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The Politics of Survival : Peasant Organi- Zations and the Left-Wing in India, 1925-46*

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The Politics of Survival : Peasant Organi- Zations and the Left-Wing in India, 1925-46* THE POLITICS OF SURVIVAL : PEASANT ORGANI- ZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA, 1925-46* D. N. DHANAGARE Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur The period between 1920 and 1946, the most significant in India's free- dom struggle, witnessed emergence of several peasant organizations. Some of them became enduring political organizations but in the post- Independence era they either merged with national political parties or be- came their appendages. The political liberalism of the Indian National Congress and particularly Mahatma Gandhi's political ethic of passive resistance formed the ideological orientation of some of these peasant or- ganizations. Other peasant organizations emerged out of the growing Indian Left-wing activities based on the theory and practice of Marxian socialism, particularly the Bolshevik model. From the mid-twenties al- most until 1950 peasant organizations of the latter type more or less do- minated the scene. The historical and political studies of the Communist and Socialist movements in India have only barely touched on the pea- sani organizations under their aegis. The Workers' and Peasants' Parties in the twenties and a variety of Kisan Sabhas (peasant organizations) in the thirties and forties were formed in different parts of India. Their character as 'peasant organizations', and their contribution to peasant movements in India, however, need to be examined systematically. This paper examines the process of their formation, growth and decline and their formal organizational features, leadership and class-character, pro- grammes and ideology. THE BEGINNING OF THE INDIAN COMMUNIST MOVEMENT Although the exact starting point of the Communist Party in India (hereafter CPI) has been a polemical issue, it could be safely said that its foundation was laid at the Second Congress of the Communist International (Moscow : July-August 1920). M. N. Roy — then a leading Marxist and an émigré revolutionary (later one of the founding members of CPI) SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN Vol. 24 No. 1 March 1975 30 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN envisaged 'the Indian revolution originating from the workers and pea- sants on the Russian model'. For that purpose, he pleaded, for the Co- mintern's exclusive assistance in the formation of CPI since that alone 'could organize the masses for the class struggle, end the British imperial- ism as well as destroy the European capitalism and thus accomplish the Indian revolution' (Roy 1964 : 411-18). Roy's disagreements with Lenin over the priorities in the formulation of strategies and tactics of the Indian revolution and Lenin's thesis on the colonial question which advocated a collaboration of the Indian com- munists with the bourgeois nationalist movement are too well-known to be repeated here (d'Encausee et al. 1969 : 149-70, 190-92). Significantly enough Roy felt that 'although the Indian proletariat was weak, the vast depressed peasantrry could always be used to build a strong revolutionary party' (Druhe 1959 : 20-7). Thus, the Leninist doctrine of 'alliance of workers with peasants' formed one of the fundamental postulates of Roy's thesis on the colonial question and on the problem of Indian revolution. The long-neglected agrarian question, existence of huge landed estates, acute land-hunger among the peasant masses and the appalling human misery in the Indian country-side, all of them reinforced Roy's position. The Comintern of course endorsed Lenin's thesis but at the same time it approved a programme for organizing workers and peasants to spread communism and thus to Bolshevize the East (Druhe 1959 : 29-30). In the first five years (1920-24) CPI functioned in different parts of the country but lacked coordination in its activities ; the Central Committee of CPI was not formed until December 1925 (Ahmad 1958 : 14). In con- formity with the Comintern's directive Roy and a few other Indian com- munists tried to spread their ideas in the Indian National Congress by taking full advantage of its built-in organized factionalism. After the first 'Non-cooperation' movement had been called off by Gandhi early in 1922, a faction led by C. R. Das felt disenchanted of Gandhi's leadership. Roy sought to 'cultivate a few outspoken Congressmen, including Das and through them to influence thinking and economic programme of the Congress. At the Gaya session of the Congress (1922) S. A. Dange and S. Chettiar, two of the pioneers of CPI, proclaimed themselves com- munists and boldly presented Roy's programme for progressive eco- nomic reforms (INC 1923 : 116-7). But, the Gaya session rejected the programme implying a clear defeat of the Communists and the Das faction they supported ; the Congress reaffirmed its faith in Gandhi's leadership PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 31 as well as in his programme of 'Non-cooperation' with the Government. Given the petit-bourgeois leadership and the liberal passivist methods of political agitation of the Congress, what happened in Gaya was only to be expected. Roy too knew fully well that a radical economic programme at that stage was bound to meet with hostility. Thus, the first Indian Communist attempt to capture the Congress and to move from the top to the bottom failed (Overstreet et al. 1959 : 44-58). GROWTH AND DECLINE OF THE WORKERS' AND PEASANTS' PARTY Following the Kanpur Conspiracy Case (1923-24), in which four promi- nent CPI leaders were accused of conspiring to overthrow the Govern- ment, the Indian communists realized that their activities had to be clan- destine. Communications between emigre leaders and Indian commu- nists, as only among those operating in different parts of India, faced seve- ral odds and risks of interception1. Roy, therefore, advised his comrades to build up two parties : namely the Workers' and Peasants' Party (here- after WPP) and the Communist Party ; the former as a legal body to dis- guise the latter which was banned (Overstreet et al. 1959 : 64-6). Thus, the first Left wing peasant organization in India was not conceived as an independent and an exclusively peasant body but was bracketed with 'workers' — the senior partner in WPP. The WPP's, set up by CPI without proclaiming its own identity and its policy of confiding in several like-minded Congressmen, worked well enough to make its existence felt in four provinces—Bombay, Bengal, the United Provinces and Punjab (Chaudhary 1971 : 234-5). Even while knowing that WPP was no more than a protective cover, the Com- munists saw to it that the classical Marxist-Leninist canons of the pro- letarian leadership of a revolutionary struggle were strictly adhered to. Therefore, within the framework of WPP the Communists worked primarily to build a "vanguard party". Consequently, more time and effort were invested in organizing urban-industrial workers by setting up trade unions ; little or no attention was paid to mobilizing the peasants in the countryside. The major centres of Communist activity throughout the 1920's were the big industrial cities such as Bombay, Calcutta and Kanpur. By March 1929, when the Meerut Conspiracy arrests began, the WPP (and CPI) influence among the industrial working class, particularly in Bom- 32 SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN bay, was considerable. The Bombay workers were preparing for a massive general strike as a protest against a Public Safety Bill introduced in the Bombay Legislative Council by the Government when it arrested 31 CPI leaders who were later tried in the Meerut Conspiracy Case— 1929-32 (Hutchinson 1935 : 79-80). This however does not mean that the trade union activity under the auspices of WPP was confined to Bom- bay ; it was widespread as is evident from the fact that between 1924 and 1929 the number of workers involved and the number of working days lost in industrial strikes and disputes went up by nearly 100 per cent (Glading 1930 : 429-30) but any corresponding performance on the agrarian front was lacking during these years. The absence of any serious or extensive effort to organize the peasants did not mean that CPI lacked either ability or inclination in this direc- tion. Notwithstanding WPP's pre-occupation with the trade unionism, some agrarian questions did attract its attention. In a series of pamph- lets and manifestoes that WPP brought out after 1926 on the occasion of its own annual conferences or those of the Congress, it promised a very radical programme of agrarian reforms including 'land to the peasant'2. Such promises and demands later became a rhetoric that appeared unfail- ingly in most of the party's documents, pamphlets etc. though with grea- ter and greater clarity and elaboration. However, action failed to keep pace with words and WPP's activities evoked little response from the peasantry. In fact, the word 'peasant' in the party's vocabulary was only to make up a political stance that carried little conviction, or backing for action. This remained so at least during the first decade of the Communist movement in India. The failure of WPP on the agrarian front was partly due to the paucity of human and material resources and partly due to the severe forms of repression the Government adopted in stifling the movement. Despite these initial setbacks, whatever chance WPP (CPI) got to expand its sphere of influence, it utilized, consciously or unconsciously, primarily for mobilizing industrial workers and not the peasantry. For example, the first All India Workers' and Peasants' Party Conference, held at Bhatpara (Calcutta) in March 1928, was attended by over a thousand delegates representing some 44 trade unions from Bengal (such as the Jute Workers Union, Cotton Mill Workers Union, Scavangers Union of Bengal and so on). But the list of these unions did not contain a single union or Sabha of peasants although there were representatives of actual peasants, PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE LEFT-WING IN INDIA 33 10 each, from Mymensingh, Dacca and some other districts3.
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