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EMERGENCE OF COMMUNISTS IN INDIA
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Various socialist and communist groups came into existence in
the 1920s. The
example of successful Russian revolution has aroused the
interest of many people.
They were dissatisfied with the outcome of the Non-cooperation
movement and
with the Gandhian political ideas and programs. On October 20,
1920, M. N. Roy
(who had gone to Russia to attend the second Congress of
CommunistsInternational and who, along with Lenin, helped evolved
its policy toward thecolonies), Abani Mukharjee and some Muhajirs
(Khilafat enthusiasts who had
joined the Hijarat and crossed over through Afghanistan into
Soviet territory) likeMohammad Ali and Mohammad Shafiq, set up a
communist party of India in
Tashkent. Roy however shifted to Berlin when his hopes of
penetrating Indiathrough Afghanistan faded in 1921. From there, he
started the fortnightly
Vanguard of Indian Independence and later published India in
Transition otherIndian revolutionaries groups abroad were meanwhile
turning towards Marxism
most notably the old Berlin group headed by Virendranath
Chattopadhyay,Bhupendranath Dutt, and Barkatullah. By mid 1920s an
important section of
Ghadar movement in exile has also turned communist under Ratan
Singh, SantokhSingh, and Teja Singh Swatantra.
By the end of 1922, through Nalini Gupta and Shaukat Usmani, Roy
establishedcontacts with the emerging communist groups in India
especially in Bombay (S. A.
Dange), Calcutta (Muzffar Ahmad), Madras (Singara Velu), and
Lahore (GhulamHussain). In August, 1922 Dange brought out the
weekly Socialist from Bombay,
the first ever communist journal to be published in India. In a
letter to Dange on
November 2, 1922, Roy outlined a plan for a dual organizationone
legal and
another illegala secret Communist nucleus working within a broad
frontWorkers and Peasants Party.
The emergence of even a few tiny communist groups in India
created a panic in theBritish Government, explained probably by the
fear of another Bolshevik
Revolution. In May 1924, Muzaffar Ahmad, S A Dange, Shaukat
Usmani and
Nalini Gupta were jailed in the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy
Case. However, the
setback was only temporary. The Communist Party of India was
founded in 1925.
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Of much greater significance was the setting up of a number of
organizations
between 1925 -27, embodying the idea of broad-front Workers and
PeasantsParty (WPP) to serve as a legal cover. The basic objective
of the WPP was to work
within the Congress to give it a more radical orientation, make
it the party of the
people, and independently organize workers and peasants in class
organizations tofirst work towards the achievement of complete
independence and ultimately
socialism.The Communists started developing real links with the
working class. They were
quite prominent in the Kharagpur railway workshop strikes of
February andSeptember 1927. Communist influence grew rapidly among
the Bombay textile
workers as well, from 1926 onwards, but there was little
penetration as yet into the
countryside. It may have been due to sheer paucity of cadres
which made dispersalinto village very difficult in the 1920s.
