Congress and Communists

[p. 1] After Gandhiji's release when he wrote to the Viceroy repudiating the sabotage campaign and seeking honourable settlement and again when he wrote to Mr. Jinnah accepting the principle of self-determination and seeking Congress-League agreement for national freedom, the common talk among patriotic circles was that Gandhiji was saying what the Communists had been preaching in his absence.

After the failure of the Gandhi-Jinnah meeting when Congressmen of some provinces passed resolutions excluding the Communists there was the inevitable confusion but not much surprise. Ever since August 9, after the arrest of the Congress leaders, the Congress Socialists and their allies who spoke in the name of the Congress, had done so much foul propaganda against the Communists that the Congress-minded people are not half as much surprised by the recent moves to exclude Communists as they were over Gandhiji's lead earlier.

It would be obvious nonsense to suggest that Gandhiji had been bagged by the Communists or that he was too old and unwell to think clearly and boldly as the Congress Socialists were suggesting for a while in those days.

But it is obvious enough that the national mind is in a state of great confusion and the national movement has never passed through such a chaotic stage as after August 9.

Gandhiji is out, but the other Working Committee leaders are yet in; the people are in great distress, but the patriots feel helpless; the fate of the world for generations to come is being decided by this war, but India's destiny is not in the hands of her own leaders. There is today the obvious need to hang together, to think our hardest and do our best.

[…] Joshi lists the strengths of the Congress and of the Communist Party.

It is the Congress that planted the banner of Indian freedom; it is from Congress leaders that we got our early lessons in patriotism and it is today Congressmen who want to deny us the privilege of fighting shoulder to shoulder with them for the cause they taught us to accept as our main aim in life. To us the Congress is our parent organisation, its leaders our political fathers, its followers our brothers-in-arms.

In common tradition, age is supposed to be mellow and youth impatient, younger organisations sectarian and the older tolerant. Today, when our elders in the Congress suddenly want to decide to cut us off without even asking us to explain ourselves, we deem it our privilege to beseech:

Think again, over and over again, about what you are doing. Ask us anything and we will try our best to set your doubts at rest. If we differ, we must discuss over and over again for the simple reason that we cannot afford to fall apart.

We have patience because we have faith not only in our own patriotism but also of our fellow Congressmen, because we know we have to fight only prejudice in [p. 3] their minds and establish the bond of patriotism. We are patient even though we are the youngest party in the country, because we have fought prejudice all our young lives. We had to fight the prejudices of others against Communism in making our Party what it is today. We know from our own experience that the battle against prejudice and for patriotism can never be lost and also that winning it is a hard and long task.

What is it then that the Congressmen bring up against us and because of which they want to part company?

II.

OUR CRITICS

Our critics can be catalogued under two heads :

First, there are those who take their stand on ‘fundamental differences’. They seem to think that there is nothing in common between Indian nationalism and Communism and that their unity is impossible; for them the very fact that we consider the present war as people’s war is conclusive enough.

The second lot of critics are far more specific. They charge us of 'stabbing the Congress in the back' (S. K. Patil) by not carrying out the August resolution.

Furious thinking is going on among Congress workers. After coming out of jail they are all trying to review the period that followed August 9, to be able to evaluate the role of various groups in the Congress and determine the future tasks of the Congress. In this sense it is a very healthy sign, a desire to think, discuss, understand and act. It is in this spirit that I am also writing this article, with a view to explain our viewpoint, learn theirs so that we may all come to correct conclusions.

Let me take up the ‘fundamental differences first’. We Communists are not ashamed but very proud of our Communism which inspires us to fight for the greatest cause of mankind—a world socialist brotherhood of free and equal peoples. There is only one thing that makes us blush, that our ancient people are slaves today. There is only one duty that Communism teaches us, to liberate our country before we can establish socialism. There is only one task which our Party teaches us, to build in alliance with our own fellow-patriots a United National Front for Indian freedom. There is only one claim we Communists make, that our policy is patriotic and we endeavour our very best to carry it out. There is only one request we make to our countrymen, judge us by what we say and do, and not by what you ‘think’ Communism means.

[…] Joshi traces the Communists' roots in the national movement and their early demands.

After the war broke out, the problem of the safety and liberation of our Motherland became an urgent issue. Power was in the hands of the bureaucrats and the dire need of the hour was that the patriotic leaders of our people should be the government of the land. But the unfortunate situation was that the two main political organisations stood divided. In recent years, the Congress had grown phenomenally, but so had the League. The mass of Congressmen were yet hugging on to the old picture of the League when only sections of the Muslim upper classes were in it.

We were the first to see and admit a change in its character when the League accepted complete independence as its aim and began to rally the Muslim masses behind its banner. We held a series of discussions within our Party and came to the conclusion in 1941-42 that it had become an anti-imperialist organisation expressing the freedom urge of the Muslim peoples, that its demand for Pakistan was a demand of self-determination and that for the freedom of India an immediate joint front between the Congress and the League must be forged as the first step to break imperialist deadlock.

When we first began to agitate for Congress-League unity, the cheap gibe hurled at us was that we were advancing an impossible slogan only to escape joining the coming ‘national struggle’ ourselves. Two years later, after the failure of struggle, serious patriots began seeing that Congress-League unity was the only practical way out. When Gandhiji and Jinnah Saheb did meet in September '44 to come to an agreement, there was as much popular interest in and enthusiasm for it as there was for starting the ‘struggle’ two years earlier, in the August 1942 meeting of the A.I.C.C.

I am not citing the above facts to suggest that the Communists gave the lead and the Congress followed it. I know that Congressmen changed through their own experience, acquired during the various nation-wide mass movements. All that I suggest is that our acceptance of Marxism gave us Communists the understanding to see earlier what Congressmen themselves [p. 6] saw later on. In fact, we very often discuss among ourselves and inside our Party that if our Marxian knowledge was better and if our Party was stronger, i.e., if we were better Communists than we are, how many trials and tribulations we could not have saved our nation and how much faster could we not have made our national movement grow.

I am referring to the above facts only to answer our critics who are shouting, that we Communists are an alien force inside the Indian national movement. What does the course of our national movement, which I have briefly sketched out above, show? That far from being aliens inside it, we are an integral part of it; that far from pulling it back, we have been trying to push it forward; that rather than divide it, we have been trying our hardest to unite it more and more.

Today the main items of the platform of the national movement—independence, democracy and self-determination—have become household words. Twenty years of programmatic controversies lie behind and all who care for truth will admit that the Communists have always been among the first to preach what the whole Congress subsequently accepted as best for the country.

Does it all prove that we are aliens inside the Congress as our critics suggest or that we are bold and virile children of the Congress as we claim to be?

[…] Joshi contrasts Congress and Communist responses to the Soviet war, Japan and famine.

The war is the all-embracing issue. Whether we like it or not, everybody's fate is being decided through it and all that is happening is because of it.

We think that because the Congress leadership took up a negative attitude towards the war, so they were inevitably driven towards a negative political policy as well; good words but no action, and giving a "We cannot" to every issue that mattered: We cannot join the battle for world freedom until we are declared to be free; we cannot defend our country until the British quit; we cannot stop our own countrymen from hoarding and profiteering unless we become the Government. In short, expect others to create conditions for us—just what ne[ver] happens in real life and just h[ow] history is not made.

We think our understanding of the war was correct and therefore, we could suggest a positive [p. 8] policy for our own country. Our faith in our policy has grown because we find the rest of our fellow patriots themselves groping their way towards it.

India had to pass through two years of hell and Gandhiji and Jinnah Saheb had separately to suffer the insolent sermons of Linlithgow and Wavell before they thought of meeting each other. They did not succeed, but who does not want them to meet again to succeed the second time. Thirty-five lakhs had to die in Bengal before the patriotic leaders of Bengal agreed to work together for relief through the Bengal Medical Relief Co-ordination Committee under Dr. B. C. Roy, and before Sjt. Kiron Shankar Roy circularised to all the district Congressmen to join the Government-sponsored Food Committees.

By adopting a negative attitude towards the war the other Congressmen came to 'We cannot'. By adopting a positive attitude towards the war, we came to 'we can.' Without wishing to be rude I ask: Which attitude is based on greater faith in our people, which attitude is more in keeping with the Congress tradition itself?

[…] Joshi asks critics to judge the Communists by their policy and work.

A very familiar charge against us is that we opposed the 8th August Resolution. We whole-heartedly agreed with the main part of the resolution; its flaming anti-Fascism, its declaration of sympathy with the cause of the United Nations, the unqualified pledge to organise both armed and non-violent resistance to the Jap aggressors and the demand for National Government.

Very few active Congressmen except those that came to the A.I.C.C. Session know of the actual amendments we moved, because immediately afterwards they were arrested. We are printing them at the end of this article with relevant passages from the Official resolution to help Congressmen make up their minds.

[p. 9] The first amendment is about the constitution of a free India. Maulana Azad called Sajjad Zaheer, one of the Communist A.I.C.C. Members, and assured him that Gandhiji wanted to see Jinnah Saheb immediately after the A.I.C.C. meeting and we should not bind Gandhiji's hands by our amendments. We took the stand that good wishes could not get national unity. Self-determination was either a just and democratic demand or it was not, and if it was, as we thought it to be, then there was no question of bargaining with Mr. Jinnah. Gandhiji should go to him with the offer of self-determination, including the right of secession, and then alone would there be good chances of Congress-League agreement.

We pressed our amendment with the same faith with which we used to our amendments about the working-class and peasant demands, for we knew the cause of the oppressed is just and the Congress that stands for justice to our country could not indefinitely go on denying justice to the Muslims.

Our amendment was defeated, but we explained our point of view with the conviction that the more persistent we were in explaining the Muslim demand to our fellow Congressmen, the sooner would Congressmen accept it.

Gandhiji could not meet Jinnah Saheb then. Linlithgow did not let him, but when he did go to meet him after his release, he went after accepting the principle of self-determination to serve as the basis of discussion as we had wanted him to do two years earlier.

Let Congressmen carefully read our amendment and see that it contained nothing more than what Gandhiji himself conceded to Jinnah Saheb during the negotiations, except that we gave a scientific definition of nationality as the unit that could claim and exercise the right of self-determination.

[…] Joshi discusses the second amendment and Communist work after the leaders' arrest.

Now let us have a look at the policy of the Congress Socialists and their allies who have done their utmost to slander us among fellow Congressmen and who as every one knows have taken the lead in seeing that the Communists are excluded from the Congress.

VI.

LEADERS OF THE ANTI-COMMUNIST CRUSADE

We have an immense mass of their illegal pamphlets, hand-bills and other literature, but I will quote only a few of the prize gems of their foremost leaders.

"It would be mean and cowardly to attempt to show that the national struggle that started on 9th August 1942 had not the authority of the Congress." This is not from Tottenham's pamphlet but Jai Prakash Narain in his Second Letter to All Fighters f[or] Freedom, as late as October 194[3]. This is six months after the publication of the Gandhi-Linlithg[ow] correspondence, in which Gandhi put the responsibility for what happened on Government repression and repudiated Congress connection [p. 12] with the campaign of sabotage and violence.

The Ninth August edited by Achyut Patwardhan and Ram Manohar Lohia and called by them the ‘fortnightly organ of the Indian National Congress’ wrote on January 26, 1944: “For our primary self-interest as well as for Swaraj our path leads to a relentless war against Britain’s war-efforts.” This paper glorified every act of sabotage and violence within the country and of Bose’s Army across the border.

[…] Joshi sets Narayan's views on Bose against Nehru's and Gandhi's, and lists Socialist slanders.

It only takes a little time for Congressmen to see that the stories about Government subsidy and acting as police agents are just lies and to brush them aside with the easy argument that all this is part of the mud-slinging between two Left groups. But quite a large number of Congressmen are taken in by their political arguments about the failure of struggle and of plans for the future. It is just because Congressmen are in a thinking stage, reviewing the past and making plans for the future that we ask them to consider the matter from all angles.

Let them read the extracts from the writings of Jai Prakash etc. together with what Gandhiji and Maulana Azad have said and let them say if there is anything in common between Congress policy and the Congress Socialists.

Let them read what they wrote side by side with what we wrote on responsibility for the national crisis, on ending the deadlock and in fact on all the major issues that cropped up after 9th August and let them decide who expounded the Congress policy more correctly, who defended the Congress honour better, who acted the good Congressmen and who the bad.

[p. 14] Let them remember that the Congress Socialists have deliberately charged us with the foulest crimes a patriot can be guilty of without having cared to prove it. The Congress Socialists knew they were lying when they lied.

They organised the sabotage campaign, we opposed it.

They used the name of the Congress, we used only the name of our Party.

They want the Congress leaders to remain in jail, we agitate for their release.

They want deadlock to continue, we want it ended.

They oppose National Government as surrender to Imperialism, we campaign for it.

They oppose Congress-League Unity, we work for it.

They call our policy pro-British, in order to cover up their policy which has been pro-Jap.

We have no doubt that the more Congressmen think the more readily they will agree with us, and the more they work among the people the sooner they will see our worth and also theirs.

In the meanwhile let them remember that the persons who are the loudest in demanding the exclusion of the Communists are the same persons who misused the name of the Congress, who cannot stand on their own before the people and who slander fellow Congressmen. This coincidence is not accidental.

[…] Joshi argues the Congress lacks a policy and that settlement with Britain is possible.

A belief continues to be held that the League is a communal organisation and that Mr. Jinnah is pro-British. But what is the reality? Mr. Jinnah is to the freedom-loving League masses what Gandhiji is to the Congress masses. They revere their Qaid-e-Azam as much as Congressmen do the Mahatma. They regard the League as their patriotic organisation as we regard the Congress. This is so because Mr. Jinnah has done to the League what Gandhiji did to the Congress in 1919-20—made it a mass organisation.

This is so because just as in one simple slogan, “Swaraj,” Gandhiji gave expression to our freedom urge, so Mr. Jinnah through the slogan of Pakistan has given expression to the freedom-urge of the Muslims, for absolute independence in their own homelands.

We do not expect a Congressman to readily admit all this, but we do expect him not to deny the patriotism of others but try to understand how it expresses itself for them; we do not expect a Congressman to claim the monopoly of patriotism for himself. If the Congressmen go narrow and sectarian, who will act the generous unifier of all patriotic elements in our unfortunate country? If Congressmen abuse the League or refuse to understand its phenomenal growth and just demands they are denying their own responsibility as members of the foremost national organisation. Claiming patriotism for oneself and denying it in others is the simplest thing to do. But has not the Congress tradition been its opposite?

[…] Joshi defends relief work, attacks S. K. Patil, and warns against rival unions.

Must political failure lead to organisational disruption or must it give rise to deeper political thinking, greater unity of the Congress and harder work among the people?

We Communist Congressmen endeavoured to act up to the best traditions of the Congress.

We draw inspiration from the great days of 1919-20 and the tradition of Hindu-Muslim unity represented by Congress-Khilafat alliance when we work for Congress-League unity to-day.

We draw inspiration for our work among the workers and kisans from the writings and speeches of Pandit Nehru in the thirties.

We draw confidence against the present day sectarian and totalitarian trend among Congressmen from the fact that if the plan for a “homogeneous Congress” did not succeed in 1934, it is not likely to succeed in 1944.

We know that anti-Communism has spread among Congressmen. We consider that it has mostly sprung from genuine misunderstanding and it is our task to remove it; and partly that it is the result of vile slander-mongering which must come to its own miserable end. Against anti-Communist prejudices, we will put our patriotic policy and Congressmen will melt. Against the disruptors we will defend ourselves and we know they cannot win.