Published below are the transcripts of three discussions held by S.A. Dange with the Soviet leadership, along with ancillary documents, shortly before and after the transfer of power in India and Pakistan in 1947. They may be seen as the beginning of a series of contacts and exchanges between the leaderships of the CPI and the CPSU(b) which included the discussions of 1951 in which J.V. Stalin was a participant and which culminated in the formation of the programme and tactical line of the Communist Party of India of that year. The participation of A.A. Zhdanov and M.A. Suslov, both leading theorists of the period, in the second and third discussions with Dange indicates the importance which the CPSU(b) attached to these exchanges. The visit of S.A. Dange to the USSR was prompted by the need of the CPI to establish permanent contacts with the CPSU(b) and to receive fraternal assistance and advice on the policies and tactics of the Indian communist party. These concerns were voiced in the report submitted by Dange on 24th July 1947 to the Staff of the Department of Foreign Policy of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). In his exposition Dange noted the temporary narrowing of support for the CPI amongst its urban sympathisers who were unable to understand the logical basis for the policy of People's War but also its broadening amongst the working class and the peasantry. Dange argued that the new Congress and Muslim League governments in India and Pakistan enjoyed the support of the people despite the domination of the 'extreme right section' in their leaderships and their compromising tendencies in relation to British imperialism. He underlined the influx of landlords, industrialists, traders and moneylenders into the Congress Party on the eve of 'independence'. While the CPI had put forward its own people's democratic perspectives it had rendered support to the national construction programme of the new Indian government. S.A. Dange did not allude to the June 1947 evaluation of the CPI which regarded the Mountbatten plan as a certain step forward rather than as an imperialist manoeuvre which the party later in the year retracted as a right opportunist mistake. The CPI, in order to preserve the unity of the Indian people, did not support the formation of a separate Communist Party in Pakistan or, indeed, of separate mass organisations. Dange augments our knowledge of the reformist understanding of the CPGB on the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism in Britain and reveals from his own experiences how the British party — in line with the revisionist theses of Earl Browder — anticipated that the anti-fascist powers would provide a just and democratic solution to the colonial question so that it was not necessary to intensify the national liberation movements in the colonial countries. We are also provided with new insights into the organisational problems of the Communist Party of Burma.
The second discussion of 16th August 1947 touched upon a wide range of questions: the character of the new bourgeois and landlord states of India and Pakistan which were compromising with British imperialism, the characterisation of the Congress Party and the Muslim League and their leaders, the propagation of communalism by imperialism, the implications of the establishment of the new state of Pakistan, the evolution of the CPI policy on Pakistan, the position of the anti-feudal struggles, the position of the 'untouchables' in the trade unions and the agrarian struggles etc. Particularly valuable are the numerous probings made by Zhdanov on the Indian socio-economic situation, the different levels of industrial development in the subcontinent, the position of the agrarian struggles, the importance of the remnants of the caste system, the role of the 'untouchables' in the democratic organisations, the attitude of the Hindu and Muslim masses to the division of India.
This free and frank discussion sheds a flood of light on the thinking of the CPI and the standpoint and concerns of the CPSU(b) on the central questions of the Indian revolution in the period of the transfer of power — a period which is sparsely covered in the existing documentary collections of the CPI. At the close of the discussion Zhdanov informed Dange that the evaluation of the line of the CPI that he demanded could only be made after informing Stalin and holding consultations with the Central Committee of the Soviet party. In the third and final discussion of 6th September 1947 Zhdanov informed Dange that this process had been completed. He also cautioned Dange that the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) was making its suggestions with regard to the policies of the CPI and that these were not to be understood as directives. These remarks confirm the practising of democratic norms by the CPSU(b) with the fraternal parties in the period of Lenin and Stalin.
First, Zhdanov recommended on behalf of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) that as two states, India and Pakistan, had come into existence it was essential to have separate Communist Parties and Trade Unions so that no party was deprived of the right and possibility to influence the affairs of state. Second, it was suggested that the Communist Party of India reorganise itself and form a Party of Labour. Similar advice had been tendered by Joseph Stalin to Enver Hoxha in July 1947 (E. Hoxha, 'With Stalin, Memoirs', Tirana, 1979, p. 62) with regard to the Communist Party of Albania. A number of the Communist Parties in the people's democratic states had similarly re-established themselves. Stalin and Zhdanov opined that in those countries where the peasantry were a major force they were fearful of the communists as they imagined that they would be divested of their lands, and so preferred to be organised in other parties. The party could revert to its communist name once the peasantry had acquired confidence in the Party of Labour, when it had linked itself indissolubly with the party and the working class, and the movement had shifted to a higher stage. This recommendation may have come as a bolt from the blue for Dange as the class composition of the CPI and the social structure of India and Pakistan had not been the subject of detailed discussion in his exchange with Zhdanov. The final suggestion made by Zhdanov was that the CPI needed to pay serious attention to the elimination of the remnants of the caste system as these distinctions obstructed the working people from recognising the distinctions of class.
This suggestion retains its force today. Retarded industrial development has ensured that only the pre-conditions exist for industrialisation in contemporary India rather than the essential characteristic of industrialisation, the production of machinery by machinery, as a result of which only a small percentage of the population is engaged in the industrial sector. In the absence of a democratic solution to the agrarian question the fitful attempts to follow the path of agrarian capitalism have formed only a semi-feudal capitalism which maximises the retention of the pre-capitalist tribal, caste and feudal forms of labour.
The survivals of the caste system remain as a challenge to the communist movement today.
Vijay Singh
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