the communists and 1942

Social Scientist

The Communists and 1942Author(s): Sumit SarkarSource: Social Scientist, Vol. 12, No. 9 (Sep., 1984), pp. 45-53Published by: Social ScientistStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3516831 .

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SUMIT SARKAR

The Communists and 1942

ARUN SHOURIE'S four articles in the Illustrated Weekly of India (N4arch 18) 25, April 1, 8, 1984) on the "great betrayal" by lndian Comtnunists in 1942 represent an unusual combination of archival research (more than 80() documents hasTe been used, we are told) with tlp-to-date techniqzles of flamboyant 'investigative journalism'; flaring headlines, photograph.s, photostats andl all. The unwary reader might be tempted to confuse this heady mixture with authentic and original historical research, presenting at last "what actually happened in 1942". But going through and quoting from a set of documents, however exci- ting or scandalous, is only a preliminary step in the craft of the historian. A piece of historical reconstruction has to be judged ultimately by the degrce and nature of tile grasp it reveals over the total historical persk pective relevant to the events being examined, the setting against which the motivations and relative significance of particular docutnents are being necssarily evaluated.

The extent c)f Arun Shourie's cotrsmand over history becomes apparent right from the beginning in the paragraphs on the international situation in the 1930s. Stalin and the Communists, we are told, were "arnong the factors that helped Hitler the most to acquire absolute power", thoughHitler "eventually turned on the German communists" (rny italics) . What is never mentioned is that the Red scare was absolutely central to the strategy Of Mussolini and Hitler throtlghout, with Ccom- munosts branded as anti-national agents of Moscow in a manner which Shourie in his present mood might find pleasantly familiar. The admitte sectarian mistakes of Stalin and the Comintern during 1929-1933 are conflated together with the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 to produce a picture of the i930s zvith no room at all for anti-fascist popular fronts and Litvinov's strivings for collective security. Very remarkably, the Western appeasement of Hitler is not mentioned even once. The British aIld French governments are described with some affection as "indecisive and incompetent and also weighed down by scruples of a sort"-they were awl legedly concerned with protecting the small nations

*Professor of History, T)elhi University, and Senior Research Fellow, Ne}:ru Memorial Museum and Library.



46 SOCIAL SCIENTIST

of eastern Europe from Stalin. Shourie prefers to remain absolutely silent about what these same governments had been doing for years about other nations, big or small, facing fascist attack: Abyssinia and China, Spain and sXustria and (>zechoslovakia. It does not matter to him that the Indian National Congress, and particularty Nehru, had repeatedly expressed solidarity with every one of these victims of aggression. Indian nationalist leaders evidently become heroes only when they are bashing the Communists and the Soviet Union, otherwise silence is golden.

In passing, Mao Zedong is quoted justifyiny the Nazi-Soviet pact, just in case those present-day Communists ho are critical of the Soviet Union but less so of China managed to slip out of Shourie's net. As compared to Shourie's remarkable defence of Chamberlain, the passage quoted from Mao unfortunately fits in rather better with standard historical interpretations of the 1930s (by AJP Taylor, for instancej: "The plan of Britain, the Unitecl States, and France was to egg Germany (on) to attack the Soviet tJnion-sitting on top of the mountain to watch the tigers fight . "

The essence of Shourie's method is clear from the opening paragraphs: sweeping generalisations about whole periods or movements, based on a few facts, rnore half-truths, and a series of omissions and interesting silences. Let us now turn to his central thesis: the Communist behaviour in 1942 *vas part of a "secret deal" with the British5 a "great betrayal" flowing inevitably from their subservietlce to Moscow, and that these are ,,rounds sufficient to condemn Indian Communists for all time as anti-national traitors who must ncver be trusted.

That therc: was much that was dubious and perhaps wrong-headed about the cotnrllunist line of 'People's War' (as well as in their near- support to Pakistan) would be accepted by many today even among the Party faithfuls, and we shall be coming to this problem a little later. But even assuming for the sake of argument that the 1942-1944 policy was as terrible as portrayed by Shourie, is it sufficient ground for generalising about the entire history of the Indian communist movement? Here the question of overall perspective is vital. In a national movement spanning senreral generatieens and a variety of social strata and political groups, differences over degrees of militancy or compromise are normal and indeed inevitable, and no group or tradition within the nlovement: can clail.n absolute consistency over time either. At practically any given moment between 1905 and 1947, it would be possible to find groups inelined to immediate struggle and others more prone to negotiation or compromise (i e, sell-out or betrayal if one likes to call il so), and the Shourie method of seleetive generalisation can therefore play havoc with our history, producing endless polemics but little real understand ing.

As an experimen t, let us tt y to apply the Shourie style of argument to the Gandhian leadership: the result would be a gross caricature, but



COMMUNISTS AND 1942

not very such more so perhaps than that presented about the Communist 47 movement.

Irl April lD42, P C Joshi promised to help the British recruitment drive. Gandhi had done the same a quarter-century earlier, going out to Gujarat sZillages as "recruiting sergeant" (as he himself described it),

jUSt three years after Jatin NIukherji and many Ghadr heroes had been shot down and at a time when a large number of patriots were jailed or interned under the Defence of Illdia regulations. The move was resented by the peasants of Ilheda, whom Gandhi had just led in a no-revenue satyagraha: "peasants who had met them (Gandhi and his companions) with gallands now refused them food.''1 Gandhi's total opposition to revolulionarwz terrorism is well-known, and his failure to insist upon a reprieve for Bhagat Singh before concluding the Delhi Pactwith Irwin in I\4arch 1931 even led to black flag demonstrations at the Karachi Congress. It was again largely at Gandhi's insistence that a move towards redefinition of the Congress creed in terms of complete independence was rejected at the Ahmedabad session cf Deccmber 1921, and the passage of the Purna Swaraj resolution was delayed by him for nearly two years during 1928-1929. Gandhi's habit of calling oS movements abruptly and unilaterally produced repeated doubts and controversies, nost notably in 1922 and 1931. Nehru recalls in his Autobiography that thc Bardoli resolution withdrawing Non-cooperation was deeply resented by the l)ulk of the Congress leaders and even more by younger militants while the Gandhi-Irwin pact which terminated the first Civil Disobe- dience movement led Jawaharlal to rnuse on the world ending "not with a bang but a whimper".

Turing to the period specifical]y discussed in the articles, Shourie states, rightly, that Gandhi and the High Command, between 1939 and 1941, took the stand that "while the Congress would continue to fight for Tndia's freedom it would do so non-violently in a way that would not impede Britain's war efforts". Not impeding British war eSorts evidently becomes unpatriotic collaboration only vvhen (>ommunists are doing it, {or Shourie passes this without criticism, and irl fact abuses the C:ommunists for attacking such moderation. The Communist about- turn in December 1941 was blatant enollgh, but was the somersault in the opposite direction by the Congress High Command in 1942 (along with Shourie's double-standards in 1984) very much less so ? There is ample evidance, ISnally, that the Congress leadership repeatedly dis- couraged rnass upsurges in the winter of 1945-46 around issues like the release of INA prisoners, preferring a path of cotnpromise and negotiation which ultimately led to a freedom truncated by partition and cotrsmunal holocaust. During the great R1N strike in Bombay in February 1946, for instance, the provincial bosses of the Congress and !\d[uslim League (S K Patil and Chundrigar) oSered "the help of volunteer.s to assist the police".2 There was remarkable anti-British wInity on the streets arnong FTindus and Muslims in Calelltta and Bombay



48 SOCIAL SCIENTIST

during these stormy lnontlls, in sharp contrast to what was to happen from August 1946 c)nwards. Gandhi however condemned such "a combination between Hindus and Muslims and others for the purpose of violent action as 'unholy' -provoking Aruna Asaf Ali, celebrated under- ground leader of 194S, into making the prophetic rejoinder that it svould be far easier to 'unite the Hindus and Muslimb at the barricade than on the constitutiorwal front'.'53 Shollrie had flayed the Conamunists, with some jllstiScation, for their briefflirtation with the Pakistan idea; it was not the Ctornrnunists, however, who accepted thc Mountbatten Plan despite the deep agony of the Mahatrtla.

With the single exception of the period 1942-1944, the Commu- lliSt record, so far as anti-imperialism is concerned, is actually more consistent than any other. Revolutionary terrorists apart, the Commu- nists were the first organised group in the country to demand complete independence as the basic national objective. Indian Commllnist policy was certainly marked at titnes by gross and counter productive sectarianism, most obviously during the Ctivil Disobedience movement. But, again with the exception of 1942, the occasional breaks with the nationalist mainstream came not frorn any softness towards the Britisl rule, but rather from a misguided militancy: Gandhi and Civil Dis- obedicnce were condemned (wrongly) for not being anti-British enough. Shourie condemns the Communists for emitting, obviously for tactical reasons, any reference to forcible overthrow of Brit;sh rule in the pro- gramme adopted at their first legal Congress in 1943 (in contrast to the Draft Platform of Action of 1934). If exclusion of such an item is to be termed unpatriotic, the Indian National Congress remained sc) throughout its history.

N'En S4Wourie's accouIlt makes it obvious (though by implication and forceci adln.s3ion, not emphasis) that 1942-1944 was the one period during the British rule when Communists were not being persecut;ed usually more intensively than any other nationalist group (terrorists apart). Despite their insignificant nurnbers, the Communists, from the vcry beginning, aroused a holy fear in official minds, reflected in the Kanpur and Meerut conspisacy cases, as well as in innumerable archival sSles with which Shourie rnust now be familiar. Shourze hirnself mentions (in passing) that in early 1942 the party organisation had been virtually smashed through repression intensified since the beginning of the war. rhe logic of a certain kind of journalism becomes blatant here. The ban on the CPI in 1934 (forsnally; in practice Communist groups had been more or less illegal throughout) has to be mentioned, as Shourie wants to stress the lifting of the ban in the eontext of Quit Tndia. But the 1934 decision is not highlighted or explained, nor is it put in the perspective of the more or less simultaneous withdrawal of repressive measures against most other sections of the national nasve ment. The Communists during 1934 1939 it needs to be reeallecl, remained illPga! at a time when the Congress was rapidly advarlcing



COMMUNISTS AND 1942

49 from jail towards ministries in most provinces. And evetl thedocuments cited by Shourie repeatedly point to continuinl, British suspicion about (]ommunists even at the height of 'People's Atar': the Punjab government in 1944 going to the length of suggesting a barl on the CPI.

Perhaps the best testimoney to the patriotic b3na fides of the Communists is provided by the entry into its ranks of a very large number of nationalist militants, fnen and women whosc patriotism and sacrifice even Shourie would find difficult to question. Whatever be the the rights and wrongs of the charge of 'Moscow dietatin' (ofwhich more a little later), it remains a historical fact that Indian Communists sprang basically from within the national movement, whether revolutionary terrorist, Gandhian or socialist: M N Roy a,nd Ghadr veterans like Sohan Singh Bhakna, Ajc)y Ghosh (compatriot of Bhagat Singh who was himself clearly mc)ving towards atheism and A{arxism on the eve of his execution) and Inost of the veterans of the Chittagong Armoury Raid, EMS Namboodiripad, P Rarnamurti and P Sundarayya all prominent CoIlgress and CSP leadets in the 1930s. One could go on adding to the list, but let us confine ourselves to those most relevant to our present context, the leaders and activists of I942. Shourie's logic makes it incoinprehensible how it was that within a decade of Quit India, 1942 leaders of the stature of Aruna Asaf Ali, Nana Patil, Jharkhand Rai or Sarjoo Pandey could have become prominent members of the tCPl. Not unnaturally, silence is preferred heren once again.

It wc)uld be absurd, but perfectly logical, if one adopted the netheds of Shourie to denounce Gandhi and the Congress High Cornmand as anti-national traitors on the basis of the deliberately seIective sul vey made just now. The Shourie style of argament merely leads to endless and unnecessary recriminations, whereas what genuine historical renonstruclion demands is sober analysis arsd evaluation of specific controversial decisions and a.ttitudes-tZf 'People's War', certainly, but also of the Bardoli resollltion of 1922, the Gandhi-Irwin pact of 193 l, the performance of Congress provincial ministrics in 1937-1939, or Congress policies in 1945-1947.

What then, Enally, of the CPI in 1942 itself? The charge of secret collaboration througEl Joshi-Maxwell contacts, going beyond the public opposition to Quit India, is not new.4 The expelled leader Batliwala made it in 1945) and the Congress from 1946 onwards had made repeated electoral use of it-a more recent example, interestingly enough, would be Sanjay Gandhi during the last nsonths of the Emer- gency. The documents, along vith certain Peopless [Xar excerpts and cartoons, still do make unpleasant reading. But a few qualifications are in order.

As noted by Shourie himself, there is an evident gap between what appears at times as a near-servile tone struck in some of the secret correqpondence, and the public statelnents and aetual functioning of the Communists in 1942-1944-which included campaigning for the release of



so SOCIAL SClENTlST

Congress leaders and did not rule out opposition to many specific government policies even while pursuing a general line of 'Peoples War'. Shourie argues that the second was mere opportunistic eyewash, the first the real Communist line. Is it not possible or even likely that the reverse would be nearer the truth ? Practically every one of the letters contains pleas for the release of party comrades, and end to repression, and a few specific favours like additional newsprint for Party journals. 'Opportunistn', certainly, but not entirely unnatural for a party which had never enjoyed legality The tone .rf the British officials in the correspondence and marginal comments remains remarkably lukewarin and suspicious throughout. Shourie hinzself notes the co1ltinued hostility towards Cc)mmunists on the part of the lower-level lbureaucrats and the police, and Communist collaboration and the "secret pact" could not even save some Party comrades from the gallows (the Kayyur martyrs). Incidentally, it is very surpri.sing that Shourie has made no use at all of the TransJer of Power volumes edited by Mansergh, which contain numerous official documants full of deep suspicion regarding possible Communist ulterior motives in offering cooperation in the war effort. Archival doctlments no doubt lose glaxnour on being printed, but remain fir3t-hand sources nevertheless.

One has to note orlce again the doulJle standard of Shourie. Other Indian politicians were also hostile tO the August movement and were collaborating in various degrees with the British. Ironically enough, the lectures on which the articles are based were delivered in honour of M N Roy, consistent supporter of the British throughout the war, who received Rs 26,000 a month from them for his publications-facts bricfly mentioned by Shourie, but WithOllt any of the usual journalistic barrage. Rajagopalachari opposed Quit India and urged negotiations with Jinnah over Pakistan, without being branded a traitor then, later, cor by Shourie. Golwalkars disciplined and militant RSS cadres were nowhere to be seen in tile August rebellion, while Savarkar, on September 4, 1942 ordered Hirldu Mahasabha members of local bodies, legislatures and services to "stick to their posts and continue to perform their regular duties".5 Shourie has to rllention M S Aney, Hindu ASahasabha member of the Viceroy's Council) as the Communists tried to use him in their early contacts with ofEcials; he does not refer to Aney's party colleague Shyama Prasad Mllkherji, minister in the Bengal government while Midnapur was being suppressed. (:£)mpared to such high standards, the Gommunist level of collaboration, and even more, the benefits they obtained flom it, appear almost trivial and rather pathetic-and yet only Communists were the ' tl aitors ' of 1942.

\Xhere the Commnnists (and the Royists) diSered from the others was that they were acting on the liasis of certain principles) possibly mistaken, derived from an international perspective, right or wrong- and it is this that makes Shourie so fUt;OUS. In the concluding section of his onslaught, Shourie attempts two major generalisations: Communists



COMMUNISTS AND 1942 51

"recognized only one tatherland" and showed "craven subservience to a second-rate (sic) foreign power", and "this genetic deformity con- tinues to influence the behaviour of the Communnists till this day"- they must r.ever be trusted or allied with (a point underlined by Minoo Masani with his warning to Jallata and PUCL). Shourie undoubtedly is Oll relatively firrn ground when he argues that the equation of prole- tarian internationalism with unquestioning adherence to all the twists and turns of Soviet (and later, for manv, Chinese) state policy caused a lot of harm. T-le quotes from arl interesting Party document from October 19+1: "We, in India, to reach the sanle objective have to adopt a diSerent tactical line"-and it does seem a pity that sllch gropings among some Indian Communists towards an alternative conception of anti-fascist struggle which allowed greater scope for the specifics of a colonial situation were cut short in December 1941. But what is remarkable otlce again, is the habit Shourie has of jumping from partially valid premise to illicit conclusions.

In the first place, the repeated warnint, about permanent Com- munist"genetic deformity" sound extremely odd at a time when virtually every section of the now-splintered Indian Communist movement is clearly rnoving away from subservience to NIoscow or Peking. Today, the CPr, tlle CPI (M), and A4L groups are all hostile to Indira Gandhi, despite her excellent Soviet connections and tolerably good relations with China. A 'no truck with Communists' line can only splinter the democratic opposition, and one is tempted to ask: who is Shourie really helping through his vitriolic attack?

A seoond logical leap is the implicit conflation of dependence on Soviet guidance with interest in and warm admiration for the Soviet experiment, which Communists in the 1930s and 1940s shared with a very wide section of the national movement and patriotic intellectuals. Nehrn and Rabindranath Tagore possibly did as much or more to popularise the Soviet model a3 the obscure and persecuted Coulmunist groups. Hindsight about the mistakes and crimes of the Stalin era might make such admiration appear starry-eyed and partially misplaced today, but can we really deny its basically positive role in the Indian ceentext in the late 1930s ? Interest in the Soviet experiment led to a novel appreciation of the need to integrate the struggle for political freedom with the socio-economic aspirations of peasanls and workers, as well as with the world-wide struggle against imperialisrn and its most rabid rnanifestation, Iascism. S Gopal's standard biography has emphasised the crucial role of the 1927 Soviet visit in the evolution of Jawaharlal Nehru.

Returning to 1942, what Shourie's reconstruction misses out cc)mpletely is ttle real agony, for anyone with an avfareness of international developments, of a time wllen a Hitlerite victory seemed not only possible but even likely. Frhe world would have been a very diCerent place if Stalingrad ha(l been lost and not won. The People's



52 SOCIAL SCIENT1ST

War cartoon showillg.SuShas Bose as a rnidget holding on to Japan was in atrocious taste, lbut one has to seriously ask what India's position could conceivably have been in a world rlllcd by Hitler, Mussolini, anel Tojo, with Jews, Communists, and liberals wiped out everywhere in a Nazi 'final solution'. Nehru, it needs to be recalled, shared for a long time much of the Communist agony. He tried desperately for an agreement with Cripps, and came perilously close to 'People's 'ar' in his talk of the need for guerrilla resistance to Japanese invaJion till the very eve of August 9. Even the Quit India resolution reaflirmed the general Congress support to the Allies, and partieularly for the Soviet and Cllinese resistanee. The epie popular heroistn of August 19420is undeniable, ad the Communist slandering of it diffieult to pardon. Yet a question of timing remains: was it entirely wise to emloark on an all-out eonfrontation at a moment when India was full of Allied troops and when the British would have a unique chanee of justifying the most brutal of repressive measures before world de1nocratie opinion by the argument of the neeessities of anti-faseist struggle?

It was, in a ver) real sense, a ehoiee of evils for maxsy: supporting a hated foreign government5 or going in for aetions whieh eould quite possibly heIp towards a faseist vietory. As for the Communist tolte face of December 1941, Shouric trivialises the issues unpardonably when he reduces a six-month inner-Party debate to a matter of waiting for a delayed letter froln Harry Pollit. A student militant of those days, now a distinguished NIarxist historian, once recalled to me that he had wept the whole night when the Party line changed.

The Illustrated Weekly articles thus present a 1942 robbed of all its most signiScant nuances, conflicts and anguish. The tragedy, so far as divisions among Indians were concerned, lay precisely in the fact that irrespective of contemporary labels, it was slot a clear-cut col;lfronta- tion between patriots and traitors, or of anti-fascist warriors and fifth columnists. There were patriots on both sides, sharing a common hatred of foreign rule and often si1nilar social aspirations, comrades-in-arms only yesterday (and often once again in the near future), but bitterly divided for the moment over a question of timing and immediate strategv.

It seems appropriate to end with the avords of a young Communist poet of Bengal, written for his comrades but not inapplicable also to those on the otI1er side of the barricades of 1942.

The fog is lifting, will lift today or tonzarrow. Tlle filth of slander shall be washed away... History, we know, is our silent witness today: We too have sought to free our rnotherland.

(Sukanta Bhattacharji)

Arun Sholllie's articles seek to perpetuate the fog and the filth.



COMMUNISTS AND 1942 53

I n Hardiman, Pca.santXationalists of Gujarat, Delhi, 1981, p 110. 2 Bombay (S,overnor Colville to Viceroy Wavell, February 27, 1946, in Mansergh(ed),

Transfer of Power, Vol VI, pp 1081-1082. 3 Durga Das (ed), Sardar's Lcttcrs, A11medabad, 1977, Vol IV, pp 162 163. 4 Minoo Masani, in a favourable comment on Shouric, calls it "old hat", Satesman,

April 8-9, 1984. 5 Indian Annual Rc;istcr, Chronicle of Events, 1942.



the communists and 1942

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