S. A. Dange
Encyclopedia
Shripad Amrit Dange (10 October 1899 - 22 May 1991) was a founding member of the Communist Party of India
(CPI) and a stalwart of Indian trade union movement
. During the British Raj
, Dange was arrested by the British authorities for communist and trade union activities and was jailed for an overall period of 13 years. After India's Independence, a series of events like Sino-Soviet split
, Sino-Indian war
, and the revelation that while in jail, Dange had written letters to the British Government, offering to cooperate with Britain
against Germany
in the World War II
, led to a split in the Communist Party of India, in 1964. The breakaway Communist Party of India (Marxist)
(CPI(M)) emerged stronger both in terms of membership and their performance in the Indian Elections. Dange who remained the Chairman of the CPI till 1978, was removed in that year because the majority of party workers were against Dange's political line of supporting Indian National Congress
, and Indira Gandhi
, the then Congress Prime Minister. He was expelled from the CPI in 1981. He joined the All India Communist Party
(AICP), and later, United Communist Party of India
. Towards the end, Dange got increasingly marginalized in the Indian Communist movement. He was also a well known writer and was the founder of Socialist the first socialist weekly in India. Dange played an important role in the formation of Maharashtra
state.
s in Village named Karanjgaon in Niphad Taluka of Nashik District, Maharashtra. His father was major landowner of the area and lived in one palace like house in Karanjgaon. Dange was sent to study in Pune. He was expelled from college for organizing a movement against compulsory teaching of the Bible
. While in work, Dange was exposed to conditions of workers when he undertook voluntary work in the textile mill areas of Bombay (now Mumbai). Dange was drawn into active politics by the fervor of nationalist movement
against the British rule in India
. Bal Gangadhar Tilak
, a veteran leader of Indian National Congress
from Maharashtra, the earliest proponent of swaraj
(complete independence) greatly inspired young Dange. Later, when Mahatma Gandhi
launched the Non-Cooperation Movement
in 1920, Dange gave up his studies and joined the Independence movement.
He became interested in Marxism
, while following the Russian Revolution of 1917. He grew increasingly skeptical about Gandhism
, especially about Gandhi's promotion of cottage industries as the sole solution for India's economic ills, while overlooking possibilities of an industrial economy.
, a comparative study of the approaches of both the leaders; but, Lenin coming out as better of the two. This work proved to be a turning point in Dange's life. Prominent Marxist leader M.N. Roy read the work and went on to meet its young author, when he came to Bombay. Ranchoddas Bhavan Lotvala, a flour mill owner from Bombay who 'concerned himself for radical causes', also read this treatise and was impressed by its contents. Lotvala sponsored Dange's study of Marxism for several years, and together they built up a library of Marxist Literature and published translations of classics.
In 1922, with Lotvala's help, Dange launched the English weekly, Socialist, the first Indian Marxist journal. Later Mohit Sen
, Dange's contemporary and a well-known communist intellectual, wrote that Dange's articles in the Socialist impressed Lenin himself.
The period also coincided with influence of Bolshevist ideas, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, manifesting in political events in countries outside Russia. This process was quickened by the establishment of the Third International or the Communist International, or in popular parlance—its abbreviated form -- Comintern
, an international communist organization founded in Moscow
in March 1919. As a resolution adopted in the Founding Congress of the Comintern
its stated objective was to fight 'by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State'.
, perhaps the most important secret revolutionary organization operating in East Bengal
in the opening years of the 20th century, went to Moscow in by the end of April 1920. The new Russian government under Lenin evinced interest in him and encouraged him to form an Indian Communist Party. Roy went on to found the émigré Communist Party of India on 17 October 1920 in Tashkent
. On his return to India, M.N. Roy who had read Gandhi Vs. Lenin met Dange in 1922. Dange at that time was closely associating with Lotvala to spread Marxian ideas. It was during this period that Dange grew in prominence as a Marxist; a sure way those days to invite antagonism from the British Government.
The British government initially did not think Dange was dangerous.
, Nalini Gupta, Shaukat Usmani
, Singaravelu Chettiar
, Ghulam Hussain and others were charged, in what was called the Cawnpore (now spelt Kanpur) Bolshevik Conspiracy case. The specific charge was that they as communists were seeking "to deprive the King Emperor of his sovereignty of British India, by complete separation of India from imperialistic Britain by a violent revolution."
The case attracted interest of the people towards Comintern plan to bring about violent revolution in India. Communist trials had taken place in India, in frontier towns like Peshawar
where Russian trained muhajir
communists were put on trial. "But no case had attracted public gaze like the Kanpur case. Pages of newspapers daily splashed sensational communist plans and people for the first time learned such a large scale about communism and its doctrines and the aims of the Communist International in India."
Singaravelu Chettiar was released on account of illness. M.N. Roy was out of the country and therefore could not be arrested. Ghulam Hussain confessed that he had received money from the Russians in Kabul
and was pardoned. Muzaffar Ahmed, Nalini Gupta, Shaukat Usmani and Dange were sentenced for various terms of imprisonment. This case was responsible for actively introducing communism to the Indian masses. Dange was released from prison in 1925.
(AITUC) was formed at Bombay by N.M. Joshi and others. Joshi was a philanthropist who was sympathetic to the workers'cause. At that time AITUC did not have a cohesive ideology, but it was sympathetic to the Indian National Congress. When Dange wrote about the founding session of AITUC at Bombay, he brought out the organization's Congress roots:
Dange edited the Marathi journal, Kranti, the official organ of the Girni Kamgar Union from the time of its inception.
. In 1926 and 1927 members of the British Communist Party, notably Philip Spratt
and Ben Bradley, came to India. mandated by Comintern to work among the industrial laborers of Bombay and Calcutta(present spelling: Kolkatta. Workers' and Peasants' Parties were started in those cities and in the United Provinces
.
The communists were addressing ground level problems and as a result "N.M. Joshi, in spite of money and no persecution from the government lost the leadership (of AITUC) to the communists." The communists took over the leadership of the AITUC in December 1929, when their rivals, led by N.M.Joshi, walked out of the session, and founded a rival organization. Like rest of the world, it was a period of great unrest in India too.
The British Government was clearly worried about the growing influence of the Communist International. Its ultimate objective, so the government perceived, was to achieve "complete paralysis and overthrow of existing Governments in every country (including India) by means of a general strike and armed uprising.".
The government's immediate response was to foist yet another conspiracy case—the Meerut Conspiracy Case.
In more than one way the Meerut Conspiracy case trial helped the Communist Party of India to fconsolidate its position among workers. Dange along with 32 persons were arrested on or about 20 March 1929 and were put on trial under Section 121A of the Indian Penal Code
, which declares,
The Sessions Court in Meerut awarded stringent sentences to the accused in January 1933. Out of the accused 27 persons were convicted with various durations of 'transportation'. While Muzaffar Ahmed was transported for life, Dange, Spratt, Ghate, Joglekar and Nimbkar were each awarded transportation for a period of 12 years. On appeal, in July 1933, the sentences of Ahmed, Dange and Usmani were reduced three years. Reductions were also made in the sentences of other convicts..
, a former General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
wrote about the aftermath of the Meerut Conspiracy case thus:
were dictated by the Comintern's views. After its admission to the Third International, the Communist Party of India was seen to be guided by the policies imposed by Joseph Stalin
on the international communist movement. Stalin's policies were, in turn, dictated by Russia's geopolitical
interests. As a result the positions taken by the CPI ran many times counter to popular nationalist sentiments, leading to erosion of the Party's popular base.
Up to 1934, the CPI viewed India's freedom struggle as a movement of the reactionary bourgeoisie
politicians. The British government had banned communist activities from 1934 to 1938. When the Comintern adopted the Georgi Dimitrov
thesis of popular front
against fascism
, CPI declared support for the Congress in 1938. The communist leaders like Dinkar Mehta, Sajjad Zaheer
, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, and Soli Batliwala became members of the national executive of the Congress Socialist Party
.
The Raj re-banned the CPI in 1939, for its initial anti-War stance. The line was changed when, following the Nazi-Soviet pact (1939-40)
. The Communist Party of India did not take an active stance against Adolf Hitler
and his policies. But when Hitler attacked Poland, the Communist Party of India had called World War II, an 'Imperialist War'. But when the he attacked the Soviet Union, the same Communist Party of India decided to call the war, a People's War.
After the USSR had sided with the Great Britain
in the war, the Communist Party of India was legalized for the first time. Saying that the freedom struggle would impede the war against fascism, the CPI stayed away from the freedom struggle. The Indian National Congress was able to politically corner the communists, as the popular sentiments were overwhelmingly supporting Gandhi's Quit India Movement
.
In 1943 Dange for the first was elected to the Central Committee of the CPI. In October 1944 he attended the XVII Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain
in London
as a fraternal representative from the Communist Party of India.
Between 1929 and 1935 Dange remained in jail for role in Meerut conspiracy case. After being released from jail in 1935, Dange went on a speaking tour in Andhra Pradesh
on the invitation of the Congress Socialist Party
leadership from there. His tour resulted in that many prominent Congress Socialist Party leaders from Andhra Pradesh joining the Communist Party. After he came out of the jail, up to 1939, he was working for the Party and was trying increase its hold over the trade union movement.
Around this time Dange's legislative career also took off. He was elected to the Bombay Legislative Assembly as Communist candidate in 1946.
Detention Camp. At Deoli several other communist leaders were also jailed along with him. In prison he started a political study circle amongst the prisoners. He was released in 1943.
Even before the takeover of the AITUC by the communists, in 1927, Dange was elected Assistant Secretary of AITUC." During the year 1943- 1944 Dange was elected for the first time as the chairman of the All India Trade Unions Congress.
In 1944-1945 he was a delegate to the World Trade Union Conference in London. In 1945-1947 he became the vice chairman of the All India Trade Union Congress. Also in October 1945 he became a member of the Executive Committee and chairman of the General Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions
. In February 1947, Dange again became the chairman of All India Trade Union Congress and continued to be at the helm of that organization either as general secretary or chairman.
Internationally also CPI found itself lost. At the start of World War II, the Comintern supported a policy of non-intervention, arguing that the war was an imperialist war between various national ruling classes. But when the Soviet Union itself was invaded on 22 June 1941, the Comintern changed its position to one of active support for the Allies
. Stalin disbanded Comintern in 1943. It is surmised that the dissolution came about as Stalin wished to calm his World War II Allies (particularly Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill
) not to suspect that the Soviet Union was pursuing a policy of trying to foment revolution in other countries.
The CPI was in a state of confusion and the Party clearly needed advice. In July 1947, P.C. Joshi, the then General Secretary, secured Dange's entry to USSR.
talking to the Soviet leaders. Andrei Zhdanov
and Mikhail Suslov
, leading Soviet theorists of the period, participated in the 1947 talks with Dange.
The following free and frank exchange between Dange and Zhdanov on the day after the India's Independence day, that is, on 16 August 1947, brings out the chaotic situation in which the Communist Party of India found itself at that historical juncture:
The Soviet leaders closely questioned Dange about the Congress. For years questions regarding what attitude should be taken toward the Congress would be debated inside the left parties in India. The following portion shows Dange's attitude towards the Congress and Muslim League, at that time.
The Communist Party of India’s second congress at Calcutta (new spelling Kolkata
) on 28 February 1948, the Zhdanov
line of insurrection was adopted on the premise that 'free' India was only a “semi-colony of British imperialism”. Joshi, who stood collaboration with Congress was sidelined, and Ranadive became the General Secretary.
Open call for taking up arms, known as 'Calcutta thesis' and was closely identified with its main proponent and the new General Secretary, Ranadive. As a result insurgencies took place in Tripura
, Telangana
and Travancore
.
A rebellion in the Telangana region in the northern part of what was to become Andhra Pradesh, a peasant struggle against the feudal regime of the Nizam was already happening when Calcutta thesis was adopted. To use the Telangana rebellion
to herald in the Indian revolution was one the main pillar of Ranadive strategy. During the peak of Telangana rebellion, 3,000 villages and some 41,000 square kilometers of territory were involved in the revolt. The ruler of Hyderabad state, nizam
had not yet acceded his territory to India, but the violence of the communist-led rebellion, the central government sent in the army in September 1948. By November 1949, Hyderabad had been forced to accede to the Indian union, and, by October 1951, the violent phase of the Telangana movement had been suppressed.
Dange had been a member of the CPI Central Committee since the founding of the Party. But during 1950-1951 he was not included in the Central Committee.
The proponents of the `Chinese path' led by Comrade C. Rajeswara Rao and those of the `Indian path' led by Comrade Ajoy Ghosh had set up their own centers and the CPI was on the verge of a split.
On 30 May 1950, the extremists with hundreds of their followers split from the Party and came out in the open. When the war of attrition between both continued unabated, the Soviet Communists intervened. The warring leaders were invited to Russia for a discussion with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU) in 1951.
Events that followed were described Mohit Sen thus:
In 1951, Dange was elected to both the Central Committee and the Politburo. In 1952 Dange lost elections to the Indian Parliament from Bombay.
, the then Indian Prime Minister visited USSR and received a tremendous welcome. This was followed by the maiden visit to India of the Soviet leaders, Nikolai Bulganin
and Nikita Khrushchev
in 1955. Jawaharlal Nehru, frankly put forward to the visiting Soviet leaders that the Communist Party of India was claiming to receive direction from the CPSU.
To this Khrushchev's response was a reiteration of the official Soviet Party line, that with the abolition of the Comintern, there was no organisation for leading the Communist Parties in other countries. Khrushchev and Bulganin's visit paved way for forging of a strong relationship between the Government of India (and later Congress Party) and the USSR, independent of CPI.
in 1956. Against the ultra-left line of Ranadive, Dange and P.C. Joshi were for reviving the 'popular front' and working with the ruling Indian National Congress
. These differences within the Communist Party of India, up to Palakkad congress was an internal matter of the Party; the international communist movement at that time was united. Ranadive who was earlier shunned for his extremism
made a comeback to the Party leadership at the Palakkad congress.
, which was created from the former Bombay Presidency
in 1950. The Government of India had appointed the States Re-organization Committee
for setting up states on the basis of language. This committee recommended a bi-lingual state called Bombay for Maharashtra-Gujarat, with Bombay as its capital. The state came into being on 1 November 1956, but stirred up political unrest in both the states. In Maharashtra, under the leadership of Keshavrao Jedhe, an all-party meeting was held in Pune
and a joint Maharashtra council (Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti) was founded. In the second general elections the Samiti defeated the stalwarts of Congress by securing 101 seats out of 133, including 12 from Mumbai.
Dange was elected to the 2nd Lok Sabha
in 1957 from Bombay City (Central) Constituency of the State of Bombay.
Dange along with S.M. Joshi, N.G. Gore and P.K. Atre fought relentlessly for Samyukta Maharashtra, a struggle that cost a lot of lives. Finally on 1 May 1960, pre-dominantly Marathi
-speaking state of Maharashtra was born.
), when the Sino-Indian border dispute broke out—an event that would sharpen the differences within the CPI. The Calcutta Congress at the end of September 1959 brought into open the differences within the Party. As Manchester Guardian reported:
The conflict came in the open when P.C. Joshi, who controlled the Party's weekly New Age, suppressed Mr. Dange's statement in Parliament that he sharply stood by the McMahon line, and also a resolution passed by Maharashtra State Committee supporting Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the border dispute. Joshi was earlier sidelined for his pro-Congress advocacy, but later rehabilitated by making him the editor of the Party journal.
incident', lamenting the loss of Indian lives, and stating that the country would support Nehru in his efforts to avoid any repetition of it.
In the initial stages, Dange's nationalist line was the dominant one. To quote Manchester Guardian, "Hence not only the Party's extremists of the Joshi wing, but also the middle-of-the-road Moscow faction were at that time visibly losing ground. This favorable development was probably accelerated by the attitude of studied neutrality adopted in Moscow, where
the Soviet press printed both the Chinese and Indian accounts of the Ladakh skirmish, without appearing to take sides. His general nationalist communist position had the backing of the Kerala, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh
, Rajasthan
, Bihar
and Uttar Pradesh
units of the party.
Indian Government in this specific cases. Even the comrades who sided with Dange on the Sino-Indian border issue, were not ready to compromise on basic tenets of communism. Dange was severely criticized and he had own up his fault in the Party forum, through a process called 'self-criticism'.
There was also a consolidation among the communist internationalists at this stage. The Swiss paper
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
identified B. T. Ranadive, a former general
secretary(1948–50), as supporting P.C. Joshi in his pro-Chinese attitude. According to these two militants, Nehru
ought to be condemned by the Party as a "reactionary", and the
policy of Congress should be resolutely opposed. At this stage, the secretariat's eight members were divided as follows:
known as 'The Thaw', by holding a summit meeting with U.S.
President Dwight Eisenhower. Two other reasons were USSR's unwillingness to support Chinese nuclear program and their neutrality in the initial days of Sino-Indian border conflict. These events greatly offended Mao Zedong
and the other Chinese Communist leaders.
. By that time the Soviets were openly supporting India in its border dispute with China. These events were followed by formal statements of each side's ideological positions: the Chinese came out with their document in June 1963. The Soviets too came out with their own document. Thereafter the two parties stopped communicating.
to reassert the right-wing control over the pro-left strongholds of West Bengal and the Punjab.
In February 1963—with 48 of its 110 members absent, in
detention or in hiding—the National Council voted to
"administer the work of the West Bengal
Party" through a Provincial Organizing Committee acting on behalf of the
Central Secretariat.
Through such partisan measures Dange alienated the centrist leader,
E.M.S. Namboodiripad, who resigned from the post of Secretary-
General, leaving Dange to take over the post.
By earlier 1963 the Left had
established an underground organization for what amounted
to a breakaway West Bengal Communist Party Unit. According to prominent leftist fortnightly Link, New Delhi, the new outfit enjoyed the support of 14,000 of the 17,000 Communist Party members in
the state. Similar moves were made in many other states by the left-wing. Release of their leaders from jails by the state governments also helped the leftists to consolidate their position among cadres.
In September 1963, A.K. Gopalan (formerly with Dange in 1959) was able to organize
an impressive anti-official party rally in Calcutta. Dange still had a majority of two-to-one
on the council, but the emerging alliance between the Leftists
and Namboodiripad's smaller Centrist faction forced him to be cautious. However, at that stage, with secessionist organizations
already at work in several states, no caution or concession
could halt the drift towards a split; though attempts were still not given up for unity. Suddenly in March 1964, a trigger was provided by what was called the 'Dange letters', that exploded on the face of the Party, precipitating a split.
were said to be written by Dange to the British Viceroy
from prison in 1924, after his conviction in the Kanpur Conspiracy Case, and in which he had promised to cooperate with Britain against Germany in World War II. Dange, who was the chairman of the Party got the Secretariat to denounce the letters as a forgery. But slide towards split became unstoppable. His opponents
exploited this opening, and called for his removal from the
leadership to facilitate investigation.
, walked out of a National Council meeting. and proceeded to appeal to all Indian Communists to repudiate the Dange leadership. National Council suspended the thirty-two leaders.
The left leaders who were ousted, in turn, announced a separated national convention. After the Tenali
convention the CPI left-wing organized party district and state conferences. Also it was decided in the Tenali convention to hold a party congress of the left-wing in Calcutta.
The Calcutta Congress was held during 31 October - 7 November 1964. Simultaneously, the official Party under Dange convened a Party Congress of the Communist Party of India in Bombay. The split was complete. The left group which assembled in Calcutta decided to adopt the name 'Communist Party of India (Marxist)'.This party also adopted its own political programme. P. Sundarayya was elected general secretary of CPI(M).
In 1967, General Elections to the Parliament, Dange won from the Bombay Central South Constituency. The results had again shown a weakening CPI. They contested in 109 seats, won only 23, with about 7.5 million votes ( that is 5.11% of total votes polled. The CPI(M) contested in 59, won 19, with 6.2 million votes(4.28%).
In the state legislative elections held simultaneously, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) emerged as a major party in Kerala and West Bengal. In Kerala a United Front government led by E.M.S. Namboodiripad was formed. The Communist Party of India was a minor coalition partner. In West Bengal, Communist Party of India (Marxist) emerged as the main force, but the chief ministership of the coalition government was given to Ajoy Mukherjee
of the Bangla Congress
, a provincial break-away group of the Indian National Congress. For the Communist Party of India, The Kerala experiment of coexisting with Communist Party of India(Marxist) did not work for long.
. After the short-lived coexistence between both the Parties broke down in Kerala and also in West Bengal similar rupture happened, the trade union wing also split. In December 1969, eight Communist Party of India (Marxist) members walked out of an All India Trade Union Congress executive committee meeting. Later, the Marxist break-away members would organize an All India Trade Union Conference in Calcutta, on 28–31 May 1970. The Calcutta conference was the founding conference of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions
, new Communist Party of India (Marxist) trade union.
In the late 1960s, however, the mood within the Communist Party of India turned strongly anti-Congress. In the Bombay party congress in 1968, the CPI took the decision of forging an anti-Congress front. This had resulted in collaborating with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for a short while. Soon differences between both Parties again came out in the open. From 1970 onwards Communist Party of India started once again working with the Congress. Dange was one of
the principal architects of this union.
. In 1971 Bangladesh
(formerly East Pakistan
) declared its independence from Pakistan
. The Pakistani military tried to quell the uprising; but Indian military intervention thwarted such moves. There was confusion within the ranks of the Indian communists—while the pro-Soviet CPI had no problem in supporting the war, and the Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi
, the CPI(M) found itself in quandary participated in the resistance struggle, the pro-China communist groups were in a quandary, because China had sided with Pakistan in the war.
as the Chief Minister. In Kerala legislative elections held in 1970, the Communist Party of India won only 16 seats, out of a total of 133, whereas the coalition leader Indian National Congress had won 30 seats. Still, Congress accepted Achuta Menon's leadership till the next election that would be held seven years later.
, and it lasted for 21 months. Emergency provisions suspended all the Constitutional rights and gave power to rule by decree
. It enabled the Prime Minister to suspend elections and civil liberties.
Indira Gandhi took this extreme step due to a host of reasons. The venerated Gandhian leader Jaya Prakash Narayan's agitation in Bihar
for change in provincial government, was getting increasingly against the Central Government
. More immediate reason for clamping of emergency was that in a judgment dated 12 June 1975, Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha
of the Allahabad High Court
held that Mrs. Gandhi was guilty on the charge of misuse of government machinery for her election campaign. The case was filed by Raj Narain
, who had been recently defeated in the parliamentary election by Indira Gandhi. The court declared her election null and void and unseated her from her seat in Lok Sabha. The court also banned her from contesting any election for an additional six years.
Comparative Performance of the Communist Parties in General Elections of 1971 and 1977.
- a medley of groups ranging from Congress rebels to Hindu party Jan Sangh - under the patronage of Jaiprakash Narayan, was able to garner 41.32% of the votes polled. Congress though lost heavily in terms of seats, still had 34.52% of popular votes. To the left parties the fact that these two parties accounted for more than three-fourth of the electorate and 449 out a total of 542 seats did suggest a possibility of a two (bourgeoisie) party political system. The result was a lot of soul searching for both the parties. Eventually both the parties would regroup and would form an alliance.
Even after Bhatinda congress, Dange was able to retain some of his influence though the majority was moving towards unity with CPI(M). The main reason for this was CPI sharing power with the Congress in Kerala.
Initially, both parties differed on the concept of what left and democratic unity would mean. This came out in open in when leaders of both parties met for the first time after 1964 split in New Delhi on 13 April 1978. In spite of repudiation of emergency, the CPI was not ready to change its overall assessment of Congress. Congress according to CPI contained left and democratic elements. This stand also justified continued cooperation between Congress and CPI in Kerala.
. Roza Deshpande, the daughter of Dange and her husband Bani Deshpande, played an important role in organising the founding of the new party.. It is said that Dange himself was initially largely sceptical of a split in the CPI.
The founders of All India Communist Party retained close communications with Dange. In May, 1981 the National Council of CPI expelled Dange. When the first conference of AICP was held in Meerut, commencing on 13 March. Dange turned up there uninvited and took charge of the new party. He was elected general secretary of the party.
. Eventually the control over this organization was completely taken over by the Congress..
. Veteran communist leader Mohit Sen
was the general secretary
of the party until his death in 2003.
The party failed to register any presence in the country. In the 2007 assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, UCPI launched three candidates, Devi Dayal Yadav in Karki (572 votes, 0.49% of the votes in the constituency), Anand Kumar in Baberu (899 votes, 0.82%) and Vimal Krishan Srivastav in Banda (456 voes, 0.39%). Similarly, in 2006 Tamil Nadu
elections, UCPI could garner only 921 votes in the state.
state government. He was survived by his wife Ushatai and daughter, Roza Deshpande.
Another attempt by various communist organizations was to hold a national communist conference in Mumbai on the occasion of Dange's birth centenary celebrations. But this had failed due to the paucity of funds. The communist organizations could not raise sufficient funds nor could find a generous sponsor to host the meet in Dange's own city. Therefore, the venue of the conference was shifted to Kerala.
, Prime Minister of India unveiled his statue along with other left leaders such as Acharya Narendra Deva and A.K. Gopalan in Parliament House. The 9-feet high bronze statue of Dange, sculpted by Vithoba Panchal, has been donated by the labor organization, Shramik Pratishthan, Mumbai.
documents, notes smuggled out by former KGB spy Vasili Mitrokhin
at the time of his defection to Britain, Christopher Andrew published, in 2005, a book Mitrokhin Archive II
, that contained details of alleged transactions between the CPI and the KGB during 1975-76, and it claimed that the money exchanged was between 0.4 to 0.8 million rupees a month. The supposed KGB papers claim that deceased CPI leaders Dange and C. Rajeshwara Rao regularly received bribes and favors from the Russians in mid-1970s and Dange even issued receipts for the money he received. This money changed hands from car windows in desolate areas near New Delhi, the book claimed.
Mitrokhin Archives are not KGB papers per se, but were notes taken by Vasili Mitrokhin over 30 years. CPI questioned the authenticity of these papers. "This is utter nonsense. We have said this before and we say it again that these documents haven't been verified and no one knows if these are real KGB papers," said CPI leader Manju Kumar Majumder, when the book was out, Academicians like J. Arch Getty
and counter-intelligence specialists had questioned the veracity of these papers.
to India during the 1960s named Indian communist leaders seeking aid from the Soviet Union
. Dange's name figured in the first excerpt is from a 17 January 1962 entry from the journal Benediktov describing a conversation with Bhupesh Gupta, the then Secretary of the National Council of CPI.
In as much as Mitrokhin archive was based entirely on notes based on alleged primary sources, the Benediktov diaries also brought in Dange through a mere hearsay. But both these documents were used by the critics of communism to attack the communist parties and Dange.
Dange was a keen follower of literature. He had published a book called Literature and People that advocated socialist realism
, as opposed to elitism
.
Dange's magnum opus was severely criticized by historian D.D. Kosambi, who said that in order to defend Engels, he had to deny Dange. He went on to say that Dange’s work was unquestionably a caricature of Engel’s work. Kosambi was especially severe when he said, ‘Marxism is not a substitute for thinking, but a tool of analysis which must be used, with a certain minimum of skill and understanding, upon the proper material..
The book was released in 2002, under the title Vedic India by his daughter Roza and her husband, Bani Deshpande. Dange was again criticized for "his ideas on ancient India and his discovery of the ideals of communism in the primitive ages (and hence a glorification of the ancient culture) left him exposed to charges of having read Marxism in the most unscientific fashion".
Communist Party of India
The Communist Party of India is a national political party in India. In the Indian communist movement, there are different views on exactly when the Indian communist party was founded. The date maintained as the foundation day by CPI is 26 December 1925...
(CPI) and a stalwart of Indian trade union movement
Indian Trade Unions
In India the Trade Union movement is generally divided on political lines. According to provisional statistics from the Ministry of Labour, trade unions had a combined membership of 24,601,589 in 2002...
. During the British Raj
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
, Dange was arrested by the British authorities for communist and trade union activities and was jailed for an overall period of 13 years. After India's Independence, a series of events like Sino-Soviet split
Sino-Soviet split
In political science, the term Sino–Soviet split denotes the worsening of political and ideologic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War...
, Sino-Indian war
Sino-Indian War
The Sino-Indian War , also known as the Sino-Indian Border Conflict , was a war between China and India that occurred in 1962. A disputed Himalayan border was the main pretext for war, but other issues played a role. There had been a series of violent border incidents after the 1959 Tibetan...
, and the revelation that while in jail, Dange had written letters to the British Government, offering to cooperate with Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
against Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, led to a split in the Communist Party of India, in 1964. The breakaway Communist Party of India (Marxist)
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
The Communist Party of India is a political party in India. It has a strong presence in the states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. As of 2011, CPI is leading the state government in Tripura. It leads the Left Front coalition of leftist parties in various states and the national parliament of...
(CPI(M)) emerged stronger both in terms of membership and their performance in the Indian Elections. Dange who remained the Chairman of the CPI till 1978, was removed in that year because the majority of party workers were against Dange's political line of supporting Indian National Congress
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
, and Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
, the then Congress Prime Minister. He was expelled from the CPI in 1981. He joined the All India Communist Party
All India Communist Party
The All India Communist Party was a communist party in India. It was emerged after a split in the Communist Party of India in 1980, by a section of CPI cadres dissatisfied with the political changes that occurred during the 1978 Bhatinda conference of CPI. During most of the 1970s CPI had supported...
(AICP), and later, United Communist Party of India
United Communist Party of India
United Communist Party of India , is a political party in India. It was formed in 1987 when the Indian Communist Party merged with the All India Communist Party. Veteran communist leader Mohit Sen was the general secretary of the party until his death in 2003.UCPI participates in the Confederation...
. Towards the end, Dange got increasingly marginalized in the Indian Communist movement. He was also a well known writer and was the founder of Socialist the first socialist weekly in India. Dange played an important role in the formation of Maharashtra
Maharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
state.
Early years
Dange was born in a family of Deshastha BrahminDeshastha Brahmin
Deshastha Brahmins are the original and the oldest Hindu Brahmin sub-caste mainly from the Indian state of Maharashtra and some districts of northern Karnataka. The word Deshastha comes from the Sanskrit words Desha and Stha which mean inland or country and resident respectively...
s in Village named Karanjgaon in Niphad Taluka of Nashik District, Maharashtra. His father was major landowner of the area and lived in one palace like house in Karanjgaon. Dange was sent to study in Pune. He was expelled from college for organizing a movement against compulsory teaching of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. While in work, Dange was exposed to conditions of workers when he undertook voluntary work in the textile mill areas of Bombay (now Mumbai). Dange was drawn into active politics by the fervor of nationalist movement
Indian independence movement
The term Indian independence movement encompasses a wide area of political organisations, philosophies, and movements which had the common aim of ending first British East India Company rule, and then British imperial authority, in parts of South Asia...
against the British rule in India
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
. Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Lokmanya Tilak –, was an Indian nationalist, teacher, social reformer and independence fighter who was the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement. The British colonial authorities derogatorily called the great leader "Father of the Indian unrest"...
, a veteran leader of Indian National Congress
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
from Maharashtra, the earliest proponent of swaraj
Swaraj
Swaraj can mean generally self-governance or "self-rule", and was used synonymously with "home-rule" by Gandhi but the word usually refers to Gandhi's concept for Indian independence from foreign domination. Swaraj lays stress on governance not by a hierarchical government, but self governance...
(complete independence) greatly inspired young Dange. Later, when Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
launched the Non-Cooperation Movement
Non-cooperation movement
The non-cooperation movement was a significant phase of the Indian struggle for freedom from British rule which lasted for years. This movement, which lasted from September 1920 to February 1922 and was led by Mohandas Gandhi, and supported by the Indian National Congress. It aimed to resist...
in 1920, Dange gave up his studies and joined the Independence movement.
He became interested in Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, while following the Russian Revolution of 1917. He grew increasingly skeptical about Gandhism
Gandhism
Gandhism is the collection of inspirations, principles, beliefs and philosophy of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , who was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian Independence Movement....
, especially about Gandhi's promotion of cottage industries as the sole solution for India's economic ills, while overlooking possibilities of an industrial economy.
Gandhi Vs. Lenin
In 1921, Dange published a pamphlet titled Gandhi Vs. LeninVladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, a comparative study of the approaches of both the leaders; but, Lenin coming out as better of the two. This work proved to be a turning point in Dange's life. Prominent Marxist leader M.N. Roy read the work and went on to meet its young author, when he came to Bombay. Ranchoddas Bhavan Lotvala, a flour mill owner from Bombay who 'concerned himself for radical causes', also read this treatise and was impressed by its contents. Lotvala sponsored Dange's study of Marxism for several years, and together they built up a library of Marxist Literature and published translations of classics.
In 1922, with Lotvala's help, Dange launched the English weekly, Socialist, the first Indian Marxist journal. Later Mohit Sen
Mohit Sen
Mohit Sen born on March 24, 1929, in Calcutta, and died in Hyderabad on May 3, 2003 was a well-known communist intellectual. He was general secretary of the United Communist Party of India at the time of his death.-Early life and education:...
, Dange's contemporary and a well-known communist intellectual, wrote that Dange's articles in the Socialist impressed Lenin himself.
Influence of Bolshevist Revolution
The second decade of the 20th century proved to be formative years for young Dange. The period also witnessed worldwide economic crises. There were long strikes in the industrialized world, especially in Britain. In India, the working class movement gained steady momentum during this period. It was during one of the long textile mill strikes that Dange got himself acquainted with the conditions of laborers.The period also coincided with influence of Bolshevist ideas, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, manifesting in political events in countries outside Russia. This process was quickened by the establishment of the Third International or the Communist International, or in popular parlance—its abbreviated form -- Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, an international communist organization founded in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
in March 1919. As a resolution adopted in the Founding Congress of the Comintern
Founding Congress of the Comintern
The Founding Congress of the Comintern was an international gathering of communist, revolutionary socialist, and syndicalist delegates held in Moscow which established the Communist International...
its stated objective was to fight 'by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State'.
Meeting with M.N. Roy
M.N. Roy, an ex-member of the Anushilan SamitiAnushilan Samiti
Anushilan Samiti was an armed anti-British organisation in Bengal and the principal secret revolutionary organisation operating in the region in the opening years of the 20th century. This association, like its offshoot the Jugantar, operated under the guise of suburban fitness club...
, perhaps the most important secret revolutionary organization operating in East Bengal
East Bengal
East Bengal was the name used during two periods in the 20th century for a territory that roughly corresponded to the modern state of Bangladesh. Both instances involved a violent partition of Bengal....
in the opening years of the 20th century, went to Moscow in by the end of April 1920. The new Russian government under Lenin evinced interest in him and encouraged him to form an Indian Communist Party. Roy went on to found the émigré Communist Party of India on 17 October 1920 in Tashkent
Tashkent
Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2008 was about 2.2 million. Unofficial sources estimate the actual population may be as much as 4.45 million.-Early Islamic History:...
. On his return to India, M.N. Roy who had read Gandhi Vs. Lenin met Dange in 1922. Dange at that time was closely associating with Lotvala to spread Marxian ideas. It was during this period that Dange grew in prominence as a Marxist; a sure way those days to invite antagonism from the British Government.
Foundation of the Communist Party of India
The Government of India, under the British Crown, saw the founding of Comintern as a disruptive force that would cause internal disorder. It viewed the nascent leftism in India with great suspicion. During the 1920s, the Government foisted a series of 'conspiracy cases against persons whom they suspected to have communist leanings.Dange in the eyes of the British authorities
During this period M.N. Roy, the spokesperson of the Comintern, was seen as the most dangerous of Indian communists. During that time all the letters written by Roy from Moscow to Dange were intercepted and delivered.The British government initially did not think Dange was dangerous.
In 1923, they came to the conclusion that they did not have enough to prove anti-government activity as "Dange is a pure doctrinaire and nothing here seen of him indicate any real power of organization." The Government of India soon changed its mind and the file notes that 'The evidence collected clearly shows that Dange has been an important figure in the conspiracy as constant reference to his name would be unavoidable in any event in the prosecution to be instituted against other members of the conspiracy at [Allahabad] .The conspiracy referred to here is the Kanpur Conspiracy Case that would catapult Dange to a leader with national prominence.
Kanpur Bolshevik conspiracy case
On 17 March 1924, M.N. Roy, S.A. Dange, Muzaffar AhmedMuzaffar Ahmed (politician)
Muzaffar Ahmed was a noted Bengali politician, journalist and communist activist, popularly known as "Kakababu".-Background:...
, Nalini Gupta, Shaukat Usmani
Shaukat Usmani
Shaukat Usmani was an early Indian communist, who was born to artstic USTA family of Bikaner and a member of the émigré Communist Party of India, established in Tashkent in 1920, and a founding member of the Communist Party of India when it was formed in Kanpur in 1925...
, Singaravelu Chettiar
Singaravelu Chettiar
-Ma.Singaravelar :He was one of the early leftist thinkers of India in 20th century. He was an advocate by profession and spent his earlier days for the propagation of Buddhism. Being contemporary of freedom fighters, VOC and Balagangadhar Thilak. He was actively participated in railway workers...
, Ghulam Hussain and others were charged, in what was called the Cawnpore (now spelt Kanpur) Bolshevik Conspiracy case. The specific charge was that they as communists were seeking "to deprive the King Emperor of his sovereignty of British India, by complete separation of India from imperialistic Britain by a violent revolution."
The case attracted interest of the people towards Comintern plan to bring about violent revolution in India. Communist trials had taken place in India, in frontier towns like Peshawar
Peshawar
Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....
where Russian trained muhajir
Muhajir
Muhajir or Mohajir is an Arabic word meaning immigrant. The Islamic calendar Hejira starts when Muhammad and his companions left Mecca for Medina in what is known as Hijra. They were called Muhajirun...
communists were put on trial. "But no case had attracted public gaze like the Kanpur case. Pages of newspapers daily splashed sensational communist plans and people for the first time learned such a large scale about communism and its doctrines and the aims of the Communist International in India."
Singaravelu Chettiar was released on account of illness. M.N. Roy was out of the country and therefore could not be arrested. Ghulam Hussain confessed that he had received money from the Russians in Kabul
Kabul
Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...
and was pardoned. Muzaffar Ahmed, Nalini Gupta, Shaukat Usmani and Dange were sentenced for various terms of imprisonment. This case was responsible for actively introducing communism to the Indian masses. Dange was released from prison in 1925.
Formation of the Communist Party of India
The industrial town of Kanpur, in December 1925, witnessed a conference of different communist groups, under the chairmanship of Singaravelu Chettiar. Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, Nalini Gupta, Shaukat Usmani were among the key organizers of the meeting. The meeting adopted a resolution for the formation of the Communist Party of India with its headquarters in Bombay., The British Government's extreme hostility towards communists, made them to decide not to openly function as a communist party; instead, they chose a more open and non-federated platform, under the name the Workers and Peasants Parties.Initial years of labor movement in India
In 1920 the All India Trade Union CongressAll India Trade Union Congress
-External links:**...
(AITUC) was formed at Bombay by N.M. Joshi and others. Joshi was a philanthropist who was sympathetic to the workers'cause. At that time AITUC did not have a cohesive ideology, but it was sympathetic to the Indian National Congress. When Dange wrote about the founding session of AITUC at Bombay, he brought out the organization's Congress roots:
The AITUC was guided principally by the Congress leaders. The masses at this period were being led by Lokmanya Tilak and his group, in which Lala Lajpat Rai from Punjab, Bepinchandra Pal from Bengal and others had a big place. Mahatma Gandhi had refused to sponsor the idea of founding the AITUC and so he did not attend.Communists were also largely excluded when, again in Bombay, in 1923, jobbers and mill clerks came together and started Girni Kamgar Mahamandal (Great Association of Mill-Workers). They participated in the long textile strike in 1924.
Girni Kamgar Union
The early trade union movement in India were not directly inspired by the communists. Dange played an important role in bringing the labor activists amongst Bombay textile workers under the communist umbrella. Girni Kamgar Mahamandal was split and the communists formed their own union, the Girni Kamgar Union during the general strike of 1928.The linkages which were forged in this strike placed the communists firmly in control of the Girni Kamgar Mahamandal and enabled them to dominate trade union movement. They were now forced to confront problems forced by the structure of industrial relations. The initiative taken by the communist leadership in reflecting working class-militancy enabled them to establish their presence at the level of industry as a whole. To consolidate this position it was imperative that the Girni Kamgar Union as it is now called to penetrate the level of the individual mill...On 30 October 1928 the Girni Kamgar Union had a membership of 324; by the end of that they boasted 54000 members.Two long and bitter strikes in 1928 and 1929 involving the members of Girni Kamgar Union followed. Dange was he general secretary of the Girni Kamgar Union. For their role in the strikes he was arrested along with Muzaffar Ahmed and Shaukat Usmani.
Dange edited the Marathi journal, Kranti, the official organ of the Girni Kamgar Union from the time of its inception.
Comintern's involvement
Believing that the world capitalism was in crisis, during 1920s the Comintern deployed its workers to various countries. Indian communists had forged a close relationship with Communist Party of Great BritainCommunist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
. In 1926 and 1927 members of the British Communist Party, notably Philip Spratt
Philip Spratt
Philip Spratt was a British writer and intellectual. Initially a communist sent by the British arm of the Communist International , based in Moscow, to spread Communism in India, he subsequently became a friend and colleague of M.N...
and Ben Bradley, came to India. mandated by Comintern to work among the industrial laborers of Bombay and Calcutta(present spelling: Kolkatta. Workers' and Peasants' Parties were started in those cities and in the United Provinces
United Provinces of British India
The United Provinces of British India, more commonly known as the United Provinces, was a province of British India, which came into existence on 3 January 1921 as a result of the renaming of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. It corresponded approximately to the combined regions of the...
.
The communists were addressing ground level problems and as a result "N.M. Joshi, in spite of money and no persecution from the government lost the leadership (of AITUC) to the communists." The communists took over the leadership of the AITUC in December 1929, when their rivals, led by N.M.Joshi, walked out of the session, and founded a rival organization. Like rest of the world, it was a period of great unrest in India too.
In India throughout 1928 and 1929 there was a strong wave of strikes, on the railroads, in ironworks and in the textile industry. 31 million working days lost in 1928, through industrial disputes. Trade union numbers and organization grew rapidly during this period."Muzaffar Ahmed, Usmani and Dange joined these later campaigns on their release from jail.
Meerut Conspiracy Case
The government's immediate response was to foist yet another conspiracy case—the Meerut Conspiracy Case.
In more than one way the Meerut Conspiracy case trial helped the Communist Party of India to fconsolidate its position among workers. Dange along with 32 persons were arrested on or about 20 March 1929 and were put on trial under Section 121A of the Indian Penal Code
Indian Penal Code
Indian Penal Code is the main criminal code of India. It is a comprehensive code, intended to cover all substantive aspects of criminal law. It was drafted in 1860 and came into force in colonial India during the British Raj in 1862...
, which declares,
Whoever within or without British India conspires to commit any of the offenses punishable by Section 121 or to deprive the King of the sovereignty of British India or any part thereof, or conspires to overawe, by means of criminal force or the show of criminal force, the Government of India or any local Government, shall be punished with trnsportation for life, or any shorter term, or with imprisonment of either description which may extend to ten years.
The charges
The main charges were that in 1921 Dange, Shaukat Usmani and Muzaffar Ahmad entered into a conspiracy to establish a branch of Comintern in India and they were helped by various persons, including the accused Philip Spratt and Benjamin Francis Bradley, sent to India by the Communist International. The aim of the accused persons, according to the charges raised against them wasto deprive the King Emperor of the sovereignty of British India, and for such purpose to use the methods and carry out the programme and plan of campaign outlined and ordained by the Communist International.
The Sessions Court in Meerut awarded stringent sentences to the accused in January 1933. Out of the accused 27 persons were convicted with various durations of 'transportation'. While Muzaffar Ahmed was transported for life, Dange, Spratt, Ghate, Joglekar and Nimbkar were each awarded transportation for a period of 12 years. On appeal, in July 1933, the sentences of Ahmed, Dange and Usmani were reduced three years. Reductions were also made in the sentences of other convicts..
Impact of Meerut Conspiracy Case
Though all the accused were not communists, the charges framed against them betrayed the British government's fear for growth of communist ideas in India. In the trial the accused were all labeled as Bolsheviks. During the trial of four and a half years, the defendants turned the courtroom into a public platform to espouse their cause. As a result, the trial saw strengthening of the communist movement in the country. Harkishan Singh SurjeetHarkishan Singh Surjeet
Harkishan Singh Surjeet was a communist politician from Punjab, India. He was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India from 1992 to 2005 and was a member of the party's Political Bureau from 1964 to 2008.-Pre-1947 career:Born to a Basi Jat family in Bundala, Jalandhar district,...
, a former General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
The Communist Party of India is a political party in India. It has a strong presence in the states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. As of 2011, CPI is leading the state government in Tripura. It leads the Left Front coalition of leftist parties in various states and the national parliament of...
wrote about the aftermath of the Meerut Conspiracy case thus:
a Party with a centralized apparatus, came into being only after the release of the Meerut prisoners, in 1933. The Meerut Conspiracy Case, though launched to suppress the communist movement, provided the opportunity for Communists to propagate their ideas. It came out with its own manifesto and was affiliated to the Communist International in 1934.
The CPI and the independence movement
During the period, prior to India's Independence, the Communist Party of India's responses to freedom struggleIndian independence movement
The term Indian independence movement encompasses a wide area of political organisations, philosophies, and movements which had the common aim of ending first British East India Company rule, and then British imperial authority, in parts of South Asia...
were dictated by the Comintern's views. After its admission to the Third International, the Communist Party of India was seen to be guided by the policies imposed by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
on the international communist movement. Stalin's policies were, in turn, dictated by Russia's geopolitical
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
interests. As a result the positions taken by the CPI ran many times counter to popular nationalist sentiments, leading to erosion of the Party's popular base.
Up to 1934, the CPI viewed India's freedom struggle as a movement of the reactionary bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
politicians. The British government had banned communist activities from 1934 to 1938. When the Comintern adopted the Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...
thesis of popular front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
against fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, CPI declared support for the Congress in 1938. The communist leaders like Dinkar Mehta, Sajjad Zaheer
Sajjad Zaheer
Syed Sajjad Zaheer was a renowned Urdu writer, Marxist thinker and revolutionary.- Life :...
, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, and Soli Batliwala became members of the national executive of the Congress Socialist Party
Congress Socialist Party
The Congress Socialist Party was founded in 1934 as a socialist caucus within the Indian National Congress. Its members rejected what they saw as the anti-rational mysticism of Mohandas Gandhi as well as the sectarian attitude of the Communist Party of India towards the Congress Party...
.
The Raj re-banned the CPI in 1939, for its initial anti-War stance. The line was changed when, following the Nazi-Soviet pact (1939-40)
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
. The Communist Party of India did not take an active stance against Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and his policies. But when Hitler attacked Poland, the Communist Party of India had called World War II, an 'Imperialist War'. But when the he attacked the Soviet Union, the same Communist Party of India decided to call the war, a People's War.
After the USSR had sided with the Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
in the war, the Communist Party of India was legalized for the first time. Saying that the freedom struggle would impede the war against fascism, the CPI stayed away from the freedom struggle. The Indian National Congress was able to politically corner the communists, as the popular sentiments were overwhelmingly supporting Gandhi's Quit India Movement
Quit India Movement
The Quit India Movement , or the August Movement was a civil disobedience movement launched in India in August 1942 in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for immediate independence. Gandhi hoped to bring the British government to the negotiating table...
.
Dange in 'P.C. Joshi era'
After the sudden arrest of then Somnath Lahiri, Secretary of CPI, during end-1935, Puran Chand Joshi became the first general secretary of Communist Party of India, for a period from 1935 to 1947—or as it was called the 'P.C. Joshi era.'In 1943 Dange for the first was elected to the Central Committee of the CPI. In October 1944 he attended the XVII Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
as a fraternal representative from the Communist Party of India.
Between 1929 and 1935 Dange remained in jail for role in Meerut conspiracy case. After being released from jail in 1935, Dange went on a speaking tour in Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh , is one of the 28 states of India, situated on the southeastern coast of India. It is India's fourth largest state by area and fifth largest by population. Its capital and largest city by population is Hyderabad.The total GDP of Andhra Pradesh is $100 billion and is ranked third...
on the invitation of the Congress Socialist Party
Congress Socialist Party
The Congress Socialist Party was founded in 1934 as a socialist caucus within the Indian National Congress. Its members rejected what they saw as the anti-rational mysticism of Mohandas Gandhi as well as the sectarian attitude of the Communist Party of India towards the Congress Party...
leadership from there. His tour resulted in that many prominent Congress Socialist Party leaders from Andhra Pradesh joining the Communist Party. After he came out of the jail, up to 1939, he was working for the Party and was trying increase its hold over the trade union movement.
Around this time Dange's legislative career also took off. He was elected to the Bombay Legislative Assembly as Communist candidate in 1946.
Dange's rise in trade union movement
In 1939 Dange was convicted to four months of rigorous imprisonment for organizing a strike of textile workers. He was arrested on 11 March 1940 for leading a general strike of textile workers in Bombay and interned in the DeoliDeoli
Deoli is a city and a municipal council in Wardha district in the state of Maharashtra, India.-Geography:Deoli is located at . It has an average elevation of 262 metres .-Demographics:...
Detention Camp. At Deoli several other communist leaders were also jailed along with him. In prison he started a political study circle amongst the prisoners. He was released in 1943.
Even before the takeover of the AITUC by the communists, in 1927, Dange was elected Assistant Secretary of AITUC." During the year 1943- 1944 Dange was elected for the first time as the chairman of the All India Trade Unions Congress.
In 1944-1945 he was a delegate to the World Trade Union Conference in London. In 1945-1947 he became the vice chairman of the All India Trade Union Congress. Also in October 1945 he became a member of the Executive Committee and chairman of the General Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions
World Federation of Trade Unions
The World Federation of Trade Unions was established in 1945 to replace the International Federation of Trade Unions. Its mission was to bring together trade unions across the world in a single international organization, much like the United Nations...
. In February 1947, Dange again became the chairman of All India Trade Union Congress and continued to be at the helm of that organization either as general secretary or chairman.
CPI on the eve of independence
Around the British decided to transfer the power to the Indians, the CPI found itself not in a very happy situation. For once their disassociation with the Quit India movement made them unpopular with the people. Secondly huge support that the Congress garnered ran contrary the CPI's portrayal of it as a mere bourgeoisie party.Internationally also CPI found itself lost. At the start of World War II, the Comintern supported a policy of non-intervention, arguing that the war was an imperialist war between various national ruling classes. But when the Soviet Union itself was invaded on 22 June 1941, the Comintern changed its position to one of active support for the Allies
Allies
In everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them...
. Stalin disbanded Comintern in 1943. It is surmised that the dissolution came about as Stalin wished to calm his World War II Allies (particularly Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
) not to suspect that the Soviet Union was pursuing a policy of trying to foment revolution in other countries.
The CPI was in a state of confusion and the Party clearly needed advice. In July 1947, P.C. Joshi, the then General Secretary, secured Dange's entry to USSR.
Dange in Moscow
On the day India got freedom, 15 August 1947 Dange was in MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
talking to the Soviet leaders. Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov was a Soviet politician.-Life:Zhdanov enlisted with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1915 and was promoted through the party ranks, becoming the All-Union Communist Party manager in Leningrad after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934...
and Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as unofficial Chief Ideologue of the Party until his death in 1982. Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the separation of power...
, leading Soviet theorists of the period, participated in the 1947 talks with Dange.
The following free and frank exchange between Dange and Zhdanov on the day after the India's Independence day, that is, on 16 August 1947, brings out the chaotic situation in which the Communist Party of India found itself at that historical juncture:
Further com. Zhdanov asks com. Dange to explain why the Congress managed to strengthen its authority.
Comrade Dange opines that during the war the Congress, taking into account the anti-English sentiments of the wide masses, opposed the English and by this action acquired a semblance of a national organization fighting for the national sovereignty.
The Communist Party during the war supported the allies, including the English and by this action weakened its influence as a lot of people could not correctly understand the position of the Party. A considerable part of the supporters of the Communist Party during the war shifted to the Congress.
The Soviet leaders closely questioned Dange about the Congress. For years questions regarding what attitude should be taken toward the Congress would be debated inside the left parties in India. The following portion shows Dange's attitude towards the Congress and Muslim League, at that time.
Com. Zhdanov: What is Nehru – a capitalist or a landowner?
Com. Dange: A bourgeois.
Com. Zhdanov: And Jinnah?
Com. Dange: Also a bourgeois. He is an eminent advocate, has acquired a lot of money and has invested it in enterprises. Nehru also belongs to a family of eminent advocates and has invested his substantial savings in the Indian company of Tata....
.
The 1950s: internal strifes within the CPI
Around the time of independence the CPI was sending confusing signals—from left to centrist to right. General Secretary Joshi was advocating unity with the Indian National Congress under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru. By the end of 1947, P.C. Joshi found himself in the minority. His line was challenged by the radicals who claimed that "ye azaadi jhoota hai" B.T. Ranadive, a prominent radical leader, was inspired by the great strides that the Chinese communists had made, and wanted a similar model for India.The Communist Party of India’s second congress at Calcutta (new spelling Kolkata
Kolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
) on 28 February 1948, the Zhdanov
Zhdanov
Zhdanov or Zhdanova is a surname and may refer to:People* Andrei Zhdanov , Stalinist politician, developer of the Zhdanov Doctrine that governed Soviet cultural activities for a number of years...
line of insurrection was adopted on the premise that 'free' India was only a “semi-colony of British imperialism”. Joshi, who stood collaboration with Congress was sidelined, and Ranadive became the General Secretary.
Open call for taking up arms, known as 'Calcutta thesis' and was closely identified with its main proponent and the new General Secretary, Ranadive. As a result insurgencies took place in Tripura
Tripura
Tripura is a state in North-East India, with an area of . It is the third smallest state of India, according to area. Tripura is surrounded by Bangladesh on the north, south, and west. The Indian states of Assam and Mizoram lie to the east. The capital is Agartala and the main languages spoken are...
, Telangana
Telangana
Telangana is a region in the present state of Andhra Pradesh, India and formerly was part of Hyderabad state which was ruled by Nizam. It is bordered with the states of Maharashtra on the north and north-west, Karnataka on the west, Chattisgarh on the north-east and Orissa to the east...
and Travancore
Travancore
Kingdom of Travancore was a former Hindu feudal kingdom and Indian Princely State with its capital at Padmanabhapuram or Trivandrum ruled by the Travancore Royal Family. The Kingdom of Travancore comprised most of modern day southern Kerala, Kanyakumari district, and the southernmost parts of...
.
A rebellion in the Telangana region in the northern part of what was to become Andhra Pradesh, a peasant struggle against the feudal regime of the Nizam was already happening when Calcutta thesis was adopted. To use the Telangana rebellion
Telangana Rebellion
The Telangana Rebellion or Vetti Chakiri Movement also known as Telangana Raithanga Sayudha Poratam was a communist-led peasant rebellion against the feudal lords of the Telangana region and later against the princely state of Hyderabad between 1946 and 1951...
to herald in the Indian revolution was one the main pillar of Ranadive strategy. During the peak of Telangana rebellion, 3,000 villages and some 41,000 square kilometers of territory were involved in the revolt. The ruler of Hyderabad state, nizam
Nizam
Nizam-ul-Mulk of Hyderabad popularly known as Nizams of Hyderabad was a former monarchy of the Hyderabad State, now in the states of Andhra Pradesh , Karnataka , and Maharashtra in India...
had not yet acceded his territory to India, but the violence of the communist-led rebellion, the central government sent in the army in September 1948. By November 1949, Hyderabad had been forced to accede to the Indian union, and, by October 1951, the violent phase of the Telangana movement had been suppressed.
Dange had been a member of the CPI Central Committee since the founding of the Party. But during 1950-1951 he was not included in the Central Committee.
Stalin's intervention
At the start of 1950s, the CPI was bitterly divided over the manner in which political power in India should be captured. The militants advocated the 'Chinese path', or capture of power through violent means and the other group that included Dange was for the 'Indian path'(a moderate strategy to capture power within the constraints of Indian Constitution.The proponents of the `Chinese path' led by Comrade C. Rajeswara Rao and those of the `Indian path' led by Comrade Ajoy Ghosh had set up their own centers and the CPI was on the verge of a split.
On 30 May 1950, the extremists with hundreds of their followers split from the Party and came out in the open. When the war of attrition between both continued unabated, the Soviet Communists intervened. The warring leaders were invited to Russia for a discussion with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
(CPSU) in 1951.
Events that followed were described Mohit Sen thus:
Four leaders, two from each center, were brought to Moscow. They travelled in cognito as manual workers in a Soviet ship from Calcutta. They were Ajoy GhoshAjoy GhoshAjoy Kumar Ghosh was a prominent leader of the Communist Party of India. In 1934, he was elected to the Central Committee of the CPI and in 1936 he was elected to its Polit Bureau. In 1938, he became the member of the editorial board of the Party's mouthpiece, the National Front...
and S.A. Dange from the 'Indian Path', and C. Rajeswara Rao and M. Basava Punnaiah, from the Chinese path.
S.A. Dange and C. Rajeswara Rao have both told me about the meeting with the leaders of the CPSU. The first meeting was attended from the Soviet side by Comrades Suslov, Malenkov and MolotovVyacheslav MolotovVyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
. It was on the third day that it was announced that Comrade Stalin would attend. So he did for subsequent days....
Stalin's view also was that India was not an independent country but ruled indirectly by British colonialists. He also agreed that the Communists could eventually advance only by heading an armed revolution. But this would not be of the Chinese type. He strongly advised that the armed struggle being conducted in Telengana should be ended.
In 1951, Dange was elected to both the Central Committee and the Politburo. In 1952 Dange lost elections to the Indian Parliament from Bombay.
Visit of Bulganin and Khrushchev to India
In mid-1955, Jawaharlal NehruJawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru , often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the...
, the then Indian Prime Minister visited USSR and received a tremendous welcome. This was followed by the maiden visit to India of the Soviet leaders, Nikolai Bulganin
Nikolai Bulganin
Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin was a prominent Soviet politician, who served as Minister of Defense and Premier of the Soviet Union . The Bulganin beard is named after him.-Early career:...
and Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
in 1955. Jawaharlal Nehru, frankly put forward to the visiting Soviet leaders that the Communist Party of India was claiming to receive direction from the CPSU.
To this Khrushchev's response was a reiteration of the official Soviet Party line, that with the abolition of the Comintern, there was no organisation for leading the Communist Parties in other countries. Khrushchev and Bulganin's visit paved way for forging of a strong relationship between the Government of India (and later Congress Party) and the USSR, independent of CPI.
Further dissensions
The party was again on the verge of split at its fourth congress held at PalakkadPalakkad
Palakkad , formerly known as Palghat, is a municipality and a town in the state of Kerala in southern India, spread over an area of 26.60 km2.The city is situated about north of state capital Thiruvananthapuram. It is the administrative headquarters of Palakkad District...
in 1956. Against the ultra-left line of Ranadive, Dange and P.C. Joshi were for reviving the 'popular front' and working with the ruling Indian National Congress
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
. These differences within the Communist Party of India, up to Palakkad congress was an internal matter of the Party; the international communist movement at that time was united. Ranadive who was earlier shunned for his extremism
Extremism
Extremism is any ideology or political act far outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards...
made a comeback to the Party leadership at the Palakkad congress.
Formation of Maharashtra
After India's independence in 1947, the princely states were integrated into the Indian Union, and the Deccan States including Kolhapur were integrated into Bombay StateBombay State
The Bombay State was a state of India, dissolved with the formation of Maharashtra and Gujarat states on May 1, 1960.-History:During British rule, portions of the western coast of India under direct British rule were part of the Bombay Presidency...
, which was created from the former Bombay Presidency
Bombay Presidency
The Bombay Presidency was a province of British India. It was established in the 17th century as a trading post for the English East India Company, but later grew to encompass much of western and central India, as well as parts of post-partition Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula.At its greatest...
in 1950. The Government of India had appointed the States Re-organization Committee
States Reorganisation Act
The States Reorganisation Act of 1956 was a major reform of the boundaries and governance of India's states and territories. The act reorganised the boundaries of India's states along linguistic lines, and amended the Indian Constitution to replace the three types of states, known as Parts A, B,...
for setting up states on the basis of language. This committee recommended a bi-lingual state called Bombay for Maharashtra-Gujarat, with Bombay as its capital. The state came into being on 1 November 1956, but stirred up political unrest in both the states. In Maharashtra, under the leadership of Keshavrao Jedhe, an all-party meeting was held in Pune
Pune
Pune , is the eighth largest metropolis in India, the second largest in the state of Maharashtra after Mumbai, and the largest city in the Western Ghats. Once the centre of power of the Maratha Empire, it is situated 560 metres above sea level on the Deccan plateau at the confluence of the Mula ...
and a joint Maharashtra council (Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti) was founded. In the second general elections the Samiti defeated the stalwarts of Congress by securing 101 seats out of 133, including 12 from Mumbai.
2nd Lok Sabha
Membership of the Second Lok Sabha...
in 1957 from Bombay City (Central) Constituency of the State of Bombay.
Dange along with S.M. Joshi, N.G. Gore and P.K. Atre fought relentlessly for Samyukta Maharashtra, a struggle that cost a lot of lives. Finally on 1 May 1960, pre-dominantly Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
-speaking state of Maharashtra was born.
Sino-Indian border dispute
Dange was the leader of the Communist group in the House of People (Lok SabhaLok Sabha
The Lok Sabha or House of the People is the lower house of the Parliament of India. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by direct election under universal adult suffrage. As of 2009, there have been fifteen Lok Sabhas elected by the people of India...
), when the Sino-Indian border dispute broke out—an event that would sharpen the differences within the CPI. The Calcutta Congress at the end of September 1959 brought into open the differences within the Party. As Manchester Guardian reported:
Half the party wants to express its support for the Congress
stand that there will be no gift (to China) of the
and that India stands broadly by the McMahon line. The other
half wants to go back to guerrilla tactics and give up the
parliamentary experiment.
The nationalist parliamentary wing of the CP, led by Ajoy
Ghosh, believes that the time for violence has not come and
that Moscow counsels patience.... The other half of the ICP (sic), fed up with the parliamentary
experiment, argues that Kerala proved that the ruling class will
never allow a people's Government to capture power
democratically.
This is the first time that the ICP has been so s
divided, and that the division has become so public.
International Socialists vs. Nationalists
Sino-Indian border dispute brought into open bitter internal war within the CPI between those who described themselves as international socialists and others who advocated that national sentiments should not be completely ignored. Mr. Dange, leader of the Party in Parliament, M.N. Govindan Nair, secretary of the Kerala unit, and Dr. Muzaffar Ahmed of Uttar Pradesh were the proponents of the nationalist cause.The conflict came in the open when P.C. Joshi, who controlled the Party's weekly New Age, suppressed Mr. Dange's statement in Parliament that he sharply stood by the McMahon line, and also a resolution passed by Maharashtra State Committee supporting Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the border dispute. Joshi was earlier sidelined for his pro-Congress advocacy, but later rehabilitated by making him the editor of the Party journal.
Initial advantage with Dange
An important leader publicly to join the nationalist Dange faction was A.K. Gopalan, the deputy leader of the Communist group in Lok Sabha. He was quoted by a newspaper that he(Gopalan) was shocked by the 'LadakhLadakh
Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...
incident', lamenting the loss of Indian lives, and stating that the country would support Nehru in his efforts to avoid any repetition of it.
In the initial stages, Dange's nationalist line was the dominant one. To quote Manchester Guardian, "Hence not only the Party's extremists of the Joshi wing, but also the middle-of-the-road Moscow faction were at that time visibly losing ground. This favorable development was probably accelerated by the attitude of studied neutrality adopted in Moscow, where
the Soviet press printed both the Chinese and Indian accounts of the Ladakh skirmish, without appearing to take sides. His general nationalist communist position had the backing of the Kerala, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh , is one of the 28 states of India, situated on the southeastern coast of India. It is India's fourth largest state by area and fifth largest by population. Its capital and largest city by population is Hyderabad.The total GDP of Andhra Pradesh is $100 billion and is ranked third...
, Rajasthan
Rajasthan
Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...
, Bihar
Bihar
Bihar is a state in eastern India. It is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at and 3rd largest by population. Almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25, which is the highest proportion in India....
and Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...
units of the party.
Dange losing ground
But soon after opposition against Dange erupted in the Party when Dange came up with his own definition of communist internationalism, different from standard Marxian understanding of the term. In his view internationalism is valid only for 'domestic' issues such as Hungary and Tibet, which were the 'domestic' affairs of the USSR and China. But he regards relations between India and China as non-domestic, so that Indian communists may side with theIndian Government in this specific cases. Even the comrades who sided with Dange on the Sino-Indian border issue, were not ready to compromise on basic tenets of communism. Dange was severely criticized and he had own up his fault in the Party forum, through a process called 'self-criticism'.
There was also a consolidation among the communist internationalists at this stage. The Swiss paper
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung is a major German language Swiss daily newspaper based in Zurich.One of the oldest newspapers still published, it originally appeared as Zürcher Zeitung, edited by Salomon Gessner, from January 12, 1780, and was renamed to Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1821...
identified B. T. Ranadive, a former general
secretary(1948–50), as supporting P.C. Joshi in his pro-Chinese attitude. According to these two militants, Nehru
ought to be condemned by the Party as a "reactionary", and the
policy of Congress should be resolutely opposed. At this stage, the secretariat's eight members were divided as follows:
- Dange, Gopalan, Ahmad - nationalist communists
- Joshi, Ranadive - extremists, pro-China
- Bhupesh GuptaBhupesh GuptaBhupesh Gupta was an Indian politician and a leader of the Communist Party of India.-Early life:He was born at Itna in the erstwhile Mymensingh District of Bengal Province in British India...
- former extremist, present views uncertain. - Ajoy Ghosh and one other not identified by the newspaper(probably Basavapunnaiah ) - centralists, attempting to restore unity.
Sino-Indian War
In the meanwhile fighting began on the Himalayan border on 10 October 1962 between the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Army of India. The war ended when the Chinese unilaterally declared a ceasefire on 20 November 1962, which went into effect at midnight.Sino-Soviet differences
Another issue that fueled the split in the Communist Party of India was parting of the ways between the USSR and China. Though the conflict had a long history, it came out in open in 1959, Khrushchev sought to appease the West during a period of the Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
known as 'The Thaw', by holding a summit meeting with U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
President Dwight Eisenhower. Two other reasons were USSR's unwillingness to support Chinese nuclear program and their neutrality in the initial days of Sino-Indian border conflict. These events greatly offended Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
and the other Chinese Communist leaders.
Left vs. Right
In 1962, the Mao criticized Khrushchev for backing down in the Cuban missile crisisCuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...
. By that time the Soviets were openly supporting India in its border dispute with China. These events were followed by formal statements of each side's ideological positions: the Chinese came out with their document in June 1963. The Soviets too came out with their own document. Thereafter the two parties stopped communicating.
Chairman Dange
These events had their direct fall-out in the Communist Party of India. Former nationalist vs. international socialist debate had now turned into a conflict between the Right (the Russian line) and the Left (the Chinese line). Dange, who was supporting the Nehru Government, was the main leader of the Right. After the death of Secretary-General Ajoy Ghosh in January 1962, a truce was established. Dange, who at that time was the head of the All-India Trade Union Congress, became the first chairman of the CPI and the centrist leader, Namboodiripad, became the Secretary-General.Split in the CPI
At that time, the Government of India had arrested 400 prominent communist leaders of the Left wing for their alleged pro-China views. Dange, seized this opportunity, a move that would further erode his base,to reassert the right-wing control over the pro-left strongholds of West Bengal and the Punjab.
In February 1963—with 48 of its 110 members absent, in
detention or in hiding—the National Council voted to
"administer the work of the West Bengal
West Bengal
West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth-most populous. It is also the seventh-most populous sub-national entity in the world, with over 91 million inhabitants. A major agricultural producer, West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's GDP...
Party" through a Provincial Organizing Committee acting on behalf of the
Central Secretariat.
Through such partisan measures Dange alienated the centrist leader,
E.M.S. Namboodiripad, who resigned from the post of Secretary-
General, leaving Dange to take over the post.
By earlier 1963 the Left had
established an underground organization for what amounted
to a breakaway West Bengal Communist Party Unit. According to prominent leftist fortnightly Link, New Delhi, the new outfit enjoyed the support of 14,000 of the 17,000 Communist Party members in
the state. Similar moves were made in many other states by the left-wing. Release of their leaders from jails by the state governments also helped the leftists to consolidate their position among cadres.
In September 1963, A.K. Gopalan (formerly with Dange in 1959) was able to organize
an impressive anti-official party rally in Calcutta. Dange still had a majority of two-to-one
on the council, but the emerging alliance between the Leftists
and Namboodiripad's smaller Centrist faction forced him to be cautious. However, at that stage, with secessionist organizations
already at work in several states, no caution or concession
could halt the drift towards a split; though attempts were still not given up for unity. Suddenly in March 1964, a trigger was provided by what was called the 'Dange letters', that exploded on the face of the Party, precipitating a split.
Dange letters
The Current, a Bombay magazine published these letters whichwere said to be written by Dange to the British Viceroy
from prison in 1924, after his conviction in the Kanpur Conspiracy Case, and in which he had promised to cooperate with Britain against Germany in World War II. Dange, who was the chairman of the Party got the Secretariat to denounce the letters as a forgery. But slide towards split became unstoppable. His opponents
exploited this opening, and called for his removal from the
leadership to facilitate investigation.
The birth of CPI(M)
The cascading events following the Dange Letters ultimately resulted in the split of the Party in October, 1964. The left challenge came into the open with a conference to prepare a party program, immediately after the Dange Letters. The showdown came on 11 April 1964 when 30 Leftists and two Centrist leaders. Namboodiripad and Jyoti BasuJyoti Basu
Jyoti Basu was an Indian politician belonging to the Communist Party of India from West Bengal, India. He served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1977 to 2000, making him the longest-serving Chief Minister of any Indian state. Basu was a member of the CPI Politburo from the time of the...
, walked out of a National Council meeting. and proceeded to appeal to all Indian Communists to repudiate the Dange leadership. National Council suspended the thirty-two leaders.
The left leaders who were ousted, in turn, announced a separated national convention. After the Tenali
Tenali
Tenali , is a town and a mandal in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh, South India. It has a population of 149,839 . It is located 16 miles east of Guntur City. Three canals of the Krishna River flow through Tenali making it a part of the rice bowl of Andhra Pradesh. One of the canals is...
convention the CPI left-wing organized party district and state conferences. Also it was decided in the Tenali convention to hold a party congress of the left-wing in Calcutta.
The Calcutta Congress was held during 31 October - 7 November 1964. Simultaneously, the official Party under Dange convened a Party Congress of the Communist Party of India in Bombay. The split was complete. The left group which assembled in Calcutta decided to adopt the name 'Communist Party of India (Marxist)'.This party also adopted its own political programme. P. Sundarayya was elected general secretary of CPI(M).
General Elections 1967
After the split, the first event that tested out the relative strengths of both groups was the Kerala Assembly Elections held in 1965. The Communist Party of India contested in 79 seats but only win 3 seats, polling about 0.5 million votes with 8.30% vote share. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) contested 73 seats, won 40, with about 1.3 million votes, 19.87% of the total.In 1967, General Elections to the Parliament, Dange won from the Bombay Central South Constituency. The results had again shown a weakening CPI. They contested in 109 seats, won only 23, with about 7.5 million votes ( that is 5.11% of total votes polled. The CPI(M) contested in 59, won 19, with 6.2 million votes(4.28%).
In the state legislative elections held simultaneously, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) emerged as a major party in Kerala and West Bengal. In Kerala a United Front government led by E.M.S. Namboodiripad was formed. The Communist Party of India was a minor coalition partner. In West Bengal, Communist Party of India (Marxist) emerged as the main force, but the chief ministership of the coalition government was given to Ajoy Mukherjee
Ajoy Mukherjee
Ajoy Mukherjee was the fourth chief minister of West Bengal, India. He hailed from Tamluk, Purba Medinipur district, West Bengal.He was one of the leaders of Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar , which came into effect on 17 December 1942 during the Quit India Movement, a programme of civil disobedience...
of the Bangla Congress
Bangla Congress
The Bangla Congress was a regional political party in the Indian state of West Bengal. It was formed through a split in the Indian National Congress in the 1960s and later co-governed with the Communist Party of India in two United Front governments, the first lasting from March 15, 1967 to...
, a provincial break-away group of the Indian National Congress. For the Communist Party of India, The Kerala experiment of coexisting with Communist Party of India(Marxist) did not work for long.
Split in the trade union
Even after the party split, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Communist Party cadres remained unified in the All India Trade Union CongressAll India Trade Union Congress
-External links:**...
. After the short-lived coexistence between both the Parties broke down in Kerala and also in West Bengal similar rupture happened, the trade union wing also split. In December 1969, eight Communist Party of India (Marxist) members walked out of an All India Trade Union Congress executive committee meeting. Later, the Marxist break-away members would organize an All India Trade Union Conference in Calcutta, on 28–31 May 1970. The Calcutta conference was the founding conference of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions
Centre of Indian Trade Unions
Centre of Indian Trade Unions , CITU is a National level Trade Union in India politically attached to the Communist Party of India . The Centre of Indian Trade Unions is today one of biggest assembly of workers and classes of India...
, new Communist Party of India (Marxist) trade union.
Collaborating with Congress
The issue whether to support Congress or not bedevilled the undivided Communist Party right from the year of independence, 1947, when the then general secretary P.C. Joshi strongly spoke in favor of it. Joshi was marginalized for this, yet the question persisted and was one of the reasons for the CPI split. It was increasingly becoming clear that anti-Congress faction, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was stronger of the two groups.In the late 1960s, however, the mood within the Communist Party of India turned strongly anti-Congress. In the Bombay party congress in 1968, the CPI took the decision of forging an anti-Congress front. This had resulted in collaborating with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for a short while. Soon differences between both Parties again came out in the open. From 1970 onwards Communist Party of India started once again working with the Congress. Dange was one of
the principal architects of this union.
Bangladesh War
One of the events that facilitated cooperating with Congress was the Bangladesh Liberation WarBangladesh Liberation War
The Bangladesh Liberation War was an armed conflict pitting East Pakistan and India against West Pakistan. The war resulted in the secession of East Pakistan, which became the independent nation of Bangladesh....
. In 1971 Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
(formerly East Pakistan
East Pakistan
East Pakistan was a provincial state of Pakistan established in 14 August 1947. The provincial state existed until its declaration of independence on 26 March 1971 as the independent nation of Bangladesh. Pakistan recognized the new nation on 16 December 1971. East Pakistan was created from Bengal...
) declared its independence from Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. The Pakistani military tried to quell the uprising; but Indian military intervention thwarted such moves. There was confusion within the ranks of the Indian communists—while the pro-Soviet CPI had no problem in supporting the war, and the Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
, the CPI(M) found itself in quandary participated in the resistance struggle, the pro-China communist groups were in a quandary, because China had sided with Pakistan in the war.
CPI-led government in Kerala
During the period 1970-1977, CPI was a strong ally of the Congress party and nothing typified better than the alliance both the parties forged in Kerala. Both the parties formed a coalition government together in that state, with the CPI-leader C. Achutha MenonC. Achutha Menon
Chelat Achutha Menon was a senior leader of the Communist Party of India . He was the Chief Minister of Kerala state for two terms. The first term was from 1 November 1969 to 1 August 1970 and the second 4 October 1970 to 25 March 1977. Achutha Menon is widely considered as the best Chief Minister...
as the Chief Minister. In Kerala legislative elections held in 1970, the Communist Party of India won only 16 seats, out of a total of 133, whereas the coalition leader Indian National Congress had won 30 seats. Still, Congress accepted Achuta Menon's leadership till the next election that would be held seven years later.
The CPI and the Emergency
A state of emergency declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in June 1975, by invoking Article 352 of the Constitution of IndiaConstitution of India
The Constitution of India is the supreme law of India. It lays down the framework defining fundamental political principles, establishes the structure, procedures, powers, and duties of government institutions, and sets out fundamental rights, directive principles, and the duties of citizens...
, and it lasted for 21 months. Emergency provisions suspended all the Constitutional rights and gave power to rule by decree
Rule by decree
Rule by decree is a style of governance allowing quick, unchallenged creation of law by a single person or group, and is used primarily by dictators and absolute monarchs, although philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben have argued that it has been generalized since World War I in all modern states,...
. It enabled the Prime Minister to suspend elections and civil liberties.
Indira Gandhi took this extreme step due to a host of reasons. The venerated Gandhian leader Jaya Prakash Narayan's agitation in Bihar
Bihar
Bihar is a state in eastern India. It is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at and 3rd largest by population. Almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25, which is the highest proportion in India....
for change in provincial government, was getting increasingly against the Central Government
Government of India
The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India...
. More immediate reason for clamping of emergency was that in a judgment dated 12 June 1975, Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha
Jagmohanlal Sinha
Jagmohanlal Sinha was a former Indian Permanent Judge. He was known mostly for his 1975 ruling in State of Uttar Pradesh v. Raj Narain on the election of then Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, in which he declared the election invalid...
of the Allahabad High Court
Allahabad High Court
The Allahabad High Court or the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad is a high court having jurisdiction over the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh since 1950...
held that Mrs. Gandhi was guilty on the charge of misuse of government machinery for her election campaign. The case was filed by Raj Narain
Raj Narain
Raj Narain was an Indian politician who, as a candidate of Janata Party for the Lok Sabha in 1977, ran for office in Rae Bareli constituency and defeated Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India...
, who had been recently defeated in the parliamentary election by Indira Gandhi. The court declared her election null and void and unseated her from her seat in Lok Sabha. The court also banned her from contesting any election for an additional six years.
CPI support to Indira Gandhi
CPI saw emergency as an opportunity and welcomed it 'as necessary to combat fascist movement led by Jaiprakash Narayan and the parties of right reaction. CPI leaders believed they could turn emergency into a communist revolution. Almost a decade of close cooperation with Indira Gandhi and the Congress seemed to be on the verge of bringing about a massive revolutionary breakthrough for the CPI.Backlash: General elections, 1977
In 1977, Indira Gandhi went for general elections and CPI was still supporting her. The Congress lost the elections and emergency was lifted. The CPI suffered its worst ever losses in general elections. CPI(M) was able to hold on to its base in West Bengal, but, electoral support for the CPI took a nosedive, as the following table would show:Comparative Performance of the Communist Parties in General Elections of 1971 and 1977.
| Party | Seats(1971) | Seats (1977) | % of Votes(1971) | % of Votes(1977) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPI | 23 | 07 | 4.73% | 2.82% |
| CPM | 25 | 22 | 5.12% | 4.29% |
| Total | 48 | 29 | 9.85% | 7.11% |
Towards left unity
To both the communist parties, election results raised serious questions regarding their relevance in the Indian political system. Newly strewn up Bharatiya Lok DalBharatiya Lok Dal
Bharatiya Lok Dal was a political party in India. The BLD was formed at the end of 1974 through the fusion of seven parties opposed to the autocratic rule of Indira Gandhi, including the Swatantra Party, the Utkal Congress, the Bharatiya Kranti Dal, and the Socialist Party...
- a medley of groups ranging from Congress rebels to Hindu party Jan Sangh - under the patronage of Jaiprakash Narayan, was able to garner 41.32% of the votes polled. Congress though lost heavily in terms of seats, still had 34.52% of popular votes. To the left parties the fact that these two parties accounted for more than three-fourth of the electorate and 449 out a total of 542 seats did suggest a possibility of a two (bourgeoisie) party political system. The result was a lot of soul searching for both the parties. Eventually both the parties would regroup and would form an alliance.
Dange's isolation in CPI
As one of the few parties that supported emergency, the CPI was under attack from all other quarters. In spite of strong pro-Indira arguments presented by Dange, CPI in its eleventh party congress at Bhatinda, repudiated the support to emergency and opted for a new policy of left democratic unity. In Bhatinda congress two separate groupings emerged, one led by Dange and another led by C. Rajeswara Rao. The Rajeswara Rao's faction was victorious and the Bhatinda congress confirmed the shift towards creating alliances with leftist forces against Congress. Dange's pro-Congress line was severely tested within his own party. Similarly in their tenth party congress held at Jullunder around the same time, CPI(M) also decided pursue a path of left unity.Even after Bhatinda congress, Dange was able to retain some of his influence though the majority was moving towards unity with CPI(M). The main reason for this was CPI sharing power with the Congress in Kerala.
Initially, both parties differed on the concept of what left and democratic unity would mean. This came out in open in when leaders of both parties met for the first time after 1964 split in New Delhi on 13 April 1978. In spite of repudiation of emergency, the CPI was not ready to change its overall assessment of Congress. Congress according to CPI contained left and democratic elements. This stand also justified continued cooperation between Congress and CPI in Kerala.
All India Communist Party
By 1980, the writing on the wall was clear. Poll alliance between CPI and CPI(M) was forged. CPI had parted ways with Congress in Kerala. The Dange group within the party was reduced to an insignificant minority. In 1980 a section of CPI cadre who wanted to retain the close relationship with the Congress, broke away from the Party and formed All India Communist PartyAll India Communist Party
The All India Communist Party was a communist party in India. It was emerged after a split in the Communist Party of India in 1980, by a section of CPI cadres dissatisfied with the political changes that occurred during the 1978 Bhatinda conference of CPI. During most of the 1970s CPI had supported...
. Roza Deshpande, the daughter of Dange and her husband Bani Deshpande, played an important role in organising the founding of the new party.. It is said that Dange himself was initially largely sceptical of a split in the CPI.
The founders of All India Communist Party retained close communications with Dange. In May, 1981 the National Council of CPI expelled Dange. When the first conference of AICP was held in Meerut, commencing on 13 March. Dange turned up there uninvited and took charge of the new party. He was elected general secretary of the party.
Marginalization within the communist movement
Although having Dange as its leader, AICP was not able to attract any major nationwide following for two main reasons. Firstly, the Soviet Union did not give any political support to the new party. The founders of AICP were upholding the pro-Soviet CPI policy of cooperating with the National Congress, but the Soviets were not interested in a split within CPI. Secondly, the Congress showed limited interest towards the idea of having a national alliance with the new party.AICP versus Congress
In the end, the two parties would be poised against each other in several local elections. Not only that, the Congress successfully outmaneuvered the new party in taking over a pro-Soviet goodwill organization. As an alternative to the CPI-controlled Indian-Soviet Cultural Society (ISCUS), members of AICP and the Congress had set up the Friends of the Soviet UnionFriends of the Soviet Union (India)
Friends of the Soviet Union was an organisation in India. It was founded by members of the Indian National Congress and the All India Communist Party as an alternative to the CPI-controlled Indian-Soviet Cultural Society , after the break between CPI and the Congress in the national political...
. Eventually the control over this organization was completely taken over by the Congress..
Merger into United Communist Party of India
In 1987 AICP merged with the Indian Communist Party and formed the United Communist Party of IndiaUnited Communist Party of India
United Communist Party of India , is a political party in India. It was formed in 1987 when the Indian Communist Party merged with the All India Communist Party. Veteran communist leader Mohit Sen was the general secretary of the party until his death in 2003.UCPI participates in the Confederation...
. Veteran communist leader Mohit Sen
Mohit Sen
Mohit Sen born on March 24, 1929, in Calcutta, and died in Hyderabad on May 3, 2003 was a well-known communist intellectual. He was general secretary of the United Communist Party of India at the time of his death.-Early life and education:...
was the general secretary
General secretary
-International intergovernmental organizations:-International nongovernmental organizations:-Sports governing bodies:...
of the party until his death in 2003.
The party failed to register any presence in the country. In the 2007 assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, UCPI launched three candidates, Devi Dayal Yadav in Karki (572 votes, 0.49% of the votes in the constituency), Anand Kumar in Baberu (899 votes, 0.82%) and Vimal Krishan Srivastav in Banda (456 voes, 0.39%). Similarly, in 2006 Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
elections, UCPI could garner only 921 votes in the state.
Death and legacy
Dange died at a Bombay hospital on 22 May 1991. He was given a state funeral by the MaharashtraMaharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
state government. He was survived by his wife Ushatai and daughter, Roza Deshpande.
Birth centenary
Seven years later, in 1998, it was decided to celebrate his birth centenary celebrations, starting from 10 October that year in a gathering of trade unionists in Mumbai. A committee was set up to undertake a project for instituting a memorial to Dange. The concept of the memorial approved in the meeting was that it would house a modern education center, a large library and facilities for research on various issues concerning the working class movement. There will also be a trade union school with hostel and canteen facilities. This project did not take off.Another attempt by various communist organizations was to hold a national communist conference in Mumbai on the occasion of Dange's birth centenary celebrations. But this had failed due to the paucity of funds. The communist organizations could not raise sufficient funds nor could find a generous sponsor to host the meet in Dange's own city. Therefore, the venue of the conference was shifted to Kerala.
Honor by the Indian Parliament
On 10 December 2004, The Indian Parliament honoured Dange when Dr. Manmohan SinghManmohan Singh
Manmohan Singh is the 13th and current Prime Minister of India. He is the only Prime Minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power after completing a full five-year term. A Sikh, he is the first non-Hindu to occupy the office. Singh is also the 7th Prime Minister belonging to the Indian...
, Prime Minister of India unveiled his statue along with other left leaders such as Acharya Narendra Deva and A.K. Gopalan in Parliament House. The 9-feet high bronze statue of Dange, sculpted by Vithoba Panchal, has been donated by the labor organization, Shramik Pratishthan, Mumbai.
Mitrokhin Archives
Controversies continued to dog Dange even after death. In what were supposedly based on KGBKGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
documents, notes smuggled out by former KGB spy Vasili Mitrokhin
Vasili Mitrokhin
Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin was a Major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, and co-author with Christopher Andrew of The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, a massive account of Soviet intelligence...
at the time of his defection to Britain, Christopher Andrew published, in 2005, a book Mitrokhin Archive II
Mitrokhin Archive
The Mitrokhin Archive is a collection of notes made secretly by KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin during his thirty years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate...
, that contained details of alleged transactions between the CPI and the KGB during 1975-76, and it claimed that the money exchanged was between 0.4 to 0.8 million rupees a month. The supposed KGB papers claim that deceased CPI leaders Dange and C. Rajeshwara Rao regularly received bribes and favors from the Russians in mid-1970s and Dange even issued receipts for the money he received. This money changed hands from car windows in desolate areas near New Delhi, the book claimed.
Mitrokhin Archives are not KGB papers per se, but were notes taken by Vasili Mitrokhin over 30 years. CPI questioned the authenticity of these papers. "This is utter nonsense. We have said this before and we say it again that these documents haven't been verified and no one knows if these are real KGB papers," said CPI leader Manju Kumar Majumder, when the book was out, Academicians like J. Arch Getty
J. Arch Getty
John Archibald Getty, III is an American historian and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is noted for his research on Russian and Soviet history, especially the period under Joseph Stalin and the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.-Life and career:Getty was...
and counter-intelligence specialists had questioned the veracity of these papers.
Benediktov Diaries
Diaries of I.A. Benediktov, Russian ambassadorAmbassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
to India during the 1960s named Indian communist leaders seeking aid from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Dange's name figured in the first excerpt is from a 17 January 1962 entry from the journal Benediktov describing a conversation with Bhupesh Gupta, the then Secretary of the National Council of CPI.
Gupta reported that after the death of Ghosh at the present time in the party there is an acute insufficiency of means for the preelection campaign. He expressed the fear that with the death of Ghosh the source for receiving means for the communist party from the CPSU might be closed. These questions were handled by Ghosh alone, Gupta underscored. He never consulted with him /Gupta/, and even less with [Elamulam M.S.] Nambudiripad and G. Nair/ with the latter two only about using the assistance/. All these matters were held in strictest secrecy from other leaders of the party and members of the National Council. This explains the fact that not a single report on this question has appeared in the press. Gupta said that he cannot singlehandedly take on responsibility in questions of assistance, therefore he considers it necessary to consult with Nambudiripad, whom he characterized as a person of crystalline honesty and whom Ghosh trusted. Gupta confidentially reported that A. Ghosh had not consulted on this problem with Akhmed or with [Shripad Amrit] Dange, who once proposed that he entrust to him alone all matters connected with the receipt of aid from abroad.
In as much as Mitrokhin archive was based entirely on notes based on alleged primary sources, the Benediktov diaries also brought in Dange through a mere hearsay. But both these documents were used by the critics of communism to attack the communist parties and Dange.
Dange the author
Dange's arrival in the political arena was through the pamphlet Gandhi vs. Lenin that got him two important contacts of his youth: M.N. Roy and Lotwala, the rich flour-mill owner from Bombay. The latter helped him to launch the first ever socialist magazine in India, The Socialist. Mohit Sen said that Dange's articles in The Socialist impressed Lenin himself.Dange was a keen follower of literature. He had published a book called Literature and People that advocated socialist realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
, as opposed to elitism
Elitism
Elitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals, who form an elite — a select group of people with intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most...
.
From Primitive Communism to Slavery
Dange's major work, From Primitive Communism to Slavery was published in 1949. The book attempted to analyze stages of growth of society in ancient India. The author had painfully researched ancient scriptures and other sources to make it a definitive tome. Engels’ book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State was the kind of road map he used. He analyzed the ancient epics to arrive at the reasons for origin of private property in India. The first draft of the book was written in Yerawada Jail between October 1942 and January 1943.Dange's magnum opus was severely criticized by historian D.D. Kosambi, who said that in order to defend Engels, he had to deny Dange. He went on to say that Dange’s work was unquestionably a caricature of Engel’s work. Kosambi was especially severe when he said, ‘Marxism is not a substitute for thinking, but a tool of analysis which must be used, with a certain minimum of skill and understanding, upon the proper material..
The book was released in 2002, under the title Vedic India by his daughter Roza and her husband, Bani Deshpande. Dange was again criticized for "his ideas on ancient India and his discovery of the ideals of communism in the primitive ages (and hence a glorification of the ancient culture) left him exposed to charges of having read Marxism in the most unscientific fashion".