മാപ്പിള ലഹള:പച്ചയും ചുവപ്പും -പുസ്തകം ഇറങ്ങി

ഇതാ രണ്ടു പുതിയ പുസ്തകങ്ങൾ 

വാരിയം കുന്നത്ത് കുഞ്ഞഹമ്മദ്‌ ‌ ഹാജിയെ മഹാനായി ചിത്രീകരിക്കാൻ  മുസ്ലിം മത മൗലിക വാദികളും മാർക്സിസ്റ്റ് ചരിത്രകാരന്മാരും വർഗീയ ചലച്ചിത്രകാരന്മാരും കൊണ്ടു പിടിച്ചു ശ്രമിക്കുന്നതിനിടെ മാപ്പിള ലഹളയെ ആധാരമാക്കി രണ്ടു പുസ്തകങ്ങൾ ഇറങ്ങി -പത്രപ്രവർത്തകനും എഴുത്തുകാരനുമായ രാമചന്ദ്രൻ എഴുതിയ 'മലബാർ ജിഹാദ്‌',അദ്ദേഹം പരിഭാഷ ചെയ്ത സി ഗോപാലൻ നായരുടെ 'മാപ്പിള ലഹള 1921'.

മാപ്പിള ലഹളയെപ്പറ്റി ആദ്യം പുറത്തിറങ്ങിയ പുസ്തകം മലബാർ ഡെപ്യൂട്ടി കലക്റ്ററായിരുന്ന ഗോപാലൻ നായർ ഇംഗ്ലീഷിൽ 1923 ൽ എഴുതിയത്  ആയിരുന്നു.അക്കാലത്ത് വന്ന പത്ര റിപ്പോർട്ടുകളുടെ സമാഹാരമാണ് ഇത്.പത്രങ്ങൾ മിക്കവയും ഇന്നില്ലാത്തതിനാൽ,ഇത് സുപ്രധാന ചരിത്ര രേഖയാണെന്ന് അവതാരികയിൽ ഡോ കെ എസ് രാധാകൃഷ്ണൻ വ്യക്തമാക്കുന്നു.സ്വയം രാജാക്കന്മാരായി അവരോധിച്ച മത മൗലിക വാദികളുടെ തനി നിറം ഇതിൽ കാണാം.

ഹൈദരാലിയുടെ കാലം മുതൽ മലബാറിൽ സംഭവിച്ച ഇസ്ലാമികവൽക്കരണ പശ്ചാത്തലത്തിൽ.മാപ്പിള ലഹളയുടെ ഉള്ളടക്കം വിശകലനം ചെയ്യുന്ന 'മലബാർ ജിഹാദ്‌'എന്ന  രാമചന്ദ്രൻറെ പുസ്തകം ,ആദ്യമായി അബനി മുക്കർജി മാപ്പിള ലഹളയെപ്പറ്റി എഴുതിയ പ്രബന്ധം പുറത്തു കൊണ്ട് വരുന്നു.1921 ഒടുവിൽ മുക്കർജി എഴുതി ലെനിന് നൽകിയ പ്രബന്ധത്തിലാണ്,ലഹള വർഗീയ സമരമാണെന്ന തല തിരിഞ്ഞ വിശകലനം വന്നത്.ഇത് ആവർത്തിച്ച കെ എൻ പണിക്കരെ പോലുള്ള കൂലി ചരിത്രകാരന്മാർ മുക്കർജിയെ തമസ്കരിച്ചു;വ്യാഖ്യാനം മോഷ്ടിച്ചു.ഗാന്ധിയുടെ നിലപാടും പുസ്തകത്തിൽ വിമർശിക്കപ്പെടുന്നു.

പുസ്തകത്തിന്റെ ആമുഖത്തിൽ രാമചന്ദ്രൻ പറയുന്നു:

"1836 നവംബറിൽ തുടങ്ങിയ പോരിന്റെ തുടർച്ചയായിരുന്നു,1921.അതിന് മുൻപ് ഏതാണ്ട് 80 മാപ്പിള കലാപങ്ങൾ നടന്നു.കുടുംബ പരമായി തന്നെ വംശഹത്യാ പാരമ്പര്യമുള്ള കാളവണ്ടിക്കാരൻ ഫസൽ പൂക്കോയ തങ്ങളെ നാട് കടത്തിയതിലുള്ള പക മലബാർ കലക്‌ടർ ഹെൻറി വാലന്റൈൻ കൊണോലിയുടെ കൊലയിൽ കലാശിച്ചു.കലാപങ്ങളിൽ ക്ഷേത്രങ്ങൾ മാപ്പിളമാരുടെ ലക്ഷ്യങ്ങൾ ആയിരുന്നു.മഞ്ചേരി ക്ഷേത്രത്തിൽ 92 മാപ്പിളമാർ ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് പട്ടാളത്തിന് ഇരകളായ കഥ ചരിത്രത്തിലുണ്ട്.ക്ഷേത്ര വളപ്പുകളിൽ പശുക്കളെ അറുത്ത് അവയുടെ ആന്തരാവയവങ്ങൾ വിഗ്രഹങ്ങളിൽ ചാർത്തുന്നതും വിഗ്രഹങ്ങൾ തകർക്കുന്നതും ക്ഷേത്രങ്ങൾ ചാമ്പലാക്കുന്നതും ഏത് മാപ്പിള ലഹളയിലും കാണാം.

"ഇവ വർഗ സമരമാണെന്ന് കെ എൻ പണിക്കർ മുതൽ വെളുത്താട്ട് കേശവൻ വരെയുള്ള മാർക്സിസ്റ്റ് ചരിത്രകാരന്മാർ കണ്ടത്,വക്രതയും കുടുമ്മി വച്ച അശ്ലീലവുമാണെന്ന് എന്നെ ചരിത്ര ബോധം പഠിപ്പിച്ചു.ചരിത്ര ബോധം ഒന്നേയുള്ളു;മാർക്സിസ്റ്റ് ചരിത്ര ബോധം എന്നൊന്നില്ല.കുഷ്ഠം ഒരു രോഗമാണ്;മാർക്സിസ്റ്റ് കുഷ്ഠം എന്നൊന്നില്ല.മാപ്പിള ലഹളയിൽ ഏറ്റവും പീഡനം അനുഭവിച്ചത് നായന്‍മാരും നമ്പൂതിരിമാരും ചില ക്ഷത്രിയരുമാണ് -തീയരുമുണ്ട്.ജനിച്ച സമുദായത്തെയും മതത്തെയും വഞ്ചിക്കുകയാണ്,മത ഭ്രാന്തിനെ വർഗ സമരമാക്കുക വഴി നായരും നമ്പൂതിരിയുമായ മാർക്സിസ്റ്റ് ചരിത്രകാരന്മാർ ചെയ്തത്.അവരിൽ പ്രധാനികൾ സി ഗോപാലൻ നായർ ഇംഗ്ലീഷിൽ എഴുതിയ 'മാപ്പിള ലഹള 1921' പകർത്തി വച്ചിട്ടുമുണ്ട്."

പച്ചയും ചുവപ്പുമല്ലാത്ത ചരിത്രമാണ് ഈ പുസ്തകങ്ങളിലുള്ളത്.

രണ്ടിന്റെയും പ്രകാശനം കുരുക്ഷേത്ര പ്രകാശൻ,കലൂർ,കൊച്ചി.ഫോൺ 0484 2338324

മലബാർ ജിഹാദ്, പേജ് 184,വില 180 രൂപ.

മാപ്പിള ലഹള, 1921 പേജ് 144 വില 150 രൂപ 

ADHIKARI'S THESIS FOR JINNAH AND PAKISTAN

The Left Supported  Islamic Fundamentalism

Dr. Gangadhar Adhikari (1898 – 1981) is best known in party circles as the bridegroom who forgot his wedding day. He was an eccentric Marxist theoretician and prolific writer. He was the former general secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI). He was a chemical scientist who earned his PhD degree in Berlin in 1927. He worked with some of the best scientists, attending lectures by Max Planck and Albert Einstein.

Dr Adhikari was in Germany between 1922 and 1928 and was attracted to Marxism. He joined the German Communist Party. He returned to India in 1928 and joined the Communist Party of India. He was arrested in the Meerut Conspiracy Case.  Einstein wrote an open letter to the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald seeking the release of the scientist Adhikari.

Adhikari was elected the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India in the National Conference at Kolkata in 1933.

He was a member of the CPI Politburo from 1943-1951.

When the clamour for Pakistan by the Muslim League, on the basis of Jinnah’s two-nation theory, was warming up, and Congress leaders were in jail following the uprising of August 1942, the CPI released a ‘thesis’, drafted by Gangadhar Adhikari. Adhikari's position on the national question, published in 1943 under the name Pakistan and Indian National Unity, was inspired by Joseph Stalin's Marxism and the National Question as it stressed the importance of nationality to share a common language, a defined territory and a common national consciousness.

The substance of the thesis was that there was no such nation as India, that India was really a conglomeration of as many as eighteen different ‘nationalities’ and that each one of these nationalities had the right to secede from the conglomeration. The communist understanding was that Muslims would be oppressed by the Hindus in united India and that the League had become ‘progressive’.

Supporting Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan, the communists argued that secession, far from dismembering the country, would “lead to still greater and more glorious unity of India, the like of which India has not seen in her history.”

Adhikari's Pakistan thesis was the speech, On the Present National Questions in India, at an Enlarged Central Committee meeting of the Communist Party of India, held in September 1942. It was published in Labour Monthly, March 1943, pp. 87-91.

Here is an abridged version of the thesis, published in the Labour Monthly:

Pakistan and Indian National Unity

By G Adhikari

The question of national unity, of Hindu-Muslim unity, has always been before our country and therefore only if we see its evolution side by side with that of our national movement, can we understand it properly in its present phase. The question itself has gone through different phases of development alongside the different phases through which our national movement itself has gone. However, only such a historical dynamic treatment of the problem can enable us to understand its significance today, in today’s phase of our national movement. Old ways of looking at the problem, old solutions, still persist in our understanding, and quite naturally so. These tendencies, these outmoded ways of thinking, which really form the deviations of today, have to be brought out and nailed down sharply, not only in terms of principles but also in terms of historical evolution, otherwise, they cannot be rooted out. Comrades raise several doubts and several questions. Where do these arise from?

From nowhere else except our own former approach to the problem before the outbreak of the war. That is why a historical-political review is necessary, a review of how the question of Hindu-Muslim unity is developed through the three different phases of our national movement. Only in this way can we understand the significance of Pakistan and of the demand for the self-determination of nationalities; only in this way can we understand exactly why these demands have arisen now at this time and not before.

Let's look back and examine the evolution of the problem. We find three distinct approaches to the problem in three distinct periods, each one corresponding to a particular phase of our national movement.

In the first and earliest period, it was the fundamental axiom of the national movement (which was itself in its earliest period) that India is one nation; the difference between the Hindus and the Muslims is only one of religion; the stronger the national urge among the masses of both religions grows, the sooner this difference will go off and Hindus and Muslims will grow together as one. At this period, propaganda for unity on the basis of nationalism against imperialism was considered the adequate solution to the problem. Such propaganda was carried on by the Liberals in the earliest period of the national movement and the Liberals at that period were the leaders of the incipient national movement. The Liberals, who were the earliest nationalists, just argued: “What is needed to solve the problem is nationalist consciousness.” This period lasted till about 1921 when it reached its culmination in the Khilafat-Congress unity.

The second period lasts from 1921 up to about 1936. In this period, with the further development of the nationalist movement, comes a further development of the problem of Hindu-Muslim unity themselves, and then seemingly “new” problems crop up ... To have a static conception of a nation is to be blind to all such development, is to be blind to historical development and reality. Let us take the case of our own country. There have been different nationalities, not yet grown to full nationhood, lying dormant within it. Actually, it was the foreign power, by its conquest and consequent shattering of all the old forms of economy, which actually started the process of “national” development. Before this foreign conquest, India was mainly of a feudal-village economy and therefore could not be called a “nation” in the modern bourgeois sense of the term. Before the British conquest of India, there was no part of India which can be described as a nation in the bourgeois sense. How then does this “national” development begin under the British in a typically uneven way? Such an uneven development had already set in even under a pre-capitalist economy, due to various historical and geographical causes. But this uneven development is accentuated by imperialism. This accentuated uneven development, imposed by imperialist exploitation and by the imperialist imposed distorted thwarted forms of capitalist development, gives rise in the course of time to various problems. In certain parts, bourgeois development comes earliest; these parts naturally lead the national anti-imperialist movement and at that stage, we ourselves were not conscious that we are actually a multi-national state. As bourgeois development goes on spreading and as the masses of the people and especially the peasantry in all parts of India wake up to political consciousness, then it is that individual national movements begin to arise within the framework of the all-Indian national movement against imperialism.

It was this unrest of the border nationalities, their democratic movement for self-expression within the broad framework of the struggle against Tsarism, that characterises the Russia of 1912-14. Bourgeois separatist movements arise in the border nationalities, seeking to take advantage of, and exploit, this democratic sentiment of the masses. As against this, the labour movement in the border regions led by the Bolsheviks seeks to combat this separatist tendency and to unite all the nationalities for the struggle against Tsarism. This is the crux of the national problem that came up before the Bolshevik Party in 1912. The Bolsheviks realised that only by recognising the essentially democratic and progressive character of this striving of the nationalities for self-determination, only by conceding this as a right, could they fight the bourgeois separatist tendencies successfully and forge unbreakable all-in unity against the Tsarist autocracy. The Bolsheviks demarcated clearly between two things: (1) the awakening to the national consciousness of new nationalities, an awakening which was historically progressive and found its expression in the demand for self-determination; (2) the way in which the bourgeoisie within these nationalities was seeking to take advantage of this essentially democratic urge of the masses and lead it into their own separatist class channels. They realised that granting the first is the only way to defeat the second and to forge a greater revolutionary unity of all the masses than ever before.

Similarly, here too in our own country, the problem of unifying the different sections of our people against imperialism, for the war of liberation against Fascism arises at a time when the spread of the national movement has aroused various dormant nationalities of our land to life when new “national” urges are beginning to appear under this impact. Unless we recognise this fact, we cannot find the key to unity today.

It is when we examine the present period that the full force of Stalin’s remark comes out before us: “In the case of India, too, it will probably be found that innumerable nationalities, till then lying dormant, would come to life with the further course of bourgeois development.”

We Communists recognise, and explain clearly to the people, two things: (1) The problem of nationalities can only be solved in a firm and lasting manner under Socialism when the disuniting factor of the bourgeoisie disappears; (2) But at the same time, a partial solution is also possible under capitalism, but only under conditions of complete and full democracy. The solution which the C.P.S.U. put forward in 1917 was one of attaining complete democracy, of a radical complete democratic revolution.

This is the crux of the problem which the bourgeois reformists entirely pass over. The problem today is not a constitution-mongering problem of remaking boundaries. The question of communal unity must be seen as a revolutionary question of forging revolutionary unity of all sections of our people to break the imperialist-feudal rule. The breaking of this rule is the precondition to the people being able to remake boundaries in a democratic way.

This is where the Communist solution is a revolutionary solution and is sharply demarcated from all constitution-mongering of the Liberals and the bourgeois reformists. To try to wander off into ethnographic pastimes and boundary-making formulae is to stray from the revolutionary path into the path of reformism. The problem before us today is not one of drawing maps and making boundaries, but one of forging the revolutionary unity of action of all sections of our people, to win the expected war, of liberation and to secure the common freedom of all.

This is what is stressed in paragraph 1 of our Resolution. That our solution is not a constitutional solution, that the cornerstone of our policy is the unity of the masses as the vanguard of the national movement.

Our policy with respect to the Hindu-Moslem problem fits into this general framework. This policy has to be sharply and clearly demarcated from (1) the stand of Jinnah and the separatists; (2) the stand of the National Congress leadership; (3) the stand of the Akhanda Hindustan-wallas...

It is necessary, in closing, to stress once again one important point – that is the crux of Communist policy. The question of the self-determination of nationalities is to be looked upon as a political revolutionary question, not a constitutional question.

It is the constitutionalist whose first question is: “Whether to separate or not.” But Communists say: When we grant the right of self-determination as an unconditional right, then this right becomes the hallmark of sovereignty, of equality. The way in which we should pose the question of nationalities is: how shall we define the nationalities so as to create conditions where there still be the fullest and freest flowering and development of national characteristics? We keep two aspects in mind, two aspects which cannot be separated: (1) Right of separation; (2) Object of unification. Our solution itself is no static solution. In the Soviet Union, for example, after the Revolution itself, a number of nationalities attained full-fledged nationhood in the course of time. Hence, we steadily keep before ourselves the two criteria: (1) the grant of the right of separation dispels distrust and creates unity here and now. (2) We should so demarcate the nationalities that in a free and democratic India, the nationalities will grow and flower, will develop towards Socialism.

1946: THE BLOODY BENGAL FILES

In Bengal 4000 Hindus Killed

The Communist Party of India, apart from M N Roy, Abani Mukherjee and their wives,we re founded by the muhajirs, or the muslims from India, who were en route to a jihad in Turkey, after the culmination of the second world war.These muhajirs were driven to the Party, when they reached the Russo-Afghan border from India.This alliance of the Party with the fundamentalist muslim forces continued during the Independence movement; it continues even today.The Party's support for Pakistan and the bloody partition of India, is a violent chapter in its history.

The nefarious role played by the Communist Party of India in the Pakistan movement, that culminated in the horrific Direct Action Day of 1946 ( August 16 ) , is also known as ‘The Bengali Hindu Holocaust’. On that day,there were Communist atrocities in the Malabar region of Kerala too.

The undivided CPI for most of the time between 1942 and 1947, advanced a friendly attitude towards the British Raj and the Muslim League alike.

The CPI was opposed to India’s independence movement. In the first World Congress of the Communist International held in Moscow in 1920, the Programme of the International, called Gandhiism a stumbling block in the way of revolution.

A motion in the sixth International held in 1928, also in Moscow, said that it was the duty of all communists in India to expose the Congress in India, and to resist the efforts of Swarajists, Gandhians and Congressmen.

The communists perceived the Gandhian movement as a bourgeois struggle and transfer of power as replacement of colonialism with that of neo-colonialism, where imperialist interests would be served better.

When the clamour for Pakistan by the Muslim League, on the basis of Jinnah’s two-nation theory was warming up, and Congress leaders were in jail following the uprising of August 1942, the CPI released a ‘thesis’, drafted by Gangadhar Adhikari. Adhikari's position on the national question, published in 1943 under the name Pakistan and Indian National Unity, was inspired by Joseph Stalin's Marxism and the National Question as it stressed the importance of a nationality to share a common language, a defined territory and a common national consciousness.

Dead bodies in Calcutta

The substance of the thesis was that there was no such nation as India, that India was really a conglomeration of as many as eighteen different ‘nationalities’ and that each one of these nationalities had the right to secede from the conglomeration. The communist understanding was that Muslims would be oppressed by the Hindus in united India and that the League had become ‘progressive’.

Supporting Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan, the communists argued that secession, far from dismembering the country, would “lead to still greater and more glorious unity of India, the like of which India has not seen in her history.”

The Pakistan Resolution was passed in the Lahore Convention of the Muslim League in 1940.The Indian Communists, in order to secure political gains, wholeheartedly supported the demand for Pakistan voiced by the Muslim League.

When every street and corner of Bengal echoed with the cries of ‘Ladke Lenge Pakistan’, the Communist Party extended its full support to the Pakistan Movement and even betrayed Hindus during the ghastly Direct Action Day. They maintained that the demand for Pakistan was a precondition for the transfer of power. The maiden meeting of the Muslim League that was held in the Ochterlony Monument Ground in Calcutta on the Direct Action Day of 16 August 1946 resounded with pro Pakistan sloganeering and speeches.

The meeting was attended by Jyoti Basu, leader of the CPI in Bengal Legislative Assembly and two other communist MLAs. The communists adopted a uniquely dialectical position with regard to the Direct Action Day. The Muslim League gave a call for a bandh on that day in Calcutta and the League Chief Minister of Bengal, H S Suhrawardy declared a holiday in the State with the obvious intent of facilitating the bandh and all that comes with it.

Jyoti Basu, in a press release declared that “the CPI would try to keep the state peaceful on that day, with a strike where necessary and without a strike where necessary”. He appealed not to precipitate any clash between the ‘brothers’ (Hindu and Muslim workers) and ‘make a common stand against the common foe’ .

As the Muslim fundamentalists resorted to arson, loot and all sorts of mayhem in the name of Muslim separatism, Jyoti Basu fled the meeting as the situation had by then gone out of control. The protagonists of Pakistan pounced upon the Hindu citizens as they were presumed to be the votaries of undivided India.

The riot continued in full swing for five days – from the 16th to the 20th August 1946. According to The Statesman, over 4000 people were killed and over 15000 injured during the riots, and over 270 killed and 1600 injured in two days since the riots started.

As the Hindus of Calcutta started organising themselves and put up a resistance to the Muslim rioters, Suhrawardy was forced to call in the military on 17 August. The communist leaders were left aghast at the Hindu retaliation, and momentarily switched sides. Few communist leaders including Jyoti Basu contributed to the peace committees that took the work of restoring communal harmony. 

Gangadhar Adhikari

This was an ‘eyewash’ for many while for some this was sheer ‘damage control’. There was a feeling among the upper rungs of the CPI that further passivity would push the communists to the margins of political untouchability.

The non-League Trade Union that did join the Muslim League’s call for Direct Action Day was the CPI-controlled Tramway Workers’ Union. The workers of this union had a four-hour-long session at the University Institute Hall with its Muslim comrade, Mohammed Ismail presiding.

During the 1946 election campaign in Raipur, Central Provinces, Mohammed Ismail had drawn the mass attention to the Pakistan demand of the League and explained the stance of his party vis-a-vis the League demand. For Ismail, Pakistan demand was a ‘natural outcome of the freedom urge of the Muslims’.

Under him, the CPI decided to observe 16 August as a strike to maintain Hindu-Muslim workers’solidarity. The communist trade union observed complete bandh in several petroleum, steel, iron and jute factories of Bengal.

Though the Communist leadership had advocated for Pakistan and handing over the entire Bengal to Pakistan, the grassroots workers were realising the folly of this stand. The industrialised localities of Calcutta had a strong presence of communist trade unions.

Dr Kalyan Dutta, communist ideologue and professor, noted in his autobiography that in Khidirpur the Hindu communist workers were attacked by their Muslim party-comrades on 17 August 1946. The communist textile union leader Syed Abdullah Farooqui along with Muslim hardliner Elian Mistry led an armed Muslim band into the Kesoram Cotton Mills in the slums of Lichubagan, near Khidirpur in Calcutta.

The Hindu workers were utterly perplexed. They did show their party membership card to their Muslim comrades and begged for their own lives. Their lives were not spared.Not less than 400 Hindu labourers, mostly Oriyas, were killed. This is the largest reported anti-Hindu massacre in the whole series of Great Calcutta Killings.

In 1946, the partywise composition of the Bengal Legislative Assembly was: Muslim League: 116; Congress: 62; Hindu Mahasabha: 1; Depressed Castes: 30 (including 24 Congress members) and; Communist Party: 3.

The three communist MLAs were, Jyoti Basu from Syedpur; Rupnarayan Roy from Dinajpur and Ratanlal Brahman from Darjeeling. The communist legislators defied the united Hindu call for Suhrawardy’s resignation in the Bengal Legislative Assembly and abstained in favour of the League. 

Suhrawardy

On 19 September 1946, the Congress moved two no-confidence motions against the Muslim League in the Assembly. One was against the ministry in general and another against Premier Suhrawardy in particular.

Participating in this debate Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the Hindu Mahasabha Leader, gave the longest speech in the House on 20 September 1946 wherein he strongly attacked both the Government and the Premier. However, the role played by the Communist Party during the two-day long debate in the Assembly exposed the nefarious nexus between the communist Party and the League.

Jyoti Basu said in the House that the British Imperialists, who were looking after Indian administration, were mainly responsible for the communal riots and pointed out the fact that while the Sindh Governor disallowed the declaration of holiday on 16 August, the Bengal Governor did the contrary in Calcutta.

Basu and his party unquestionably played the role of a League collaborator and a genocide apologist within the Assembly. In the guise of attacking the British Governor of Bengal for inciting the League to riot freely, he preserved silence on the flagitious role played by Suhrawardy in orchestrating the anti-Hindu pogrom in the heart of the provincial capital. CPI legislator Rupnarayan Roy went to the extent of proposing a resolution to condemn the stridently anti-League stand Syama Prasad Mukherjee took in the floor of the House.

Both the motions were put to vote on 20 September 1946. The motion against the Premier was defeated by 130 to 85 votes, and the one against the government by 131 to 87.

86 Congress members and one Hindu Mahasabha member voted against the Suhrawardy government.The 3 communist members remained ‘neutral’, voting neither for nor against the Muslim League.

In spite of their failure in the face of the brute majority of the Muslims in the Bengal Legislative Assembly gifted by the Communal Award of 1932, the most striking thing about the no-confidence motion was how the opposition, irrespective of their political affiliations, spoke in one voice. Whether the Congress or Mahasabha, they all criticised the ministry in one voice for the failure of the police and delay in calling the military.

Contrary to the Hindu opinion which was united against the League, the Communists backstabbed not only their electors who were largely Hindu but also jeopardized the unity and integrity of undivided India. The Communist Party posited the farcical excuse of ‘working-class unity’ to defend its position. In the veneer of class struggle, the communists did not dither to push the Hindu masses into the jaws of the League.

Jyoti Basu

Justifying their ‘neutral’ stand, the Communist Party’s General Secretary Puran Chand Joshi wrote to his fellow Bengali comrades on 27 August 1947: “We can vote against the Muslim League Ministry provided it does not affect our working-class base and we can carry it with ourselves through our extensive explanatory campaign… If we cannot keep up even our hold on existing organised working class, everything is lost, even for the future. Thus the best way possible to keep all in good humour was to stay neutral. Voting against the Muslim League will have other serious implications”.

With the fall of Japan and subsequent Indian National Army’s surrender before the Allied Forces, the British government put Netaji’s men to trial. While three of the INA heroes, G.S. Dhillon, Prem Sehgal and Shah Nawaz , a patriotic Muslim who was taunted as ‘Pandit’ by Muslim League, were let off completely while another compatriot, Captain Abdul Rashid was sentenced to seven years.

This created a tremendous stir among the Muslims. Rashid stated that the reason for his joining the INA was to arm himself sufficiently so as to safeguard Muslim interests in the event of a future INA invasion in India. He despised the ‘non-Muslim soldiers’ who were the moving spirits of the INA.

The Communist Party and its students’ wing immediately joined the Muslim cause and extended support to the Muslim League’s strike on 9 February 1946, observing it as ‘Captain Abdul Rashid Day’. The communists hailed that day as ‘an anti-Imperialist expression of Muslim masses’. Jyoti Basu defended the communist position by arguing that they were with the anti-imperialist Muslim masses in general, rather than with the Muslim League in particular.

The communists rubbing shoulders with the Muslim fundamentalists was similar to Gandhi’s support to the Khilafat Movement. Justifying the anti-British stance of the Khilafat agitators, Gandhi did not hesitate to strike a Hindu-Muslim alliance.

Direct Action Day was nothing but the highest culmination of fanatical expression of the Muslim masses arising out of the Pakistan movement.

The Hindus were the worst sufferers of the Pakistan movement.The Communist Party’s justification of a common Hindu-Muslim alliance was wholly inefficacious and only pushed the Hindus into the horrid dregs of Islamist frenzy.

The lame excuses of the communists for endorsing the Pakistan movement swarmed between ‘anti-imperialism’ and ‘workers’ unity’. They claimed that Pakistan was a rightful demand of the Muslim working classes. Clinging on to the principle of ‘international unity of working classes’, they argued that the Hindu working classes should concur to the political bargaining of the Muslim working classes, even at the cost of their own existence.

Even after independence, communist ideologues like Jyoti Basu and Manikuntala Sen left no stone unturned to whitewash Muslim League’s crimes. The CPI leaders, such as Sajjad Zaheer, B.T. Ranadive, P.C. Joshi and others, actively wrote and propagandized in favour of the ‘right of secession of the Muslims of India’. 

Probably the Communists expected that in the fledgling state of Pakistan they would be much better off as a party than they were in undivided India. Alas, this was not to be.

The atheist Communists with Hindu names were treated no differently from their God-fearing Hindu brethren, and with the exception of very few like Moni Singh, they had all to leave their beloved Pakistan.

Acclaimed Bengali communists like Ganesh Ghosh and Kalpana Dutta- the two revolutionaries of the Chittagong Armoury Raid, and Ramen Mitra and Ilaa Mitra,organisers of the Nachole Tebhaga Uprising, had to flee Pakistan after independence.

IN KERALA

Prior to the Direct Action Day violence, the party PB and CC had endorsed the August Resolution of 1946.The CC meet in December 1945 had given the green signal for a militant struggle through a document, The New Situation and Our Tasks.It admitted the existence of differences within the CC.Though the moderate P C Joshi was the General Secretary and the general trend was moderate Right, the August Resolution was Left in content. But it had a Right mix too. The resolution said:

"The National congress represents the main stream of independence movement of the country...A joint front of three main patriotic parties-Congress,League,Communist Party and and other popular patriotic parties is essential for developing such final struggle."

But see the extreme Left in these passages:

"The peasant is lagging behind the working class in this phase of mass upheavals.But even the peasantry is beginning to take militant actions against land lords,hoarders,money lenders etc...Such mass actions of the kisans are bound to grow in militancy..."

"The Communist Party supports these mass actions,and will organise the Kisans to withstand the repression that they will have to face...The Communists in the States must raise a broad based movement for civil liberties,agitate against bogus constitution which the princes are foisting pon the people..."

This document was praised in Ranadive's Report, On Reformist Deviation in 1948.

In March 1946, Soli Batliwala, a C C member, resigned and levelled important charges against the leadeship. One of the charges was that the PB had secret relations with the British Intelligence.That P C Joshi had been a British agent was revealed later in files of the Home department of the British Government ( Home,Pol/1942 F 226 of NAI). Batliwala had been a prisoner in Kerala earlier and his attack was a set back for the Communists in Kerala.

After the August resolution, the miltancy of the Communist Party intensified and became violent.When the Muslim League called to observe 16 August 1946 as Direct SAction Day, in Malabar, the Communists did every thing to incite the Mappilas for an open revolt. On 28 August, The Mathrubhumi Daily reported:

"As a result of the riot, 3368 dead bodies were removed from the streets of Calcutta."

EMS Namboodiripad wrote a leaflet inciting the Mappilas to revolt in Malabar.The Mappilas didn't pay much attention.Though EMS had openly advocated for Muslim homeland of pakistan, he had no influence over them.In the March 1946 election to the Madras assembly, EMS had contested from Malappuram, where he he had got only 16% of the votes. It was the lowesast for a Communist candidate in Malabar.The total votes he got was just 5518.

The Congress leaders like K Kelappan and U Gopala Menon immediately called upon the people to remain calm.The government took action against The Desabhimani which had published EMS' call for revolt. The government prohibited it from publishing any material relating to the Moplah Rebellion.

____________________________

Reference:

1.History of the communist Movement in Kerala/E Balakrishnan

2.Roy, Tathagata/ POLITICS OF BENGAL BETWEEN THE TWO PARTITIONS, 1905-1947
3.Chatterjee, Chhanda/ Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the Hindu Dissent and the Partition of Bengal, 1932-1947
4.Sanyal, Sunanda and Basu, Soumya /The Sickle and the Crescent: Communists, Muslim League and India’s Partition

© Ramachandran