The British Communist Rajani Palme Dutt is rightly remembered in this country for his book ‘India Today’ which is still unsurpassed as a Marxist introduction to modern Indian history finding its match and complement only in the awesome volume by A. M. Dyakov, ‘India in the Period During and After the Second World War 1939-1949’, Moscow, 1952 (in Russian). Born in Cambridge where his father was a doctor in a working class area, from early childhood R.P. Dutt came into contact with many of the legendary figures of the Indian independence movement who visited this university town A founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and an expert on Indian questions he was a stalwart supporter of Indian independence and made important interventions in the communist movement in this country, notably in convincing the CPI in 1946 to modify its approach to the Pakistan question. Despite his family links with India the British authorities did not grant him permission to visit the subcontinent until the time of the visit of the British Cabinet Mission in 1946. At that time he was Vice-Chairman of the Communist Party of Great Britain. While in India R.P. Dutt functioned as a correspondent of The Daily Worker and conducted interviews with the leadership of the Congress Party.

The interviews with the Congress leaders on the eve of political independence and partition indicate the political concern of R.P. Dutt to smoothen the way of co-operation internationally between the Communist movement, the democratic camp and the national movement, and, as a corollary of this to explore the possibilities of building broader links between the Congress Party and the Communist Party of India, on lines analogous to the relations in Britain between the Communist Party of Great Britain and the ruling Labour Party in the post-war period, in order to facilitate a broad programme of national reconstruction.

This task was not an easy one because of the collisions of the two parties in the 1940s on the ‘August revolution’ of 1942 which was seen by the CPI as an event which assisted the very real threat of the Japanese fascist invasion of India at a conjuncture when the international democratic forces were exerting every nerve to defeat Nazism and Fascism; and, the differences of the two on the stand to be adopted on the demand for Pakistan by the Muslim League. These differences widened as the Congress established an ‘enquiry’ into the CPI line at the All-India Congress Committee meeting in September 1945 and took the decision to bar members of the CPI from holding positions of responsibility in the Congress. Differences were marked on the refusal of the Congress Party to reach an agreement with the Muslim League which contributed to the weakening of the anti-colonial struggle against the British and the failure to create a united Indian state on the basis of a voluntary union. The interviews reveal these frictions between the CPI and the Congress: on Congress-League unity in addition to the tensions which arose from the militant role of the CPI in the revolt of the naval ratings in 1946. Sardar Patel posed these questions in the sharpest fashion.

The Congress Party did not join the international coalition against fascism on the ground that India had not been granted independence by British imperialism. In contrast, the CPI in the period 1942-44 considered that India despite her continued colonial status had to take part in the struggle against fascism along with the United Nations. The CPI called for the release of the Congress leaders and fought for the establishment of a provisional national government which would have enormously bolstered the mobilisation of the people of the country against the Japanese army which was standing at the doorstep of India (and, further, assist the fight of the Chinese people against the Japanese occupation which was led by the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China). The Indian National Army which was headed by Subhas Chandra Bose and which had the backing of Japanese fascism was regarded as functioning as the adjunct of Japan. The CPI took a leading role in the fight against Japanese imperialism and opposed the ‘August revolution’ of 1942 which was correctly perceived as weakening the national and international front for democracy and against fascism. The Congress Party in 1942 denied responsibility for the August events while sections of the Congress Socialist Party and the pro-Bose Forward Bloc whipped up national-chauvinist passions against the CPI.⁽¹⁾

On the tactical line of the CPI regarding the revolt of August 1942, Patel, despite Nehru’s inflammatory charges in June 1945 that the CPI had placed itself on the ‘other side’ in not leading the 1942 ‘struggle’ and despite also the Congress measures against the CPI in September 1945, argued that the Congress leadership, after their release from jail, had determined to forge an understanding with the CPI forgetting the differences over this issue, but found that co-operation became difficult as the CPI continued to defend its tactical stand. Patel charged the CPI with denouncing Congressmen to the British and reaching an understanding with the colonial regime but without in any way considering it incumbent upon himself to substantiate his allegations. The position of Gandhi was considerably milder on this, recognising that there were reasonable grounds for the line of policy of the CPI in 1942. He did not allude to the allegations of collaboration of the CPI with the Home Member Maxwell. Nehru’s discussions suggest that he did not wish to repeat his vitriolic assault on the democratic positions of the CPI of 1942-44 in his discussions. R.P. Dutt found that Nehru did not attempt to counter his sharp critique of the tactical line of the Congress Party in 1942 and, astonishingly in view of his stand of the previous year, ‘appeared at heart to be in considerable agreement’ with his exposition. Nehru, nevertheless, was not amenable to repudiating the charges of CPI collaboration with the colonial authorities levelled by Sardar Patel despite the absence of any credible evidence on this, asserting only that they were widely believed by members of the Congress Party and the Congress Socialist Party. In this instance for Nehru in the political life of the country questions of belief held sway over matters of fact.

In the years prior to 1947 the CPI had forthrightly distanced itself from the multiplicity of constructions of ‘nationalism’ rooted in chauvinism, religion and communalism which were being advocated by the parties of imperialism, the local bourgeoisie and landlordism. The CPI substantiated the multinational character of the subcontinent on the basis of Marxist theory. It opposed the twin concepts of the ‘Hindu nation’ put forward by the Hindu Mahasabha and that of the ‘Indian nation’ constructed by the Congress Party, both of which corresponded to the interests of the pro-imperialist big Gujarati-Marwari bourgeoisie desirous of inheriting the large multinational British Indian colonial market and state. Likewise the CPI did not embrace the schema of the ‘Muslim nation’ supported by the Muslim League which obscured the reality of the existence of several nations in the project of the formation of a semi-colonial Pakistan market and state which was being advocated by the smaller minority strata of the Gujarati bourgeoisie, the landlords of the United Provinces allied to imperialism (and, later, by sections of the nascent bourgeoisie and the jotedars of Bengal who were in a position to mobilise the majority of the peasantry behind themselves under communal slogans). The reactionary ‘two-nation’ theory had been originally formulated by the pioneers of Hindu communal-fascism such as Savarkar. It was espoused in a big way by the Muslim League after the big Gujarati-Marwari bourgeoisie and the Congress Party under the leadership of Sardar Patel and Nehru refused to provide clear constitutional safeguards for the bourgeoisie and landlords of the largest minority community. It may be recalled that the Muslim League and the Congress Party had accepted the Cabinet Mission plan of 1946 which called for a unified federal India which would have weak central powers.

The CPI considered that India was a multinational country and, as is apparent from the party’s memorandum to the Cabinet Mission in 1946, argued that a free, voluntary, democratic Indian Union required to be constructed anchored on the unfettered right of each nation to self-determination. According to this each nation in India through its own constituent assembly would decide its own future as to whether it would join the Indian Union, form a separate sovereign state or join another Indian union. The CPI opposed an arbitrary partition imposed by the British while recognising that the genuine concerns of the Muslim League had to be seriously addressed in view of the mass support that the League enjoyed and in the interests of a wider Indian unity. The communists fought for a policy of unity between the Congress Party and the Muslim League to counter the attempts of the British to stall independence and to divide India. The CPI failed to persuade the Congress to accept all the implications of a free India being a family of sovereign states. Gandhi came close to a democratic position for as was pointed out by P.C. Joshi in 1944 he recognised that in the areas of Muslim majority they should have the fullest right to constitute themselves into a separate state, he further supported the call for the closest co-operation between the Congress and the Muslim League on common issues.⁽²⁾ The principled and consistent democratic stands of the CPI, despite a number of flaws, failed before the adamant positions of the big Gujarati-Marwari bourgeoisie and the leadership of the Congress Party which preferred to exercise strong centralised industrial and political monopoly control in a divided India rather than to come to a compromise with those sections of the minority bourgeoisie and landlords and the Muslim League which were legitimately desirous of protecting their own economic, political and administrative interests in a united Indian state. These were the circumstances which persuaded the Indian big bourgeoisie to withdraw from supporting a unified India as envisaged by the Cabinet Mission plan and enabled Mountbatten, on behalf of British imperialism, to serially win over Sardar Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi for his partition project.⁽⁴⁾ The cracks between various fractions of the Indian bourgeoisie widened with the last budget before 1947. The Liaquat Ali budget, based on the Congress Party manifesto, proposed that industry and business pay income tax on illicit war profits and suggested the establishment of a commission to ferret out and recover unpaid taxes on their black money struck at the very roots of big Gujarati-Marwari capital. The budget provoked the big Indian bourgeoisie led by G. D. Birla to exert enormous pressure on the Congress Party and Nehru and to successfully bring them to heel before the transfer of power.

It is interesting to note that during these interviews the leadership of the Congress did not care to contest the fundamental understanding of the CPI on the national question. Gandhi, Patel and Nehru did, however, assail the CPI for allegedly supporting the six province demand of the Muslim League (which implied the inclusion of Assam in Pakistan), an appraisal which was rejected by R.P. Dutt on the factual basis of the CPI documents. Similarly, the Congress leaders did not express opposition to the CPI proposals for Congress-League unity but protested against any electoral co-operation between the CPI and the Muslim League. Despite the cordial relations of the Congress Party and sections of the landlords, as with the big Gujarati-Marwari bourgeoisie, Nehru objected to the ‘electoral understandings’ of the CPI with ‘landed interests’ in the United Provinces and the North-West Frontier Province. The views of Nehru and Patel on the questions pertaining to partition, autonomy and secession which were elicited by R.P. Dutt at press conferences and interviews were published in the British and Indian press at the time and are of considerable interest in illumining the stands of the Congress Party on the brink of partition and the transfer of power.

A third impediment to amicable Congress-CPI relations to which Sardar Patel refers was the alleged use of violence by the CPI. Patel cited the example of the recent strike of the Bombay naval ratings in which he had sought to persuade the Communists and the Socialists not to call for an hartal as this would result in police firing and fatal casualties but to trust in his appeals to the British authorities to resolve the matters. As R.P. Dutt well understood, in assailing the CPI Patel did not care to mention that the real reason that the communists and socialists had declared for the strike in Bombay in solidarity with the naval ratings was to forestall the attempt of the British authorities to sink the twenty ‘mutinous’ ships which would have led to an even greater loss of life than actually occurred. Sardar Patel it was apparent was more concerned to uphold the authority of the Congress Party as the leading national organisation vis a vis the Communists and the Socialists than seeking a democratic and non-sanguinary resolution of the naval ratings strike.

The interviews reveal interesting details of the political mindset of the leaders of the Congress Party: Gandhi’s stereotyped views on the political collisions in the Soviet Union, his philosophical anarchist views on the state wherein he demarcated himself from a state under Congress Party rule and Patel’s narrow conservative constitutional approach to politics, emerge in a transparent form. Dutt had a greater empathy and rapport with Nehru in his discussions on international affairs in the run-up to the Second World War when Britain endeavoured to embroil Germany and the Soviet Union in mutually destructive strife, the possibilities presented by the Cripps mission. He also had the realistic understanding that while Nehru expressed – in words – preference for the Soviet-led democratic camp over the US imperialist bloc the Indian leader had only a tepid sympathy for the USSR.

The fundamental hiatus between the Communist Party and the Congress Party in the years prior to 1947 on a number of questions reflected the fact that in framing its policies the former took into account the requirement of strengthening international democracy and the world-wide anti-fascist front in the period of people’s war while the latter adopted a local narrow-nationalist stand. This in turn was a reflex of the differing class basis of the two parties. The CPI as a working class party could not support any policy which would weaken the Soviet Union, the only state where the working class held power, just as it could not betray the struggles of the peoples of China, Vietnam and Indonesia who were conducting resistance movements against the occupation of Japanese fascism. The Gujarati-Marwari bourgeoisie, the landlords and the Congress Party had other priorities in the Second World War. The CPI, further, was interested in democratic solutions to the national question and the Pakistan question in the interests of a wider unity of the peoples in the subcontinent and so perforce was compelled to oppose the divisive policies of imperialism, the local bourgeoisie, the Congress Party and the Muslim League which were the driving forces for partition and the consequent formation of two antagonistic semi-colonial states both of which were and are prison-houses for the oppressed nations within their frontiers.

1. See: ‘Indian Communists and the Congress’, World News and Views, November 17th 1945, Volume 25, No. 45, p. 362.

2. Cited in: Ben Bradley, ‘Gandhi-Jinnah Discussions’, ibid., 21st October 1944, Vol. 24, No. 43, p. 339.

3. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, ‘India Wins Freedom’, Orient Longman, New Delhi, 1972, pp. 157-8.

4. Ibid., pp. 164-169.

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