Question : Account for the emergence of the left-wing within the Congress. How far did it influence the programme and policy of the Congress?
(2006)
Answer : A powerful left-wing group developed in India in the late 1920s and 1930s contributing to the radicalization of the national movement. The goal of political independence acquired a clearer and shouter social and economic content. The stream of national struggle for independence and those of the oppressed came together. The left wing within the Congress came to be symbolized by Jawahar Lal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose.
The left wing in the Congress owed its emergence to the developments in the twenties. The twenties saw a new group emerging in Indian national movement. This young group had enough exposure to the outside world and with the ideological developments there. Jawahar Lal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose were the forces of this new group. Their exposure to international socialistic developments gave them new direction.
The emergence of modern industries and factory system gave impetus to socialistic ideas in the Congress. It led to the growth of trade unions and they came under socialistic principles. Equally seminal in this subject was the impact of the Russian Revolution. On 7 November, 1917, the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin overthrew the despotic Czarist regime and declared the formation of the first socialist state. The new Soviet regime electrified the colonial world by unilaterally renouncing its imperialist rights in China and other parts of Asia. A lesson was driven home that if the common people could unite, a new social order free from exploitation of man by man could be established.
Socialistic ideas now began to spread rapidly because many young persons who had participated actively in the Non-cooperation movement were unhappy with its outcome and were dissatisfied with the Gandhian principles and ideas. Several Socialist and communist groups came into existence all over the country. In Bombay, S.A. Dange published a pamphlet Gandhi and Lenin and started the first socialist weekly, the Sociologist. In Bengal, Muzaffar Ahmed brought out Navyug, in Punjab Ghulam Hussain published Inquilab and in Madras M.Singaravelu founded the Labour-Kisan gazette.
Students and youth associations were organised all over the country during 1928 and 1929. Hundreds of youth conferences were organised all over the country during this time with speakers advocating radical solutions for the political, economic and social ills from which the country was suffering.
The Revolutionary terrorists led by Chandra Shekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh also turned to Socialism. Trade and peasant movements grew rapidly throughout the 1920s. Socialist ideas became even more popular during the 1930s as the world was engulfed by the great economic depression. Unemployment spread all over the capitalist world. The world depression brought the capitalist system into disrepute and drew attention to towards Marxism and Socialism.
Within the Congress, the left wing tradition came to be mirrored by Jawahar Lal Nehru who imparted a socialist vision to the national movement and became the symbol of socialism and socialist ideas in India after 1929.
The notion that freedom could not be defined only in political terms but must have a socio-economic content began increasingly to be associated with his name. Nehru developed an interest in economic questions when he came in touch with the peasant movement in eastern Uttar Pradesh in 1920-21. He then asked him Leisure in jail during 1922-23 to read widely on the history of the Russian and other revolutions. In 1927, he attended the International Congress against the colonial oppression and imperialism, held at Brussels, and came into contact with communists and anti-colonial fighters from all over the world. The same year he visited the Soviet Union and was deeply impressed by the new socialistic society.
In 1929, Jawahar La Nehru joined hands with Subhas Chandra Bose to organise the Independence for India league to fight for complete independence and a socialist revision of the economic structure of the society. At the Lahore session of the Congress in 1929, Nehru proclaimed – “I am a socialist and a republican, and am no believer in kings or princes, or in the order which produces kings who have greater power over lives and fortunes of men than even the kings of old.”
India, he said, would have to adopt a full ‘socialistic programme’ if she was to end her poverty and inequality. Nehru’s commitment to socialism found a cleaner and sharper expression during 1933 to 1936. he put his commitment to socialism in clear, unequivocal and passionate words in his presidential address to the Lucknow Congress in April 1936, where he proclaimed – “I am convinced that the only key to the solution of the world’s problems and of India’s problems lies in socialism, and when I use this word I do so not in a vague humanitarian way but in the scientific, economic sense.
I see no way of ending the poverty, the vast unemployment, and the subjection of Indian people except through socialism. This involves vast and revolutionary changes in our political and social structure. That means the ending of private property and the replacement of the present profit system by a higher ideal of cooperative service. During these years, Nehru also emphasized the role of class analysis and class struggle.
The move towards the formation of a socialist party was made in the jails during 1930-31 and 1932-34 by a group of young congressmen who were disenchanted with Gandhian strategy and leadership and attacked by socialist ideology. The efforts culminated in the formation of Congress Socialist Party (CSP) in 1934 at Bombay under Jai Prakash Narayan, Acharya Narendra Dev and Minoo Masani.
From the beginning, the Congress socialists were of view that the primary struggle was struggle for freedom and nationalism was in necessary stage in on way to socialism. Further, they wanted to work inside the Indian National Congress and asked it to lead the national freedom struggle. They felt that Congress needs to be given a socialist direction to impart a socialist direction to the national movement. To achieve this favoured aims, they must organize workers and peasants in class organizations, wage struggle for their economic demands and make them the social base of national struggle.
One of their tasks was that the Congressmen were to be gradually persuaded to adopt a socialist vision of independent India and a more radical, pro-labour and pro peasants stand on current economic issues. This was concerned of as a process. In organization it was deeply believed to change the leadership at top. Initially, the task was interpreted as displacement of the existing leadership, which was to be declared meetable of developing the struggle of masses to a higher level. The task was to wear away the anti imperialist elements in the Congress away from the present lay bourgeoisie leadership and to bring them under the leadership of revolutionary socialism.
This perspective was abandoned. Later in favour of a composite leadership of socialists at all levels.
The emergence of the left wing in the Congress deeply influenced the Congress programme and policy. To begin with it led to emergence of a left wing ginger group within the Congress which came to be symbolized by Jawahar Lal Nehru and Subhas Bose, who floated independence for India League in 1928 to press for their views.
They gave the Congress programme a sharper anti-imperialist content which became clear when Nehru was elected President for Lahore reunion in 1929 where he declared the aim of Congress to be not Dominion status but complete independence. Both Nehru and Subhas owing to their commitment to socialism were able to take over the presidentship of the All India Trade Union Conference (AITUC) in 1929 and 1931.
The Congress was forced to accept the programme and resolution on Fundamental rights and Economic reforms to define what Swaraj would mean for masses. In this was demanded living wage for workers, special taxes on property, and state control and ownership of key industries. Moreover, it was under the impact of left wing in the Congress that Congress passed at the Faizpur reunion a policy statement on Agrarian policy, which among others demanded end of forced labour, provision of security of tenancy and tenure to the peasants, and reduction of rents.
Further, the Congress set up National Planning Committee under the presidentship of Jawahar Lal Nehru in 1938 at the time when Subhas Chandra Bose held the presidency of the Indian National Congress.
Thus, the left wing in the Congress profoundly affected the Congress programme and policy and led to adoption of socialist vision after independence.
Question : Examine the cause of the rise and progress of revolutionary movements in India from 1905 to 1931.
(2003)
Answer : Along with the open political movements, there arose in the first decade of the 20th century various revolutionary groups in the different parts of the country. These early revolutionaries, active mainly in Bengal, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Punjab had no faith in constitutional agitations. They believed that by terrorizing British officials, they would be able to demoralize the entire machinery of the government and bring about freedom. After the government suppressed almost all open political agitations and imprisoned a large number of nationalist leaders, the activities of the revolutionary groups intensified.
After the division of Bengal, the leadership of Anti-partition movement soon passed to militant nationalist, like Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghose. This was due to many factors.
Firstly, the early movement of protest by the moderates failed to yield results. Even the liberal secretary of state John Morely, from whom much was expected by the moderate Nationalists, declared the partition to be a settled fact which would not be changed. Secondly, the government of the two Bengals, particularly of East Bengal, made effective efforts to divide Hindu and Muslim. Seeds of Hindu-Muslim disunity in Bengal Politics were perhaps sown at this time. This embittered the nationalists. But most of all, it was a repressive policy of the government which led people to militant and revolutionary politics. The government of East Bengal, in particular, tried to crush the nationalist movement. Official attempted at preventing student participation in the Swadeshi Agitation. The singing of Bande Matram in public streets in East Bengal was banned. Public meetings were restricted and sometimes forbidden. Laws controlling the press enacted. Swadeshi workers were prosecuted, and imprisioned for long periods.
Many students awarded even corporate punishment. From 1906 to 1909 more than 550 cases came up before Bengal court. Prosecutions against a large number of nationalist newspapers were launched and freedom of press was completely suppressed. Military police was stationed in many towns where it clashed with the people. One of the most notorious examples of repressions was the police assault on the peaceful delegates of Bengal provincial conference at Barisal in April 1906. Many of the young volunteers were severely beaten up and the conference itself was forcibly dispersed. In December 1908 nine Bengal leaders including the venerable Krishna Kumar Mitra and Ashwini Kumar Dutt were deported. In 1908, the great Tilak was arrested and given the severe sentence of 6 years imprisonment. Chidambram Pillai in Madras and Hari Sarvottam Rao and other in Andhra were put behind bars.
As the militant nationalists came to the face, they gave the call for passive resistance in addition to Swadeshi and Boycott. They asked the people to refuse to cooperate with the government and to boycott government service, the courts, government schools, and colleges and municipalities and legislative councils, and thus, as Aurobindo Ghose put it, “to make administration under present condition impossible”. The militant nationalists tried to transform the Swadeshi and Anti-partition agitation into a mass movement and gave the slogan of independence from foreign rule.
The youth of Bengal found all avenues of peaceful protest and political actions blocked and out of desperation they fell back upon individual heroic action and the cult of the bomb. They no longer believed that passive resistance could achieve nationalist aims. The British must therefore, be physically expelled. In 1904, V.D. Savarkar had organized the Abhinav Bharat, a secret society of revolutionaries. After 1905 several news papers had begun to advocate revolutionary terrorism. The Sandhya and the Yugantar in Bengal and the Kal in Maharashtra were the most important among them.
In December 1907 an attempt was made on the life of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal and in April 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafull a Chaki threw a bomb at a carriage which they believed was occupied by Kingsford, the popular judge at Muzaffarpur. Prafulla Chaki shot himself dead while Khudiram Bose was tried and hanged. The era of revolutionary terrorism had begun.
The revolutionaries also established centres of activity abroad. In 1915 during an unsuccessful revolutionary attempt, Jatin Mukherjee popularly known as Bagha Jatin gave his life fighting a battle with the police at Balasore. Rash Bihari Bose, Raja Mahendra Pratap, Lala Hardayal, Abdul Rahim, Maulana Ubaidllah Sindhi, Champa Karaman Pillai, Sardar Singh Rana and Madam Cama were some of the prominent leaders who carried on revolutionary activities and propaganda outside India.
Another reflection of the new mood was growing activity of the revolutionary terrorist movement which too was beginning to take a socialist turn. The failure of the first non-cooperation movement had led to the revival of the revolutionary movement. After an all India conference, the Hidustan Republican Association was founded in October 1224 to organize an armed revolution. The government struck at it by arresting a large number of terrorist youths and trying them in the Kakori conspiracy case (1925). Seventeen were sentenced to long term of imprisonment, four were transported for life and four including Ram Prasad Bismal and Ashfaquallah were hanged. The terrorists soon came under the influence of socialist ideas, and in 1928, under the leadership of Chandra Shekher Azad changed the name of their organization to the Hindustan Sociolist Republican Association (HSRA).
They also gradually began to move away from individual heroic action and terrorism. But the brutal lathi-charge on an anti-Simon Commission demonstration on 30 October, 1928 led to a sudden change. The great Punjabi Leader Lala Lajpat Rai died as a result of the lathi blows. This enraged the youth and on 17 December 1928, Bhagat Singh, Azad and Rajguru assassinated Saunders, the British Police officer who had led the Lathi Charge. The HRSA leadership also decided to let the people know about their changed political activities and objectives and the need for a revolution by the masses. Consequently, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt a threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929. The bomb did not harm anyone, for it had been deliberately made harmless. The aim was not to kill but, as their leaflet put it, “to make the deaf hear”. Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt a could have easily escaped, but they deliberately chose to be arrested for they wanted to make use of the court as a forum for revolutionary propaganda.
In Bengal too, revolutionary terrorist activities were revived. In April 1930, a well-planned and large-scale armed raid was organised on the government armoury at Chitagang, under the leadership of Surya Sen. This was the first of many attacks on unpopular government officials. A remarkable aspect of the terrorist movement in Bengal was the participation of young women. The Chitagang revolutionaries marked a major advance. Their’s was not an individual action but a group action aimed at the organs of the colonial state. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were executed on 23 March 1931. In his last message of 3 March 1931 he declared that the struggle in India would continue so long as “a handful of exploiters go on exploiting the labour of the common people for their own ends. It matters little whether these exploiters are purely British capitalists, or British and Indians in alliance or even purely Indians”. And he accepted that he acted as a terrorist but he was not the terrorist.
The revolutionary terrorist movement soon abated though stray activities were carried on for several years more. Chandra Shekhar Azad was killed in a shooting encounter with the police in a Public Park. Surya Sen was arrested in February 1933 and hanged soon after.
Question : Discuss the nature of the leadership and programme of the Congress Socialist Party.
(2002)
Answer : In 1934, after the suspension of the Civil Disobedience Movement, some socialist wanted to form a socialist party within the congress organisation so as to prevent the erosion of the revolutionary character of the Congress. The socialists within the congress believed in Marxist ideas like the communists but they owed their alleginance to the Indian National Congress and were nationalists. The Congress Socialists joined hands with the bourgeois democratic within the congress for carrying on the struggle of national liberation with the help of workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie.
The Congress Socialists wanted to create a broad base for the Congress Organisation by bringing into it the workers and the peasants. They held that the workers and the peasants should take part in the struggle for national liberation. They believed in the efficiency of such techniques as workers’ strikes and peasants’ agitation for the attainment of freedom from foreign rule. The Congress Socialists believed in class struggle and stood for abolition of capitalism, zamindari and princely states. They wanted to incorporate radical socio-economic measures for the uplift of toiling masses into the Congress Party’s programme.
The Congress Socialists belonged to the westernised middle class. They were influenced by the ideas of Marx, Gandhi and the Social Democracy of the West. They simultaneously practised Marxian, Socialism, Congress nationalism and liberal democracy of the West. The Congress Socialists played an important role in the Kisan movement. They changed the Congress Party’s policy from aloofness to closer involvement in the affairs of princely states. The Congress Socialists activists also took part in the democratic movements of the people in the princely states against their autocratic rulers. They agitated for civic rights and responsible government.
The Congress Socialist Party a constitution which outlined the following programme of action:
The Bombay session adopted separate progrmmes for the workers and peasants uplift. The Congress Socialists sought to mobilise the workers and peasants for their economic amelioration as well as the country’s liberation from foreign rule.
Independence and socialism were the twin objectives of the Congress Socialist Party.
Question : “The ideology of Subhash Chandra Bose was a combination of nationalism, fascism and communism.”
(2002)
Answer : In the closing stage of the Civil Disobedience movement, Subhash horrered around the working class movement. He inspired the students and the under-privileged, towards a radical militant temper. This eventually facilitated the formation of the Congress Socialist Party within the framework of the congress organisation. Subhash confined himself progressively, to the discussions on the coducting of India’s struggle for freedom, looking for new styles and strategies to intensify it and getting impatient for a show down with the authorities. In April 1939 he left the congress and organised the Forward Bloc and the Kisan Sabha. In November 1941 he escaped from India and surfaced in Berlin, where he met Hitler. He was of the view that one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend. He organised the Azad Hind Fauj or the Indian National Army with the help of his Japanese allies, to fight for the freedom of India. In dealing with the role of Subhash during this period we have to take note of the fact that what he did was not due to his support to Facist Germany or expansionist Japan but for India’s freedom.
Subhash lost his mark on the congress by lying emphasis on the industrialisation of India and planned economic growth on the Soviet pattern. He was in fact instrumental in the formation of a National Planning Committee of the Congress. He appeared to have identified the manner in which the anti-imperialist struggle had to rise above all sectional considerations of class and creed by emphasising the actual sufferings of the people. He seemed to know how the struggle must be escalated and strengthened by rallying all the victims of the imperialist rule, especially the toiling people. The consequent process of radicalisation of the national movement owed substantially to the vision and exertion of Subhash Chandra Bose.
Question : Account for the rise and growth of leftism in the Congress movement. What impact did it have on contemporary Indian politics?
(1997)
Answer : The 1930s witnessed the rapid growth of socialist ideas within and outside the Congress. In 1929 there was a great economic slump or depression in the United States which gradually spread to the rest of the world. Everywhere in the capitalist countries there was a sleep decline in production and foreign trade, resulting in economic distress and large scale unemployment. At one time, the number of unemployed was 3 million in Britain, 6 million in Germany, and 12 million in the United States. On the other hand the economic situation in the Soviet Union was just the opposite. Not only was there no slump, but the years between 1929 and 1936 witness the successful completion of the first two Five-Year Plans which pushed up the Soviet industrial production by more then four times. The world depression, thus, brought the capitalist system into disrepute and drew attention, towards Marxism, Socialism, and economic planning. Consequently, socialist ideas began to attract more and more people, especially the young. The workers, and the peasants.
From its early days, the national movement had adopted a pro-poor orientation. This orientation was immensely strengthened with the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the coming of Gandhiji on the political stage and the growth of powerful left-wing groups during the 1920s and 1930s. It was Jawaharlal Nerhu who played the most important part in the popularising the vision of a socialist India both within the national movement and in the Congress the left-wing tendency found reflection in the election of jawaharlal Nehru as president for 1929, 1936 and 1937 and of Subhas Chandra Bose for 1938 and 1939. Nehru argued that political freedom must mean the economic emancipation of the masses, especially of the toiling peasants from feudal exploitation.
In his presidential address to the Lucknow Congress in 1936, Nehru urged the Congress to accept socialism as its goal and to bring itself closer to the peasantry and the working class. This was also he felt the best way of weaning away the muslim masses from the influences of their reactionary communal leaders. The growth of the radical forces in the country was soon reflected in the programme and policies of the Congress. A major point of departure was the resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy passed by the Karachi Session of the Congress on the urging of Jawaharlal Nehru.
The resolution declared : 'In order to end the exploitation of the masses, political freedom must include real economic freedom of the starving millions'. The resolution guaranteed the basic civil rights of the people equality before law irrespective of caste, creed on sex, elections on the basis of universal adult franchise, and free and compulsory primary education. It promised substantial reduction inernet and revenue, exemption from rent in case of uneconomic holdings and relief of agricultural indebtedness and control of money-lending; better conditions for workers including a living wage, limited hours of work and protection of women workers; the right to organise and form unions by workers and peasants; and state ownership or control of key industries, mines and means of transport.
Radicalism in the Congress was further reflected in the Faizpur Congress resolutions and the Election Manifesto of 1936 which promised radical transformation of the agrarian system, substantial reduction in rent and revenue, sealing down of rural debts and provision of cheap credit, aboliton of feudal levies, security of tenure for tenants, a living wage for agricultural labourers and the right to form trade unions and peasant unions and the right to strike.
In 1945 the Congress Working Committee adopted a resolution recommending abolition of landlordism. During 1938, when Subhas Chandra Bose was its president, the Congress committed itself to economic planning and set up a National Planning Committee under the Charimanship of Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru and other leftists and Gandhi also argued for the public sector in large-scale industries as a means of preventing concentration of wealth in a few hands. In fact, a major development of the 1930s was the increasing acceptance of radical economic policies by Gandhiji. In 1933, he agreed with Nehru that 'without a material revision of vested interests the condition of the masses can never be improved'. He also accepted the principle of land to the tiller. He declared in 1942 that the land belongs to those who will work on it and to no one else.'.
Outside the Congress, the socialist tendency led to the growth of the Communist Party after 1935 under the leadership of P.C. Joshi and the foundation of the Congress Socialist Party in 1934 under the leadership of Acharya Narendra Dev and Jai Prakash Naryana. In 1939, Subhas Chandra Bose had been re-elected president of the Congress even though Gandhiji had opposed him. But the opposition of Gandhiji and his supporters in the Congress Working Committee compelled Bose to resign from the presidentship of the Congress in April 1939. He and many of his left wing followers now founded the Forward Bloc. By 1939, within the Congress the left was able to command influence over the one-third votes on improtant issues. Moreover, socialism became the accepted creed of most of the politicised youth of Indian during the 1930s and 1940s.
