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