Coauthored by Saswati Sarkar, Shanmukh, Dikgaj and Gangadhar
Section A: Introduction and Overview
We have been examining the communist worldview in a series of articles pertaining to Indian freedom struggle [30], [31]. We now broaden the scope to examine how the worldviews of key political figures during the era of freedom struggle related to communism. This broadening is imperative as communism in Indian context has been more of a political ideology, narrative and thought process, rather than a governance. In fact, communist record on governance has been largely comparable with that of other parties. The doctrine has however influenced several who have never been formally affiliated with any communist party. It is therefore imperative to examine the worldview and actions of those in the communist influence sphere and contrast with the choices of those whose worldview remained at variance with most of the principal tenets of communism. We choose two behemoths of the last lap of the freedom struggle, namely Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, as contrasting examples. We consider their outlooks on four key aspects, namely, 1) Nationalism vs Internationalism (Section A.1) 2) goal for liberating India (Section A.2) 3) what the freedom struggle constituted (Section A.3) and 4) class war (Section A.4) and compare with the communist positions on these.
On each of the above counts, Nehru’s worldview turns out to be a derivative of communism. It may alternately be stated that his worldview largely overlapped with communism and that of the other European left, which all drew their inspiration from similar sources. In his autobiography, written in 1936, in which he applauded Marx, communism, communists and Russia, and in subsequent public positions and writings, he implied that nationalism was narrow and could only be elevated to a higher plane through internationalism. He saw India’s nationalist struggle as a confrontation between Indian people and only the British state, and portrayed the British people as much a victim of their own imperialist government as the Indian people. He envisioned India’s freedom as a stepping stone towards world-peace, and envisioned an international socialist order (such an order constitutes one of the cornerstones of communism), to which India would cede her independence. Many of the above follow directly from Lenin’s Colonial thesis and M. N. Roy’s interpretation thereof (M. N. Roy is hailed as the father of Indian Communism). He acknowledged the presence of class conflict in India, but somewhat de-emphasized it as compared to the communist narrative in which class conflict was a significant component. Many of his later choices resemble that of the communists and he may be described as their ally, except where being an ally came in the way of his personal power or electoral politics. Thus, core ideologies rather than formal party affiliation ought to constitute the cornerstone of predicting actions.
Staunch Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose’s worldview constitutes a striking contrast to that of the communists’ and Nehru’s. Bose described himself as a leftist, per the definition that leftism was unflinching opposition to imperialism, but as many ideological communists have pointed out, his leftism was superficial and one of political expediency. He expressed deep aversion to communism and its sister doctrine, that of internationalism, which is but natural given 1) his staunch Indian nationalism and 2) how communism can never accept the nationalism of countries low in their hierarchy. He was passionate about liberating India, not as a stepping stone towards a broader international goal such as establishing a global communist or internationalist order, but saw freedom as an end in itself and as essential for any nation. He envisioned India’s freedom struggle as a battle between two nations – India and Britain, rather than that between Indians and the British state. He recognized the racial component of British colonialism and how it has inculcated a sense of racial inferiority in Indians. To overcome the latter, Indians needed to attain freedom through their enterprise, rather than being led by externals in their quest for liberty. He did not have much to say about class struggle, and therefore in all likelihood, he did not believe that it was important at least in the Indian context.
It becomes clear from the above that Subhas Chandra Bose was antithetical to the doctrine of communism. Simultaneously, it must also be stated that he had nothing in common with the current Indian right wing, which is today nearly synonymous with anti-intellectualism and hatred of certain Indic ethnicities, primarily Bengalis and those from South India. The current Indian right wing allows consciousness of only some ethnic identities, namely Hindi speakers, Gujaratis, Marathis as also Marwaris and other mercantile groups. All others are subsumed in the “Hindu in name only’’ identity, and some ethnicities such as Bengalis and those from South India are actively encouraged to hate their ancestors and disown their historical legacy. Such anti-intellectualism and ethnic ordering would also be an anathema to a rooted Indic nationalist such as Subhas Chandra Bose, particularly given his Bengali origin and pride in his roots, culture and education. Broadly speaking, Indic ethos simply can not be compartmentalized into Euro-centric left-right taxonomy, as such genuine Indic nationalists belong to neither the left nor the right. In general, Indic ethos simply can not be compartmentalized into Euro-centric left-right taxonomy, as such he belonged to neither the left nor the right.
Communism is fundamentally intolerant of national identity. Accordingly, the individuals whose worldviews are influenced by communism usually manifest deracination, regardless of their formal political affiliation. We show that Jawaharlal Nehru is an illustration of this phenomenon (Section B). He was in essence an Englishman, rather than an Indian. He was more than an ally of the British left, he belonged to them and one of them. He viewed the world through the British lens and demonstrated identical prejudices as the British left. A child of privilege, his worldview was his organic choice, and not a consequence of any compulsion, such as torture in British jails. Yet, his articulation of his worldview appear so devoid of originality and so imitative of the writings of the communist ideologues that it becomes unclear if they emerged from innate ideological convictions informed by an in-depth study of communist or other leftist doctrines. More likely, he just rehashed leftist phraseology to belong to the British left camp to benefit from the latter’s political patronage. This ideological posturing could have been a result of his political calculations directed towards furthering his political ambitions. Given that he would not be able to outwardly legitimately side with the British right and retain his claim to leadership of the Indian national movement, he might have astutely decided to cultivate the British Left as both could pay lip service to nationalist causes while not causing much embarrassment to the British colonial interests. Either way, such choices indicate a deracination. It is impossible to definitively conclude the cause and effect in such cases –whether he adopted his worldview because of a deracinated upbringing or he became deracinated because of the impact of communism on him. But the correlation between the two is distinctly observable, which is also typical of individuals from his social strata and ideological persuasion. A related observation is that the individuals who belong to the current Indian right wing are usually not rooted in their regional identities, particularly if they belong to groups that are not highly rated therein (eg, Bengalis, Malayalis).
We conclude this article by outlining how the choices of Nehru and Communist Party of India and Subhas Chandra Bose diverged during a crucial era, and the ramification of these choices on India’s freedom fight. The contrasting choices reveal that the worldviews of these entities are more than accidents of history (Section C).
Section A: Worldviews
Section A.1: Nationalism vs Internationalism
Internationalism is one of the foundational principles of Communism. In his Colonial Thesis written in June 1920, continuing the global doctrines propounded by Marx and Engels, Lenin condemned petty-bourgeoisie nationalism, distinguished it from proletarian internationalism, and emphasized on the import of ushering in international dictatorship of the proletariat. He wrote, “Recognition of internationalism in word, and its replacement in deed by petty-bourgeois nationalism and pacifism, in all propaganda, agitation and practical work, is very common, not only among the parties of the Second International, but also among those which have withdrawn from it, and often even among parties which now call themselves communist. The urgency of the struggle against this evil, against the most deep-rooted petty-bourgeois national prejudices, looms ever larger with the mounting exigency of the task of converting the dictatorship of the proletariat from a national dictatorship (i.e. existing in a single country and incapable of determining world politics) into an international one (i.e. a dictatorship of the proletariat involving at least several advanced countries, and capable of exercising a decisive influence upon world politics as a whole). Petty-bourgeois nationalism proclaims as internationalism the mere recognition of the equality of nations, and nothing more. ‘’ p. 145, [23], and “On the other hand, the more backward the country, the stronger is the hold of small-scale agricultural production, patriarchalism and isolation, which inevitably lend particular strength and tenacity to the deepest of petty-bourgeois prejudices, i.e., to national egoism and national narrow-mindedness. ‘’ pp. 147-148, [23]. Here Lenin describes “national narrow-mindedness’’ as the deepest petty-bourgeoisie prejudice. A leading director of The Communist University of the Toilers of the East founded in Russia on April 21, 1921 under Lenin’s blessings, said “We regard any display of nationalist feeling as the most fatal disqualification for our students,” pp. 760-761, [23].
In his autobiography written in mid 1930s, Nehru implied that nationalism was narrow and could only be elevated to a higher plane through internationalism: “The reaction of the Spanish War on me indicates how, in my mind, the problem of India was tied up with other world problems. More and more I came to think that these separate problems, political or economic, in China, Abyssinia, Spain, Central Europe, India, or elsewhere, were facets of one and the same world problem. There could be no final solution of any one of them till this basic problem was solved…..This reaction to foreign events was not confined to me. Many others in India began, to some extent, to feel that way, and even the public was interested. This public interest was kept up by thousands of meetings and demonstrations that the Congress organized all over the country in sympathy with the people of China, Abyssinia, Palestine and Spain. Some attempts were also made by us to send aid, in the shape of medical supplies and food, to China and Spain. This wider interest in international affairs helped to raise our own national struggle to a higher level, and to lessen somewhat the narrowness which is always a feature of nationalism.’’ p. 601, [14]. Note how even Nehru’s verbiage was identical to Lenin’s – both explicitly associated the adjective “narrow’’ with nationalism.
On 16 July 1938, Nehru described nationalism as a negative sentiment, something which unhappily brings hatred and rivalry between different people. Nehru also describednationalist struggle as an expression of bitterness, hatred and racism, or nearly so. At a speech at Kingsway Hall, London, “You know that nationalist struggle generates feelings of bitterness, almost of hatred. After all, nationalism is something is anti, anti-foreign government may be almost racial – it is a negative thing which has a definite positive side to it also. It is not a good thing taken by itself. Usually too much of it – too great a dose of it – stunts a race, although at the same time, at a certain stage, it is something that makes a race grow. It has two aspects – an aspect of leading a people to freedom and another aspect which you see so much in Europe today – something which leads to the reverse of freedom. And so nationalism often has been in the past something which unhappily brings hatred and rivalry between different people in its train’’ p. 72, [15].
Sources enamored of Nehru have attested to Nehru’s preference of internationalism to nationalism. In May 1936, then Labor Party MP, Ellen Wilkinson, praised Nehru as one who ‘openly embraced international socialism, in preference to the blatant nationalism of Motilal Nehru and the Mahatma’. Loc 3362, [25]. In a book dedicated to friend and Comrade, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad has written: “ I may also mention that Jawaharlal has always been more moved by international considerations than most Indians. He looked at all questions from an international rather than a national point of view. I also shared his concern for the international issues, but to me the question of India’s independence was paramount ‘’ pp. 65-67, [17]. As per historian D. N. Gupta, he “always looked at the issue of Indian independence in the broader context of world freedom and prosperity, and had been even prepared to forgo some national advantage to help save world democracy” p. 34, [27]. Note how this approach is consistent with Lenin’s call to subordinate the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country to the interests of that struggle on an international scale, as articulated in his Colonial Thesis, June 1920: “ Petty-bourgeois nationalism proclaims as internationalism the mere recognition of the equality of nations, and nothing more. Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact, whereas proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale, and second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital ‘’ p. 145, [23]. India’s interests took a backseat in Nehru’s mind, and the freedom struggle suffered, given that he ascended to the leadership of this movement, likely facilitated by the British establishment and intelligentisia. The British perceived Nehru as the potentially most pliable leader favourable to British interests. Such a perception would be of immense help in the extremely regressive regime foisted on India by the British administration, even on the relatively favourable constraints placed on him politically and personally compared to the die-hard opponents.
Subhas Chandra Bose was a confirmed nationalist and had ridiculed the internationalism of the communists and had disparaged them for attacking the concept of nationalism: “The attack is not only ill advised but unconsciously serves the interests of our alien rulers…before we can endeavour to reconstruct Indian society….we should first secure the right to shape our own destiny…When political freedom has been attained, it will then be time to consider seriously the problem of social and economic reconstruction. As far as I am aware this is also the opinion of prominent communists in other lands. To introduce fresh cleavage within our ranks by talking openly of class war and working for it appears to me at the present moment to be a crime against nationalism. To what straits we may be reduced by a mal-assimilation of Karl Marx and Bakunin becomes manifest when we come across a certain class of Indian labourites (or communists, if you call them so), who openly advocate the use of British or foreign cloth on the plea of internationalism’’ p. 166, [12]. Incidentally, this shows that even in the 1920s internationalism was used to weaken India’s freedom struggle through an advocacy for rescinding the boycott of British cloth. In 1927, in a letter from Mandalay jail to his brother, Sarat Chandra Bose, Bose had disassociated himself from the Communist internationalism: “If I had the remotest intention of becoming a Bolshevik agent, I would have jumped at the offer made and taken the first available boat to Europe. If I succeeded in recouping my health, I could then have joined the gay band who trot about from Paris to Leningrad talking of world revolution and emitting blood and thunder in their utterances. But I have no such ambition or desire’’ p. 146, [12].
He also expressed intellectual disagreements with the internationalism of Rabindranath Tagore. On 1.8.1925, he wrote from Mandalay to Sarat, “There is one aspect of Deshbandhu’s work which is not ordinarily spoken of now but which in the years to come is bound to have a profound influence on Bengali thought. I refer to the line of thought which he tried to foster and develop in the columns of his Narayana. As you know his object was to revive the ancient and national culture of Bengal as revealed in the poems of Chandidas, Bidyapati and in the writings of a host of other writers – and at the same time to expose the hollowness of the shallow internationalism in life and literature of Tagore and his school which did not realize the fundamental truth in nationalism. I have been trying to study some of the articles which appeared in Narayana written by writers of the anti-Tagore School and I feel sure that in the days to come this school will come greatly into prominence. ‘’ pp. 302-303, [2]. This disagreement was purely intellectual. He had known Tagore at a personal level from his College days and had continued to draw inspiration from and quote Tagore’s compositions.
But, what was Subhas Chandra Bose’s nationalism like? In short, it encompassed emotional ties with every aspect of Indic existence, ranging from spirituality, civilizational, intellectual and cultural existence. His Indic nationalism was grounded in Hindu spirituality. The fountainhead of his inspiration was Indic civilization and history. He was also deeply rooted in the literary traditions of his home region – Bengal. He was passionate about Indic music and art and vested in the growth of Indian Science. He strongly opposed propaganda demonizing Indians in general and Hindus in particular, and envisioned a comprehensive cultural revival of India, in which anti-intellectualism would have no place. He wanted an education system that would be fully grounded in native values in the early years, but expose individuals to diverse systems in later years – the combination would equip him to attain a synthesis. He was deeply attached to the environment, the flora and fauna, folk culture, local cuisine of his native Bengal. He chose Indian attire whenever he was abroad as a point of principle. Finally, he picturized his compatriots in a very Indic manner. Being a Hindu was at the heart of his Indic nationalism– this is also an attribute of Indic nationalism. His Hindu religiosity had a distinct Bengali flavour. The Hindu philosophers who ushered in Bengal renaissance had a lasting impact on him. He was for example under the spell of Swami Vivekananda’s teachings throughout his life. Aurobindo Ghose had a strong influence on him during his formative years, though his admiration for Ghose was somewhat tempered later owing to the latter’s abdication of political responsibilities. His Hinduism relied on various philosophical explorations and lived religiosity, that of a distinct Bengali flavour. He objected to Christian Missionary propaganda against Hindus, deceptive practices of frauds assuming Hindu monastic garbs and his insistence that Hindu Mahasabha be representative of Hindus of all provinces.
His political nationalism was about securing India’s interests regardless of who was violating those interests. It is well-documented how he fought the British colonization of India with all he had. How he secured India’s interests against his chosen allies like Germany and Japan during the second world war, with the limited resources at his disposal, is however lesser known. His uncompromising opposition to Nazi racism against Indians before the second world war rarely gets any mention. Finally, he was deeply concerned with international affairs and geo-politics, but only to the extent that they affected India and could be utilized to extract maximum advantage for India. He sought to exploit every opportunity that international developments provided, to advance his mission, which was to liberate his compatriots from the yoke of slavery – he would also ally with anyone and everyone towards that end despite his personal emotions towards those allies. Note how this was in direct contravention of Lenin’s call to subordinate the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country to the interests of that struggle on an international scale, as articulated in his Colonial Thesis, June 1920. We write about Bose’s nationalism in detail in a sequel.
Section A.2: India’s freedom struggle – Conflict between classes or nationalities?
Prior to 1947, communists argued that India was not being ruled by the English people as a whole, but by a small section of the English, that is, their capitalist ruling class , which exploited both the Indian and the British working class. In his book titled “What do we want?’’ written in 1922, M. N. Roy wrote, “The present government of India is not elected by the people of India; it is appointed by the capitalist class of England, which make profit by exploiting the labour of the Indian and English working class. We are rebelling against the present government because it lets the British capitalist rob the Indian people.’’ p. 690, [23], and “The concern of British Government is to see that the British merchants and manufacturers, who rule England today, get the greatest amount of profit by robbing the Indian people. The fact that the Viceroy is an Englishman and all the high government officials are also Englishmen does not mean that India is ruled by the English people as a whole. No, India is ruled by a very small section of the English nation—the small section which makes profit by exploiting the Indian people and natural resources of our country, and which is called the capitalist ruling-class. It is this capitalist class which carries on trade, owns railways, mines, and plantations, and makes money by robbing the Indian worker and peasant of the fruits of his labour. It is this class which rules not only India, but England and the whole British Empire today. The British Government is composed of the representatives of this powerful class of exploiters, who control the affairs of the Empire in their own interests.’’ p. 690, [23]. Thus, communists saw class conflict as the root cause of imperialism.
Similar to the communists, Nehru saw India’s nationalist struggle as a confrontation between Indian people and only the British state, and portrayed the British people as much a victim of their own imperialist government as the Indian people: “It is not a question of an implacable and irreconcilable antagonism to England and the English people, or the desire to break from them at all costs….. I dislike British imperialism and I resent its imposition on India ; I dislike the capitalist system ; I dislike exceedingly and resent the way India is exploited by the ruling classes of Britain. But I do not hold England or the English people as a whole responsible for this……They are as much the victims of circumstances as we are.’’ pp. 418-419, [14]. His views on this issue were therefore clearly a reiteration of those of M. N. Roy’s.
Subhas Chandra Bose’s views were polar opposite. In his Mayoral Address delivered at the meeting of the Calcutta Corporation on 27 September 1930, he said “I do not think we have any essential quarrel with the Britishers. The world is big enough to hold us both. We want to live as free men and as friends” p. 133, [3]. But, overall he saw India’s struggle for independence as a struggle between the Indian and British people, not merely between the Indian people and the British State. On June 10, 1933, in his Presidential Speech at the third Indian political conference held in London, titled “The Anti-Imperialist Struggle and Samyavada,’’ he said: “1)There is no social kinship between the two countries. 2) There is hardly anything in common between the cultures of India and of Britain.’’ p. 249, [4]. With a remarkable clarity of thought, he went on, “It is sometimes urged by our British friends that the British public have an open mind on the Indian question and that we would gain much if we could win their sympathy by means of our propaganda. I do not, however, think that the British public have an open mind on the Indian question—it is not humanly possible. In India, administration and exploitation go hand in hand, and it is not exploitation by a group of British capitalists and financiers, but the exploitation of India by Great Britain as a whole. The British capital that has been invested in India has not come from the upper classes alone, but also from the middle classes, and probably to some extent from the poorer classes as well. Further, even the working classes of Great Britain cannot afford to see the Indian textile industry thrive at the expense of Lancashire. That is why India has not been made a party question by the great political parties in Great Britain. That is why the policy of brutal repression and persecution was continued in India even when there was a Labour Government in power in London. I know that there are individual members in the Labour Party who rise above selfish consideration and who are sincere in their desire to do justice to India. But however much we may admire them and however cordial our personal relations with them may be, the fact remains that they are not in a position to influence party decisions. And, judging from our past experience, we may say that we cannot expect any improvement in the Indian situation through a change of Government in Downing Street.’’ pp. 256-257, [4].
Thus, Bose was emphatic that not only the upper classes, but the middle and poor classes of Great Britain were part of the colonial exploitation of India. Note that this directly negates the principle of solidarity of international working classes, that constituted the bedrock of Communism. But the futility of the theory of this solidarity in practice has been acknowledged by British Labor politician, Lester Hutchinson. In an article titled, “India and the British Working class’’, published in monthly Journal, “INDIA”, Volume I, Number Six, of June 1935, London, Hutchinson, acknowledged the existence of substantial conflicts between the working classes of different countries. We produce some revealing excerpts:
- “Marx, in a letter dated April 9, 1870, showed the advantages reaped by capitalism from these artificially stimulated antagonisms between the British and the colonial workers: “ every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class population divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hales the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. The Irishman regards the English worker as both sharing in the guilt of the English domination over Ireland and at the same time serving as its stupid tool. This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. It is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite their organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And of this that class is well aware.” ‘’ pp. 828-829, [24].
- “The same antagonism exists between large sections of the British and colonial workers of to-day, having exactly the same cause and effect. The British worker is taught that his bad conditions, low wages, unemployment, short time and general misery are directly due to the competition of cheap labour in India and Japan; he is taught to hate the Indian worker as one who is taking the bread from his mouth: he is taught—and here lies the inestimable value of the system of compulsory education -that he is a member of the ruling race; he is taught that the “native” is sly, treacherous, servile, murderous and altogether inferior; and he is taught to console himself while he stands in the queue at the Labour Exchange that although suffering from cold and hunger he is the part owner of nearly a third of the world. And lest his reason should revolt, he is further sandbagged by the official Labour Party propaganda. He is told that a Socialist Government — save the mark—could not “give” freedom to the colonial peoples at once, for if it did so the whole economic system of Britain would collapse, and the working class plunged into the depths of evil and misery. Instead he is informed that a Socialist Government, inheriting the divine civilising mission of imperialism, would manfully shoulder the white man’s burden and gradually educate the colonial peoples towards freedom within “the Commonwealth”; there would be a danger otherwise that the wanton natives if given their independence might prefer out of sheer malice to eat their raw materials instead of exporting them for the benefit of British “Socialism”; and so on, in an endless farrago of the most hypocritical and nauseating form of Imperialism masquerading as Socialism’’ p. 829, [24].
- “On the other hand, in India the British working class is regarded as partly guilty for the long oppression and exploitation of India. And it must be confessed that India has had until recently very little opportunity of drawing a distinction as far as the exploitation of India is concerned between the British capitalist and the British worker. For India the word British alone, irrespective of class, signifies oppression. The Indian believes that the British worker distinguishes between British Capitalism in Britain and British Capitalism in India; the former to be fought and the latter to be supported’’ p. 830, [24].
- “In 1882 Engels wrote to Kautsky: “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general: the same as what the bourgeois thinks. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.” This was written in 1882, the high-water mark of capitalist prosperity in Britain. Capitalism had not then entered upon its decline, and the political backwardness of the working class, sharing to some extent in capitalist prosperity, can then be readily understood. But what is not so easy to understand is that this estimate of Engels, correctly applied to the working class of 1882, equally applies to a large section of the working class today [June, 1935], when the economic system of Capitalism is in contradiction to social needs, when Capitalism has no longer any historical justification for continuing to exist, and when working class prosperity has been replaced by low wages, unemployment, poverty and despair’’ p. 831, [24].
Common Indians also saw India’s freedom struggle as a struggle between the Indian and the British peoples. Achar Singh China (1899–1981) who was an Indian communist politician, and later became the Secretary of the Punjab Communist Party and served as a MLA in the Punjab Legislative Assembly for two terms, has documented the public mood between September 1939 to August 1940, in a thesis titled “The National Front in India” that he submitted to Stalin in Russia in December 1940. He writes: “ The general people of India hate the European people in general and English people in particular so much that from the bottom of their hearts, they wish to see the destruction of the European nations in mutual wars. Their line of thought is that until and unless the European powers weakened themselves in mutual war, there was no chance of liberation for the peoples of India, China, Arabia and Africa’’ p. 328 [22]. On 11 October 1939, Jawaharlal Nehru had written to V. K. Krishna Menon in England, “there is a deep-seated antipathy to the very idea of coming to terms with Britain, which means to the average mind, British imperialism” p. 39, [27].
Bose recognized the racial element in the oppression of the Indians by the British and a sense of racial inferiority in many Indians. In the speech on 10-6-1933, he said: “…7) India has so long been exploited and dominated by Britain that there is a genuine apprehension that in the event of a political compromise between the two countries, India will stand to lose and Britain will stand to gain. Moreover, India has developed an “inferiority complex’’ as a result of her long servitude, and this “inferiority complex’’ will remain as long as India is not completely independent of Britain. …….9) As long as India remains within the British Empire she will not be able to safeguard the interests of other Indians who have settled in other parts of the Empire. The weight of Great Britain has always been, and always will be, thrown on the side of white races-as against the Indians.An independent India, on the other hand, will be able to secure better treatment for her children who have settled in different parts of the British Empire’’ pp. 249-250, [4].
Owing to the racial element in the colonial oppression by the British, Bose developed an implacable opposition to them. His close political aide in Germany, M. R. Vyas, has described him as: “he was vehemently distrustful of the British, and not a mere opponent of their rule over India. He had suffered a great deal at their hands. He had been there enemy no. 1. During the freedom movement, even when other Indian leaders were either not arrested or were set free, the British had kept him in prison. For two years he was kept in Mandalay jail (where Lokmanya Tilak had also been kept a decade and a half earlier), which as a jail was reported to be only a small degree less tortuous than the Andamans. He did accept that people in general in Britain were truly democratic and freedom loving. However, according to him the ruling class in Britain had a vested interest in keeping the masses at home misinformed about the true nature of the imperialist rule, so that the policy towards India and the colonies was accepted by the people. He did not believe that efforts as being made by the India league, in particular by Krishna Menon, would be of much avail. The Establishment had a perfect mastery of the media, at home and abroad, and with its help could successfully carry on its usual campaign of vilification of the Indian people, throughout the world. The activities of bodies like the India League could touch only a fringe of the problem. Only military defeat or political exhaustion due to economic crisis, could force Britain to change the main character of her imperialist policies’’ pp. 308-309, [11]. Incidentally, decades later a British scholar Nicholas Owen would similarly assess the efficacy of Krishna Menon and India League in terms of advancing India’s quest for freedom. Owen described how between 1934-1939, Menon’s influence grew in England, but that did not attain any benefits for India, “In 1934, the India League had been small, financially weak and characterized by a floating and irregular membership. By the middle of 1939, Menon was the leading figure in anti-imperialist politics in London….. The support that Menon got “was mostly indirect and self-interested support, provided in expectation of reciprocal endorsement of the ‘peace front’ and ‘anti-fascist’ Struggle’ …this enthusiasm for India was not much about India’ ….’’ Loc 3560, [25].
Vyas has also written, “Subhas Bose’s immense distrust of the Britain was coupled with a powerful hatred created in his mind by the experiences of arrogance of the British in India, right from his school days in his birth place of Cuttack. His repeated incarcerations added fuel to the fire’’ p. 278, [11]. British intelligence described Bose as a “long standing extreme nationalist’’ p. 27, [13], “a bitterly and irremediably anti-British politician,’’ p. 27, [13] (note prepared by M. J. Clauson on 15. December, 1932) and an “implacable foe of British rule in India’’ p. 49, [13].
Finally, Bose also felt that the non-British European left was more pro-British than the right wing parties there. On 30.1.1936, he wrote to his European friend Mrs. Vetter, on board S.S. Washington (near Havre, France), “Germany is now very pro-British….Some of the right parties (in France) are anti-British, but the left parties are pro-British because of their close association with the British Labour Party” pp. 139-140, [4]. This intensified his dislike of the European left.
Section A.3: Freedom, but why?
In the communist worldview, political freedom for India was worth striving for only if it leads to establishing a Communist order. In “An Indian Communist Manifesto’’ published on 19 July, 1920, M. N. Roy, Abani Mukerji, Santi Devi [M. N. Roy’s wife Evelyn Roy] stated that political liberation is not the final goal of the revolutionary movement, but establishing a Communist state is: “ The nationalist movement in India has failed to appeal to the masses, because it strives for a bourgeoisie democracy and cannot say how the masses will be benefitted by the independent national existence. The emancipation of the working class lies in the social revolution and the foundation of a Communist State. Therefore the growing spirit of rebellion in the masses must be organized on the basis of the class struggle in close cooperation with the world proletarian movement. But, because British domination deprives Indians of the elementary rights indispensable for the organisation of such a struggle, the revolutionary movement must emphasize in its programme the political liberation of the country. This does not make its final goal- a bourgeois democracy under which the native privileged class could rule and exploit the native workers in place of British Bureaucrats and Capitalist’’ [20]. In his book titled “What do we want?’’ written in 1922, M. N. Roy argued the futility of political independence for the sake of it: “We want, first of all and as soon as possible, political independence, because it is the first step towards our goal. But we must know that merely the overthrow of foreign rule will not bring us all we lack today and all that is indispensable in order that the masses of the Indian people shall live like human beings’’ p. 689, [23]. He argued that British government must be ousted because it protects the right of the possessing class to exploit the toilers: “ Why are we determined to overthrow the British Government? Because, it is based on the principle against which everyone who lives by honest labour must rebel. It is based upon the right of the possessing class to exploit the expropriated toiler’’ p. 689, [23]. He suggested that political independence is an intermediate step towards overthrowing capitalism: “Will the condition of the toiling masses, who constitute the great majority of the Indian people, be any better off after gaining such national freedom? No, surely not. The Indian workers and peasants are poor, they are starving, they die by thousands from famine and pestilence, because the exploitation of the propertied class deprives them of the fruit of their labour. The British, being the rulers of the nation, are able to rob the people more than the native capitalists do. Therefore we must fight to overthrow them. But the over- throw of British rule will not be enough to free the entire people from economic exploitation and social slavery. The fundamental motive of our struggle is to abolish the source of human exploitation, which lies in the system of private property, on production for profit, in a word, Capitalism. ‘’ pp. 721-722, [23].
In a convergence of views with communists, Nehru envisioned India’s freedom as a stepping stone towards world-peace, and envisioned an international socialist order, to which India would cede her independence. He has written in his Autobiography, “If we claim independence today it is with no desire for isolation. On the contrary, we are perfectly willing to surrender part of that independence, in common with other countries, to a real international order. Any imperial system, by whatever high-sounding name it may be called, is an enemy of such an order, and it is not through such a system that world co-operation or world peace can be reached. Recent developments have shown all over the world how the various imperialist systems are isolating themselves more and more by autarchy and economic imperialism.’’ p. 420, [14], and “we are tied up, as every country is tied up, with the rest of the world, and it seems to me quite impossible for us to cut adrift. We must think, therefore, in terms of the world, and in these terms a narrow autarchy is out of the question. Personally I consider it undesirable from every point of view. Inevitably we are led to the only possible solution – the establishment of a socialist order, first within national boundaries, and eventually in the world as a whole, with a controlled production and distribution of wealth for the public good.’’ p. 523, [14]. On 15 July 1938, he said at the Peace and Empire Conference, London that “isolated national independence’’ was out of date and limited in scope and Congress must think of “greater’’ perils overshadowing the world, “Therefore I am not prepared to say exactly how under a certain set of circumstances we shall act, but I can tell you that we are prepared to act with only one thought in our minds. Firstly, it is for the achievement of the independence of India that we shall continue to strive, and secondly, because we do believe, and we are convinced, that this isolated national independence is out of date and cannot exist for long in future, that we cannot always consider problems in terms of isolated national independence. We have to consider it in a larger way. If we think only in terms of national independence, I feel we would not go a long way. The Indian National Congress must think in larger terms, must think of the greater perils that are overshadowing the world and try to avert these perils ‘’ p. 70, [15].
Subhas Chandra Bose was passionate about attaining political freedom for India – it was an all-encompassing goal in itself for him – not a stepping stone towards establishing a global socialist or communist order. On 19 October, 1929, Bose spoke at the Lahore session of the Punjabi Students’ Conference, “life has but one purpose, viz., freedom from bondage of every kind. Hunger after freedom is the song of the soul – and the very first cry of the newborn baby is a cry of revolt against the bondage in which it finds itself. Rouse this intense desire for freedom within yourselves and in your countrymen and I am sure India will be free in no time. India is bound to be free – of that there is not the slightest doubt. It is to me as sure as day follows night. There is no power on earth which can keep India in bondage any longer. But let us dream of an India for which it would be worthwhile to give all that we have – and for which we could sacrifice our dearest and nearest” p. 51, [3]. He said in the same speech, “Freedom means life, and death in the pursuit of freedom means the highest glory imperishable. Let us therefore resolve to be free or at least to die in the pursuit of freedom- and let us show by our conduct and character that we are worthy of being the countrymen of the great martyr – Jatindra Nath Das” p. 53, [3]. Thus, political freedom was a spiritual and civilizational quest for Subhas Chandra Bose, while it was at best an economic quest for communists and those inspired by them.
Section A.4: Class conflict
Class conflict is one of the staple diets of Communists all over the world. In “What do we want?’’ written in 1922, M. N. Roy for example wrote, “ The fact that an Indian gentleman may sit where Lord Reading sits today; that Indian officials administer the affairs of the country instead of English ones ; that all the governors of the provinces will be Indians ; that all the magistrates, collectors and judges will also be Indians, does not necessarily mean that the country will be governed in the interests of the entire people of India ….Why is this so? It is because the interests of all the people in any given country are not identical…. It is clear then that the interests of all the people belonging to the same country are not identical. The interests of the rich are opposed to those of the poor ; those of the landlord are not the same as those of his tenants ; the interests of the mill-owner are contrary to those of his factory-hands. Why? Because one class thrives on the exploitation of the other. The present government represents the British capitalist class whose interest it is to exploit the labour of the Indian working-class, on whose wealth it fattens. When the British government is overthrown, and a government of the Indian landlords, merchants and manufacturers is established in its place, will that change the present miserable condition of the Indian workers and peasants? No, for the interests of these two classes are not the same. A government composed of the upper and middle classes of the Indian people, in spite of being a national government, will protect only the interests of those classes, and not of the exploited majority. The power of the Zamindar will increase; more profits will swell the purse of the mill-owner ; the Indian middle-class intellectuals will fall heir to the fat government jobs today reserved for Civil Service men imported from Great Britain. ‘’ pp. 691-692, [23].
Communists saw class war even in India’s freedom fight. In “What do we want’’ written in 1922, M. N. Roy posits that the Indian propertied class wants to be free from foreign domination to win the unrestricted right to exploit the proletariat, that is, they are in reality fighting for their own interests: “The Indian people as a whole are exploited by the foreign ruler, and therefore the British Government is their common enemy irrespective of class distinction. Rich and poor, capitalist and worker, bourgeoisie and proletariat, are fighting and must continue to fight in a united front against the foreign domination. This fight is called the struggle for national freedom. The Indian people are fighting for their political independence, for the right to rule themselves. The Indian propertied class want to be free of foreign rule because under it, freedom of development and the unrestricted right of exploitation is denied to this class. If all the wealth produced by the workers and peasants of India remained in the hands of the rich native capitalists the British would cease to rule India, because there would be no profit in their rule. As long as a foreign government rules the country, the native capitalist class must lose a portion of the proceeds of exploitation, which are appropriated by the foreign ruler and which the native consider their legitimate due. Such being the case, the native upper classes must fight the foreign exploiter. They say they are struggling against foreign domination to make the country free, but what they are really fighting for is their own interest. They are fighting for the freedom to exploit the Indian workers and peasants and the natural resources of the country; in order to secure this they must become the rulers of India. This is the national freedom they are striving for; this is what they want ‘’ p. 721, [23].
Roy repeatedly argued that the Indian freedom struggle was in reality a social strife or a class struggle between the exploiter and the exploited, irrespective of nationality, and has only the appearance of a national struggle. The Indian bourgeoisie is including the proletariat in this class struggle only because they do not have numbers and will deceive the proletariat. Referring to “India in Transition’’ written in 1922,
- “ The more the British Government makes concession to the Indian bourgeoisie, the more ambitious the latter becomes. It knows quite well that it is necessary to make compromises with the Imperial capital, till the time comes when it will be in a position to openly contend for the right of monopoly of exploitation with the foreigner. But it also knows that British Imperialism cannot be overthrown without the help of the masses. So to deceive the workers, whose revolutionary consciousness is steadily growing, owing to their increased poverty, which is accentuated by the concentration of wealth in the hands of the bourgeosie, the latter has thrown open the doors of the Indian National Congress to the masses. But at the same time, by declaring the boycott of British goods for the second time, the Indian bourgeoisie shows its tendency to aggrandize itself at the cost of the people’’ p. 40, [19].
- “The nationalists were more interested in turning out a popular demonstration than to develop the revolutionary consciousness of the masses by participating in their struggle of every-day life of course this defect of tactics of the nationalists is due to their affiliation which puts a class-stamp upon their activities ‘’ p. 142, [19].
- “Indian nationalism, whether of the progressive character and of evolutionary tactics, as advocated by the Moderates now in League with the Imperialist Government, or based on the integralist theory of the Extremists, orthodox in social tendencies, is fundamentally a bourgeois movement. Excepting the religious orthodox, whose violent outbursts not so much against the British Government as against the “Western Civilization” it stands for, do not make them any less the exponents of the forces of reaction, all shades of opinion in the national movement tend consciously or unconsciously, to the enhancement of the material interests of the intellectual and propertied middle-class’’ p. 202, [19].
- “ When the latter [toiling masses, working masses] will begin the struggle earnestly, it is expected to be more of a social nature than a political movement for national liberation. Since 1918, the Indian movement has entered this stage. It may still have the appearance of a national struggle involving masses of the population, but fundamentally it is a social strife, the revolt of the exploited against the exploiting it is class, irrespective of nationality ‘’ p. 204, [19].
- “The movement for national liberation is a struggle of the native middle-class against the economic and political monopoly of the imperialist bourgeoisie. But the former cannot succeed in the struggle, nor even threaten its opponent to make substantial concessions, without the support of the masses of the people. Because the Indian middle-class is still weak numerically, economically and socially, hence the necessity of nationalism in the name of which the people can be led to fight; the victory gained in this fight however will not change very much the condition of those whose blood it will cost.’’ p. 204, [19].
In the Epilogue to his Autobiography, titled as “The Parting of Ways’’, Nehru spoke briefly of class-conflict in India, “ It is obvious that any system of government that might be proposed for India will find many odd groups and interests opposed to it. No system can possibly be devised which meets with unanimity from all these groups and interests and from the four hundred millions of India. Every agrarian legislation has to deal with the inherent conflicts between the landlord and the tenant ; every labor legislation is looked upon with disfavor by the captains of industry. Even among industrialists in India, there is a continuing conflict between British vested interests and the rising Indian industry, which has been deliberately prevented from expanding so that the former might not suffer. So the conflicts of interests run through the whole of national life as it is constituted today, because there are different classes with conflicting interests. Some of us would like to have a classless society, and I have no doubt that it will ultimately come’’ Loc 8025, 8030, Kindle Edition, [14]. In addition, in an article in National Herald, written from Paris, on 22 September, 1938, he accused the British Government of harbouring “class sympathies’’ towards the Nazis and Fascists, “This straight and obvious policy, inevitably leading to peace, was not to the liking of the British Government, for it meant cooperation with the Soviet Union. It meant the strengthening of the Soviet Union and releasing of popular forces all over the world. The class sympathies of the British Government made them view the Soviet Union with horror and inclined them towards Nazism and fascism. And so although they talked of democracy and peace, they pursued a policy of appeasement of fascism and thus directly led to war.’’ p. 155, [15]
Bose did not write or speak much on class conflict and it is unlikely that he believed in it at least in the Indian context.
Section A.4: Views on Communism
Nehru applauded Marx, Communism, Communists and Russia in his Autobiography: “As between fascism and communism my sympathies are entirely with communism. ….I incline more and more towards a communist philosophy….he [Marx] seems to me to have possessed quite an extraordinary degree of insight into social phenomena and this insight was apparently due to the scientific method he adopted. This method, applied to past history as well as current events, helps us in understanding them far more than any other method of approach, and it is because of this that the most revealing and keen analysis of the changes that are taking place in the world today come from Marxist writers…..the whole value of Marxism seems to me to lie in its absence of dogmatism, in its stress on a certain outlook and mode of approach and in its attitude to action. That outlook helps us in understanding the social phenomena of our own times, and points out the way of action and escape. Even that method of action was no fixed and unchangeable road, but had to be suited to circumstances. That, at any rate, was Lenin’s view, and he justified it brilliantly by fitting his action to changing circumstances. He tells us that: “ To attempt to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question of the definite means of struggle, without examining in detail the concrete situation of a given moment at a given stage of its development, means to depart altogether from the Marxian ground.” And again he said: “Nothing is final; we must always learn from circumstances.” Because of this wide and comprehensive outlook, the real understanding communist develops to some extent an organic sense of social life. Politics for him cease to be a mere record of opportunism or a groping in the dark. The ideals and objectives he works for give a meaning to the struggle and to the sacrifices he willingly faces. He feels that he is part of a grand army marching forward to realise human destiny, and he has the sense of ‘marching step by step with history…they [Communists] are a sorely tried people and, outside of Soviet Union, they have to contend against enormous difficulties. I have always admired their great courage and capacity for sacrifice. They suffer greatly, as unhappily untold millions suffer in various ways, but not blindly before a malign and all-powerful fate. They suffer as human beings, and there is a tragic nobility about such suffering….I feel that they [Russia] offer the greatest hope to the world. …the greatest thing in favour of the present directors of Russia’s destiny is that they are not afraid to learn from their mistakes.’’ pp. 591-593, [14].
In an interview to Daily Worker, London, on 6 September, 1938, he praised the Communist Party and declared that opposition to it can only emanate from Fascist and Nazi sympathies, “It is well known that the Communist Party today is one of the strongest forces in favour of world peace and its earnestness and capacity for action of many of its members are undoubted. Only those who secretly or publicly favour or wish to encourage fascism and Nazism can be opposed to cooperation with communists and others of their way of thinking in the cause of peace. To call the World Youth Congress, which was a gathering of such representatives of the youth drawn from all over the world who feel intensely interested in peace, a war congress shows an amazing confusion of thought’’ p. 140, [15].
Subhas Chandra Bose had deep ideological reservation against Communism. For him, independence of India was primary, and unionization of workers secondary, but radicalization and organization of the workers was primary to Indian communists p. 207, [12].
He had explicitly repeatedly disassociated himself from Communism, rarely extolled the virtues of Communists, Marx, Lenin, etc. (there is hardly any mention of these worthies in his political memoir, Indian Struggle). He considered himself “a socialist, but that was a very different thing from being a communist’’ p. 348, [12]. We reproduce his opposition in his words next, but cutting to the chase, an ideology rooted in a foreign soil, swearing subservience to a foreign country or a foreign body, be it Russia, be it Britain or the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was repugnant to a fervent Indian nationalist.
In 1934 he has written in his most celebrated work, his political memoir, the Indian Struggle:
- “There are several reasons why Communism will not be adopted in India. Firstly, Communism today has no sympathy with Nationalism in any form and the Indian movement is a Nationalist movement- a movement for the national liberation of the Indian people. (Lenin’s thesis on the relation between Communism and Nationalism seems to have been given the go-by since the failure of the last Chinese Revolution). Secondly, Russia is now on her defensive and has little interest in provoking a world revolution, though the Communist International may still endeavor to keep up appearances. The recent pacts between Russia and other capitalist countries and the written or unwritten conditions inherent in such pacts, as also her membership of the League of Nations, have seriously compromised the position of Russia as a revolutionary power. Moreover, Russia is too preoccupied in her internal industrial reorganization and in her preparations for meeting the Japanese menace on her eastern flank and is too anxious to maintain friendly relations with the Great Powers, to show any active interest in countries like India. Thirdly, while many of the economic ideas of Communism would make a strong appeal to Indians, there are other ideas which will have a contrary effect. Owing to the close association between the Church and the State in Russian history and to the existence of an organized Church, Communism in Russia has grown to be anti-religious and atheistic. In India, on the contrary, there being no organized Church among the Indians and there being no association between the Church and the State, there is no feeling against religion as such (Further, in India a national awakening is in most cases heralded by a religious reformation and a cultural renaissance). Fourthly, the materialistic interpretation of history which seems to be a cardinal point in Communist theory will not find unqualified acceptance in India, even among those who would be disposed to accept the economic contents of Communism. Fifthly, while Communist theory has made certain remarkable contributions in the domain of economics (for instance the idea of state-planning), it is weak in other aspects. For instance, so far as the monetary problem is concerned, Communism has made no new contribution, but has merely followed traditional economics. Recent experiences, however, indicate that the monetary problem of the world is still far from being satisfactorily solved’’ pp. 352-353, [1]. Note that this last part was written after1942 but his views on communism were likely formed earlier.
- “But the Communist Party, besides being numerically small, lacked a proper national perspective and could not develop as the organ of national struggle. Not having its roots in the soil, this party very often erred in estimating a particular situation or crisis and consequently adopted a wrong policy’’ p. 377, [1].
Dilip Kumar Roy had been a close friend of Subhas Chandra Bose since the duo went to Presidency College in the second decade of the twentieth century. The conversations that Dilip Kumar Roy recounted with Subhas Chandra Bose indicate that the latter’s opposition to communism had started early on. Dilip Kumar Roy writes, “ It was in 1921 in the house of Dr. Dharamvir in Lancashire. We often talked far into the night with a glow of heart that only youth can command. Sitting before the crackling fire, we fell to discussing the portents of the Labour Party in England and Communism in Russia. I may say, in those days I used to be an ardent believer in the gospel of Marx and was all but convinced that the Millenium of the visionary could never come in any other – that is, less sanguinary-way ‘’ p. 178, [9].
Roy continues about the conversation, “When Labour comes into power in England, it’s surely going to be great (in India), don’t you think ?” I said, alas, too fervently. ….Aren’t the exploited and the disinherited of all races one ?…Or, without beating about the bush, the dictatorship of the Proletariat, what ?” pp. 178-179, [9].
Subhash Chandra Bose said, “I would sooner believe in the tale of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp….Those of us who still fondly believe that India is going to win her independence by raising vast echoes to such nostrums of alien countries are blowing hope-bubbles of illusion. They don’t know what they are talking about…..others can’t work for our salvation and, what is more to the point, they won’t….For the obvious reason that nobody helps another disinterestedly – not in politics. Recall Mirzafar (He used often to quote the Bengali metaphor, khal kete kumir ana [খাল কেটে কুমির আনা] -……He was never tired of indicting Mirzafar). Didn’t he believe, as fondly as you believe in English Labour or Russian Communists, that Clive would help him on to his throne and then gallantly buttress him with the fealty of an obedient vassal ? No Dilip, Sri Aurobindo was perfectly right when he said in the Swadeshi days that no outsider would help India. If we ourselves can’t win our freedom none will come to our rescue. Remember Hamlet : ‘Never a borrower nor a lender be.’ That should be our guiding motto in dealing with parties and politicians outside. ‘’ pp. 179-180, [9].
On 30 March 1929, in his Presidential Address at the Rangpur Political Conference, he warned against adoption of Marxism and called for adoption of a policy that suits Indian needs and ideals, “It is not proper to take any school of thought as unmistakable and absolute truth. We must not forget that the Russians, the main disciples of Karl Marx, have not blindly followed his ideas ; finding it difficult to apply his theories they have adopted a new economic policy consistent with possession of private property and ownership of business factories. We have therefore to shape society and politics according to our own ideals and according to our needs. This should be the aim of every Indian’’ p. 3, [3].
On 27 March 1931, he gave the Presidential address at the Karachi Conference of the All India Naujawan Bharat Sabha, which was at that time strongly influenced by Communism. Even there he warned against blind adoption of the tenets and methods of Bolshevism and questioned their suitability to Indian conditions. He also said that communism could not make much headway in India because its methods and tactics alienate rather than win over possible friends and allies. He spoke, “ I believe that in the future that is before us India will be able to evolve a socio-economic political structure which will be in many respects an object lesson to the world just as Bolshevism today has many useful lessons for humanity. But I do not believe that abstract principles can be applied in the same manner, form and degree to different nations or countries. Marxian principles when applied to Russia and Russian conditions gave birth to Bolshevism. Similarly socialism when applied to India and Indian conditions will develop a new form or type of socialism which we may hail as Indian Socialism. Environment, racial temperament, socio-economic conditions all these can not be ruled out by a stroke of the pen. They are therefore bound to influence or modify any principle that is sought to be translated into reality. While seeking light and inspiration from abroad, we cannot afford to forget that we should not blindly imitate any other people and that we should assimilate what we learn elsewhere with a view to finding out what will suit our national requirements as well as our national genius. There is a great deal of truth in the proverb – “What is one man’s meat is another’s poison”. I should therefore like to strike a note of warning to those who may feel tempted to follow blindly the tenets and methods of Bolshevism. With regard to the tenets of Bolshevism I may say that Bolshevik theory is at present going through an experimental stage. There has been a departure not only from the original theory of Marx but also from the principle enunciated by Lenin and other Bolsheviks before they captured political power. This departure has been caused by the peculiar conditions or circumstances prevailing in Russia which have compelled a modification of original Marxian or Bolshevik theory. With regard to the methods and tactics employed by the Bolsheviks in Russia I may say that they will not necessarily suit Indian conditions. As a proof of this I may say that in spite of universal and human appeal of communism, communism has not been able to make much headway in India – chiefly because the methods and tactics generally employed by them are such as tend to alienate rather than win over possible friends and allies’’ pp. 152-153, [3].
In November 1944, he addressed the faculty and students of Tokyo University, in which he said that planned economy was one of the greatest achievements of Soviet communism. But communism was deficient in that it did not appreciate the value of national sentiment. Besides, Marxism accords too much importance to the economic factor. The class conflict that it engenders is unnecessary in India. The State should act as the servant and the organ of the masses. Soviet Russia also overemphasizes the problem of the working classes. But India is predominantly a country of peasants, so their problems were more important than those of the working classes pp. 298-299, [8]. Indeed, in his Colonial Thesis published in 1920, Lenin had condemned the small farmers, alleging that small-scale agricultural production strengthens petty-bourgeois prejudices like national egoism and national narrow-mindedness: “ On the other hand, the more backward the country, the stronger is the hold of small-scale agricultural production, patriarchalism and isolation, which inevitably lend particular strength and tenacity to the deepest of petty-bourgeois prejudices, i.e., to national egoism and national narrow-mindedness ‘’ pp. 147-148, [23]. Communist historian, Service, has also observed that the internationalist communists, who were mostly urban in their upbringing, and who depended more on the workers than on the peasants, were actually very mistrustful of the rural population, which had significantly more loyalty to the land, and to their communities Loc. 948, [26].
Subhas Chandra Bose described himself as a leftist, but his notion of leftism was quite different from what is commonly understood by the term today. In particular, he was a leftist in the sense that he was an anti-imperialist and believed in attaining undiluted independence, not merely substance thereof [6] [29]. Thus, neither economics nor communism was central to his notion of leftism. He wrote “In the present political phase of Indian life, leftism means anti-imperialism. A genuine anti-imperialist is one who believes in undiluted independence (not Mahatma Gandhi’s substance of independence) as the political objective and in uncompromising national struggle as the means for attaining it. After the attainment of independence, leftism will mean socialism and the task before the people will then be the reconstruction of national life on a Socialist basis. Socialism or socialist reconstruction before attaining our political emancipation is altogether premature.‘’ Forward Bloc-Its Justification pp. 27-28, [6] In the same article, he described rightists as negation of leftists, as those “prepared for a deal with imperialism.’’ p. 28, [6]. He also considered B. Tilak and Aurobindo Ghosh, Swami Govindanand of Karachi as leftists (clearly neither was a communist) pp. 15, 31 [1].
Ideological communists like M. N. Roy found Bose’s leftism as “opportunistic’’ and “pretense’’. Roy had commented in 1939, “ Opportunism is the common motive of Bose and the Communists. Bose requires some pretence of leftism and organized support; the Communists cannot do without a popular hero’’ p. 1724, [21]. (Roy had been expelled from Comintern a decade back, when he made this comment, but ideologically he remained a communist all along)
Unlike most in the Indian left, Bose equated Fascism with Imperialism. For subject countries like India, the two were the same in his mind. He believed that if for their survival, the British could align and cooperate with anyone, so could the subjugated nations in Africa and Asia pp. 271-272, [11]. M. R. Vyas, who was residing in England when Bose visited in 1937, writes about Bose’s speech at a public meeting at London’s Caxton Hall: “Having come to speak mainly about India’s struggle, he could not, or rather, did not, wish to be detracted in to any oratory on the international situation. ….But his speech was not in tune with the expectations of the substantial British Labour Party audience. It wanted a vehement and long-winded denunciation of Germany and Italy along with the expression of Indian support to the anti-Fascist struggle of the people of Europe. India’s struggle for freedom deserved, according to the British audience, only a passing reference. Subhas Bose did not oblige, and the meeting would have ended in noisy cat-calls, but for a strange coincidence. (A telegram reached during the meeting that he had been unanimously elected President of the Indian National Congress) pp. 79-80, [11]. Vyas also writes, “One of the reasons Subhas Bose’s speeches were coolly received by the British listeners was that, while referring to the Fascist role in Europe, he always bracketed it with the British aggression elsewhere ‘’ p. 90, [11]. He had writtenin a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru on March 28, 1939: “ it is no use condemning countries like Germany and Italy on the one hand and on the other, giving a certificate of good conduct to British and French imperialism.’’ p. 199, [5]. On 21-3-1946, Uttamchand wrote in The Indian Express, “For forty-five days Bose Babu was with me [in January 1941 in Afghanistan] and not once during this period did I hear one good word for the Axis from his lips. He hated them as much as the British.” p. 170, [9]. Bose’s biographer Leonard Gordon has analyzed his leftism as follows: “ He [Bose] considered himself part of the left or radical tendency of the nationalist movement, but the kind words for fascism were anathema to most of the other members of the Indian left. ….Nehru is typically of the Indian left in that he condemned fascism, but like Bose, nowhere examined it at any length or with any depth ‘’ p. 288, [12].
Section B:The Deracination of Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru was in essence an Englishman. In his autobiography, he also implies that he was culturally English, “Personally, I owe too much to England in my mental makeup ever to feel wholly alien to her. And, do what I will, I can not get rid of the habits of mind, and the standards and ways of judging other countries as well as life generally, which I acquired at school and college in England. All my predilections (apart from the political plane) are in favour of England and English people, and if I have become what is called an uncompromising opponent of British rule in India, it is almost in spite of myself’’ p. 419, [14]. Vallabhbhai Patel used to describe him as “our Englishman” (Durga Das, India from Curzon to Nehru and after, p. 202) pp. 217-218, [10]. M. R. Vyas, who was a close political aide of Subhas Chandra Bose in Germany between 1941-1943, has recalled Bose saying: “In spirit Jawahar is a part of the British establishment. Had he been born a little earlier, he would have prided in being Lord Nehru!’’ This was the measure of distrust he had gradually developed of his erstwhile associate’’ p. 310, [11]. After reading Nehru’s autobiography, Dilip Kumar Roy, who personally knew Nehru, had written to Sri Aurobindo, “But he [Nehru] is so English in his outlook, isn’t he?” p. 108, [9]. Dilip Kumar Roy was incidentally not at all inimical to Nehru, in friendly banter, Bose used to tease him of hero-worshipping Nehru p. 122, [9].
Being culturally English and leftist in proclivities, Nehru shared a natural chemistry with the British left. He has written that ‘In many ways I have far more in common with English and other non-Indian socialists than I have with non-socialists in India’’ Loc 3338, [25]. This is also why he H. N. Brailsford, a left-wing journalist and a member of the Independent Labor Party of Britain, has written that the British socialists regarded Nehru as ‘one of us’ Loc 3370-3379, [25]. Nicholas Owen writes that “Labour [British Labour Party] found it easier to listen to Nehru than to his colleagues because he was the most Anglicized of the Congress leadership ‘’ Loc. 3333-3338, [25]. Congress Socialists and he were closer allies of the British left than Gandhi ever managed to be Loc 2763, [25]. Harold Laski (later chairman of British Labor Party) assessed him as ‘worlds above Gandhi in strength of character and insight’. Also recall that in May 1936, then Labor Party MP, Ellen Wilkinson, praised Nehru as one who ‘openly embraced international socialism, in preference to the blatant nationalism of Motilal Nehru and the Mahatma’. Loc 3362, [25].
Nehru’s incorporation in the British left establishment was so complete that he viewed the world including India through British lens throughout his life. We provide several evidences:
- Nehru may not even have wanted India to be free from British control. We again quote from his autobiography, “But the real drive towards fascism will naturally come from the younger members of the middle class. Actually, at present, it is part of the middle class in India that is revolutionary, not so much the workers or the peasantry, though no doubt the industrial workers are potentially more so. This nationalist middle class is favourable field for the spread of fascist ideas. But fascism cannot spread here in the European sense so long as there is a foreign government. Indian fascism must necessarily stand for Indian independence, and cannot therefore ally itself with British imperialism. It will have to seek support from the masses. If British control were wholly removed, fascism would probably grow rapidly, supported as it would certainly be by the upper middle class and the vested interests.’’ p. 591, [14]. Curiously, the above passage has been nearly verbatim replicated in dime a dozen opeds by left-liberal in India and the West (barring the last sentence), with fascism substituted by Hindutva and fascists substituted by Hindu supremacists. So, the history of the compromise by the Indian left in the pre-independence era, owing to the collusion with the European (particularly British) left, is also the history of the left-liberals of India.
- British (both left and right) loathed the revolutionary freedom struggle in India, so Nehru’s surrender to the British left deprived the revolutionaries of political support. In fact, he has referred to the revolutionary freedom-fighters as “fascists’’ in his autobiography, “As a group notion, indeed, it [terrorism aka revolutionary freedom fight] had practically gone, and individual and sporadic cases were probably due to some special reason, act of reprisal, or individual aberration, and not to a general idea. This did not mean, of course, that the old terrorists or their new associates had become converts to non-violence, or admirers of British rule. But they did not think in terms of terrorism as they used to. Many of them, it seems to me, have definitely the fascist mentality’’ 262, [14]. Manmathnath Gupta, an eminent revolutionary of Azad’s organisation had later observed: “When the book (Nehru’s autobiography) appeared, it was the fashion to brand one’s political opponents as fascists. To brand a set of people as fascists it is necessary to prove them hired trigger-happy agents of the big monopolists“ pp. 322-323, [16]. Thus, following British left, he considered the revolutionary freedom fighters as his opponents. He even resented movements in Bengal and Punjab for the release of the political prisoners from British captivity, at times without trial. On 11 October, 1939, in a letter to Krishna Menon, he pitted the movements for the release of political prisoners in these provinces against freedom, “ For Bengal as well as the Punjab the paramount question is one of release of political prisoners. They can hardly think in terms of freedom as a near objective. They are just an opposition, feeling rather helpless and shout a lot’’ pp. 182-183, [15]. The political prisoners would mostly be revolutionary freedom fighters.
- The British also showed deep animosity against the ethnic groups that produced the bulk of the freedom fighting revolutionaries. Bengalis produced the maximum number of freedom fighting revolutionaries. Nehru has shown deep hostility against the Bengalis too. In his autobiography, he deemed Bengalis fascists: “Communism and fascism seem to be the major tendencies of the age, and intermediate tendencies and vaccilating groups are being eliminated. Sir Malcolm Hailey has prophesied that India will take to National Socialism, that is, some form of fascism. Perhaps he is right so far as the near future is concerned. There are already clearly marked fascist tendencies. In India’s young men and women, especially in Bengal, but to some extent in every province, and the Congress is beginning to reflect them. Because of fascism’s close connection with extreme forms of violence, the elders of the Congress, wedded as they are to non-violence, have a natural horror of it.’’ p. 590, [14]. Innumerable other sources of divergent political persuasion attest to Nehru’s ethnic hatred against the Bengalis. Dilip Kumar Roy has written that Subhas Chandra Bose’s “associates warned him [Bose] against Jawaharlal‘ unconfessed “anti Bengali” mentality’’ p. 92, [9]. On 20.12.1935, Bose wrote in Bangla to Sunil Mohan Ghosh Moulik, “Thanks to the Mahatma’s kindness, Jawaharlal appears to be set to become President again. Who will listen to the voice of Bengal? ‘’ p. 123, [4]. On March 28, 1939, Bose wrote to Nehru, “Regarding Bengal, I am afraid you know practically nothing. During two years of your presidentship you never cared to tour the province, though that province needed your attention much more than any other, in view of the terrible repression it had been through‘’ p. 207, [5]. On 11 October, 1939, Nehru wrote to Krishna Menon, “ In India two separate mentalities have developed in recent years. One is represented by the Congress provinces, the other by Bengal and the Punjab which have undergone no serious change during recent years and can think only in purely agitational terms. For Bengal as well as the Punjab the paramount question is one of release of political prisoners. They can hardly think in terms of freedom as a near objective. They are just an opposition, feeling rather helpless and shout a lot.’’ pp. 182-183, [15]. Nehru’s animosity against Punjab was stirred because Punjab had produced the second largest number of revolutionary freedom fighters and had sided with Bose during his conflict with the Gandhian wing and Nehru. A CPI pamphlet in 1945 writes, “we find Sardar Patel and Pandit Nehru asking why there was no uprising in Bengal- why people did not “loot and seize food where it could be got.” Patel and Nehru don’t say it in so many words, but for three years we have heard it said that the people of Bengal have become “decadent” – they could not even loot, but died helplessly when they got no food’’ p. 32, [28]. Ram Manohar Lohia has narrated the malice that Nehru harbored against the Bengalis in general, and those from the East Bengal in particular: “I may be permitted to refer to a private conversation with Mr. Nehru in Noakhali around the end of 1946, to which I had more or less been forced by Mahatma Gandhi. Mr. Nehru spoke of the water, slime, bush and tree that he found everywhere in East Bengal. He said that that was not the India he or I knew and wanted with some vehemence to cut East Bengal away from the main land of India. That was an extraordinary observation. The man was obviously speaking under an emotional strain. He had set his heart on something. He was trying to discover enduring reasons of geography in order to still some small voice of conscience that he may still have been hearing. These reasons of geography might under other circumstances prove how necessary it is for the Ganga and Jamuna plains to stay joined with their luxuriant terminus. But once the idea of partition came to be accepted as a condition precedent to India’s freedom, no matter that the acceptance was still very private and not even communicated to Mahatma Gandhi, the geography of East Bengal could well become abominable. For myself, I have found the gay laughter of East Bengal women unparalleled in all the world.’’ p. 28, [18].
- Nehru showed a strong animosity against Japan, which went beyond that he displayed towards Germany and Italy. During 1938, he repeatedly advocated boycott of Japanese by Indians so as to protest Japan’s aggression in China. We reproduce from his writings,
- “I am glad to tell this conference that the Indian National Congress has organised and is soon sending a medical unit to China. We have also met with considerable success in India in our boycott of Japanese goods as the export figures demonstrate. A recent incident will indicate the strength of our feeling for the Chinese people. In Malaya the Japanese owned iron and tin mines which employed Chinese workers. These workers refused to help in producing munitions for Japan and left the mines. Thereupon Indian workers were engaged, but at our request they also refused to work there, although this meant privation and suffering for them’’ [speech at the international Peace Conference, Paris, 24/07/1938], pp. 88-89, [15].
- “All Asians are aware that the heavenly empire is fighting for their common aim. The Indian sympathies for China are very understandable, as China is nearest to us and our relations with her are thousands of years old. India helps Chinese struggle with all means available at hand. One of the most effective means of help has been the boycott of Japanese goods. It was the biggest success in India’’ [interview to the Rude Pravo, Paris, 31/07/1938], p. 91, [15].
- “I hope that we shall continue with vigour our China campaign in India – both this unit in regard to the medical unit and the boycott of Japanese goods. This boycott has been more successful than many of us imagined as the export figures show. October 10th [1938] might be celebrated by us in India as a special China Day’’ [letter to the CWC, Paris, 01/08/1938], p. 105, [15].
Note that Nehru never asked for boycott of Germany or Italy or their goods by Indians. Also, there was nothing that Japan was doing in China in the late 1930s that Britain had not been doing in India for a much longer time. Yet, Nehru was not asking for boycott of the British or their goods in India during that time. The particularly strong animosity against the Japanese could have emerged from an Euro-centric view of the world that was typical of communists and the left. Note that Marx and Engels believed that the “leading civilised countries’’ or “great industrial powers’’ (read Europe) would usher in the civilizing mission that they perceived Communism to be. Robert Service has noted that, “Somehow the ‘united action’ of what Marx and Engels called ‘the leading civilised countries’ would supply ‘one of the first preconditions for the emancipation of the proletariat’.’’ Loc. 616, [12], and “Marxism’s co-founders put their faith in the civilising mission of the great industrial powers. They railed against the economic exploitation of indigenous peoples carried out by the European empires; but imperialism was not in their eyes a bad thing in itself. The world was changing as the factory system was extended. It was, for them, a harsh but inevitable process.’’ Loc. 779, [12]. In his Colonial Thesis in June 1920, Lenin asked that the Communist parties of the colonizing nations must lead the freedom fights in the colonies, “first, that all Communist parties must assist the bourgeois-democratic liberation movement in these countries [European colonies], and that the duty of rendering the most active assistance rests primarily with the workers of the country the backward nation is colonially or financially dependent on’’ p. 146, [23]. Thus the colonies were being denied the agency to fight for their own freedom. On March 4, 1922, the Executive Committee of Communist International adopted a resolution on the Orient Question, which was published in Inprecorr (International Press Correspondence, official mouthpiece of the Communist International), No. 29 of 1922. It specifically asked the Communist Party of England to “support’’ (that is, lead) the revolutionary movements in the English colonies like India and Egypt: “ Owing to the great importance of the national revolutionary movements which are developing more and in the colonial countries of the Near East and neutral Asia and especially in Egypt and in India the Plenum of the Executive proposes to the parties of those countries which are in connection with the aforementioned regions to organize a systematic campaign for the liberation of the colonies in the press, in Parliament and among the masses. The Communist Party of England is especially requested to launch a well-organized and continued action with a view of supporting the revolutionary movement in India and Egypt. ‘’ p. 198, [23]. The expression of strident nationalism by an Asian power would be construed as violation of the race hierarchy that was fundamental to the mindset of a large number of Europeans (of both right and left political pursuasion) at that time. Japan’s message of Asian solidarity stood in stark contrast to the implicit and explicit assumptions in communism (as also leftism) that the Europeans must lead the world.
Section C: Contrasting actions of Nehru and Subhas
Given their respective ideological convergence and dissonance with the communists, Jawaharlal Nehru shared a strong bonhomie with the European left, particularly the British component thereof, as also with the leadership of the Communist Party of India (CPI), while Subhas Chandra Bose was at loggerheads with the same segment. These ideological and inter-personal relations had significant ramifications on the freedom struggle in India. Nehru’s relation with the British left led to compromise after compromise of India’s national interests. Throughout the 1930s, India’s freedom movement in England took a back-seat due to the influence of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) on Nehru’s altar ego, V. K. Krishna Menon, who rose in stature in England through Nehru’s exclusive patronage. The CPGB sought to influence Congress politics through Nehru in return of their support for Menon in England and Nehru in India.
The ramifications of Nehru’s and Bose’s positions vis a vis communism become even more evident when we consider a specific but crucial time-period in the history of Indian freedom movement – 1938-1947. Motivated in part by self-interests, during the late 1930s, the British left, including the CPGB was aligned to the British state. They prioritized defeating Nazism and Fascism over anything else and promoted the interests of the British state perceiving the British state to be the most effective defense against Nazism and Fascism. Nehru’s predilections were entirely guided by the interests and the stands of the British left, Bose’s by the interests of the Indian freedom struggle. And, Nehru had a strong influence on both the right and left wings of the Congress. Bose was the President of the Indian national Congress during 1938. During 1938-1939, taking advantage of the pre-occupation of Britain in the impending second world war, Bose tried to get Congress serve an ultimatum to the British to leave India, and launch a mass movement against them from the Congress platform if they do not respond satisfactorily. The right wing (Gandhian) leadership of the Congress refused to cooperate with Bose, and thereby facilitated British imperialism. The CPGB fully controlled the CPI during this period. Under the instruction of the CPGB, and in the guise of unity with the anti-imperialist forces (read Gandhian Congress), the CPI sought to further the Gandhian line and sabotage Bose, thereby in effect furthering the interests of British imperialism. Other eminent members of the Indian left, such as the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) and Jawaharlal Nehru were again in the same boat as the CPI and the CPGB. The disagreement between the Indian left leadership and Subhas Chandra Bose boiled down to the latter’s insistence on issuing a time-bound ultimatum to the British. The CPI effort in this part was led by its Bombay wing again. But at Tripuri Congress 1939 the Bengal cadre of the CPI forced the leadership to support Bose, through an open revolt. CSP, however, comprised of the bulk of the Congress left, and their cooperation with Gandhi rendered it impossible for Bose to get Congress deliver any ultimatum to the British. Bose was forced to resign from Congress presidency which he had won fair and square against a Gandhian proxy. The ultimatum and the mass-movement could only be launched in 1942 in the form of Quit India.
On 1st September, 1939, the second world war broke in Europe. The CPGB openly supported the British war efforts at the start of the second world war. The CPGB General Secretary, Harry Pollitt, was one of the principal architects of this support. But, given its mutual non-aggression pact with Germany, Soviet Russia forced the CPGB to assume neutrality at least in stated position. Harry Pollitt had to step down as General Secretary. Notwithstanding, large parts of the CPGB continued to support the British war efforts and Pollitt was far from marginalized in the CPGB. Pollitt’s support for Britain became more and more explicit as Hitler advanced and Belgium and France fell to him; in fact, he actively participated in the war efforts in personal capacity. The British left, including the Labor Party and the CPGB, wanted Congress to support the British war efforts in lieu of their stated support for India’s independence.
The Congress right wing leadership remained pro-British until the end of 1941, mostly to protect the interests of its big business patrons. The rank and file of Congress wanted tangible action against the British, and exerted tremendous pressure on the leadership towards that end. Subhas Chandra Bose gave voice to this rank and file, from outside the Congress, and racheted pressure on the Congress leadership through propaganda and assemblies. The Gandhian wing deflected this pressure through some concessions and some symbolic movements. The situation of the war changed fast during May, 1940 and by 6th June 1940, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands and France had all succumbed to Germany. Between May, 1940 and June 1941, Gandhi started to believe that Britain would lose, and mustered enough courage to launch some symbolic, albeit farcical, movements against the British. But, no real mass movement was launched.
Throughout 1939 the CPGB instructed the CPI to maintain a united front with the Congress right wing. In practice this meant that the CPI ought not to rock the Gandhian Congress boat of collusion with the British during the initial part of the second world war. The General Secretary of the CPI, Puran Chandra Joshi, was beholden to the CPGB and was deeply influenced by CPGB ideologues and leaders, and CPI as an organization was also obligated to follow CPGB’s instructions in letter and spirit. Thus, the CPI completely surrendered to the British imperialism during the second world war. Between 1939 and mid-1941, the CPI opposed British war efforts, in only its rhetoric. But, in actual action, together with Nehru and the Congress Socialist Party (CSP), the CPI sabotaged Subhas Chandra Bose’s opposition to Gandhian collusion. Thus, Nehru, CPI and the CSP indirectly colluded with the British in action, while opposing them in words. During 1939, CPI took no concrete action against the British, all they did was to call a one-day political strike of the workers in September, 1939, but only to call it off a day before it was to be launched, and eventually organized it on 2 October, 1939. All other strikes of the workers called by the CPI in 1939 were on purely economical grounds. The only active opposition to the British that the CPI launched in 1940 was the organization of a strike, referred to as the Mahagai strike, in the textile industry of Bombay in March 1940. The short term goals of this strike were all economic, but the long term goals had political components. The strike was called off, unconditionally, in a month. CPI’s inaction continued until the middle of 1941.
First two years of the second world war was a critical period of India’s history in which a Congress driven solely by national interests could have extracted major advantages for India by exploiting British vulnerability during the starting phase of the second world war. This Congress could not, thanks in no small measure to, Nehru’s capitulation to the interests and demands of the British left. The Congress Working Committee stalled mass movements against the British throughout the first two years of the second world war. This may be attributed in part to Nehru’s influence on the Congress Working Committee since he had an eminent role in framing Congress policies during this period. Also, due to Nehru’s (and the CPGB’s) influence on the Indian left, the latter could not put up a united front to force the Gandhian wing, out of their path of collusion with British imperialism.
Subhas Chandra Bose had forged a Left Consolidation Committee (LCC) with Forward Bloc (his own party), CPI, CSP, Kisan Sabha, Roy group (now called the League of Radical Congressmen), Labour Party and Anushilan Marxists, at the time of the first conference of the Forward Bloc (22 and 23 June 1939). The goal was to coordinate the left wing opposition to Gandhian collusion with the British imperialism through a united front. The Royists, the CSP and the CPI gradually dropped off from the LCC one by one on some pretext or the other. The Congress right wing ensured this disintegration through a carrot and stick policy enacted in cooperation with the British government of India. CPI was mortally afraid of Governmental persecution, and avoided confrontation with the Government towards that goal. And, unlike the Forward Bloc and the Kisan Sabha, the CPI was not subjected to governmental persecution until March 1940. Collaboration with Congress right wing leadership saved CPI leaders from arrests in many occasions. This may explain in part as to why CPI continued to maintain a united front with the Congress right wing despite its own certainty that the Congress right wing would not act against British imperialism.
In March 1940, together with Swami Sahajanand of the Kisan Sabha, Bose organized an Anti-Compromise Conference in Ramgarh where Congress had assembled for its annual conference too. The goal was to pressurize Gandhi into declaring a mass movement against the British. This conference was a thorn in the flesh for the wing in Congress, namely Congress right wing and Nehru, that was bent on continuing the status quo of inaction. Nehru, CPI and CSP together sought to sabotage this conference which was however held as planned. Throughout 1940, Bose and the CPI and Nehru had a war of words. While Bose attacked the CPI for giving the British a free pass, CPI and Nehru ran a vilification campaign against him. Starting late 1939, the CPI and the CSP tried to sabotage the struggles that Bose called. Realizing that it would be impossible to force the British out of India from within, owing to the collusion, direct or indirect of large sections of the Indian polity with the British, Bose left India to strike at British imperialism from abroad in January 1941.
By 1942, given Japan’s rapid advances up to the Indian frontier, one part of the Congress right wing (namely Gandhi, Patel) decided to adopt a stringent anti-British line to hedge their bet should Japan displace the British from India. The result was the announcement of the Quit India struggle. Nehru opposed this call from within the Congress working committee as long as he could. Finally, finding himself in the minority, he acquiesced to the announcement. The Congress leaders were arrested shortly after Quit India was announced. The CPI opposed this call, both from within the Congress working committee and publicly. When however the Quit India program was still launched, they sought to sabotage some of the programs therein. But once the Quit India program was launched the CSP leaders launched a vigorous mass movement, at times from underground. Subhas Chandra Bose supported the movement from Germany. The movement was finally quashed by mid 1943, but it left an indelible imprint on India’s march towards freedom. Not getting the requisite assistance from Germany, Bose set off for Japan in a submarine voyage in early 1943. He reached Japan by mid 1943. He led the INA, an army of Indian civilians and the Indian prisoners of war in South East Asia towards India in 1944. The direct military mission of the INA failed, but their tale of heroics inspired Indians to rise up against the British post the second world war. To avoid an ignominious exit, British transferred power to Indian leaders and left in 1947.
Nehru was party to destruction of the war memorial of the Indian National Army (INA) in Singapore under the instructions of Mountbatten. M. R. Vyas has described the destruction of the INA war memorial, “ My worst fears were confirmed when I read a late March 1946 issue of the Singapore Times. It carried a picture of the demolished I.N.A. martyr’s memorial erected by Netaji, bearing the three watchwords : Unity, Faith, Sacrifice. The demolition had been ordered by Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Allied Supreme Commander in South East Asia. A member and a staunch upholder of the dignity of the Britain’s Royalty, and a vain man, he had been the proud side of Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) during the latter’s visit to India in 1921. His reasons for the destruction of the Memorial could easily be guessed. Unlike the Americans, Lord Louis Mountbatten was seeking vengeance on those, who had defied British supremacy. As the Head of the Joint South East Asia Command, he had insisted on a humiliating ceremony of surrender by General Terauchi, his Japanese counterpart. He wanted to repay the Japanese for having rolled into dust the British pride of military supremacy. The I.N.A. was his second hate. Before the public hue and cry and threat of violent upsurge in India forced the British to repatriate the I.N.A. men to India, he had a few of them summarily tried and shot. He wanted to set an example. The soldiers having thus escaped his wrath, his next act was to make the Indians in Singapore witness the humiliating demolition of the I.N.A. memorial. A potential challenge to his arrogance seemed to arise, when in March 1946 the Congress, in response to persistent public demand, decided to depute Pandit Nehru to Singapore to “study the fate of the Indians, who had helped the I.N.A.” He could not have suspected a kindred soul in the hero of the Indian national movement. However the great Lord did not have to probe long to make that discovery. To his great surprise and satisfaction, Panditji who had been sent to study his misdeeds, agreed to become his honored guest. Thereafter the Lord was the show-master, and the Pandit the meek spectator, He proudly showed the demolished I.N.A. Martyr’s Memorial to the Indian leader. The man, who had posed as the great defense counsel of the I.N.A. heroes at Red Fort, witnessed with folded hands this revenge on the symbol of India’s heroic struggle for freedom with no sign or utterance of even the mildest protest ! My mind was horrified as I read the details. Had the old weakness of Panditji – the desire to be Britain’s admired “gentleman” reasserted under the glamour of the Royalty ? What other explanation could there be that Jawaharlal Nehru, visiting as an envoy of Indian National Congress had agreed to look at his objects through the British glasses ? The reports in the Singapore Times were eloquent enough to indicate, that the Indian leader’s visit brought forth no relaxation in the crusade by the British against the nationalists, but only a reinforcement of the Lord’s desire for vengeance ‘’ pp. 553-554, [11].
Nehru and CPI were therefore on the wrong side of history throughout this crucial period of Indian history, and Subhas Chandra Bose was on the right. It may not be a coincidence that the first two were communist and communist-influenced, while the last was an Indian nationalist. Recall again that Nehru was not formally affiliated with any communist party, thus the core ideology of the principals count rather than party affiliation. This is worth noting given that several public intellectuals and politicians in India plead disassociation from communism, to not be bracketed with the troubling history of Indian communists vis a vis India’s interests over the course of history; while pursuing identical political and social choices as the communists.
References:
[1] Subhas Chandra Bose, “The Indian Struggle’’, Netaji Collected Works, Volume 2, Edited by Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose
[2] Renunciation and Realization : Correspondence 1926-1932, Netaji Collected Works, Volume 4
[3] Subhas Chandra Bose, “Leader of Youth 1929-1932’’, Netaji Collected Works, Volume 6, Edited by Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose
[4] Subhas Chandra Bose, India’s Spokesman Abroad, Netaji Collected Works, Volume 8, Letters, Articles, Speeches and Statements, 1933-1937, Edited by Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose
[5] Subhas Chandra Bose, “Congress President Speeches, Articles and Letters, January 1938-May 1939’’, Netaji Collected Works, Volume 9, Edited by Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose
[6] `The Alternative Leadership, Speeches, Articles, Statements and Letters’, June 1939-1941 Subhas Chandra Bose, Netaji Collected Works, Volume 10, Edited by Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose
[7] Subhas Chandra Bose, “Azad Hind, Writings and Speeches, 1941-May 1943’’, Netaji Collected Works, Volume 11, Edited by Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose
[8] Subhas Chandra Bose, “Writings and Speeches, Chalo Delhi, 1943-1945’’, Netaji Collected Works: Volume 12, Edited by Sisisr K. Bose and Sugata Bose
[9] Dilip Roy, “Netaji – the Man Reminisces’’
[10] Ashok Bose, “My uncle Netaji’’
[11] M. R. Vyas, “Passage Through a Turbulent Era’’
[12] Leonard Gordon, “Brothers against the Raj’’
[13] Nanda Mookherjee: Subhas Chandra Bose: The British Press, Intelligence and Parliament, Jayasree Prakashan, Calcutta 700026, 1981
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[15] S. Gopal, Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol 9
[16] Manmathnath Gupta, ‘They Lived Dangerously’
[17] Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, `India Wins Freedom’
[18] Ram Manohar Lohia, “Guilty Men of India’s Partition’’
[19] M. N. Roy, “India in Transition’’
[20] Manabendra Nath Roy, Abani Mukhetji, Santi Devi, “An Indian Communist Manifesto’’, Drafted in Berlin, en route from Mexico to Moscow for the II Congress of the Comintern. Published in Glasgow Socialist, 24 June 1920. Available in Marxists Internet Archive (2011).https://www.marxists.org/archive/roy-evelyn/articles/1920/manifesto.htm
[21] “Towards Freedom’’, Documents on the Movement for Independence in India 1939, Edited by Mushirul Hasan, COMMUNISM IN INDIA—A Survey of Recent Developments (up to 31-10-1939) , 17.11.39 Deputy Director (E) Secret. Copy forwarded to: 1) Deputy Director, Intelligence, G. of I., Peshawar. 2) Senior Asst Director, Intelligence, G. of I., Quetta 3) Central Intelligence Officer, Calcutta 4) Central Intelligence Officer, Bombay 5) Central Intelligence Officer, Madras 6) Central Intelligence Officer, Lucknow 7) Central Intelligence Officer, Lahore 8) Central Intelligence Officer, Karachi 9) Central Intelligence Officer, Patna 10) Central Intelligence Officer, Nagpur. PIM
[22] Indo-Russian Relations : 1917-1947, Select Documents From The Archives of The Russian Federation, Part II, 1929-1947, Edited and Compiled by Purabi Roy, Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, Hari Vasudevan
[23] Documents of the Communist Movement in India,Vol. I, 1917-1928, Edited by G. Adhikari https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.460894
[24] Documents of the Communist Movement in India, Volume III, 1929-1938, Edited by G. Adhikarihttps://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.459838
[25] Nicholas Owen, The British left and India – Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism 1885-1947 Oxford Historical Monographs
[26] Robert Service, “Comrades: Communism – a world history’’
[27] D. N. Gupta, “Communism and Nationalism in Colonial India’’, 1939-45 (SAGE Series in Modern Indian History Book 12) 1st Edition
[28] “Inside Bengal 1941-1944: Forward Bloc and its allies versus Communists’’ Arun Bose, Khoka Rai, December 1945, People’s Publishing House, Raj Bhuvan, Sandhurst Road, Bombay 4
[29] Saswati Sarkar, Shanmukh, Dikgaj “Netaji’s modernism versus Gandhi’s spiritual Swaraj http://www.dailyo.in/politics/mahatma-gandhi-subhas-chandra-bose-socialism-british-raj-independence-nehru/story/1/4164.html
[30] Saswati Sarkar, Shanmukh, and Dikgaj, “The Communist betrayal of the Indian Freedom Struggle – the groundwork’’ https://sringeribelur.wordpress.com/the-communist-betrayal-of-the-indian-freedom-struggle-the-groundwork/
[31] Saswati Sarkar, Shanmukh, Dikgaj and Gangadhar, “Communism and Nationalism – The Twain Can Never Meet – The Saga of Indian freedom fight’’ https://sringeribelur.wordpress.com/communism-and-nationalism-the-twain-can-never-meet-the-saga-of-indian-freedom-fight/