DR.

RAM MANOHAR LOHIYA

NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

SESSION 2021-2022

SEMESTER - II
HISTORY
The Rise Of Left In The Indian Freedom Struggle
Submitted To Submitted By
Dr. Vandana Singh Rachit Verma
Associate Professor En. No.: 210101114
History Section: A

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

● Acknowledgement ............................................................................ 3

● Introduction ....................................................................................... 4

● The impact of Russian Revolution...................................................... 5

● Jawaharlal nehru and socialism ......................................................... 5

● FORMATION OF COMMUNIST PARTIES...................................... 6

● FORMATION OF PEASANTS AND WORKERS PARTIES…....... 7

● FAMOUS SPLIT OF 1964................................................................. 9

● THE MEERUT CASE AND AFTER .............................................. 10

● UNITED ACTIONS ,NO MERGER................................................ 11

● THE CENTRAL ISSUE - CLASS STRUGGLE.............................. 12

● CONCLUSION……………………………………………………… 13

● BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………….14

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Project is like a bridge between theoretical and practical work. With this intention, I decided
to work on this particular topic. First of all, I would like to thank my teacher of History, Dr.
Vandana Singh. I express my deep gratitude to her for giving her exemplary guidance,
monitoring and constant encouragement throughout the project.

I would like to express my gratitude towards my parents and my friends for their kind support
and encouragement which helped me in the completion of this project.

I know that despite my sincerest efforts some discrepancies might have crept in, I hope and
believe that I would be pardoned for the same.

Thanking You

Rachit Verma

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 INTRODUCTION

A powerful left-wing group developed in India in the late 1920s and 1930s contributing to the
radicalization of the national movement. The goal of political independence acquired a
clearer and sharper social and economic content. The stream of national struggle for
independence and the stream of the struggle for social and economic emancipation of the
suppressed and the exploited began to come together. Socialist ideas acquired roots in the
Indian soil; and socialism became the accepted creed of Indian youth whose urges came to be
symbolized by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. Gradually there emerged two
powerful parties of the Left, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Congress Socialist
Party (CSP).

Student and youth associations were organized all over the country from 1927 onwards.
Hundreds of youth conferences were organized all over the country during 1928 and 1929
with speakers advocating radical solutions for the political, economic and social ills from
which the country was suffering. Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose toured the country
attacking imperialism, capitalism, and landlordism and preaching the ideology of socialism.
The Revolutionary Terrorists led by Chandrasekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh also turned to
socialism. Trade union and peasant movements grew rapidly throughout the 1920s. Socialist
ideas became even more popular during the 1930s as the world was engulfed by the great
economic depression. Unemployment soared all over the capitalist world. The world
depression brought the capitalist system into disrepute and drew attention towards Marxism
and socialism. Within the Congress the left-wing tendency found reflection in the election of
Jawaharlal Nehru as president for 1936 and 1937 and of Subhas Bose for 1938 and 1939 and
in the formation of the Congress Socialist Party.

One of these movements was the Swadeshi and the Boycott Movement. The Swadeshi
movement, part of the Indian independence movement and the developing Indian
nationalism, was an economic strategy aimed at removing the British Empire from power and
improving economic conditions in India by following the principles of swadeshi (self-
sufficiency); which had some success. Strategies of the Swadeshi movement involved
boycotting British products and the revival of domestic products and production processes.

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The Swadeshi Movement started with the partition of Bengal by the Viceroy of India, Lord
Curzon, 1905 and continued up to 1908. It was the most successful of the pre-Gandhian
movements. Its chief architects were Aurobindo Ghosh, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak,
Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai. Swadeshi, as a strategy, was a key focus of Mahatma
Gandhi, who described it as the soul of Swaraj (self-rule). Gandhi, at the time of the actual
movement, remained loyal to the British Crown.

THE IMPACT

THE IMPACT OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Seminal in this respect was the impact of the Russian Revolution. On 7 November 1917, the
Bolshevik (Communist) party, led by V.I. Lenin overthrew the despotic Czarist regime and
declared the formation of the first socialist state. The new Soviet regime electrified the
colonial world by unilaterally renouncing its imperialist rights in China and other parts of
Asia. Another lesson was driven home: If the common people — the workers and peasants
and the intelligentsia — could unite and overthrow the mighty Czarist empire arid establish a
social order where there was no exploitation of one human being by another, then the Indian
people battling against British imperialism could also do so. Socialist doctrines, especially
Marxism, the guiding theory of the Bolshevik Party, acquired a sudden attraction, especially
for the people of Asia. Bipin Chandra Pal, the famous Extremist leader, wrote in 1919:
‘Today after the downfall of German militarism, after the destruction of the autocracy of the
Czar, there has grown up all over the world a new power, the power of the people determined
to rescue their legitimate rights— the right to live freely and happily without being exploited
and victimized by the wealthier and the so-called higher classes.’ Socialist ideas now began
to spread rapidly especially because many young persons who had participated actively in the
NonCooperation Movement were unhappy with its outcome and were dissatisfied with
Gandhian policies and ideas as well as the alternative Swarajist programme. Several socialist
and communist groups came into existence all over the country. In Bombay, S.A. Dange
published a pamphlet Gandhi and Lenin and started the first socialist weekly, The Socialist;
in Bengal, Muzaffar Ahmed brought out Navayug and later founded the Langal in

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cooperation with the poet NazruI Islam; in Punjab, Ghulam Hussain and others published
Inquilab; and in Madras, M. Singaravelu founded the Labour-Kisan Gazette

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AND SOCIALISM

It was above all Jawaharlal Nehru who imparted a socialist vision to the national movement
and who became the symbol of socialism and socialist ideas in India after 1929. The notion
that freedom could not be defined only by political terms but must have a socioeconomic
content began increasingly to be associated with his name. Nehru became the president of the
historic Lahore Congress of 1929 at a youthful forty. He was elected to the post again in 1936
and 1937. As president of the Congress and as the most popular leader of the national
movement after Gandhi, Nehru repeatedly toured the country, travelling thousands of miles
and addressing millions of people. In his books (Autobiography and Glimpses of World
History), articles and speeches, Nehru propagated the ideas of socialism and declared that
political freedom would become meaningful only if it led to the economic emancipation of
the masses; it had to, therefore, be followed by the establishment of a socialist society, Nehru
thus moulded a whole generation of young nationalists and helped them accept a socialist
orientation.

Nehru developed an interest in economic questions when he came in touch with the peasant
movement in eastern U.P. in 1920-21. He then used his enforced leisure in jail, during 1922-
23, to read widely on the history of the Russian and other revolutions. In 1927, he attended
the international Congress against Colonial Oppression and imperialism, held at Brussels, and
came into contact with communists and anti-colonial fighters from all over the world. By
now he had begun to accept Marxism in its broad contours. The same year he visited the
Soviet Union and was deeply impressed by the new socialist society. On his return he
published a book on the Soviet Union on whose title page he wrote Wordsworth’s famous
lines on French Revolution: ‘Bliss was it in that drawn to be alive, but to be young was very
heaven.’ Jawaharlal returned to India, in the words of his biographer S. Gopal, ‘a self-
conscious revolutionary radical.’ In 1928, Jawaharlal joined hands with Subhas to organize
the Independence for India League to fight for complete independence and ‘a socialist
revision of the economic structure of society.’ At the Lahore session of the Congress in 1929,

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Nehru proclaimed: ‘I am a socialist and a republican, and am no believer in kings and
princes, or in the order which produces the modem kings of industry, who have a greater
power over the lives and fortunes of men than even the kings of old, and whose methods are
as predatory as those of the old feudal aristocracy.’ India, he said, would have to adopt a full
‘socialist programme’ if she was ‘to end her poverty and inequality.’ It was also not possible
for the Congress to hold the balance between capital and labour and landlord and tenant, for
the existing balance was ‘terribly weighted’ in favour of the capitalists and landlords.

But Nehru’s commitment to socialism was given within a framework that recognized the
primacy of the political, anti imperialist struggle so long as India was ruled by the foreigner.
In fact the task was to bring the two commitments together without undermining the latter.
Thus, he told the Socialists in 1936 that the two basic urges that moved him were
‘nationalism and political freedom as represented by the Congress and social freedom as
represented by socialism’; and that ‘to continue these two outlooks and make them an organic
whole is the problem of the Indian socialist.’

Nehru, therefore, did not favour the creation of an organization independent of or separate
from the Congress or making a break with Gandhiji and the right-wing of the Congress. The
task was to influence and transform the Congress as a whole in a socialist direction. And this
could be best achieved by working under its banner and bringing its workers and peasants to
play a greater role in its organization. And in no case, he felt, should the Left become a mere
sect apart from the mainstream of the national movement.

FORMATION OF COMMUNIST PARTIES

Attracted by the Soviet Union and its revolutionary commitment, a large number of Indian
revolutionaries and exiles abroad made their way there. The most well-known and the tallest
of them was M.N. Roy, who along with Lenin, helped evolve the Communist International’s
policy towards the colonies. Seven such Indians, headed by Roy, met at Tashkent in October
1920 and set up a Communist Party of India. Independently of this effort, as we have seen, a
number of left-wing and communist groups and organizations had begun to come into
existence in India after 1920. Most of these groups came together at Kanpur in December
1925 and founded an all-India organization under the name the Communist Party of India
(CPI). After some time, S.V. Ghate emerged as the general secretary of the party. The CPI

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called upon all its members to enroll themselves as members of the Congress, form a strong
left-wing in all its organs, cooperate with all other radical nationalists, and make an effort to
transform the Congress into a more radical mass-based organization.

The move towards the formation of a socialist party was made in the jails during 1930-31 and
1932-34 by a group of young Congressmen who were disenchanted with Gandhian strategy
and leadership and attracted by socialist ideology. Many of them were active in the youth
movement of the late 1920s. In the jails they studied and discussed Marxian and other
socialist ideas. Attracted by Marxism, communism and Soviet Union, they did not find
themselves in agreement with the prevalent political line of the CPI. Many of them were
groping towards an alternative. Ultimately they came together and formed the Congress
Socialist Party (CSP) at Bombay in October 1934 under the leadership of Jayaprakash
Narayan, Acharya Narendr Dev and Minoo Masani. From the beginning, all the Congress
socialists were agreed upon four basic propositions: that the primary struggle in India was the
national struggle for freedom and that nationalism w..s a necessary stage on the way to
socialism; that socialists must work inside the National Congress because it was the primary
body leading the national struggle and, as Acharya Narendra Dev put it in 1934, It would be a
suicidal policy for us to cut ourselves 3ff from the national movement that the Congress
undoubtedly represents; that they must give the Congress and the national movement a
socialist direction; and that to achieve this objective they must organize the workers and
peasants in their class organizations, wage struggles for their economic demands and make
them the social base of the national struggle.”

From the beginning the CSP leaders were divided into three broad ideological currents: the
Marxian, the Fabian and the current influenced by Gandhiji. This would not have been a
major weakness — in fact it might have been a source of strength — for a broad socialist
party which was a movement. But the CSP was already a part, and a cadre-based party at that,
within a movement that was the National Congress. Moreover, the Marxism of the 1930s was
incapable of accepting as legitimate such diversity of political currents on the Left. The result
was a confusion which plagued the CSP till the very end. The party’s basic ideological
differences were papered over for a long time because of the personal bonds of friendship and
a sense of comradeship among most of the founding leaders of the party, the acceptance of
Acharya Narendra Dev and Jayaprakash Narayan as its senior leaders, and its commitment to
nationalism and socialism.

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 FORMATION OF THE PEASANTS AND WORKERS PARTY
The Workers’ and Peasants’ Party was also dissolved on the ground that it was unadvisable to
form a two-class (workers’ and peasants’) party for it was likely to fall prey to petty
bourgeois influences. The Communists were to concentrate, instead, on the formation of an
‘illegal, independent and centralized’ communist party. The result of this sudden shift in the
Communists’ political position was their isolation from the national movement at the very
moment when it was gearing up for its greatest mass struggle and conditions were ripe for
massive growth in the influence of the Left over it. Further, the Communists split into several
splinter groups. The Government took further advantage of this situation and, in 1934,
declared the CPI illegal. The Communist movement was, however, saved from disaster
because, on the one hand, many of the Communists refused to stand apart from the Civil
Disobedience Movement (CDM) and participated actively in it, and, on the other hand,
socialist and communist ideas continued to spread in the country. Consequently, many young
persons who participated in the CDM or in Revolutionary Terrorist organizations were
attracted by socialism, Marxism and the Soviet Union, and joined the CPI after 1934.

The main form of political work by the early Communists was to organize peasants’ and
workers’ parties and work through them. The first such organization was the Labour-Swaraj
Party of the Indian National Congress organized by Muzaffar Ahmed, Qazi Nazrul Islam,
Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, and others in Bengal in November 1925. In late 1926, a Congress
Labour Party was formed in Bombay and a Kirti-Kisan Party in Punjab. A LabourKisan Party
of Hindustan had been functioning in Madras since 1923. By 1928 all of these provincial
organizations had been renamed the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party (WPP) and knit into an All
India party, whose units were also set up in Rajasthan, UP and Delhi. All Communists were
members of this party. The basic objective of the WPPs was to work within the Congress to
give it a more radical orientation and make it ‘the party of the people’ and independently
organize workers and peasants in class organizations, to enable first the achievement of
complete independence and ultimately of socialism. The WPPs grew rapidly and within a
short period the communist influence in the Congress began to grow rapidly, especially in
Bombay. Moreover, Jawaharlal Nehru and other radical Congressmen welcomed the WPPs’

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efforts to radicalize the Congress. Along with Jawaharlal and Subhas Bose, the youth leagues
and other Left forces, the WPPs played an important role in creating a strong left-wing within
the Congress and in giving the Indian national movement a leftward direction.

FAMOUS SPLIT OF 1964

The internal politics within the CPI soon manifested itself in the famous split of 1964, when
the radical section leaning towards China walked out of a meeting held in Delhi, calling
themselves the ‘real communist party’. Soon after they would form the Communist Party of
India (Marxist) (CPI-M), which eventually overshadowed the CPI in parliamentary politics.

Three years after the split of 1964, however, there was yet another dissension within the CPI-
M, with a faction of radicals claiming that the party, engrossed in parliamentary politics, had
given up on the original cause of armed revolution. In 1969, this group, led by Charu
Mazumdar, led violent attacks at Naxalbari in North Bengal in an effort to replicate a Chinese
revolution. The movement was soon crushed when the CPI-M, which was at that moment
part of a coalition government in Bengal, came down heavily upon it, ironically accusing it of
drawing inspiration from Mao, rather than following what India stood for. Despite the failure
of Mazumdar’s movement though, the revolution he attempted to ignite, established the roots
of what is now the Maoist movement in the country.

The recurring splits within the party, primarily based on what precisely the Marxist ideology
entailed, however, could not shake the Left’s influence on the three states it had gained
control over in the 50s and 60s. In Kerala the Left Front kept alternating with the Congress in
presiding over the government, in West Bengal the CPI-M, once elected to power in 1977
under Jyoti Basu’s leadership, held on to power for the three decades. In Tripura too the CPI-
M came to power in 1988, and except for a brief moment of Congress rule between 1992 and
1998, the state was governed by the Left up until the overthrow by the BJP earlier this month.

Not only did it lead to a clear split in the Party-the formation of the CPI(M) and the CPI-but
also to the ganging up of the latter behind the Congress. Although forced, for some time in
the 1967-69 period, to join the anti-Congress united front (in the process incidentally, they
had no hesitation to become the coalition partner of the Jana Sangh and other reactionary
parties in three state governments), they broke with this policy in 1969 and started
collaborating with the Congress. This conti- nued for a full decade including the notorious
two-year long Emergency. The CPI leader formally headed the Kerala government in that

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period but the real force was the Congress whose policies had to be legally carried out by the
CPI Chief Minister and his government. Naturally, therefore, the CPI had to share the
ignominy which befell the Congress in the 1977 elections that followed the lifting of the
Emergency. The CPI(M) had to face the most difficult period in the years that culminated in
the promulgation and continuation of the Emergency. Not only was a part of the Communist
Movement (the CPI) a partner of the Congress in the violent attacks on the CPI(M) and other
left and militant forces in the country but it had to face the boycott organised by the frater-
nal Communist and Workers' Parties with very few exceptions. Faced by the semi-fascist
terror in West Bengal, the vicious police-goonda atttacks in Kerala, the severe repression
wherever the Party or its left allies stood with the fighting people, the Party had to defend its
honour. In discharg- ing its major responsibilities, the Party had the supreme confidence that
other left forces, including the CPI who had for the time being left the camp of which they
are and should be integral parts, they cannot but come back. The CPI(M) therefore, patiently
worked. Its hopes in this regard were partly released when (in 1978) the CPI made its first
break with the Congress and opted for the left and democratic front in which the CPI(M) is
the most active force

THE MEERUT CASE AND AFTER

The notorious Meerut Conspiracy Case involving all the known Communist leaders of the
time, disintegrated what had been formed at Kanpur. Furthermore, serious differences arose
among those who remained outside the jail on tile tactics to be puria!I,d in tile rapidly
changing situa- tion ii India and abroad. For four full years since the Mcerut arrests of 1929,
the Party virtually ceased to exist as a Party, the small groups of Communists in some parts of
the country acting as they thought it. While the tenacity with which these groups ol-erated
testified to the influ:cnce exerted by communism over large sections of anti-imperialists, the
prono- uncements and practices of these groups cannot be termed as the work of the
Communist Party of India. These difficulties could be overcome partly towards the end of
1933 when most of the Meerut case comrades came out of jail, but that could not overcome
the difficulties caused by ideological confusion. These were re- moved only when the
Seventh Congress of the Comintern (1935) gave the line of unity against fascism and as an
integral part thereof, the anti-imperialist united front in countries like India. This helped in
politically and organisa- tionally unifying the various Communist groups which had, for

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several years, been ideologically divided. It was from that time onwards that and continuing
central leadership-the Central Committee and the Pol Bureau-came into existence.

UNITED ACTION, NO MERGER

This however does not negate the big possibilities of united actio a wide field. It was in view
of these two aspects of the situation that the two parties agreed some time back to set up an
All-India Co-ordina Committee. It is however regrettable that, instead of taking all requests
to the All-India Coordination Committee and sorting them at that level, the CPI leaders insist
on CPI(M) toeing the CPI l several issues which, they know, the CPI(M) can never agree to
do.

To take one instance, they want the CPI(M) to agree that they have never committed
revisionist or right opportunist mistakes and theirs is a Marxist-Leninist Party. Some of them
go to the ext demanding an outright merger of the two parties since "all the difference
between the two parties have been resolved" Everyone who has eye see will see that this will
not work, that what is reasonable and pr will be for the two parties to develop unity of action
on issues on they agree while deferring the question of mutual differences for a congenial
future. Such an approach will facilitate broader unity between the two parties and by them
with other left parties.

THE CENTRAL ISSUE: CLASS STRUGGLE

The central issue involved in the question of left unity today is the historic reality that the
political vanguard of the Indian working class is pitted against parties and organisations some
of which are oriented to the working class but carry with them a lumber-load of non-
proletarian ideas and practices. Many other radical parties and organisations are not even
formally committed to the ideologies and practices of the working class. The Communist
Party-the united party before the split and the CPI(M) since then-has been trying its best to
assert the proletarian posi- tions as opposed to alien class positions which are represented and
sup- ported by other (petty-bourgeois, bourgeois and even feudal) forces. The continuing
class struggle in the realm of ideas, policies and practices is therefore inherent in the
situation. This struggle however should be so conducted as to forge the broa- dest possible
unity of anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, anti-monopoly and anti-authoritarian democratic forces.
It is with this idea that the CPI(M) gives the perspective of a People's Democratic Front
which is necessarily led by the working class. The Left and Democratic Front which the Party
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advances as an immediate perspective, may not be led by the working class but the working
class and its firmest allies-mass of peasantry-play a positive role in the Left and Democratic
Front. While trying to develop such a Left and Democratic Front based on a programme
which is opposed to the programme of all bourgeois, landlord and petty-bourgeois parties, the
CPI(M) strives to develop the broadest possible unity of action on the largest number of
issues affecting the life of the people. To sum up, this overall review of the left movement in
the country,the Left and Democratic Front which is in the process of formation now, is a
continuation of but qualitatively different-different in its class content and therefore its
ideology or world outlook, its political programme, the forms of its militant struggle, mode of
revolutionary organisation, etc.- from the left that took shape exactly eight decades ago.
While the latter was the path-finder of a new class-the bourgeoisie with its petty-bourgeois
following-the present left movement symbolises a growing working class which is finding
allies in the other anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, anti-mono- poly democratic forces, the mass of
peasantry above all.

CONCLUSION
To sum up, this overall review of the left movement in the country, the Left and Democratic
Front which is in the process of formation now, is a continuation of but qualitatively
different-different in its class content and therefore its ideology or world outlook, its political
programme, the forms of its militant struggle, mode of revolutionary organisation, etc.- from
the left that took shape exactly eight decades ago. While the latter was the path-finder of a
new class-the bourgeoisie with its petty-bourgeois following-the present left movement
symbolises a growing working class which is finding allies in the other anti-imperialist, anti-
feudal, anti-mono- poly democratic forces, the mass of peasantry above all.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

● the left and the national movement research by irfan habib { jstor }
● https://www.insightsonindia.com/2015/03/23/3-critically-analyse-the-impact-the-left-
had-on-the-indian-society-and-polity-during-the-freedom-struggle/
● https://www.gktoday.in/upsc-questions/discuss-the-reasons-of-the-emergence-of-the-
left-w/
● https://www.jstor.org/stable/3517432?seq=1

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● https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/leftism-in-india-1917%E2%80%931947/
book258676
● http://vidyamandira.ac.in/pdfs/e_learning/dp_history/Communist%20Party
%20of%20India,%20Leftist%20Movement%20and.pdf

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