write an essay on communist party of india

Elaborate upon the Communist Party of India’s perspective on Independence.(600 words)

The communist party of india (cpi) played a distinctive and influential role in the struggle for indian independence..

While it was aligned with the overarching objective of ending British colonial rule, the CPI’s perspective on independence differed significantly from the mainstream Indian nationalist movements, particularly the Indian National Congress and other parties. The CPI’s approach can be elucidated in several key aspects:

1. Class Struggle Over Nationalism:

The CPI was founded in 1920 with a clear Marxist ideology that viewed the world through the lens of class struggle. At its core, the party believed that the root cause of India’s suffering lay not only in British colonialism but also in the deep-seated exploitation of the Indian masses by the indigenous bourgeoisie and landlords. From this perspective, the struggle for independence was not merely about ending British rule; it was about initiating a revolutionary transformation of Indian society. The CPI contended that national liberation would only be meaningful if it led to the complete restructuring of Indian society, which included land reforms, worker empowerment, and the equitable distribution of wealth.

2. Radical Economic Reforms:

One of the defining features of the CPI’s perspective on independence was its emphasis on radical economic reforms. The party called for the redistribution of land and wealth, the nationalization of key industries, and the elimination of the zamindari system. These ideas distinguished the CPI from the Congress and other mainstream parties that were more inclined towards a mixed economy with a significant role for private enterprise. The CPI’s vision for a post-independence India involved a planned economy with a focus on the welfare of the masses.

3. Internationalism:

The CPI was profoundly influenced by internationalism. It looked to the Soviet Union and the global communist movement for inspiration and support. During the tumultuous period of World War II, the CPI initially opposed Indian involvement in the war, arguing that it was an imperialist conflict. However, its stance shifted when the Soviet Union joined the Allied forces. This shift was in part due to the CPI’s realignment with the broader anti-fascist and anti-imperialist movements, and it sought to align its goals with the larger global context.

4. Role in the Quit India Movement

: The CPI actively participated in the Quit India Movement of 1942. While the party had been banned by the British government, its members played a crucial role in the mass protests and contributed to the broader anti-colonial resistance. This participation was notable because it marked a moment of convergence with other nationalist movements, such as the Indian National Congress, as both sought the immediate end of British rule. The party’s involvement in the Quit India Movement demonstrated its commitment to the cause of independence and its willingness to work with other political groups when necessary.

5. Post-Independence Role:

After India gained independence in 1947, the CPI faced a complex political landscape. It participated in the first general elections of independent India and won several seats, including in the state legislatures of Kerala and West Bengal. However, it remained a relatively small player in the Indian political landscape, with its influence limited primarily to these two states. Over the years, the CPI and its splinter groups continued to advocate for socialist and communist ideals, sometimes participating in coalition governments at the state level.

In conclusion, the Communist Party of India’s perspective on independence was marked by its strong emphasis on class struggle and the necessity of profound economic reforms alongside the broader anti-colonial struggle. While it shared the ultimate goal of ending British rule with other nationalist movements, its distinct vision of a post-independence India as a socialist state with radical socio-economic changes set it apart. The CPI’s role in the broader narrative of Indian independence remains significant, as it provided an alternative perspective that influenced both the independence movement and the subsequent political landscape in India. The CPI’s commitment to the cause of independence, combined with its unique ideological perspective, leaves an indelible mark on the historical tapestry of India’s struggle for self-rule.

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One Hundred Years of the Communist Movement in India

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Dossier nº32

On 17 October 2020, the Indian communist movement looks back on a century of courageous resistance against tyranny, oppression, and exploitation. This was a century of sacrifices by hundreds of thousands of revolutionaries of the Indian communist movement who pledged their lives to the dream of an egalitarian and a truly democratic society. Thousands of cadre were martyred on this path and many more continue to carry forward the dream and the fight in the face of state repression, violence, and infinite efforts at subversion.

Through their self-effacing work, the communists have galvanised hundreds of millions of people into action in order to bring about far-reaching changes in society. They fought sectarian religious strife and caste discrimination, mobilised workers and peasants to fight to advance their rights, and worked to change the consciousness of the people in a progressive direction in order to make society more liveable for all marginalised, exploited, and oppressed sections of people. The communist movement is aware that the exploitation of human beings by human beings can end only with the establishment of a socialist society and its transition towards communism; the fight for this goal continues through the difficult times that humanity is faced with today.

Indian communists are patriotic; their practice is deeply rooted in Indian socio-economic and cultural realities. Yet they see their revolutionary activity in India as an intrinsic part of the international struggle for human liberation and emancipation. They have always been acutely aware that their dream of a communist future is a dream that they share with comrades across the world. This means that the Indian communist movement has always been strongly internationalist. In other words, it has stood for the rights of the oppressed people and nations across the world, even when such a stance has not been popular within the country.

Moreover, the Indian communist movement itself was strongly inspired by the October Revolution (1917) – a glorious episode in history that bore fruits not just in the struggle against the Tsarist Empire, but across all oppressed nations. A set of Indian revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow British colonial rule in India reached Tashkent, in what was then the Soviet Union, from various parts of the world. Assisted by MN Roy – an Indian revolutionary who was a founder of the Mexican Communist Party and who was a member of the executive committee of the Communist International – they formed the Communist Party of India on 17 October 1920.

Apart from the émigré Communist Party of India, scattered communist groups were emerging in different parts of India during the early 1920s, led by leaders such as SA Dange in Bombay, Muzaffar Ahmad in Calcutta, M Singaravelu Chettiar in Madras, and Ghulam Husain in Lahore. The activities of the émigré Communist Party of India served to provide theoretical and practical education in Marxism-Leninism to these groups.

The communists who were in touch with MN Roy held an open conference of Indian communists in the city of Kanpur in the present-day state of Uttar Pradesh from 25 to 28 December 1925 and decided to form a Communist Party of India with headquarters in Bombay. This was the first effort on Indian soil to form an all-India communist party and is considered by a section of Indian communists to mark the beginning of the Indian communist movement.

MN Roy (centre, black tie and jacket) with Vladimir Lenin (tenth from the left), Maxim Gorky (behind Lenin), and other delegates to the Second Congress of the Communist International at the Uritsky Palace in Petrograd. 1920. Magazine Krasnay Panorama (Red Panorama) / Wikipedia.

The Early Years

The Indian communists wanted to achieve full independence from British colonial rule and to build a society where working people could be the masters of their own destiny. For them, the example of the Soviet Union was living proof that this was an eminently possible objective. They undertook intense organisational work, which strengthened the trade union movement by the late 1920s in the urban centres. The years 1928 and 1929 saw a wave of working-class strikes in the country, including protracted struggles waged by the textile mill workers of Bombay and the railway workers of Bengal.

With the emergence of communists in the anti-colonial struggle, the Indian National Congress, which was leading the Indian national movement, was forced to adopt a stronger stance against British rule – a departure from the mild resistance it had put up until then. In the Ahmedabad session of the Indian National Congress in 1921, two communists – Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Swami Kumaranand – moved a resolution demanding complete independence from British rule. While the Congress rejected the resolution, that it was raised at the meeting and taken seriously shows that communist ideas had begun to make an impact on the anti-imperialist struggle.

Alarmed by the spread of communist ideas in India and worried about the implication to its empire, the British launched a series of conspiracy cases against the early communists. Between 1921 and 1933, many important communist leaders of that time were arrested and incarcerated. The most prominent of these cases was the Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929-1933). Though the case was launched to suppress the communist movement, it provided an excellent platform for the communists to propagate Marxist ideology. They made use of the opportunity by spiritedly explaining and defending Marxism in the court room, helped along by the great interest that these proceedings generated among the Indian public. Twenty-seven of the thirty-three accused were convicted and sentenced to transportation or imprisonment. In 1934, the British government outlawed the Communist Party and all of its affiliated organisations, making its membership a criminal offence. The communists continued their revolutionary activity clandestinely and continued to grow the Party’s reach and membership.

The success of the Soviet Union – even in the midst of the Great Depression, which ravaged the capitalist world – attracted numerous people across the world to socialism and to Marxism. India was no exception. Though the Communist Party was banned, communists continued to work in various organisations that were part of the Indian national movement, including the Indian National Congress. They carried out their party activities clandestinely and recruited many young people into the Communist Party. Many of those recruited into the communist movement in this fashion later became prominent leaders. Using these various fora, one of which was the Congress Socialist Party or CSP (a left bloc within the Indian National Congress), communists plunged headlong into mobilising vast sections of people into various mass and class organisations of peasants, workers, students, and writers.

Portrait taken outside the jail in Meerut of twenty-five of those who were imprisoned as part of the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Back row (left to right): KN Sehgal, SS Josh, HL Hutchinson, Shaukat Usmani, BF Bradley, A Prasad, P Spratt, G Adhikari. Middle Row: RR Mitra, Gopen Chakravarti, Kishori Lal Ghosh, LR Kadam, DR Thengdi, Goura Shanker, S Bannerjee, KN Joglekar, PC Joshi, Muzaffar Ahmad. Front row: MG Desai, D Goswami, RS Nimbkar, SS Mirajkar, SA Dange, SV Ghate, Gopal Basak.  The Hindu Archives.

The Growth of Mass and Class Organisations

As they matured in the movement, the communists recognised the importance of the alliance of the working class and peasantry in order to achieve complete independence. They understood the role that revolutionary workers can play in paralysing the machinery of the colonial administration, as well as transport and communication. As a result of communist activity, a wave of working-class strikes involving 606,000 workers took place across India in 1937.

Apart from workers, the communists identified the role that students, young people, and intellectuals could play in the national movement and sought to mobilise them behind the revolutionary cause.

Most importantly, the communists came to realise that in India, where more than 80% of the population lived in agrarian societies, national liberation would truly be possible only when the peasantry was mobilised on a large scale. Thus, the communist movement – which in its early years had mainly mobilised in urban centres – started growing in rural India as well.

With this understanding, the communists formed a number of mass organisations in 1936: the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS or All India Peasant Union), the All India Students’ Federation, and the Progressive Writers’ Association, as well as the Indian People’s Theatre Association in 1943. The first organisation of agricultural workers was also started by the communists. These mass organisations helped channel the quest of various sections of people seeking justice and rights towards a revolutionary consciousness.

As the communist movement entered rural India, it had to grapple with the entrenched structure of Indian feudalism – in particular with the amalgam of caste and class. Rural India was rife with the exploitation of peasants by the landlord class, moneylenders, and government officials. After the extraction of rent and debt by moneylenders, the peasant who grew the food hardly had anything left with which to feed his family. Pushed into a cycle of debt, inevitably a large section of the peasantry lost their lands, becoming tenants. Even worse was the situation of the landless workers, mainly belonging to untouchable castes, who were forced – through the coercion of physical force and societal customs – to provide free labour and to lead a socially sanctioned subhuman existence. The first among the many issues that communists took up in the villages was that of untouchability, which they connected with other issues such as low wages and conditions of forced labour.

Under the leadership of communists, the peasant movement gathered strength. The membership of the communist-led All India Kisan Sabha rose from 600,000 in May 1938 to 800,000 in April 1939. The peasant movement had a range of demands, which included abolishing landlordism and granting land ownership to cultivating peasants, ending forced labour and illegal exactions from tenant farmers by landlords, redistributing land to landless peasants, radically changing the land tax system, and better prices for crops.

While the communists mobilised the peasantry, the leadership of the Congress was openly aligned with the landlords and rulers in most places. The landlord class, along with Indian industrialists, were two pillars of support for the Congress. As a result, tensions rose between the communists and the right-wing sections of the Congress. The provincial governments led by the Congress were openly supportive of landlords and capitalists. Under pressure from the right-wing of the Congress, the CSP leadership expelled the communists. Following this, as EMS Namboodiripad, a key communist thinker and the first Chief Minister of the state of Kerala, recalls, ‘some of the state, district and local units of the CSP (including the entire membership of the CSP in Kerala) transformed themselves in their entirety from the CSP to the CPI. ’

Circa 1946: Godavari Parulekar, leader of the communist movement and the All India Kisan Sabha, addressing the Warli tribals of Thane in present-day Maharashtra. The Warli Revolt, led by the Kisan Sabha against oppression by landlords, was launched in 1945.  Margaret Bourke-White / The Hindu Archives.

The Second World War

When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Britain made India a participant in the war without consulting the representatives of the Indian people. The war caused the Indian people immense hardship as the price of essential goods rose sharply. The CPI staunchly opposed the war and organised mass protests. The British government began mass arrests; by May 1941, almost the entire CPI leadership was in jail.

But the character of the war changed after Nazi Germany launched its attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 from an inter-imperialist war to an all-people’s war against fascism. Proletarian internationalism now called upon the communist parties of all countries ‘to recognise that Hitler-fascism was the main enemy and that war waged by the USSR in alliance with Britain and America was a war which had to be won by all the people in the interests of defending the base of the world revolution’ (‘Resolution of the Polit Bureau of the CPI, despatched to all party members under the cover of party letter no. 56 dated 15 December 1941’).

The Congress was in negotiations with the British, who offered concessions – including the transfer of power – but only after the war. The negotiations broke down. The threat of a Japanese invasion loomed large as the Japanese forces advanced towards India and conquered the British-occupied territories of Singapore, Burma, Malaya, and the Andaman Islands. Nevertheless, the Congress, which had long campaigned against fascism, now launched the Quit India struggle, demanding that the colonial rulers must ‘quit India’, to pressure the British to quickly seek a compromise.

The communists opposed the Quit India Resolution of the All India Congress Committee. Faced with the global advance of fascist powers, they considered the call to be inappropriate for the time and were concerned that any weakening of the Allies would weaken the anti-fascist war effort. But the people were impatient to discard the yolk of colonialism, and the communists’ stance went against the popular feeling in the country at the time.

After India won independence, this stance was reviewed by the Communist Party, which concluded that it had been a serious mistake to go against the popular mood during the Quit India movement. While supporting the people’s war in the international sphere, the communists ought to have backed the Indian people’s just demand that the British colonialists ‘quit India’, the CPI concluded. Though the Congress issued the call for the British to ‘quit India’, most of its leaders were arrested immediately, and there was no direction or preparation from the part of the Congress leadership regarding how to carry forward the struggle when faced with large-scale repression. Despite their opposition to the call, the communists campaigned for the release of the jailed Congress leaders and demanded the establishment of a national unity government.

The ban of the Communist Party that had been imposed in 1934 was lifted in July 1942 and the communists were released from jail. Amidst the war, the horrific Bengal Famine of 1943-1944 caused the deaths of more than three million people in Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, and Assam. As economist Utsa Patnaik has pointed out, this was the result of a deliberate policy by the British to engineer profit-inflation ‘to raise resources from the Indian population by curtailing mass consumption in order to finance the Allies’ war in South Asia with Japan’. The communists actively took part in procuring and distributing essential commodities. The Party campaigned to build a movement against sections of merchants and landlords who hoarded food grains and other essential commodities, and to expose the anti-people character of the British rulers who were favouring such exploiters. Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti (‘Women’s Self Defence Committee’) was formed to save young women from human traffickers. Volunteers and medical teams were mobilised and sent for relief work. As a result of such tireless work – despite taking an unpopular stand on the war – the communists retained their independent strength, and mass support for the Party significantly increased.

 A page from Hungry Bengal (1945) by Chittaprosad. Copies of the book were seized and burnt by the British; this drawing is from the only surviving copy (reprinted in facsimile by DAG Modern, New Delhi, 2011). Chittaprosad’s drawings on the Bengal Famine were published in the Communist Party of India’s journal People’s War , helping to intensify popular anger against the British colonial regime.

The Post-War Upsurge

The post-war period saw an upsurge of mass struggles in India, many of which were led by the Communist Party. The strength that the Communist Party built in many regions during the war was now mobilised into mass actions.

A tide of working-class struggles rose up in the country in response to the retrenchment of five to seven million workers and the rising cost of living as well as in response to calls to strengthen the struggle for national independence. Among the massive working-class actions were strikes of post office, telegraph, and railway workers in 1946.

The mutiny of the ratings (junior officers) of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) in February 1946 was a landmark event. The naval ratings of Bombay who went on strike hoisted the red flag along with flags of other parties in the national movement. They took up arms and arrested their superior officers. The CPI fully supported the uprising and called for a general strike on 22 February 1946. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike, merchants closed their establishments, and students boycotted classes. Ultimately, the rebelling naval ratings surrendered on 23 February; however, the popular support that they garnered as a result of the communist-led campaign prevented their total annihilation.

Under the leadership of communists during this period, various parts of India saw massive mobilisations of peasants against the exploitation of landlords. Everywhere, the CPI demanded the abolition of various forms of economic and social oppression that have burdened the Indian villages for centuries. In some places, the mobilisations took the form of armed revolts led by the communists; there were massive mobilisations of peasant men and women that ran from Andhra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Maharashtra to Bengal, Assam, Tripura, and Kashmir. These mobilisations shook the ruling classes, which used extreme violence to suppress them. Ultimately, the peasants won many of the rights they had been fighting for, further strengthening the communist movement.

BT Ranadive, G Adhikari, and PC Joshi at a meeting of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India at the CPI headquarters in Bombay, 1945. Sunil Janah / The Hindu Archives.

The Tebhaga Movement

The Tebhaga movement was a massive peasant agitation in Bengal led by the Communist Party of India under the banner of the All India Kisan Sabha from 1946 to 1950. Sharecroppers had been allowed to keep only half of the produce from the land, with the rest going to the landowners. The Tebhaga movement demanded that the sharecroppers’ share be increased to two-thirds and that rents be reduced. Tebhaga literally means ‘three shares’, referring to the demand that the harvest be divided into three, with two out of the three shares going to the sharecroppers.  The movement took place at a time when communal [ 1 ] riots were occurring in Calcutta and in the district of Noakhali in the eastern part of Bengal. But the Tebhaga movement held up a glorious example of Hindu-Muslim unity based on class struggle, and the areas where the Kisan Sabha had influence remained free of communal riots. Hindus, Muslims, and tribal men and women were among the 73 people who were killed by the police during the struggle. In spite of brutal repression by the Muslim League ministry in Bengal, sharecroppers’ rights as demanded by the Tebhaga movement were established in many regions as a result of the struggle.

The Telangana Armed Struggle

The Telangana armed struggle was the biggest communist-led uprising that has taken place in India’s history. It took place from 1946 to 1951 in Telangana, a Telugu-speaking region which was then part of Hyderabad. During British colonial rule, India had hundreds of regions that were not under direct British rule, and where vassal states were allowed to continue in subsidiary alliance with the British. Hyderabad, ruled by the monarch with the title Nizam, was one such princely state. The Telangana struggle, led by the Communist Party, fought against the autocratic rule of the Nizam and against feudal exploitation by landlords. The struggle began with demands to abolish unjust taxes and vetti (forced labour) and provide title deeds for peasants who were cultivating lands. As the communist mobilisation grew stronger, the repression, violence and murders of communists by both the Razakars (the Nizam’s stormtroopers) and the police intensified, leading to armed resistance. At the peak of the armed struggle, the movement had complete control of 3,000 villages with a total population of over three million. As a result of this struggle, one million acres of land were distributed among the peasantry. Forced labour was abolished, the daily wage of the labourers was raised, and minimum wage was enforced. Education, health, and other services were organised in these villages by the people through self-organised committees.

The Congress government launched ‘police action’ on 13 September 1948 to suppress the communist-led struggle and to force the Nizam to join the Indian Union. The Nizam surrendered and the merger of the Hyderabad state into India was announced. But it was not enough to seize Hyderabad. The Indian army then marched into the villages to crush the peasant struggle. The landlords and the former regional administrators of the Nizam came back to the villages with the Indian Army and the police to restore the lands to the landlords, though the people resisted successfully in many places. As many as 4,000 communist and peasant militants were killed during the uprising and crackdown, and more than 10,000 people were thrown into detention camps and jails to be tortured for three to four years.

Mallu Swarajyam (left) and other members of an armed squad during the Telangana armed struggle (1946-1951). Sunil Janah / Prajasakti Publishing House.

The Punnapra-Vayalar Uprising

Punnapra and Vayalar, two villages in the Alappuzha district of Kerala, became the epicentres of a major struggle in 1946 against the autocratic rule of the king of Travancore and his prime minister. Travancore was a princely state like Hyderabad. Its rulers were trying to avoid joining independent India, instead wanting to adopt the ‘American model’ with an executive President rather than the parliamentary system that India adopted. The refusal of the Travancore rulers to concede to the demand for a government that would be accountable to an elected legislature and the move to impose the ‘American model’ spurred action by the working class led by the Communist Party. There were furious battles between the workers and the armed police. The police shot and killed several hundred workers from 24 October to 27 October. In less than a year, the prime minister had to leave Travancore in ignominy, and the immediate political demand of a democratic government became a reality with Travancore becoming a part of India. The struggle also set in motion the process for the formation of the united linguistic state of Kerala, by the merger of the Malayalam-speaking regions: the former princely states of Travancore and Cochin, and the Malabar district of the Madras presidency which was under direct British rule.

Differences in the Communist Movement

By the time of Indian independence on 15 August 1947, a number of questions had emerged before the communist movement. The colonial power that the communists had vehemently fought against was gone. Now Indians ruled the country. But what was the nature of the new state and who were the new rulers? Was the new Indian state a puppet state of a colonial power? Or was it an independent one, rooted in the support of Indian ruling classes? Who were the Indian ruling classes in this new context? What should be the nature of engagement of the communist parties with the new state and the ruling classes? Should the Communist Party engage and ally with the new rulers? Or should it wage an armed struggle for the overthrow of the state? Should it take the ‘Russian path’ or the ‘Chinese path’? Or was there an Indian way? These were the major questions that brewed within the communist movement and which subsequently led to the formation of different strands within the movement.

The differences intensified from the mid-1950s onwards. The immediate question was how to analyse the policies of the post-independence Indian government, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru of the Indian National Congress. The government was pursuing a relatively independent foreign policy; it had set in motion the process of economic planning; and the Congress even claimed that its aim was to establish a socialistic pattern of society. A section of the CPI felt that the communists should work with the left faction within the Congress, represented at the time by Jawaharlal Nehru, arguing that this faction represented the national bourgeoisie and that it stood in opposition to imperialism and feudalism.

These debates ultimately led to the Communist Party of India splitting into two in 1964. The faction that opposed the path of cooperating with the Congress formed the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M); the other faction retained the name Communist Party of India (CPI).

In 1969, convinced of the necessity of armed struggle, other communists formed the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) or CPI (ML).

The Left Governments

A crucial phase of the Indian communist movement began with the formation of communist-led governments at the state level.

India as a nation is constituted by multiple linguistic nationalities, and the Indian polity is by and large divided into linguistic states (for instance, West Bengal for the Bengali-speaking people, Tamil Nadu for the Tamil-speaking people). The communist movement played a crucial role in the language-based re-organisation of Indian states. Under the British and during the early years after independence, the division of states in India had no rational basis; states were divided on the basis of when and how the British had acquired those regions. This resulted in the imposition of non-local languages on native populations, impeding their participation in education, culture, and political life. The communists advocated for the formation of linguistic states based on the understanding that India is a multi-national state with many linguistic-cultural groups that make up different nationalities within the greater unity of the Indian nation. The Telangana uprising and the Punnapra-Vayalar revolt were among the struggles that galvanised the movements for the formation of linguistic states in India.

Due to the successful organisation of peasants by communists in some regions during and after Indian independence, the communists were strong enough to win elections and form governments in some of the linguistically-organised states. While it is clear that merely winning elections and governing is not the path to state power for the working class and the peasantry, leading governments at the state level enabled communists to showcase alternative policies and to provide relief to the people as well as to politically educate the people using the electoral process.

Members of the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti headed by communist leader SS Mirajkar (third from right, wearing dark glasses) who was then the Mayor of Bombay, demonstrating before the Parliament House in New Delhi, 1958. The Hindu Archives.

After setbacks in the attempt to form a communist-led government in the state of Andhra Pradesh, came a historic victory in Kerala. The state of Kerala was formed based on the common language of Malayalam in 1956. In 1957, the CPI won the first assembly elections and formed the government; EMS Namboodiripad took the oath as the first chief minister on 5 April 1957.

The communists came to power in Kerala on the back of mighty movements of the working class and the peasantry. The communists had led decades-long struggles of the peasantry against feudal landlordism under which peasants were subjected to rack rents, exorbitant exactions, evictions, and social indignities. Thus, land reforms were naturally high on the communist agenda. On the sixth day after coming to power in 1957, the CPI government issued an ordinance banning the eviction of tenant farmers by landlords. The ministry introduced land reforms legislation – the Kerala Agrarian Relations Bill. Its aims included providing permanent land rights to cultivating farmers, fixing fair rent, imposing an upper limit (or ‘ceiling’) on the size of land holdings, and giving tenants the right to purchase the land they were cultivating.

The communist ministry greatly expanded funding for education, and undertook reforms in the education sector to bring more democratic oversight and better working conditions, job security, and remuneration for teachers in private schools. Public healthcare was expanded, and a network of fair price shops was instituted to supply rice at affordable rates to the poor.

The land reform measures rattled the landlords, while the education reforms were detested by the leadership of the Catholic Church, which ran a large number of private schools. The Catholic Church and the dominant caste organisations which represent landed interests joined hands with the Congress party to oppose the communist ministry. They waged an agitation that they ironically named Vimochana Samaram (‘Liberation Struggle’). Making use of the opportunity, the Congress government at the centre dismissed the communist ministry in Kerala in 1959.

The Congress-led governments which came to power after the first communist ministry was dismissed diluted the land reform legislation. Nevertheless, further legislation and administrative actions by the Left government of 1967-69, as well as agitations led by the CPI(M) during the first half of the 1970s, led to the implementation of far-reaching land reforms that continued in the subsequent years. By 1993, 2.8 million tenant farmers had been conferred ownership rights or had their rights protected, and 600,000 hectares of land had accrued to them through these measures. More than 528,000 landless agricultural labourers had been provided with homestead land by 1996.

Land reforms in Kerala broke the back of dominant caste landlordism, raised the living standards of vast sections of the peasantry, and greatly increased the bargaining power of agricultural workers. Public investments in education and healthcare resulted in sharp improvements in literacy and in health indicators. These improvements were noted by academic studies from the mid-1970s onwards, which gave rise to the concept of the ‘Kerala model’. The basic ideas behind the Kerala model are: (1) it is not necessary for a country or region to wait until it becomes rich to bring about significant improvements in peoples’ material conditions of living, distributed across the entire population; and (2) public action by the people can drive such changes by forcing the governments to adopt redistributive measures and other programmes. Kerala is the Indian state with the highest literacy and the lowest infant mortality rate. It is also the state with the highest wage rates and the most wide-ranging social security measures for workers. The strength of the working-class movement has been the most crucial factor in making these possible.

EMS Namboodiripad (right) taking oath as the first Chief Minister of Kerala. Thiruvananthapuram, 5 April 1957.  Rajan Poduval / The Hindu Archives.

West Bengal

Bengal was one of the provinces that bore the brunt of British colonialism the most. Millions of Bengalis died in famines induced by colonialism, and Bengali farmers were some of the worst exploited in the country. Along with independence came the partition of the country into two: India and Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands were killed in communal riots in which violence raged based on divides of religious identity, historically fanned by British colonial rulers and other political organisations which sought to benefit from such divides. There were massive flows of refugees from Pakistan to India and vice-versa. Bengal was split into two, with east Bengal joining Pakistan. The communists in West Bengal were in the forefront fighting to stop atrocities and demanding housing and voting rights for refugees.

Communists carried out relief work during the Bengal Famine, and led a food movement in the 1950s during which the rural poor poured into the streets of Calcutta as part of ‘processions of the hungry’ ( Bhukha Michhil ). These contributed to poor people rallying behind the Communist Party in ever larger numbers.

The demand for land reform had become part of the demands of the Tebhaga movement in its later stages, and the 1950s saw the communist-led Kisan Sabha fighting against the eviction of sharecroppers from their land.

The rising strength of the communists was reflected in their electoral performances. The CPI(M) and CPI were part of short-lived United Front governments that served in office in 1967-1969 and in 1969-1970. In 1977, the Left Front, a coalition of CPI(M), CPI, and some other left parties, won the elections and formed the government, with Jyoti Basu as the chief minister. For 34 unbroken years, the communists led the state government of West Bengal.

The Left Front government carried forward the land reform measures initiated during the United Front governments’ tenure. It implemented Operation Barga, whereby the rights of sharecroppers ( bargadars ) were established; this ensured that a fair share of the harvest went to the sharecroppers who tilled the land. The landowner had to give the sharecropper a receipt for his share so that the receipt would be accepted by banks as proof of the tenant’s right to the land. Landholdings above a certain ceiling were declared surplus land and were redistributed.

The scale of the Left Front’s land reform programme in West Bengal can be seen by the fact that more than 50% of the total number of beneficiaries of land distribution programmes in India were from West Bengal alone. As of 2008, more than 2.9 million people had received agricultural land as part of land distribution programmes, more than 1.5 million sharecroppers had their lands recorded, and more than 550,000 people had received homestead land. Moreover, 55% of the recipients of agricultural land belonged to the Dalit (untouchable) castes and tribal communities who constitute the poorest sections in Indian society.

An important achievement of the communist-led governments in West Bengal was the revival of agriculture and hence of rural livelihoods in the state. Public investment in rural development, including irrigation, was expanded significantly, which enabled vast tracts of lands where only one crop had been grown per year to grow three crops per year instead. Land reforms encouraged productive investment by the peasants themselves. All these led to higher agricultural growth in West Bengal, and the state turned into the leading producer of rice in the country.

The process of democratic decentralisation that the Left Front governments set in motion brought about vast changes in rural West Bengal. Panchayats (local self-government institutions in the countryside) were set up and tasked with local decision-making, including the implementation of land reforms. A substantial share of the funds was devolved from the state government to the local self-government institutions. These reforms altered the balance of class forces in the villages in favour of the peasantry, substantially weakening the dominance of the big landowners, old landlords, and moneylenders. The proportion of Dalit and tribal panchayat representatives rose well above their share in the population.

Communist leader Jyoti Basu (sixth from the left in the front row; no glasses), who later became the Chief Minister of West Bengal, at a Bhukha Michhil (’procession of the hungry’), during the Food Movement of 1959. Ganashakti

In Tripura, the communist-led People’s Liberation Council ( Ganamukti Parishad ) was formed in 1948. It led struggles for the pressing issues of the tribal people, such as ending forced labour extracted from tribals, and usurious money-lending practices.

Following the partition of India in 1947, Tripura saw a wave of refugees immigrate from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Political disturbances and communal tensions in East Pakistan meant that this immigration continued into the 1950s and 1960s. The immigration had a severe impact on the tribal people and their land. Before the Left Front came to power, the state administration was apathetic to the condition of refugees. The political movement led by the Ganamukti Parishad and the communists in the 1950s and 1960s raised a series of demands: the protection of tribal lands, proper rehabilitation of refugees, and ending the eviction of tribal sharecroppers. The common struggles of the peasantry, both tribal and non-tribal, helped build unity among them.

The CPI(M)-led Left Front came to power in Tripura in 1978, with Nripen Chakraborty as chief minister. The Left Front government initiated a series of measures. Among these were the full implementation of land reforms, which focused on stopping the illegal transfer of tribal land, tribal land restoration, ensuring the rights of sharecroppers through an amendment to the land reform legislation in 1979, and redistributing land to the landless and the poor peasantry. The Autonomous District Council (ADC) legislation –which aimed at democratic decentralisation and providing regional autonomy to tribal people – was passed in 1979. The tribal language Kokborok was included as one of the official languages of the state.

Tripura witnessed a spate of secessionist insurgency-related violence starting in the early 1980s, which continued into the 1990s and mid-2000s. Physical insecurity caused by insurgency was a major challenge in the state until the mid-2000s. However, by the late-2000s, a multi-pronged approach by the Left Front government led to a sharp reduction in insurgency-related violence. This approach included mass political campaigns, counter-insurgency measures, and developmental measures in tribal areas.

The return of peace led to the revival of developmental initiatives, and Tripura saw significant achievements in literacy, schooling, health, per capita income, and democratic decentralisation. The protection of tribal people’s rights as well as unity along class lines between tribal and non-tribal people are the most significant highlights of Tripura’s communist and democratic movement.

The Left Front was in power in Tripura from 1978 to 1988, and again from 1993 to 2018. It lost the state elections in 2018. On the one hand, it was difficult to realise middle-class aspirations while facing investment boycotts and the pressure of neoliberal policies pushed by the central government. On the other hand, enormous amounts of money were pumped into Tripura by the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in order to spread misinformation through social media and other means. There were also violent attacks against the communists by the right-wing forces. Despite this electoral loss, the communists in Tripura remain strong and continue to fight repression unleashed by the BJP.

The Neoliberal Era

In 1991, India formally entered the neoliberal era, though the increasing power of India’s big capitalists and the country’s drift towards the neoliberal path was evident even before. Communists fought tooth and nail against the government’s efforts to privatise public industry, sell off public assets at low prices, and dilute labour rights. The collapse of the Soviet Union increased India’s shift towards a more aggressive form of capitalism. The rise of rabid right-wing political forces that seek to turn India into a Hindu state came hand in hand with neoliberalism. These forces are led by the fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), with numerous affiliate organisations, including its main political-electoral arm, the BJP.

At the national level, the communist parties and other left parties supported two short-lived coalition governments dominated by regional parties during the late 1990s. The peak of the communists’ influence in national politics in post-independence India came during 2004-2007. This was when the CPI(M), the CPI, and two other left parties, the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the All India Forward Bloc, supported a coalition government at the centre led by the Congress in order to keep the BJP out of power. This period saw several measures being enacted to provide succour to working people, including a rural employment guarantee scheme, the Right to Information Act (which improved transparency in governance), and the Forest Rights Act (which sought to protect the rights of tribes and other forest-dwellers to land and other resources). But the neoliberal thrust was not reversed, and ultimately the Left parties withdrew their support for the government in 2008 over India moving closer to US imperialism by signing a nuclear deal with the United States.

The most crucial turning point, however, came in 2007 in West Bengal. The Left Front had won a landslide victory in the state assembly elections in 2006. But with neoliberalism gradually seeping into the economy, states began losing their autonomy. There was competition between states, whereby the states that protected labour rights lost out on investment. While successive central governments regularly discriminated against West Bengal with regard to public investments, private and foreign investment went to states that gave substantial tax concessions and exempted industries from labour laws. West Bengal suffered the most in this race to the bottom. The growth spur provided by land reforms had slowed and alternatives were needed.

While the Left Front government tried to attract private investment, its efforts to acquire land from the peasantry for industrialisation became controversial. This snowballed into a crisis, as the controversy was utilised by the opposition to turn sections of the peasantry against the Left Front government. This resulted in the electoral defeat of the communists in the 2011 state assembly elections, after which a full-scale campaign of terror and violence was unleashed by the right-wing which continued in the subsequent years. More than 250 cadres and supporters of the communist parties and other left parties were killed; thousands of left supporters were driven out of their homes and villages.

However, communist-led struggles are continuing in Bengal and the rest of the country. Communists have redoubled their efforts to organise the increasingly unorganised and contractual urban work force. They have been particularly successful in organising women workers in key areas, such as government schemes and garment factories. The efforts to organise women domestic workers and agricultural workers are coming to fruition. The lack of a permanent common workplace and the high amount of home-based work pose an organising challenge for communists. Despite this, they have mobilised successful actions by workers in these situations.

Crucial to these struggles is the fight against the caste system and caste discrimination, the violence of which has only increased in the recent decades. Communists have fought caste oppression since the inception of their movement in India, and that fight continues. This is perhaps one of the most difficult challenges for the communist movement in India. Several new communist-led platforms have been set up from the late 1990s onwards to carry forward the work to annihilate the caste system. These platforms have been waging struggles to end abhorrent social practices, to win land rights for oppressed castes, and to ensure affirmative action in education and jobs for marginalised communities. In these struggles, Indian communists are trying to build the broadest possible front against caste oppression and caste violence, against violence against women, and for the emancipation of all oppressed groups.

Apart from significant women’s participation and leadership in workers’ and peasants’ struggles, the left-democratic women’s movement has played a significant role in several battles to enact laws that ensure citizen’s rights for women, such as women’s right to property and to divorce. Movements against gender-based violence have provided the backdrop to important amendments to anti-rape law. The fights against caste atrocities and honour killings (in which couples who choose to marry or have relationships defying caste norms are killed) have been notable in recent decades, in particular the struggles in Haryana waged by the communist-led All India Democratic Women’s Association.

The rise of Hindutva forces (Hindutva is right-wing political Hinduism) and the communal mobilisations that they lead have posed serious challenges to the emancipatory struggles led by the communists and have created schisms in the working-class movement. As the RSS, BJP, and other fascistic formations channelled the Hindu working class’s increasing disenchantment with neoliberal policies towards violent communal conflagrations, at times the communists have stood alone in their fight. While many political parties have cowered instead of confronting the frequently violent Hindutva fascists, the communists, in a broad coalition with other secular and progressive forces, have remained in the forefront defending the lives and rights of minorities in India.

In the neoliberal era, as US imperialism and the Indian bourgeoise have co-opted various political actors in the name of identity politics and single-issue based non-governmental organisations, Indian communists continue to be at the forefront of all just struggles. Increasing repression by the state may have cowed the dissent and voices of many, but not the communists. The communist movement recognises that the struggles ahead are difficult and have to be faced with spirit and hope.

Indian communism, 100 years old this year, is an unfinished project. It is fluid and mobile. It has been weakened by the rise of neoliberalism, but it recognises both its limitations and its opportunities. Only an honest look at the problems and the potential, absent rancour and bitterness, will show the way forward; this way forward is essential for the Indian people. Anything else will be barbaric.

Farmers in Sikar, Rajasthan conducting a mock funeral of the BJP government of the state of Rajasthan as part of a struggle led by the All India Kisan Sabha, 3 September 2017. All India Kisan Sabha

[1] : Communalism in South Asia refers to the idea that religious communities are political communities with secular interests that are opposed to each other. Political parties that subscribe to the worldview of communalism are called communal parties; terms like ‘communal violence’ and ‘communal riots’ are used to refer to clashes between people belonging to different religious communities in the context of an atmosphere charged with communalism.

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• The Country Where Liberty Is a Statue: The Second Newsletter (2021)
• We Are Living in an Emergency That Requires Urgent Action (a note written with Noam Chomsky): The First Newsletter (2021)
• The Future Will Only Contain What We Put into It Now: The Fifty-Third Newsletter (2020)
• All the Cannons Will Silently Rust: The Fifty-Second Newsletter (2020)
• The Revolutionaries, When They Rise, Care for Nothing but Love: Newsletter Fifty-One (2020)
• We Don’t Listen to the Dying Government of Donald Trump: The Fiftieth Newsletter (2020)
• We Are Grass. We Grow on Everything: The Forty-Ninth Newsletter (2020).
• We Suffer from an Incurable Disease Called Hope: The Forty-Eighth Newsletter (2020).
• It Is Freedom, Only Freedom Which Can Quench Our Thirst: The Forty-Seventh Newsletter (2020).
• Take a Deep Breath and Then Return to the Work of Building a New World: The Forty-Sixth Newsletter (2020).
• Wage War Against the Philosophy of War: The Forty-Fifth Newsletter (2020)
• We Are That History That Is Discredited, but Which Reappears When You Least Expect It: The Forty-Fourth Newsletter (2020)
• Paradise for Human Victims of Corporate Persons: The Forty-Third Newsletter (2020).
• Bullets Are Not the Seeds of Life: The Forty-Second Newsletter (2020)
• When Confronted by Us Hungry Bellies, the Imperialists Reach for Their Guns: The Forty-First Newsletter (2020).
• If I Didn’t Believe, I Wouldn’t Know How to Breathe: The Fortieth Newsletter (2020).
• Hunger Will Kill Us Before Coronavirus: The Thirty-Ninth Newsletter (2020).
• Wise People Know That Winning a War Is No Better Than Losing One: The Thirty-Eighth Newsletter (2020)
• Not Just an Orchard, Not Merely a Field, We Demand the Whole World: The Thirty-Seventh Newsletter (2020).
• Six Complexities of These Pandemic Times: The Thirty-Sixth Newsletter (2020).
• Only the Struggle of the People Will Free the Country: The Thirty-Fifth Newsletter (2020).
• Tell the People That the Struggle Must Go On: The Thirty-Fourth Newsletter (2020).
• It Is Late, but It Is Early Morning If We Insist a Little: The Thirty-Third Newsletter (2020)
• Do Not Reach for the Sky Just to Surrender: The Thirty-Second Newsletter (2020).
• Humanity Protests Against the Crimes of Death: The Thirty-First Newsletter (2020).
• Some Are in Super-Yachts and Others Are Clinging to Drifting Debris: The Thirtieth Newsletter (2020).
• Each Heartbeat Must Be Our Song; the Redness of Blood, Our Banner: The Twenty-Ninth Newsletter (2020).
• Here Not Death but the Future Is Frightening: The Twenty-Eighth Newsletter (2020).
• We Are in Palestine, Habibi, and Palestine Is Heaven: The Twenty-Seventh Newsletter (2020).
• The Dangerous Incompetence of Narendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro: The Twenty-Sixth Newsletter (2020).
• Ten-Point Agenda for the Global South After COVID-19: The Twenty-Fifth Newsletter (2020).
• Living Is No Laughing Matter: The Twenty-Fourth Newsletter (2020).
• Goliath Is Not Invincible: The Twenty-Third Newsletter (2020).
• If You Do Not Feel for Humanity, You Have Forgotten to Be Human: The Twenty-Second Newsletter (2020).
• The Bouficha Appeal Against the Preparations for War: The Twenty-First Newsletter (2020).
• Hunger Gnaws at the Edges of the World: The Twentieth Newsletter (2020).
• It Takes a Revolution to Make a Solution: The Nineteenth Newsletter (2020).
• Farewell to the God of Plague: The Eighteenth Newsletter (2020).
• Either Socialism Will Defeat the Louse or the Louse Will Defeat Socialism: The Seventeenth Newsletter (2020).
• Without a Country in Which to Live, a Field to Plant, a Love to Cherish or a Voice to Sing, One is Dead: The Sixteenth Newsletter (2020).
• Femicide Does Not Respect the Quarantine: The Fifteenth Newsletter (2020).
• These Migrant Workers Did Not Suddenly Fall From the Sky: The Fourteenth Newsletter (2020).
• We Won’t Go Back to Normal, Because Normal Was the Problem: The Thirteenth Newsletter (2020)
• The Mutilated World Is Moved by the Nurses and Doctors: The Twelfth Newsletter (2020).
• Letter From the Great Wound: The Eleventh Newsletter (2020).
• We Who Were Nothing and Have Become Everything Shall Construct a New and Better World: The Tenth Newsletter (2020).
• Show Me The Words That Will Reorder the World, Or Else Keep Silent: The Ninth Newsletter (2020).
• You Write Injustice on the Earth; We Will Write Revolution in the Skies: The Eighth Newsletter (2020).
• I Am Tired of Holding Other Worlds in My Fist: The Seventh Newsletter (2020).
• This Is the Time for Solidarity, Not Stigma: The Sixth Newsletter (2020).
• I Will Hold You in My Arms a Day After the War: The Fifth Newsletter (2020).
• When Will The Winter Come to An End?: The Fourth Newsletter (2020).
• Your Arrow Can Pierce the Sky, But Ours Has Gone into Orbit: The Third Newsletter (2020).
• What Passes for Reality Is Not Worth Respecting: The Second Newsletter (2020).
• How Many Millions Did You Make for the Pennies You Gave to the Coolies: The First Newsletter (2020)
• We Are the Ones Who Will Awaken the Dawn: The Fifty-Second Newsletter (2019).
• Those Who Search for Dawn Don’t Fear the Night; Nor the Hand that Holds the Dagger: The Fifty-First Newsletter (2019).
• If You Want Peace, You Get War; If You Want War, You Get Rich: The Fiftieth Newsletter (2019)
• The Oppressive State Is a Macho Rapist: The Forty-Ninth Newsletter (2019)
• We Demand Changes So We Can Have a Future: The Forty-Eighth Newsletter (2019)
• We Thought the House Was Empty: The Forty-Seventh Newsletter (2019)
• Bolivia Does Not Exist: The Forty-Sixth Newsletter (2019).
• Even a Clown Is Fascinated by Ideas: The Forty-Fifth Newsletter (2019).
• The Test of a Country Is Not the Number of Millionaires It Owns, but the Absence of Starvation Among Its Masses: The Forty-Fourth Newsletter (2019).
• There’s Something That’s Ours on Those Streets and We’re Going to Take It Back: The Forty-Third Newsletter (2019).
• The IMF Does Not Fight Financial Fires But Douses Them With Gasoline: The Forty-Second Newsletter (2019).
• If You Take Away Freedom, All Four Seasons and I Will Die: The Forty-First Newsletter (2019).
• At First, I thought I Was Fighting to Save Rubber Trees. Now I Realize I Am Fighting for Humanity: The Fortieth Newsletter (2019).
• iPhone Workers Today Are 25 Times More Exploited Than Textile Workers in 19th Century England: The Thirty-Ninth Newsletter (2019).
• My Voice Is the Gallows for All Tyrants: The Thirty-Eighth Newsletter (2019).
• Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life: The Thirty-Seventh Newsletter (2019).
• We Will See Roots Reaching Out for Each Other: The Thirty-Sixth Newsletter (2019)
• Hungering For The Language Of Class War: The Thirty-Fifth Newsletter (2019).
• Hybrid Wars Are Destroying Democracies: The Thirty-Fourth Newsletter (2019).
• History Often Proceeds by Jumps and Zig-Zags. The Thirty-Third Newsletter (2019).  
• There Must Be Bones Under The Paved Street: The Thirty-Second Newsletter (2019).
• Homage to OSPAAAL, the Organisation of Solidarity for the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America: Newsletter Thirty-One (2019).
• As the Ocean Waters Rise, So Do the Islands of Garbage: The Thirtieth Newsletter (2019).
• Revolutions Are Not the Train Ride, but the Human Race Grabbing for the Emergency Brake: The Twenty-Ninth Newsletter (2019).
• For the Reasons that Follow, that Country is Currently Not Likely to Be the United States: The Twenty-Eight Newsletter (2019).
• Religion is the Sigh of the Oppressed Creature: The Twenty-Seventh Newsletter (2019).  
• On Twitter, He Declares War on Iran: The Twenty-Sixth Newsletter (2019)
• Using Democratic Institutions to Smash Democratic Aspirations (the Brazil Model): The Twenty-Fifth Newsletter (2019)
• Be Careful of the Crooked Smile of Powerful People: The Twenty-Fourth Newsletter (2019).  
• Life and the People Have Never Let Us Down: The Twenty-Third Newsletter (2019).
• The World Divided by a Line is a Dead Body Cut in Two: The Twenty-Second Newsletter (2019).  
• The Dogs of War Are Unchained Once More. The Twenty-First Newsletter (2019).
• We Are the Shadow-Ghosts, Creeping Back as the Camp Fires Burn Low: The Twentieth Newsletter (2019). 
• We have Stolen His Land. Now We Must Steal His Limb: The Nineteenth Newsletter (2019).
• We Thought It Was Merely a Stone, But It Carried Away Our Wealth: The Eighteenth Newsletter (2019).
• If War Is an Industry, How Can There Be Peace in a Capitalist World? The Seventeenth Newsletter (2019).
• This is the Hour of Madness: The Sixteenth Newsletter (2019). 
• Radical Thinking Must Fall Like a Gentle Mist, Not a Heavy Downpour: The Fifteenth Newsletter (2019).
• You Can’t Have Democracy When You Put the Truth in Prison: The Fourteenth Newsletter (2019)
• Singing in a Cage is Possible and So is Happiness: The Thirteenth Newsletter (2019)
• The Sunrise Will Be the Same for Those Who Wake and Those Who Never Will: The Twelfth Newsletter (2019).
• Killing the Most Beautiful Things We Own: The Eleventh Newsletter (2019)
• We Refuse to Stop Dreaming: The Tenth Newsletter (2019).
• We are the Invisible. We are the Invincible. We will Overcome. The Ninth Newsletter (2019).
• The President of the United States Is More the President of My Country Than the President of My Country: The Eighth Newsletter (2019)
• Phrasebook of Imperialism: The Seventh Newsletter (2019)
• The Mines are Weeping: The Sixth Newsletter (2019)
• Twelve Step Method to Conduct Regime Change: The Fifth Newsletter (2019)
• What The Mountain Taught the Mouse. The Fourth Newsletter (2019).
• My Hopes Lie Shattered. I Need Your Support: The Third Newsletter (2019)
• Struggles That Make the Land Proud: The Second Newsletter (2019)
• We are sorry for the inconvenience, but this is a Revolution: The First Newsletter (2019)
• The Butcher Washes His Hands Before Weighing the Meat: The Forty-Fourth Newsletter (2018).
• We Want Cash While Waiting for Communism: The Forty-Third Newsletter (2018)
• We Have No Choice But To Live Like Human Beings: The Forty-Second Newsletter (2018).
• This Economic Policy Has Been a Disaster, a Calamity for the Country’s Public Life: The Forty-first Newsletter (2018).
• Promote The Health of All The People of the World: The Fortieth Newsletter (2018)
• If the Field Cannot Feed the Farmer, then Burn the Field: The Thirty-Ninth Newsletter (2018).
• Living Our Lives Inside a Tragedy the Size of the Planet: The Thirty-Eighth Newsletter (2018)
• You Only Run For the Border When You See the Whole City Running As Well: The Thirty-Seventh Newsletter (2018).
• With Samir Amin By Our Side: The Thirty- Sixth Newsletter (2018)
• Experience is the Comb You Get When You Are Bald: The Thirty-Fifth Newsletter (2018)
• The Monstrous Anger of the Guns: The Thirty-Fourth Newsletter (2018).
• Tomorrow Will Be Too Late To Do What We Should Have Done A Long Time Ago: The Thirty-Third Newsletter (2018)
• This Village Is Too Big For Us: The Thirty-Second Newsletter (2018)
• Solidarity is More Than a Slogan: The Thirty-First Newsletter (2018)
• If You Think Education Is Expensive, Try Ignorance: The Thirtieth Newsletter (2018).
• There is No Refugee Crisis. There is Only a Crisis of Humanity: The Twenty-Ninth Newsletter (2018).
• If You Care Nothing Of Starvation, You Are Not a Socialist: The Twenty-Eighth Newsletter (2018)
• The Day of the Disappeared: The Twenty-Seventh Newsletter (2018)
• A World So Changed: The Twenty-Sixth Newsletter (2018)
• Let Us Be Midwives: The Twenty-Fifth Newsletter (2018)
• The Twenty-fourth Newsletter (2018): We Are The Mosquitos
• Twenty-Third Newsletter (2018): My Land Is Where I Lay My Feet
• The Twenty-Second Newsletter (2018): Message in a Bottle
• The Twenty-first Newsletter (2018): Where Do You Get Your News?
• The Twentieth Newsletter (2018): Assassinations.
• The Nineteenth Newsletter (2018): Right to a House, Right to a Life
• The Eighteenth Newsletter (2018): Refugees and Strongmen
• The Seventeenth Newsletter (2018): American Power and the Time of the Soft Coup
• The Sixteenth Newsletter (2018): Lives Taken, Lives Lived
• The Fifteenth Newsletter (2018): Trump World
• The Fourteenth Newsletter (2018): Imperialism Has Had a Tough Week.
• The Thirteenth Newsletter (2018): Venezuela
• The Twelfth Newsletter (2018): Guns and Butter
• The Eleventh Newsletter (2018): Opening The Doors of Hell
• The Tenth Newsletter (2018): Marx and His Old Mole
• The Ninth Newsletter (2018): Tender and Radiant World of Sadness and Struggle
• The Eighth Newsletter (2018): Blindness In Our Times
• The Seventh Newsletter: Manual of Anti-Democracy
• The Sixth Newsletter (2018): War and Socialism
• The Fifth Newsletter (2018): Democracy and Tariffs
• The Fourth Newsletter (2018): Economics and Miners
• The Third Newsletter: Water and Farmers
• The Second Newsletter (2018): Peace and War.
• The First Newsletter (2018): Money and People.

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Communist Party of India (CPI) , national political party in India whose headquarters are in New Delhi . Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy became head of the CPI in 2012, following his election as general secretary.

According to the CPI’s official history, the party was founded in late 1925 in Kanpur (now in Uttar Pradesh state). Earlier in the decade, however, a number of people, both within and outside India, attempted to establish a communist presence on the subcontinent. Notable was a manifesto issued in 1920 in Tashkent (now in Uzbekistan ) by Manabendra Nath Roy (who would become the party’s first leader), Abani Mukherji, and Roy’s wife Evelyn that called for the creation of a communist party in India.

The CPI’s initial objectives combined militant anti-imperialist patriotism with internationalism to create a movement parallel to the nonviolent civil disobedience ( satyagraha ) campaigns led by Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress (Congress Party). At that time, however, the British colonial administration had imposed a general ban on communist activities and took a number of measures against the party, including imprisoning its leaders in 1929. The CPI thus remained organizationally weak and constrained to operate clandestinely until the party was legalized in 1942.

The CPI gained momentum after India became independent in 1947. It demanded social equality for women, suffrage for all adults, the nationalization of privately owned enterprises, land reforms, social justice for the lower castes (including those formerly called untouchables ), and the right to protest through demonstrations and strikes —all of which increased the party’s popularity. In 1951 the party substituted its core demand of the formation of a “people’s democracy” with one it called a “national democracy.”

The party did well politically in the 1950s. Nationally, it gained relatively small numbers of seats in the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament) elections of 1951, 1957, and 1962 compared with the ruling and then-dominant Congress Party, but each time it was enough for the CPI to be the principal opposition party. In 1957 the CPI defeated Congress in legislative assembly elections in the southern state of Kerala and, under Chief Minister E.M.S. Namboodiripad , formed the first non-Congress government in independent India. That government introduced several reforms (including land distribution and education), but, following violent protests against those actions, its members were dismissed by the central authorities in New Delhi.

The CPI’s fortunes began to decline in the 1960s. It was defeated in the 1960 Kerala assembly elections by a Congress-led coalition. The 29 seats the party garnered in the 1962 Lok Sabha polls marked their electoral high point in that chamber. Most significantly, however, in 1964 ideological differences that had built up over a split between the Soviets and the Chinese communists in the 1950s and over the response to the 1962 border clashes between India and China prompted a large faction of party members (including Namboodiripad) to break with the CPI and form the Communist Party of India (Marxist) , or CPI(M). The split weakened the CPI considerably at the national level. The CPI(M) surpassed the CPI’s seat total in the Lok Sabha in 1971 and consistently won two or more times as many seats as the CPI in subsequent elections. In Kerala the CPI was forced to become part of a Congress-led coalition that governed the state between 1970 and 1977.

In the late 1970s the CPI started aligning itself with the CPI(M) and other leftist parties to create the Left Front coalition, which formed governments in the states of West Bengal , Tripura , and, intermittently, Kerala. In Tamil Nadu the CPI was part of the ruling Democratic Progressive Alliance formed there in 2004. The party was also politically influential in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar .

The 2004 Lok Sabha elections gave the country’s Left Front parties a chance for some national political leverage. The CPI won 10 seats (compared with only four in the 1999 elections) and the CPI(M) 43 seats, and the front was able to provide important external support that allowed the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition to form a government. By 2008, however, the Left Front had withdrawn its backing, citing its opposition to the UPA’s civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States . The front’s decision initiated a series of political setbacks for the country’s leftist parties. In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the CPI was again able to win only four seats, and the CPI(M) total was reduced to 16, its lowest since it first fielded candidates in 1967. The Left Front also suffered defeat in the 2011 West Bengal state assembly elections, the first time that the left had been out of power there since 1977. The slide in leftist support continued in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, where the CPI could win only one seat, and the CPI(M) total dropped to nine.

MIA : Subjects : India : Communist Party of India (Marxist)

COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MARXIST)   LEADERS AND ACTIVISTS: BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES   Muzaffar Ahmed  (1889-1973) Muzaffar Ahmad was one of the founders of the communist movement in India. Born in an impoverished middle class Muslim family in Sandip (now in Bangladesh) on August 5, 1889, Comrade Muzaffar Ahmed started his career as a Bengali Muslim literary activist. He also edited daily Nabajug in 1920 with the rebel socialist poet, Qazi Nazrul Islam. He was convicted in the Kanpur Communist Conspiracy Case of 1924 alongside Shaukat Usmani, S. A. Dange and Nalini Gupta for establishing an early communist network and developing a correspondence and contacts with M. N. Roy and Comintern. Upon release he participated in the communist conference in Kanpur in 1925 and was elected to the Presidium of the CPI when it was reorganized in 1927. He was a key organiser of the Workers and Peasants Party of Bengal, the first socialist platform in the region and open organisation of the banned CPI. He edited Langal (Plough) and Ganabani (Voice of the People) on its behalf and was active in organising several strike actions, including that of outcaste sweepers of Calcutta and Howrah municipalities. He was elected Vice-President of AITUC at the Jharia session in 1928. After being convicted in the Meerut Communist Conspiracy Case of 1929-1931 as the Chief Accused he was released in 1936, having served the longest sentence. He was in and out of prison the 1940s, 50s and 60s in late colonial and Independent India. He founded the National Book Agency, the Party’s publishing house, and Ganashakti press. He authored numerous articles and several books, including his autobiography, Amar Jiban o Bharater Communist Party (Myself and the Communist Party of India), and Qazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha (Qazi Nazrul Islam: Recollections). He was an advocate of a communist movement in India independent of Peking and Moscow and joined the CPI(M) when the CPI formally split in 1964. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) at the time of his death in December 18, 1973.     Makineni Basavapunnaiah  (1914-1992) Makineni Basavapunnaiah was one of the stalwarts and foremost theoreticians of the Indian Communist movement. Comrade MB, as he was affectionately known, was the member of Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He was also editor of the CPIM’s central organ, People’s Democracy . Born on December 14, 1914, he belonged to the generation which became deeply influenced by the upsurge in the freedom movement in early 1930s. Disillusioned with the withdrawal of the movement by the then Congress leadership and increasingly convinced that the problems of the Indian people could be comprehensively resolved only under a socialist system, Comrade MB joined the fledgling Communist Party of India during 1934-35. Dedicating himself totally to the cause that he embraced, MB first started out as a district level activist in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh and by 1943 was elected to the CPI state committee and its secretariat in Andhra. He was among the outstanding leaders of the glorious Telengana people’s struggle and along with stalwarts like Comrade P. Sundarayya, was deeply involved in the organisation, execution and conduct of the Telengana struggle. It was during this period that MB emerged as one of the top Indian communist leaders. He was elected to the central committee at the Second Congress of the CPI in 1948 and elected to the Polit Bureau in June 1950. Steeled by the experiences of the Telengana struggle, his years of underground life and repression by the Congress government, Comrade MB was one of the initiators of the inner party discussions in the united CPI on the crucial issue of the strategy and tactics of the Indian revolution, a debate which finally culminated in the formation of the CPI(M) in 1964. He remained a member of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau throughout and was a pillar of strength to the Party, giving it ideological guidance and formulating its tactics in the most complex of circumstances. Comrade MB’s sterling contribution to the Indian communist movement came in the form of steadfast adherence to the revolutionary tenets of Marxism-Leninism and its liberating influence. A relentless campaigner against all deviations in the Indian as well as international communist movement, he authored many of the crucial drafts that provided the ideological basis for the fight against revisionism in the earlier period and left-adventurism later. During the intense ideological discussions within the Indian communist movement, Comrade MB was given the responsibility to discuss these issues with world communist leaders. He was in the four-member delegations in discussions with the CPSU leadership. He also represented the Indian Communists at the meeting of the world communist parties in Moscow in 1957. In addition to his immense contributions to the communist movement, both in theory and practice, Comrade MB made a mark as parliamentarian in course of his 14 year term in the Rajya Sabha. He was a prolific writer, gifted with a sharp pen and lucid style. His entire life was dedicated to the cause of socialism and the liberation of the Indian people, and he worked with tireless energy till the day of his death.     Jyoti Basu  (1914-2010) Jyoti Basu one of the stalwarts of the Communist movement in India was born on 8th July, 1914 at Kolkata. His father Nishikanta Basu and mother Hemlata Devi lived in Kolkata though their ancestral home was in village Bardi in Dhaka. Jyoti Basu spent his childhood in Kolkata, mostly in their house in Hindusthan Park in South Kolkata, where he lived the most part of his life too. Jyoti Basu passed his Senior Cambridge and Intermediate from St. Xaviers’ school and later was admitted in Presidency College with Honours in English. Though not an active political family, Basu’s father was supportive of the national struggle. While in school, Basu was inspired by the Chittagong armed rebellion led by Surya Sen in 1930. In 1935, Basu went to England to study law. In a volatile international situation, during his university days, his political thoughts were shaped in ideological debates against fascism. Basu became an active member of the India League, a body of Indian students, led by V.K. Krishna Menon. Among others, Bhupesh Gupta and Snehangshukanta Acharya were his friends in student days. Jyoti Basu gradually came into contact with leaders of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He began to participate in Marxist study circles and joined in the activities of the Communist groups in London, Oxford, and Cambridge. He came in close contact with Harry Pollitt, Rajni Palme Dutt, Ben Bradley and other leaders of CPGB. They had a great influence in shaping the ideas and life of young Basu. Jyoti Basu became the first secretary of London Majlis, an association of Indians that felicitated Jawharlal Nehru when he was in London. Basu decided that he would join the Communist Party after returning to India. Basu returned to India in 1940 and immediately contacted the Party leaders. Though he enrolled himself as a barrister in Calcutta High Court, he never practiced simply because he was determined to become a wholetimer of the Party. Basu became the secretary of Friends of Soviet Union and Anti-Fascist Writers’ Association in Kolkata. As member of the Party, his initial task was to maintain liaison with underground Party leaders. He was entrusted with responsibilities in the trade union front from 1944. In that year, the Bengal Assam Railroad Workers’ Union was formed and Basu became its first secretary. Basu was elected to Bengal Provincial Assembly in 1946 from the Railway Workers constituency. From that day on, Basu became one of the most popular and influential legislators for decades to come. He showed how the Communists can use the legislative forums for strengthening struggles. Basu played a very active role in stormy days of 1946-47 when Bengal witnessed the Tebhaga movement, workers strikes and even communal riots. Everywhere the struggling people saw Basu by their side. Jyoti Basu was the secretary of the West Bengal Provincial Committee of the Party from 1953 to January 1961. He was elected to Central Committee of the Party in 1951. He was a member of the Polit Bureau of the CPIM from 1964 onwards. He was elected as a special invitee to PB in 19th Congress of the Party in 2008. After the country gained independence, he was elected to the assembly from Baranagar in 1952. He was elected to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1991 and 1996. Though an elected member, Basu was arrested several times during the 1950s and ’60s and for certain periods he went underground to evade arrest by the police. In 1962, Jyoti Basu was one amongst the 32 members of the National Council who walked out of the meeting. When the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was formed in 1964 as a result of the ideological struggle within the Communist movement, Basu became a member of the Polit Bureau. He was, in fact, the last surviving member of the “Navaratnas”, the nine members of the first Polit Bureau. During the days of India-China border conflict, Basu, along with other leaders of the Party, were accused of being “agents of China” and faced attacks from the ruling class parties and the anti-Communist media. 1n 1967, Basu became the deputy Chief Minister in the first West Bengal United Front Ministry and again in 1969. These two governments provided a great stimulus in unleashing mass and class struggle in West Bengal. Jyoti Basu played an important role in intertwining the struggle and running the government. In 1970, he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at the Patna Railway Station by the Anandmargis. In 1971, Basu’s car and public meeting were attacked by Congress miscreants at least twice. Though the Communist Party of India (Marxist) became the single largest party in the assembly elections in 1971, the Party was refused the chance to form a ministry and Presidents’ Rule was imposed in West Bengal. The 1972 elections were rigged and Jyoti Basu was forced to boycott the elections. Basu famously declared the new assembly as “assembly of the frauds” and CPI(M) boycotted the assembly for the next five years. West Bengal faced severe repression and terror during the semi-fascist Congress regime in this period. The CPI(M) and the Left forces courageously fought the onslaught and Basu was one of the leading figures of that heroic resistance by the people. In 1977, the Left Front Government was formed as a product of the democratic and mass struggles and Basu became the Chief Minister. He was 63 then. A new, vigorous era in his life began. The very first announcement by Basu after he was sworn in was that the government would not be run from Writers’ Building alone. The people would be very much part of it. Under Basu’s leadership, the LF government initiated far reaching measures in the interests of toiling people. The land reforms, decentralization through panchayats, guaranteeing trade union rights of the workers, giving widespread relief to different sections of the society, spread of education marked a radical departure in governance in our country. Under LF government, West Bengal witnessed excellent advancement in agriculture and later it was under his leadership that the state government took serious initiative in industrialization of the state. In office continuously for 24 years, Basu was the longest serving chief minister in the country. One of the major contributions of Basu as Chief Minister was to raise the issue of Centre-State relations at the all India level. On the one hand, Basu led the struggle against discrimination against West Bengal and successfully built the Haldia Petro Chemicals, Bakreswar Thermal Power Station etc. On the other hand, he could mobilize other state governments and various political parties on the issue. Jyoti Basu played a significant role in national politics and his intervention in important junctures proved to be crucial. Basu played a prominent role in mobilizing anti-Congress secular opposition forces during the regimes of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao. He also played an important role in mobilizing secular forces against the communal BJP. In 1996, his name was proposed by the secular allies for Prime Ministership. But the CPI(M) Central Committee decided to support the government from outside. Jyoti Basu was one of the main campaigners for the Party at the national level. He visited all the states and areas a number of times to address public meetings and rallies. He was particular about attending the open sessions of the CITU all India conferences. Basu was all along associated with the trade union movement and was a champion of the cause of working class. He was a Vice President of CITU since its inception in 1970. In November 2000, Basu voluntarily retired from Chief Ministership but he continued to lead the Party in West Bengal. Despite his ill health, Basu participated in Party meetings and in election campaign in 2006 also. On 1 January 2010, Basu was admitted to AMRI hospital (Bidhannagar, Kolkata) after he was diagnosed with pneumonia. On 16 January 2010, it was reported that he was suffering from multiple organ failure and that his health condition had become extremely critical. Seventeen days after being taken ill, he died on 17 January 2010. His donation of his body to medical science was made with the following pledge on April 4, 2003: “As a Communist, I am pledged to serve humanity till my last breath. I am happy that now I will continue to serve even after my death.”     Promode Dasgupta  (1910-1982) Promode Dasgupta, a pioneer of the communist movement in India and one of the founders of Communist Party of India (Marxist) was born on July 7, 1910, in Faridupur district now in Bangladesh. While a student in the Brajmohan College in Barisal (now in Bangladesh) he joined the revolutionary group Anusheelan Samity to fight against British imperialism. Those were the days when the revolutionary youth of Bengal believed that with their individual heroism they can defeat the imperialist rulers and win the country's freedom. After joining Anusheelan Samity, Comrade Promode shifted his political activities to Calcutta. He was arrested in connection with the famous Machua Bazzar Bomb Case in 1929 along with a number of others like Satish Pakrashi, Sudhansu Dasgupta and Satyabrata Sen. Some of them were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, while there was not enough evidence to convict Comrade Promode. But he was detained under the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act. He was for eight years in various jails in Bengal and in the Deoli detention camp. He was released in 1937. Comrade Promode earned his membership in the CPI on May 1, 1938, and began working among the dock labourers in Calcutta. He worked as the Secretary of the Calcutta District Committee of the Party and was underground for some time during the period of the Second World War. Later he was arrested and was released after the legalisation of the Party in 1942. It was then that Comrade Promode organised the press of the Bengal Committee of the Party and the publication of its first Bengali Weekly Jan Yudh and later Swadhinata daily. During the attack on the Party in 1948-51 immediately after India attained Independence, Comrade Promode worked underground for some time and was arrested and detained in jail for the rest of the period. After he came out of jail in 1951, he took a leading part in reorganising the Party in West Bengal and resuming the publication of Swadhinata . Comrade Promode was elected Secretary of the West Bengal State Committee of the Party at the Burdwan State Conference prior to the Sixth Party Congress in Vijayawada in 1961. He remained in that post till his death. He was elected to the National Council of the CPI at the Fifth Amritsar Congress of the Party in 1958 and to its Central Executive Committee in 1961. The inner-Party struggle against revisionism which had begun on the eve of the Fourth Congress of the Party reached a climax at the Vijayawada Congress. Comrade Promode was one of the leading comrades who participated in this struggle against revisionism since the Sixth Congress. Later when Naxalite Left-adventurism came on the scene and the Naxalites began their annihilation campaign with the CPI(M) as their main enemy, the Party in West Bengal under the leadership of Comrade Promode fought a bitter political battle to expose the Naxalite ideology and isolate and defeat the Left-adventurists and to defend the Programme of the Party and its organisation. At the time of the India-China war in October 1962, a section of the leadership of the CPI was arrested and detained. Comrade Promode was one of them. From inside jail, Comrade Promode and other leading comrades guided the party members in West Bengal in the struggle for Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. He was among the last to be released in West Bengal in 1964. He was in the leadership which organised the Tenali Convention which gave the call for the Seventh Congress Party. Just a few days before the Seventh Congress, Comrade Promode and other West Bengal leaders of the party were arrested and detained. After the Congress, the Party in the rest of the country was also attacked by the Congress rulers and most of the Central, State and district leaders were detained. From inside jail, Comrade Promode and others again gave guidance to consolidate the achievements of the Seventh Congress and strengthen the Party. He was elected to the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) at the Seventh Congress, a post which he held till his death. Comrade Promode Dasgupta played a major role in forging and strengthening the Left Front in West Bengal. He died in Beijing on November 29, 1982.     A.K. Gopalan  (1902-1977) A.K. Gopalan who became entrenched in the hearts of millions of people in India by the three letters AKG, was born into the feudal family Ayilyath Kuttyeri in the Makrery village near Peralassery in Kannur in 1902. After working as a school teacher for a short period, he went into active public life as a full time political worker. Resigning his job in 1930 he took part in Salt Satyagraha and was imprisoned. Since then his eventful life was dedicated to the cause of the people of India till his death on 22nd March 1977. A.K.G. played a leadership role first in the Social reform movement and later in the Congress Socialist Party and the Communist Party. His unflinching commitment to the toiling classes earned him the name “general of the poor”. The Communist Movement in Kerala gained strength by developing an agenda for social change put forward by the social renaissance movements since the late nineteenth century to a higher level of class consciousness. A.K.G. was one of the leading soldiers in the Guruvayoor Satyagraha which had served as a link between the Social renaissance movement and the political struggle for independence. He also played a leading role in the Paliyam struggle in Cochin and in the struggle of the untouchable lower castes (later called as Harijan’s) for right of the way in Kandoth in Kannur district. A.K.G. along with P. Krishna Pillai, organised the first trade unions of workers in the Kozhikode-Feroke region and led many strikes. A.K.G.’s contribution to the growth of a militant peasant movement in North region is legendary. Struggle against injustice was in his blood. The authorities who thought that A.K.G. could be silenced by putting him behind bars were soon proved wrong. A.K.G. organized struggles inside the prison also. He also broke jail once to plunge again in to the struggle of the people. When the whole country celebrated India’s independence on the night of August 15th, 1947 A.K.G was in jail. He was released only on 24th October as a result of the people’s demand. A.K.G.’s struggles were not confined to Kerala. He was elected as the national President of All India Kisan Sabha in the Calcutta Conference in 1951. A.K.G. was active in almost all the peasant struggles in various states in the country. His name is remembered even now in the remote Indian villages which had witnessed his presence in their struggles. He was arrested during the Maha Gujarat struggle. He was arrested and expelled from Punjab for taking part in the struggle against water cess. All the struggles led by A.K.G. had unleashed many political storms. He had participated in the Guruvayoor Satyagraha which was a land mark struggle for social reforms in Kerala. Later he led the Hunger march from Kannur to Madras to arouse the consciousness of the people against poverty and unemployment under the British rule. This march in which volunteers travelled by foot for 750 miles and addressed wayside meeting rejuvenated the Congress Movement in Kerala. A.K.G. led the Malabar march in support of the self-rule movement in Travancore. After Independence he led the Peasant march from Kasargod to Thiruvananthapuram in 1960. The struggle led by A.K.G. against the eviction of farmers in Amaravathy in Idukki is a legendary chapter in people’s struggles in Kerala. The struggles against the evictions in Churuli-Keerithode and Kottiyoor are also famous. A.K.G. took strong positions against the revisionism in the Communist Party in 1964 and became part of the first Polit Bureau of Communist Party of India (Marxist). When left extremism took shape in 1967 he carried forward the struggle against this deviation also. He was imprisoned in 1962 as a China’s agent. He was also Secretary of the CPIM Kerala State committee for a short period of time. For A.K.G. even the courts provided stage for his struggles. When he was imprisoned for taking part in the Mudavanmugal struggle for distribution of surplus land, he got his release from the court by taking up argument himself. Under the new Indian constitution, Government passed a law using certain loopholes in section 22, for extending the imprisonment of those taken into preventive custody. A.K.G. who was in jail at that time approached the Supreme Court by pointing out that the new legislation was in violation of the fundamental rights ensured under part-3 of the constitution. This case which came to be known as “A.K. Gopalan vs. State of Madras” was a landmark in the constitutional and legal history of India and is in the text book of law graduates. A.K.G. was a Communist who showed how the avenues of parliamentary democracy could be utilized for advancing the cause of the people. He served as the leader of the opposition since the first Lok Sabha in 1952. His interventions in the parliament espousing people’s issues were unique events in the Parliamentary history. Although failing in health, he took active part in all struggles against emergency declared in 1975. A.K.G. passed away in Trivandrum on 22 March 1977.     Susheela Gopalan  (1929-2001) Susheela Gopalan, a communist revolutionary and an unabashed partisan for women’s emancipation, was born in a well to do family in the village of Inchamudi, in Thrissur district of Kerala. She was deeply influenced by the freedom struggle and anti-imperialist values that continued to determine her work throughout her life. As a teenager, she addressed a meeting of coir workers who were mobilizing for a historic strike action. Later, through the struggles and leadership of the coir workers, she gained deep insights into the interlinked exploitation of class and gender. She became a member of the Communist Party at the age of 18, and as a young college student, faced the wrath of the authorities for her political work, for which she was jailed several times during her life. This background informed her work as the founding General Secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association that was formed in 1981. She was elected as a Member of Parliament thrice and a Member of the Kerala State Assembly twice, and used these forums in an extremely effective way to advance important reforms in laws concerning women. As a Minister, she took several important policy decisions that brought relief to women, particularly those working in the unorganized sector. Believing strongly in united struggles, she played an extremely active role in bringing together national women’s organizations on a common set of demands on a wide range of issues that helped their struggles to become dynamic and visible. She made a special effort to encourage and develop activists, strongly believing in the necessity of bringing all sections of women into the movement and its leadership. Her personal concern and care enabled them to develop as political activists. She strongly believed in the need for them to assert their ideas and beliefs in all spheres, including within the family. At the time of her death, she was a Patron of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), a Vice President of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and a member of the Central Committee of the CPI(M).     Abdul Halim  (1901-1966) Abdul Halim was one of the earliest organizers of the communist movement in Bengal. He was born on December 6, 1901 in Burdwan district. He resigned his job to take part in the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1921 and was jailed as a result. He came into contact with Muzaffar Ahmad in the early 1920s and joined the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Bengal. He subsequently helped to organize the Communist Party when Ahmad and others were imprisoned in consequence of the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Halim played an important part in regrouping the CPI Central Committee in the period 1933-34. He founded the Ganashakti Publishing House. Halim was imprisoned several times both before and after India’s Independence. He was released from prison only a few days before his death on April 29, 1966.     Mohammad Ismail  (1912- ) Mohammad Ismail was a legendary communist trade union organiser and leader of CPI(M). He was born at Ranjitpurwa, Unnao District, colonial United Province (later Uttar Pradesh) in 1912. He migrated to and joined the communist movement in Bengal in the mid-1930s and became Secretary of the Bengal Committee of the Communist Party of India in 1949. He was associated with the Indian National Congress, 1930-35 and spent 7 years in Jail and 3 years underground in connection with trade union and political activities. He continued his studies after matriculation in jail and was proficient in Bengali, Hindi and Urdu. He was an organiser of the Tram Workers and organised crucial Tram strikes in late colonial and post-Independence Calcutta which led to expanding communist influence among workers and the public sphere of the city. He was Vice-President of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions after the split in CPI in 1964 and active in the AITUC. He also served as an organiser of the Assam-Bengal Railroad Workers Union, Water Transport Federation of India beginning in 1975, the West Bengal, Committee of Centre of Indian Trade Unions and several other trade unions. He was an adviser, First Indian labour Conference, Delhi and elected as a member of Parliament several times from working class constituencies of West Bengal.     Harekrishna Konar  (1915-1974) Throughout his entire life, HareKrishna Konar worked for the application of Marxist-Leninist ideology to the concrete Indian reality. He was a pioneering figure in movements of peasants and agricultural workers to dismantle the stranglehold of feudalism on them. Comrade HareKrishna Konar was born on August 5, 1915 at Memari of Bardhaman district. He breathed his last on July 23, 1974 at the age of 59. Comrade HareKrishna Konar started his political activities as a member of “Jugantar” revolutionary group against the British colonial rule in our country. He devoted himself for the cause of independence of the country from his student days. When he was only fifteen, he was sent behind the bars for taking part in the non-cooperation movement in 1930. He was subsequently sent to Andaman Cellular Jail in 1932 for taking part in the extremist movement to uproot British rule in India. In the Cellular Jail itself he was attracted to the Communist ideology and became member of Communist Consolidation. He was released from the jail in 1938. He became a member of the Party in the same year. He got involved with the Party activities in Kolkata and Howrah. He was sent to Bardhaman district to strengthen the movement against canal tax. During that time the Communists used to work remaining within the Congress according to the Bradley thesis. Comrade HareKrishna Konar was given responsibility to maintain contacts with the Congress workers of Kolkata, Bardhaman, Howrah and Hooghly districts. He utilised this opportunity to inculcate Leftist ideology among them. Afterwards Comrade HareKrishna Konar involved himself primarily in the Bardhaman district to apply Marxist principles in different activities. He was a pioneer in shaping the peasants’ movement in Bardhaman district. Subsequently he became a leading figure in the peasants’ movement not only in this state but in the entire country. The British rulers restricted his movements in the industrial areas in the 40s. He was a leading figure in the Ajoy river dam movement in 1944. Comrade HareKrishna Konar was busy with the activities of Communist Party and Kisan Sabha in Bardhaman district during the period of 1944 to 1948. The Communist Party was banned on March 26, 1948. Comrade HareKrishna Konar was arrested and subsequently released after three months. He went underground and worked for the Party remaining underground till 1952. He was elected from the Memari-Kalna assembly constituency of Bardhaman district in 1957 and from Kalna assembly constituency in 1962. He was re-elected from Kalna assembly constituency in 1967 and became minister for land and land revenue in the first United Front government. HareKrishna Konar played a pioneering role in seizing surplus land held by big land owners in excess of land ceiling laws and kept ’benami’ (or false names) land. The first United Front could sustain only for nine months. Comrade Konar was once again elected from Kalna assembly constituency in 1969 and took charge as the minister for land and land revenue in the second United Front government. The initiative of seizing surplus land was even more extended in seizing the ’benami’ land. He was an inspiration to the peasants’ movements in the state and our entire country. He was a great orator. He was arrested several times and also went underground for work, evading arrest. The police under British rule and later on, the police of independent India arrested this legendary leader of mass movements and peasants’ struggles. He was arrested under Defence of India Act in 1962 and was released after one year. He was once again arrested under the same act in 1964. For that reason he could not take part in the seventh Party Congress which was held in Kolkata in that very year. But he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in that Party Congress. He was re-elected as the Central Committee member of Party in eighth and ninth Congress respectively held in Kochi in the year 1968 and Madurai in the year 1972. His steadfast ideological stand against revisionism placed him amid the leading members of the undivided Party. He also played a resolute role in the ideological battle with the Naxalites, opposing the left-sectarian line within the Party and upholding the Marxist-Leninist principle. Comrade HareKrishna Konar was elected as the general secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha from the national conference of 1969, which was held in Madurai. He was re-elected as the general secretary of AIKS from the conferences held in 1971 and 1973. He discharged his responsibilities as the general secretary of AIKS till he breathed his last. He took part in several international conferences. He was the member of a delegation of Party to China and Vietnam.   Kanak Mukherjee  (1921-2005) Kanak Mukherjee, Kanak di, as she was affectionately known all over the country, was one among the pioneers of the Progressive women’s movement in India. Kanak di was born in Jessore, now in Bangladesh, on December 30th, 1921. When she was barely 18, she organized a girl students’ association and became an active member of the Bengal Provincial Students Federation. Because of her involvement in the national movement, she was imprisoned soon after and was then externed from Calcutta and other districts of Bengal. She went underground during l940-41 during which time she married Com. Saroj Mukherjee (Former Polit Bureau Member and West Bengal State Secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist)) In the terrible years of the Bengal Famine of l942-43 she plunged into relief work as a leader of the Mahila Atmaraksha Samity and began her life-long association with the women’s movement and, soon afterwards, she became one of the leaders of the Ganatantrik Mahila Samity which she helped to found. The Samity was in the forefront of not only relief work but was also active in all the struggles of the working people and in the struggle for independence. After 1947 also it was in the forefront of the many mass struggles that West Bengal witnessed. When, in l981, many State organizations like the Ganatantrik Mahila Samity merged to form the All India Democratic Women’s Association, Kanak di was one of its founders. She played an important role in preparing the Constitution and other documents of the new organization. The West Bengal state unit of AIDWA, its largest unit, has been an inspiration to the organization and to the women’s movement in the country not only because of its strength and the number of issues that it has been taking up but because of the tremendous sacrifices made by its members in defence of democratic and women’s rights and in the struggle against semi-fascist oppression. Kanak di joined the Communist Party in l938. In 1943, she participated in the first Party Congress of CPI at Bombay as a Delegate. When the communist party split in 1964 she joined CPIM. She was a member of CPIM West Bengal State Committee from 1978 to 1998 and a member of CPI(M) Central Committee from 1989 to 1998. She went to jail several times and for long periods in l951 and during the Emergency. She has served in public life as an alderman and was elected twice (in 1978 and 1984) to the Rajya Sabha. Her intellectual prowess not only ensured a place for her as a University lecturer but also made her a lyrical poet and a consummate and compulsive writer. She edited the journal of the West Bengal Ganatantrik Mahila Samity, Ek Sathe, for decades with dedication. From 1967 to 1981, she was a Professor of English in Calcutta Women’s College. In 1998 she was awarded the title of "Bhubanmohini Dasi" award by Calcutta University for her contribution in the field of literature. Kanak di’s indomitable spirit and unflinching commitment to the cause that she espoused are an inspiration for all of us. Her poor health in the last several years, her difficulty in walking and the fact that she could hardly see in the last few years of her life never sapped her of her determination to attend meetings and programmes or of her sharp and incisive contribution to debates and discussions. She died after being seriously ill for several days in Kolkota at the age of 83 on March 9, 2005.     EMS Namboodiripad  (1909-1998) EMS Namboodiripad was one of the foremost leaders of the Communist movement in India and one of the founding leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He was a rare example of a Communist leader who, while hailing from a traditional landlord family, graduated to become the foremost leader of the proletarian revolutionary movement. He spent three years in jail and six years underground. In his nearly seven decades of public life and revolutionary activities, EMS Namboodiripad left an indelible imprint on the progressive and working class movement of the country. As a young man, he became active in the social reform movement against caste. He left college in 1931 to join the freedom struggle and was jailed in the satyagraha movement. From then onwards, he played an important role in the Congress movement and was one of the founders of the Congress Socialist Party in Kerala. In 1934 he became the all India joint secretary of the Congress Socialist Party. It is in this period that EMS while leading the Congress Party as general secretary of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Party became acquainted with Marxism. He was one of the five members who formed the founding group of the Communist Party in Kerala in 1936. EMS Namboodiripad represented the coming together of the two streams, the anti-imperialist and the anti-feudal struggles, which laid the foundations for the development of a powerful communist movement in Kerala. He was one of the key proponents of Aikya Kerala which led to the formation of Kerala as a unified linguistic state. EMS Namboodiripad was first elected to the Madras Provincial Legislative Assembly in 1939. As an important leader of the fledgling Communist Party he donated the proceeds of his landed property to the Party. He went underground building the Party in crucial periods between 1939-42 and 1948-50. He was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India in 1941. He became a member of the Polit Bureau of the CPI in December 1950 and later its secretariat. He became general secretary of the united CPI in 1962. In 1957, after the state of Kerala was formed in the first elections in 1957, the Communist Party won a majority and EMS Namboodiripad became chief minister of the first elected Communist ministry in India. It was the EMS ministry which initiated the path breaking land reform legislation and other democratic measures, till the ministry was dismissed undemocratically in 1959. EMS Namboodiripad became chief minister of Kerala again in 1967 heading a United Front ministry till 1969. EMS joined the leading group from the united Party who formed the CPI(M) and was elected to the Central Committee and the Polit Bureau of the Party at the Seventh Congress of the Party in 1964 and he continued to serve in these positions till his death. EMS Namboodiripad was elected the general secretary of Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1977 and he led the Party in this capacity till the 14th Congress in 1992 when he stepped down due to ill-health. His leadership in rallying all the Left, democratic and secular forces was invaluable. EMS was a brilliant Marxist theoretician. He made outstanding contributions to the application of Marxism-Leninism to Indian society and in working out the strategy and tactics of the Indian revolution. His vast body of writings bears the mark of an original and creative mind which mastered the dialectics of Marxist theory. His writings on land relations, Kerala, society and politics and his writings on Marxist philosophy, literature and history – mark him out to be one of the most influential communist thinkers of the country and the world. His was a life of sacrifice and simplicity. He set an example which has inspired tens of thousands of communists all over the country. In Kerala he was a legend in his lifetime, adored and respected by all sections of the people. Till the last day of his life, despite failing health, EMS kept to his daily routine of writing articles and providing guidance to the Party. The Complete works of Com. EMS was published by Chintha Publishers in 100 Volumes. He died on March 19, 1998 at the age of 89.     B.T. Ranadive  (1904-1990) One of the pioneers of the Communist Party and the trade union movement in India Com. B. T. Ranadive's revolutionary career, which spanned seven decades, was singular for his deep commitment to Marxism-Leninism and his tireless struggle to develop the revolutionary working class movement. After a brilliant academic record as a student, BTR joined the Communist Party in 1928. He was one of the pioneers who worked from the Party centre when it was set up in Bombay in 1934-35 and rose to be the General Secretary of the CPI at its Second Congress in 1948. Elected to the Central Committee and Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) at the Seventh Congress, he remained in these leading positions still his death, on April 6, 1990. BTR played a crucial role in the fight against revisionism in the united party. He made a big contribution to foundation of the CPI(M) and its basic programmatic and ideological outlook. BTR was the staunch defender of the Party’s ideological purity. He doggedly opposed both right revisionism and left sectarianism in the communist movement. He made a notable contribution in fighting the Naxalites left-sectarian deviation in the sixties. In his last days, BTR took up the challenge of defending the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism against the aberrations and distortions of Marxist theory by the leadership of the CPSU. In the trade union movement, BTR will occupy a special place. He was one of the prominent leaders of the AITUC beginning in the late twenties. He was the initiator of the formation of the CITU (Centre of Indian Trade Unions) and guided its growth as a militant trade union centre till his death. He constantly strove to take the Marxist ideology to the working class, build up class unity and develop the political consciousness of the workers. See also: B.T. Ranadive Archive   Vimal Ranadive  (1915-1999) Born on 10 April 1915 in a middle class family in Maharashtra, Vimal Ranadive joined the anti-colonial nationalist movement at the tender age of 12-13 as a Seva Dal volunteer. At the age of 15, she was arrested for picketing a foreign cloth shop. The British judge asked her to admit the mistake and apologise. She boldly refused and said, “We know what we have done and for what; we won’t apologise” and went to jail gladly. Vimaldi developed solidarity with the cause of the poor, the working class and became a communist. She worked to earn a living for her siblings, married a communist, B. T. Ranadive, who had to go underground on the day of their marriage. When her son was just two years old she was jailed for two years. She spent many years underground, including at the time of the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi. She was actively involved in organising workers in Mumbai and was part of the upsurge of the Mumbai working class and the naval ratings in 1946. She was the first General Secretary of the All India Plantation Workers’ Federation, the founder President of the AIFAWH and was the leader of the Beedi workers also. She was the founder Convenor of the AICCWW (CITU) and continued in that position till her death. She was Secretary, CITU and was a member of the central committee of the CPI(M). She was the founder editor of ’The Voice of the Working Woman’ and ’Kamkaji Mahila’.     Ahilya Rangnekar  (1922-2009) A long-standing member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Ahilya Rangnekar was among India ’s first women communist organisers. Ahilya Rangnekar took up the struggles of women when India was fighting for Independence during the last years of British colonial rule. In 1942-43 the freedom movement drew large numbers of women, particularly from the working class. Ahilya Rangnekar realised that women needed to participate in the freedom struggle and fight for their own rights within this context. She and her comrades started the Parel Mahila Sangh, comprising mainly wives of workers. It demanded maternity benefits and better wages and eventually became the nucleus of the left and democratic womens movement in Maharashtra. During this period, Rangnekar worked with other well-known women activists and freedom fighters such as Vimal Ranadive, Malti Nagarkar, Maniben Patel (Vallabhbhai Patels sister), Sofia Khan (Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khans wife) and Aruna Asaf Ali. All these women courted arrest, were on the run, were separated from their families and faced violence as part of the freedom struggle and later as members of political parties. The most noteworthy part is that they never lost direction; they kept on with their work. Ahilya Rangnekars journey in politics began soon after she finished college in 1943. She grew up in a house full of reformists and liberals and the family supported her political leanings. She was most influenced by her elder brother B.T. Ranadive, who was a leading communist organiser. In 1961, she contested her first civic election on the Communist Party of India ticket. Re-elected many times, she was a corporator for 19 years in Mumbai. Along with her fellow-corporator and friend Mrinal Gore she fought for the rights of hutment dwellers, contract labourers and women who worked for no wages, and for better water supply and other basic civic amenities. Rangnekar and Mrinal Gore were many a time targets of vicious comments from male politicians such as Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. Such moments only strengthened their resolve to continue on the path they had chosen. In fact, they formed a formidable duo as corporators. Wherever there was a struggle, Ahilya Rangnekar was sure to be at the head of it. In 1950, she was deeply involved in the Samyukta Maharashtra agitation, which demanded the unification of the Marathi-speaking regions. In 1962, she was among the many Communist Party members to be arrested after the border conflict with China. She was in jail for three and a half years. In 1974, she was arrested for participating in the nationwide railway strike. During the Emergency she was sent to the Yerawada prison in Pune, where she continued to mobilise women and carried on fighting for their rights. In 1977, Ahilya Rangnekar contested the parliamentary elections on the Communist Party of India (Marxist) ticket and won from Mumbai North Central constituency. In spite of her political commitments, she never lost touch with the functioning of the Parel Mahila Sangh and its agenda. Eventually, the organisation became the Janwadi Mahila Sangh, which is the State unit of AIDWA. As a founding member of AIDWA, Ahilya Rangnekar was the working president and vice-president of the organisation.     P. Sundarayya  (1913-1985) P. Sundarayya is recognized as a builder of the Communist Party, strategist of the agrarian revolution, defender of Marxist Leninist principles and a man closely associated with the masses. Popularly known as Comrade PS, Puchalapalli Sundarayya was born on 1 May 1913 in Alaganipaduin Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh, India. He completed primary education and entered a college where he studied at entry level until he left in 1930, at the age of 17, to join Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement. He was arrested and spent time in a Borstal school in Rajahmundry where he became acquainted with various communists and local dalit leaders. When released, he organized agricultural workers in his village to protest against bonded labour. Sundarayya himself marks his becoming a communist to the year 1930. He was 18 years old and a college student at that time. From an early acquaintance of Marxism to becoming a full-fledged communist was a rapid transition as far as PS was concerned. His remarkable abilities as an organizer, his steadfastness and convictions and courage was what attracted Amir Hyder Khan, who had been sent as an organizer of the Party to South India, to approach him to join the Party. The arrest of Amir Hyder Khan in 1933 led to PS stepping into his role as an organizer of the Party. Sundarayya was the first to recognize the necessity to set up the independent class organisation of agricultural workers. He formed the first agricultural workers union in his village, Alaganipadu, in 1932. In 1934, at the age of 22, PS was taken into the Central Committee of the Party, constituted after the release of the Meerut prisoners. Thus from the outset of the Party becoming an all India organized unit, Sundarayya became part of its leadership. He set about the task of building the Party from scratch with a zeal and determination which was remarkable. In the coastal districts of Andhra which was part of the Madras province and in the Telangana region of Hyderabad, PS toured various parts of the state, in village after village to enlist members and supporters to the Party and to recruit the first cadres who would work among the peasants and workers. He very quickly absorbed Lenin’s principles of Party organisation and became a Party organizer par excellence. While undertaking this herculean task in Andhra, PS also devoted time and energies to developing the Party in other states all over India. During the same year, he became one of the founders of the All India Kisan Sabha and was elected as its joint secretary. His discussions with the leaders of the Congress Socialist Party from Kerala – P. Krishna Pillai and EMS Namboodiripad – in Mumbai and elsewhere led to his visit to Kerala, after which the first communist unit was set up in 1937. This unit consisted of P. Krishna Pillai, EMS Namboodiripad, K. Damodaran and N. C. Sekhar. Sundarayya was accompanied by S.V. Ghate when this unit was constituted. In the Tamilnadu part of the Madras province, Sundarayya played an important role in contacting and recruiting some of the early communist leaders. He worked with P. Ramamurthy, P. Jeevanandan, B. Srinivasa Rao, A.S.K. Iyengar and others. In 1936, in the presence of PS and S.V. Ghate, the first Communist unit of Tamilnadu was set up. What stood out in this period of Party building was the unique capacity of Sundarayya to identify potential cadres, recruit them and nurture and develop their talent and capacities. He also was able to provide the guidance for them to work in the class and mass organisation. From the outset Sundarayya would concentrate on recruiting students and youth who would then be initiated into work among the basic classes. By consistently working among the masses and identifying with their lives and way of living he also inspired the cadres by his personal example to devote themselves to the people. The discipline observed in the Party by its cadres and members comes from this dedication to serve the people and the consciousness which arises out of working and leading the struggles of the people. Here Sundarayya was a Communist leader unparalleled in putting into practice the principles of a revolutionary organisation. When the Party was banned, he went underground between 1939 and 1942.When the ban was lifted in 1943, the first Party Congress was held at Bombay and he was again elected to the Central Committee in the second party Congress held at Calcutta. He was the Secretary of the Andhra Communist Party Committee which was formed in 1934. Sundarayya from the beginning identified the agrarian revolution as the crux of the democratic revolution in India. The fight against landlordism and the old social order that it fosters and the distribution of land of the landlords to the tillers was central to Sundarayya’s strategy for the democratic revolution. The years of work from 1940 onwards which went into the building the Communist Party and the peasant movement and the broad front of the Andhra Mahasabha resulted in the historic Telangana people’s armed uprising. The fight against the jagirdar-landlordism under the Nizam’s rule in Hyderabad, according to Sundarayya “brought to the fore the agrarian question and its role in the democratic revolution”. The Telangana people’s armed struggle began in 1946 and ended in 1951. In this period, ordinary peasants, men and women rose up against the cruel exploitation and violence perpetrated by the big landlords of the region. They had to fight the razakars sent in by the Nizam along with the police and armed forces sent in by the Nizam which led to the development of guerilla squads to defend the lands taken over by the people and their popular gram sabhas. At the height of the movement, 3,000 villages were liberated from the Nizam’s rule and the landlords driven out and the lands taken over. In 1948, the Indian army was sent to not only integrate Hyderabad into the Indian Union but also to suppress the peasant struggle. In all four thousand communists and peasant militants were killed. More than 10,000 communist cadres and people’s militants were thrown into detention camps and jailed for three to four years. More than 50,000 people were beaten, tortured and intimidated in police and army camps. Sundarayya went underground between 1948 and 1952. He was re-elected to the Central Committee in 1952 when a special party conference was held. He was also elected to the Politburo, the highest forum within the Party. He was then re-elected to Central Committee and the Politburo in the third party congress in Vijayawada and again in the fourth congress held at Palakkad. He was elected to the Central Executive and the Central Secretariat of the Party at the fifth Party Congress at Amritsar. As a committed Marxist-Leninist, he applied the theory to Indian conditions to build the revolutionary movement. When revisionist and ultra-left trends came to the fore, he fought them and safeguarded the correct Marxist-Leninist line. Sundarayya became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from its inception in 1964 and played a major role in establishing the Party as a leading force in the left movement in the country. As a Member of Parliament and state legislature, Sundarayya set an example of how to take up people’s issues. Comrade Sundarayya reared successive generations of cadres and inspired them by his life and example. He donated his whole property to the Party and lived a simple and exemplary life.   Mallu Swarajyam  (1931-2022) Telangana armed struggle warrior, former Central Committee member of Communist Party of India (Marxist), Mallu Swarajyam was born in 1931 in Kothagudem of Tungaturti Mandal in Suryapeta District. Swarajyam, took part in the Telangana armed struggle along with her brother and displayed supreme bravery. She was an inspiration to many women at a time when it was considered a taboo for women to step out from the house. She went round to villages and worked among the people through her songs and lectures. She also awakened the tribal in Warangal, Karimnagar and Adilabad districts during the armed struggle. Razakars burnt her house in 1947-48 and announced a prize money of Rs. 40000 on her head if anyone informed about her whereabouts. At this point she went underground. Mallu Swarajyam continued to play active role in politics after the end of the armed struggle. She was elected to the legislative assembly twice in 1978 and 1983 from Thungaturthi constituency and rendered valuable services to the people of not only her constituency but also the entire state. She also served as the Secretary of the AIDWA Andhra Pradesh state committee She died in March 2022 at the age of 91.     PARTY DOCUMENTS AND RELATED MATERIALS Dange Unmasked. Repudiate the Revisionists! (1964) National Integration and Communist Party, By E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1964) Draft Programme of the Communist Party of India (Drafted by M. Basuvapunnaiah) (April 1964) A Brief Critical Note on the Programme Drafts, By E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1964) Regarding the 1964 Programme Document of the CPI(M) By Parimal Dasgupta (1964) Fight Against Revisionism, Political-Organizational Report Adopted at the Seventh Congress (1964) On the Tasks of the Party in the Present Situation, Resolution Adopted at the Seventh Congress (1964) Introducing the Draft Programme of the CPI(M) at the 7th Congress by M. Basavapunnaiah Programme of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Adopted at the Seventh Congress (1964) Constitution of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Adopted at the Seventh Congress (1964) On the Seventh Congress of Our Party, By P. Rammurti for the West Bengal State Committee, Communist Party of India (1964) First Editorial of People's Democracy : Our Mission by Jyoti Basu (1965) Message of Greeting to the 5th Congress of the Party of Labor of Albania Signed by Sundaraja (November 1966) Present Situation and Tasks by the Committee for the Struggle Against Revisionism (December 1966)   _________________________ Against Anti-Party Tendencies, by B. T. Ranadive Behind Revolutionary Phrases, Disorganizing Struggle Against Imperialism, People's Democracy (July 2, 1967) Logic of Anti-Leninism in Theory and Practice, People's Democracy (July 9, 1967) Ultras' Thesis: Inverted Advocacy of Congress Rule, People's Democracy (July 16, 1967) Phrase Mongering Replaces Building Up of Struggles, People's Democracy (August 6, 1967) 'Left' Tactics Will Delink Party from Mass Struggles, People's Democracy (August 13, 1967) 'Left'-Opportunist Line Means Liquidation of Party as Centralized Organization, People's Democracy (August 20, 1967) In Defense of the C.C. Draft, by B. T. Ranadive 'Left' Phrase-Mongerers Expose Their Utter Bankruptcy, People's Democracy (February 4, 1968) 'Left-Revisionists' Unashamed Volte-Face, People's Democracy (February 11, 1968) The Slogan of United Action, People's Democracy (February 18, 1968) More on the Slogan of Unity in Action, People's Democracy (February 25, 1968) The National Liberation Movement, People's Democracy (March 3, 1968) On the Concept of Peaceful Coexistence, People's Democracy (March 10, 1968) Soviet Economic Aid, U.S. Imperialism, and Revisionism of the CPSU Leadership, People's Democracy (March 17, 1968) Lack of Understanding of Lenin's Teachings, People's Democracy (March 24, 1968) _________________________ Election Manifesto of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (1967) Divergent Views Between Our Party and the C.P.C. on Certain Fundamental Issues of Programme and Policy (Excerpts) (September 1967) On the Ideological Issues in the International Communist Movement, by D. Venkateswara Rao (October 1967) Materials of the Andhra Communist Plenum, January 1968 Resolution Submitted by T. Nagi Reddy and C. Pulla Reddy Resolution Submitted by Kolla Venkayya AP Plenum Rejects the Neo-Revisionist Ideological Draft _________________________ Rebellion is Right!, (on the Andhra State Party Plenum, CPI (M)) [ Liberation, Vol. I, No 5 (March 1968)] Adventurists' Slogan of "Armed Struggle" Here and Now - What Does it Really Mean?, by Harekrishna Konar (March-April 1968) Fiasco of Revisionism, by B. T. Ranadive (April-June 1968) Stand on Ideological Issues (April 1968) Report of the Debate on Ideological Resolution of the CPI(M)Adopted at the Central Plenum at Burdwan, April 5-12, 1968 Letter to Andhra Comrades from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (1968) An Open Letter to Party Members (Reply to the Letter to Andhra Comrades) from four leading comrades in AP (1968) Editorial of the People's Democracy , June 23, 1968: Party will Emerge More United and Stronger [on the expulsion of Nagi Reddy, Pulla Reddy, D. Venkateshwara Rao and Kolla Venkayya] The Rebels Press Statement (June 1968) Rebuff the Rebels, uphold Party Unity , Joint statement of P. Sundarayya and M. Basavapunnaiah on behalf of the Polit Bureau of CPl(M) (June 1968) On the Defectors in Andhra Pradesh Resolution Adopted by the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (July 1968) Resolutions Adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) at its Meeting in Jaipur, August 7-11, 1968 Why the Ultra-'Left' Deviation? An Examination of the Basic Causes of Left Defections in Special Reference to Andhra (Adopted by the Central Committee of the CPI(M) in its meeting held in Calcutta, October 5-9, 1968) Political-Organizational Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to the Eighth Congress, Cochin, December 23-29, 1968 Political Resolution Adopted by the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Cochin, December 23-29, 1968 Report of the Proceedings of the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (January 1969) The R ole of Stalin as the CPI(M) Views It (1970s) Documents on an Expulsion from the CPI (Marxist), Frontier, (May-August 1971) Stop This Reign of Terror in West Bengal by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, West Bengal Committee (January 1972) Bihar: Division Within CPI (M), By P.N.K. Singh (February 1972) After the rigged elections: Face the Ordeal with Courage and Determination , by West Bengal State Committee (March 1972) Bihar: CPM: Split Within a Split, By P.N.K. Singh (May 1972) Programme of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Amended by the 9th Congress in Madurai on June 27 - July 2, 1972 Telangana People's Struggle and Its Lessons, By P. Sundarayya (1972) My Resignation From the Offices of General Secretary and PolitBureau Membership, By P. Sundarayya (1975) The "Statement of Policy" Reviewed, By M. Basavapunnaiah (1976) Excerpts from Political Resolution Adopted at the Tenth Congress, April 2-8, 1978 Review-Report Adopted at the Tenth Congress, April 2-8, 1978 Excerpts from Political Resolution Adopted at the Tenth Congress, April 2-8, 1978 Central Committee Report on Political Development Calcutta, June 24-28, 1981 Kerala Society and Politics. An Historical Survey, By E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1984) Naxalism Today, By Prakash Karat (1985) Party Line on Current Tactics, By E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1985) Revolt of the Warlis, By Godavari Parulekar [AIKS Golden Jubilee Series No. 1] (1986) Tebhaga Struggle of Bengal, By M. Abdullah Rasul [AIKS Golden Jubilee Series No. 2] (1986) The Historic Punnapra-Vayalar Struggle, By V.S. Achuthanadan [AIKS Golden Jubilee Series No. 3] (1986) Anti-Betterment Levy Struggle in Punjab, By Harkishan Singh Surjeet [AIKS Golden Jubilee Series No. 4] (1986) Struggle of the Surma Valley Peasantry, By Biresh Misra, Pranesh Biswas, and Achintya Bhattacharya [AIKS Golden Jubilee Series No. 5] (1986) Fifty Years of the Kisan Sabha, By E.M.S. Namboodiripad [AIKS Golden Jubilee Series No. 6] (1986) Gana Mukti Parishad in Building the Peasant Movement in Tripura, By Dasrath Deb [AIKS Golden Jubilee Series No. 7] (1986) What the AIKS Stands For, By Harkishan Singh Surjeet [AIKS Golden Jubilee Series No. 8] (1986) On Certain Ideological Issues Resolution Adopted at the 14th Congress of the CPI(M) Madras, January 3-9, 1992 The 15th CPI(M) Congress by Harkishan Singh Surjeet (1995) Review Report On 1996 General Elections Adopted By The Central Committee, July 27-29, 1996 Report on Current Political Developments Adopted At the May 7-8, 1999 Central Committee Meeting Programme Updated at the Special Conference at Thiruvananthapuram in October 2000 Report on Political Developments Adopted At The August 11-12, 2001 Meeting Of The Central Committee CPI(M) Policy Document on Tribal Question (2002) Political Resolution Adopted at the 17th Congress, Hyderabad, March 19-24, 2002 Political-Organisational Report Adopted At the 17th Congress Hyderabad, March 19-24, 2002 Political Resolution Adopted at the 18th Congress, New Delhi, April 6-11, 2005 Political-Organizational Report Adopted at the 18th Congress, New Delhi, April 6-11, 2005 ’Maoism’: An Exercise in Anarchism by Anil Biswas (2005) Political Resolution Adopted At the XIX Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) March 29 to April 3, 2008 Coimbatore Political-Organizational Report Adopted At the XIX Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) March 29 to April 3, 2008 Coimbatore On Rectification Campaign Edited version of the Resolution adopted by the Central Committee, October 23-25, 2009 Review Report of the Implementation of the Political-Tactical Line of 19th Congress Adopted at the Extended Meeting of the Central Committee, August 7 to 10, 2010, Vijayawada Political Resolution Adopted at the 20th Congress of CPI(M) Kozhikode, Kerala, April 4-9, 2012 Resolution on Some Ideological Issues Adopted at the 20th Congress of CPI(M) Kozhikode, Kerala, April 4-9, 2012 Draft Political Resolution For the 21st Congress (Adopted by the Central Committee at its January 19-21, 2015 Meeting, Hyderabad) Draft Review Report on the Political-Tactical Line Adopted by Central Committee at its Meeting, January 19-21, 2015, Hyderabad) Political Resolution Adopted at the 21st Congress Of The Communist Party of India (Marxist) Visakhapatnam, April 14-19, 2015 Report on Organization Adopted by the Plenum on Organization Kolkata, December 27-31, 2015 October Revolution: A New Path for Humanity On the occasion of the year long Centenary Celebrations, 2016-17 Political Resolution Adopted at the 22nd Congress Of The Communist Party of India (Marxist) Hyderabad, April 18-22, 2018 100 Years of the Communist Party of India (1919) Political Resolution Adopted at the 23rd Congress held on April 6-10, 2022 at Kannur India Subject Archive

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Role of Communist Party in India’s Struggle for Independence

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In this article we will discuss about the Role of Communist Party in India’s Struggle for Independence

The Communists too had very little impact on the freedom struggle of the country because their ideology and method of struggle did not suit the people of India. The Communist party and individual Communist leaders were practically nowhere in 1885, when Indian National Congress was founded and even long after that till 1924, when in September of that year Satya Bhatta founded Communist Party of India.

The party’s objective was to struggle for complete swaraj for the country in which there will be common ownership over all means of production and distribution. These will be used for the welfare of the masses. The Communists rejected Gandhian philosophy of non-violence and in 1925 expressed their desire for independence from the control of Comintern.

They made it clear that they were not their subordinates. They wanted that radical changes should be brought in Congress party programmes. They were critical of both the Congress and Swaraj party. They pleaded that the Congress party should follow policy of militant mass action and policy of surrender and compromise should be discarded.

They considered that Congress was at present under the influence of bourgeois leadership from which it should be liberated. In 1926, Communists decided to work under the guidance of Comintern and some Communist leaders even attended Sixth Congress of Communist International held in September, 1928.

It decided to fight on two fronts for country’s freedom namely National bourgeoisie on the one hand and British imperialism on the other. It was at this Communist International that about India it was resolved that, “The Communist must unmask the national reformism of the Indian National Congress and oppose all the phases of the Swarajists and Gandhists, etc., about passive resistance.”

The Communists should fight against Gandhian ideology. Accordingly they criticised Gandhian philosophy of Civil Disobedience movement for being not a struggle but a manoeuvre of the Indian bourgeoisie to obtain concessions from imperialism. They believed that Gandhian programme diverted attention of the workers and peasants from their main struggle against landlords and capitalists.

But even then when important Congress leaders were arrested in Meerut Conspiracy case Communist leaders did not favour this arbitrary move of the British government and formed a Civil Defence Committee which included such prominent leaders, as Moti Lal Nehru, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Dewan Chaman Lal and many others. Funds were also raised for fighting court case.

Because of their negative approach towards Satyagrah, the Communist lost the appreciation of masses and when their leaders were arrested in Meerut conspiracy case, they went out of national mainstream.

But those who were not arrested started a paper called ‘Workers Weekly’ which pleaded that working class must form a political party and that they can play effective role only if they are leaders in an organisation with which they are associated.

The Communists in India favoured complete independence of India not with the help of ahimsa or non-violence but with the use of violent methods. They wanted that all British factories should be confiscated and then nationalised. No compensation should be paid for confiscated lauds and other properties of landlords and other propertied classes.

They also favoured nationalisation of banks, railways and all other major industries. All debts, according to them, should be cancelled. The minorities should have right of self determination and native states should be abolished. An all India workers and peasants Soviet Republic should be created.

The government, however, did not favour the activities of the Communists in India and on 23rd July, 1934 it imposed a ban on the functioning of the party. The Communists now tried to infiltrate in the Congress and some of them pleaded for constituting a united front of all leftist forces so that a solid fight could be put against British empire.

They did not favourably view constitutional scheme embodied under the Government of India Act, 1935. They were opposed to Federal pattern for India and also scheme of provincial autonomy.

The Communists had all along been condemning British government as an imperialist and capitalist power which was exploiting the poor Indians. They wanted that the aim of India’s freedom struggle should be that of throwing Britishers out of India. But when Soviet Russia joined Second World war on the sides of the Allies, the war became all of a sudden people’s war.

They appealed to the people of India to extend whole-hearted support to Britain in war efforts. This completely alienated the sympathies of the people of India for the Communists of India.

They thus went out of main stream of national struggled. They also got a serious push out when they declared Subhash Chandra Bose as traitor and openly condemned Gandhian philosophy, particularly his policies of Satyagrah and Ahimsa. Thus, the party could not leave much impact during the difficult days when the country was fighting for winning freedom.

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Indian History

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Movement of the Working Class

• 02 Aug 2021
• 13 min read
• GS Paper - 1
• Modern Indian History
• Important Personalities
• Population and Associated Issues
• Effects of Globalization on Indian Society

Introduction

• It was a modern working class in the sense of relatively modern organisation of labour and a relatively free market for labour.
• Plantations and railways were the initial enterprises to herald the era of colonial capitalism in Indian subcontinent.
• Port cities Bombay, Calcutta and Madras became the centres of the capitalist economy.
• Cotton mills in Bombay, jute mills in Calcutta, and several factories in Madras were set up in the late 19 th century. Similar developments took place in the cities of Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Solapur and Nagpur.
• The first jute mill of India was set up in Calcutta in 1854 by a Scottish entrepreneur.
• The ownership of the cotton mills was with the Indian entrepreneurs, while that of jute was with the foreigners for a long time.

Workers’ Movement in Pre-Independence India

• Till the Swadeshi surge of 1903-08 , there was no concerted effort to better the working conditions of the labour.
• Again between 1915-1922, there was resurgence of workers’ movement along with the Home Rule Movement and the Non-Cooperation Movement.
• The earlier attempts to improve the economic conditions of the workers were in the nature of philanthropic efforts which were isolated, sporadic and aimed at specific local grievances.
• Despite this isolation, the plantation workers, on their own, registered their protests against the exploitation and oppression by the plantation owners and managers.
• The early social workers and philanthropists were also involved with them facilitating better organisational work as well as better reporting and public support.
• In Bengal, Sasipada Banerjee founded the ‘Working Men’s Club’ in 1870 and started publishing a monthly journal in Bengali entitled ‘Bharat Shramjibi’ in 1874.
• It also established the ‘Working Men’s Institution’ in 1905.
• The Bombay Millhands Defence Association formed by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1908.
• However, these bodies were primarily interested in welfare activities and did not have much organisational base among the workers.

Emergence and Growth of Trade Unions:

• Rising prices of essential commodities.
• Decline in the real wages of workers.
• Increase in the demand for the industrial products resulting in the expansion of Indian industries.
• Gandhi's call for the Non-Cooperation Movement .
• The Russian Revolution.
• B.P. Wadia, a nationalist leader and an associate of Annie Besant, was instrumental for its organisation.
• The union was formed following the agitation of mill workers of Ahmedabad demanding for a bonus to compensate for the rise in prices.
• This union worked along Gandhian lines and became very strong over the years.

All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC):

• Since then the working class movement became strong and by 1930 onwards, an ideological tone was added to the movement.
• The members selected from AITUC represented the Indian Labour at the ILO.
• Lala Lajpat Rai became the first president of the AITUC and Joseph Baptista its vice president.
• Lajpat Rai was the first to link capitalism with imperialism: “imperialism and militarism are the twin children of capitalism”.
• The Gandhian philosophy of non-violence, trusteeship and class-collaboration had great influence on AITUC.
• The act recognised trade unions as legal associations.
• It laid down conditions for registration and regulation of trade union activities.
• It secured civil and criminal immunity for trade unions from prosecution for legitimate activities, but also put some restrictions on their political activities.

Role of Communists:

• The communist ideology, deriving from the theories of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, assigns the working class the central place.
• The Communist Party of India (CPI), formed in Soviet Union in 1920, soon after its formation, became active in the labour movements.
• Role in the Movements: The communists organised the workers in cotton mills of Bombay and jute mills of Calcutta, besides many other industries and led militant struggles.
• The moderate and reformist group were against the idea and consequently left the AITUC and formed the Indian Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU).
• The communists severely criticised Gandhi and condemned the Round Table Conference of 1931 in which the Indian National Congress was participating.
• Unable to secure a majority for this condemnation, the communists split from the nationalists and formed the Red Trade Union Congress (RTUC).
• By 1931, there were three national federations of trade unions – the AITUC, the IFTU and the RTUC.
• Consequently, the RTUC, and the AITUC also united in 1935 and the name AITUC was retained for the unified organisation.

Workers’ Movement in Post-Independence India

• CITU was formed by Communist Party of India (Marxist), splitting from AITUC.
• Legislations Framed: The Industrial Dispute Act, 1947 and Labour Relations Bill and Trade Unions Bills, 1949 were introduced.
• Decline in Strikes: Between 1947-1960, the condition of the working class improved and there was a decline in the number of strikes.
• Economic Recession: The period of late 1960s saw decline in the wages of the working class; as a result, disputes in the industrial front increased.
• Liberalisation deteriorated the bargaining position of the workers vis-a-vis capital.
• It gave the employers the complete right to hire and fire.

Weaknesses of the Movement

• The unions took the relatively easy path of pressing the demands of those who could be easily organised or whose demands were likely to be heard by the government.
• Multiplicity of unions in a capitalist system keeps the working class fragmented and vulnerable to all forms of pressures.
• Unions lay fragmented which produced bitter rivalry among them and hence very often they failed to respond to the issues of the working class.
• This reflected the lack of political consciousness among the working class.
• Negligence for Marginalised Sections: Trade unions in the organised sector overlooked the problems of women workers and workers belonging to the socially oppressed groups.

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The communist party of india: a short history.

Author: Masani, M. R.

Keywords: Communism India- Politics India- Government Communist Party of India Communism- India

Publisher: Derek Verschoyle, London

Source: National Library of India, Kolkata

Type: E-Book

Received From: National Library of India

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• Published: October 2014
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communism in india records the rise, consolidation, and relative decline of left politics in India since India’s independence in 1947. Despite having ideological roots in classical Marxism and its contemporary variants, Indian communism appears to have taken a unique path of development, and it provides an example for understanding left consolidation in socio-economic circumstances similar to those in which other variants of communism developed elsewhere. Following a well-defined social-democratic path, the Indian variety of parliamentary communism does not differ much from its counterparts elsewhere. There is no doubt that communist ideology attracted mass support in India largely due to its universal egalitarian concerns and its endeavor to implement them through effective legislation. It thus became a refreshing ideology, especially in a transitional society like India, which never became a truly liberal democratic polity, given the importance of its caste system. It is difficult to establish that those championing communism are free from caste prejudices; nonetheless, by questioning birth-driven social segregation, they set in motion a powerful argument challenging what was considered to be sacrosanct. Communism thus became an empowering ideology for the vulnerable sections of Indian society that also remained peripheral in an independent polity, which, despite being politically free, was not adequately equipped to meaningfully address the basic human needs for food, shelter, and social security. So the communist parties and those drawing on parliamentary communism fulfilled two goals simultaneously. On the one hand, their sustained political activities at the grassroots gave socio-political outcasts a powerful voice and made them stakeholders in the political processes, thereby creating a powerful constituency that could not be ignored in electoral democracy. On the other hand, their role was far more significant in exposing the serious limitations of the prevalent liberal democratic arrangement in fulfilling the founding fathers’ widely publicized aim of making India free from hunger, poverty, and insecurity. Despite being ideologically different, political parties appreciative of parliamentary communism adopted the Westminster path of democracy to attain their distinctive pro-people socio-economic goals. For the ultra-left-wing communists, also christened as Maoists, the Western liberal democratic forms were neither democratic nor liberal but a refined system of exploitation of the “have-nots” by the “haves.” Seeking to replace the system, they thus found in armed revolution a definite means to usher in an era free from exploitation of human beings by human beings.

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• Introduction
• Party Constitution
• Party Programme
• Party Publications
• Party programme

Constitution

• Party Papers
• Events and News
• Campaigns and struggles

Under the Constitution

The name of the Party shall be Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is the revolutionary vanguard of the working class of India. Its aim is socialism and communism through the establishment of the state of dictatorship of the proletariat. In all its activities the Party is guided by the philosophy and principles of Marxism-Leninism which shows to the toiling masses the correct way to the ending of exploitation of man by man, their complete emancipation. The Party keeps high the banner of proletarian internationalism.

ARTICLE III

The flag of the Party shall be a red flag of which the length shall be one-and-a half times its width. At the centre of the flag there shall be a crossed hammer and sickle in white.

1. Any person residing in India, eighteen years of age or above who accepts the Programme and Constitution of the Party, agrees to work in one of the Party organisations, to pay regularly the Party membership dues (fee and levy as may be prescribed) and to carry out the decisions of the Party shall be eligible for Party membership.

2. (a) New members are admitted to the Party through individual application on the recommendation of two Party members. Party members who recommend an applicant must furnish the Party Branch or the unit concerned, full information about the applicant from personal knowledge and with due sense of responsibility. The Party Branch shall make recommendation to the next higher committee, if the applicant is to be admitted. The next higher committee takes a decision on all recommendations.

(b) All Party committees higher to the Party Branch and up to the Central Committee level have the power to directly admit new members to the Party.

3. (a) All applications for Party membership must be placed before the appropriate committee within a month of their presentation and recommendation.

(b) If the applicant is admitted to the Party, he or she shall be regarded as a candidate member for a period of one year commencing from the date of such admission.

4. If a leading member from another political party of local, district or state level comes to the Party, in addition to the sanction of Local Party Committee or District or State Committee, it is necessary to have the sanction of the next higher committee of the Party before he or she is admitted to membership of the Party. In exceptional cases the Central Committee or the State Committee can admit such members to full membership of the Party. And whenever a State Committee admits such members it should obtain previous sanction from the Central Committee.

5. Members once expelled from the Party can be re-admitted only by the decision of the Party Committee which confirmed their expulsion or by a higher committee.

6. Candidate members have the same duties and rights as full members except that they have no right to elect or be elected, or to vote on any motion.

7. The Party Branch recommending or the Party committee admitting candidate members shall arrange for their elementary education on the Programme, Constitution and the current policies of the Party and observe their development, through providing for their functioning as members of a Party Branch or unit.

8. By the end of the period of candidature, the Party Branch or Party committee concerned shall discuss whether the candidate member is qualified to full membership. If a candidate member is found unfit, the Party Branch or committee shall cancel his or her candidate membership. A report on admission to full membership shall be regularly forwarded by the Branch or the Party committee concerned to the next higher committee.

9. The higher committee may, on scrutiny of the report, alter or modify any such decision after consultation with the Branch or the Party committee which has submitted the report. The District and State Committee will exercise supervisory power over the recruitment of candidates and over admissions to full membership and have the right to modify or reject the decision of the lower committee in this respect.

10. A Party member may transfer his or her membership from one unit to another, with the approval of his or her unit and by sending his or her application through his or her unit to the higher unit under whose jurisdiction the concerned unit functions.

Party Pledge

Every person joining the Party shall sign the Party Pledge. This Pledge shall be:

“I accept the aims and objectives of the Party and agree to abide by its Constitution and loyally to carry out decisions of the Party.

“I shall strive to live up to the ideals of communism and shall selflessly serve the working class and the toiling masses and the country, always placing the interests of the Party and the people above personal interests.”

Party Membership Records

All membership records shall be kept under the supervision of the District Committee.

ARTICLE VII

Check-up of Party Membership

1. There shall be annual check-up of Party membership by the Party organisation to which the Party member belongs. Any Party member who for a continuous period and without proper reason has failed to take part in Party life and activity or to pay Party dues shall be dropped from Party membership.

2. A report on check-up of Party membership by a Branch or a Party committee concerned shall be sent to the next higher committee for confirmation and registration.

3. There shall be right of appeal on decisions of droppage from Party membership.

ARTICLE VIII

Resignation from Party membership

1. A Party member wishing to resign from the Party shall submit his or her resignation to the Party branch or to the Party unit to which he or she belongs. The unit concerned may accept the same, decide to strike his or her name off the rolls and report the matter to the next higher committee. If the resignation is on political grounds the unit may refuse to accept the resignation and may expel him.

2. In the case where a Party member wishing to resign from the Party is liable to be charged with serious violation of Party discipline which may warrant his or her expulsion and where such a charge is substantial, the resignation may be given effect to as expulsion from the Party.

3. All such cases of resignations given effect to as expulsion shall be immediately reported to the next higher Party committee and be subject to the latter’s confirmation.

Membership Fee

1. All Party members as well as candidates shall pay a Party membership fee of rupees five per year. This annual Party fee shall be paid at the time of admission into the Party and by March end of each year to the Branch or unit secretary by the member concerned. If he or she does not clear the fee in due time his or her name shall be removed from the Party rolls. The Central Committee may extend this date if the circumstances warrant such extension.

2. All Party fees collected from Party members by Party Branches or units will be deposited with the Central Committee through the appropriate Party committees.

Every Party member must pay a monthly levy as laid down by the Central Committee. Those whose incomes are of annual or of seasonal character have to pay their levy at the beginning of the season or at the beginning of every quarter on the same percentage basis. If a member fails to deposit his levy within three months after it is due, then his name is to be removed from the Party rolls.

Duties of Party Members

1. The duties of the Party members are as follows:

(a) To regularly participate in the activity of the Party organisation to which they belong and to faithfully carry out the policy, decisions and the directives of the Party.

(b) To study Marxism-Leninism and endeavour to raise their level of understanding.

(c) To read, support and popularise the Party journals and Party publications.

(d) To observe the Party Constitution and Party discipline and behave in the spirit of proletarian internationalism and in accordance with the noble ideals of communism.

(e) To place the interests of the people and the Party above personal interests.

(f) To devotedly serve the masses and consistently strengthen their bonds with them, to learn from the masses and report their opinions and demands to the Party, to work in a mass organisation, unless exempted, under the guidance of the Party.

(g) To cultivate comradely relations towards one another to constantly develop a fraternal spirit within the Party.

(h) To practice criticism and self-criticism with a view to helping each other and improving individual and collective work.

(i) To be frank, honest and truthful to the Party and not to betray the confidence of the Party.

(j) To safeguard the unity and solidarity of the Party and to be vigilant against the enemies of the working class and the country.

(k) To defend the Party and uphold its cause against the onslaught of the enemies of the Party, the working class and the country.

2. It shall be the task of the Party organisation to ensure the fulfillment of the above duties by Party members and help them in every possible way in the discharge of these duties.

ARTICLE XII

Rights of Party Members

1. Rights of Party members are as following:

(a) To elect Party organs and Party committees and be elected to them.

(b) To participate in discussions in order to contribute to the formation of the Party policy and of the decisions of the Party.

(c) To make proposals regarding one’s own work in the Party.

(d) To make criticism about Party committees and Party functionaries at Party meetings.

(e) To be heard in person in his or her unit when a Party unit discusses disciplinary action against him or her.

(f) When any Party member disagrees with any decision of a Party committee on organization he or she has a right to submit his or her opinion to the next higher committee. In case of political difference a member has the right to submit his or her opinion to the higher committee up to the Central Committee. In all such cases the Party member shall, of course, carry out the Party decisions and the difference shall be sought to be resolved through the test of practice and through comradely discussions.

(g) To address any statement, appeal or complaint to any higher Party organisation up to and including the Central Committee.

2. It shall be the duty of Party organisations and Party functionaries to see that these rights are respected

ARTICLE XIII

Principles of Democratic Centralism

1. The structure of the Party is based on, and its internal life is guided by, the principles of democratic centralism. Democratic centralism means centralised leadership based on inner-Party democracy under the guidance of the centralised leadership.

In the sphere of the Party structure, the guiding principles of democratic centralism are:

(a) All Party organs from top to bottom shall be elected.

(b) The minority shall carry out the decisions of the majority; the lower Party organisations shall carry out the decision and directives of the higher Party organs, the individual shall subordinate himself to the will of the collective. All Party organisations shall carry out the decisions and directives of the Party Congress and of the Central Committee.

(c) All Party committees shall periodically report their work to the Party organisation immediately below and all lower committees shall likewise report to their immediate higher committee.

(d) All Party committees, particularly the leading Party committees, shall pay constant heed to the opinions and criticism of the lower Party organisations and the rank-and-file Party members.

(e) All Party committees shall function strictly on the principles of collective decisions and check-up combined with individual responsibility.

(f) All questions of international affairs, questions of all-India character, or questions concerning more than one state or questions requiring uniform decisions for the whole country, shall be decided upon by the all-India Party organisations. All questions of a state or district character shall be ordinarily decided upon by the corresponding Party organisations. But in no case shall such decisions run counter to the decisions of a higher Party organisation. When the Central Party leadership has to take a decision on any issue of major state importance, it shall do so normally after consultation with the state Party organisation concerned. The state organisation shall do likewise in relation to districts.

(g) On issues which affect the policy of the Party on an all-India scale, but on which the Party’s standpoint is to be expressed for the first time, only the Central leadership of the Party is entitled to make a policy statement. The lower committees can and should send their opinions and suggestions in time for consideration by the Central leadership.

2. Basing itself upon the experience of the entire Party membership and of the popular movement, in the sphere of the internal life of the Party, the following principles of democratic centralism are applied:

(a) Free and frank discussion within the Party unit on all questions affecting the Party, its policy and work.

(b) Sustained efforts to activise the Party members in popularising and implementing the Party policies, to raise their ideological-political level and improve their general education so that they can effectively participate in the life and work of the Party.

(c) When serious differences arise in a Party committee, every effort should be made to arrive at an agreement. Failing this, the decision should be postponed with a view to resolving differences through further discussions, unless an immediate decision is called for by the needs of the Party and the mass movement.

(d) Encouragement of criticism and self-criticism at all levels, from top to bottom, especially criticism from below.

(e) Consistent struggles against bureaucratic tendencies at all levels.

(f) Impermissibility of factionalism and factional groupings inside the Party in any form.

(g) Strengthening of the Party spirit by developing fraternal relations and mutual help, correcting mistakes by treating comrades sympathetically; judging them and their work not on the basis of isolated mistakes or incidents, but taking into account their whole record of service to the Party.

ARTICLE XIV

All-India Party Congress

1. The supreme organ of the Party for the whole country shall be the All-India Party Congress.

(a) The regular Party Congress shall be convened by the Central Committee ordinarily once every three years.

(b) An Extraordinary Party Congress shall be called by the Central Committee at its own discretion, or when it is demanded by two or more State Committees representing not less than one-third of the total Party membership.

(c) The date and venue of the Party Congress or of the Extraordinary Party Congress shall be decided by the Central Committee at a meeting especially called for the purpose.

(d) Regular Party Congress shall be composed of delegates elected by the State Conferences as well as by Conferences of Party units directly under the all-India Party Centre.

(e) The basis of representation at a regular Party Congress and the basis of representation and method of election of delegates to the Extraordinary Party Congress shall be decided by the Central Committee on the basis of total Party membership, strength of the mass movements led by the Party and the strength of the Party in the respective States.

(f) The members of the Central Committee shall have the right to participate as full delegates in the Party Congress, whether regular or extraordinary.

2. Functions and powers of the regular Party Congress are as follows:

(a) To discuss and act on the political and organisational report of the Central Committee;

(b) To revise and change the Party Programme and the Party Constitution;

(c) To determine the Party line on current situation;

(d) To elect the Central Committee by secret ballot.

3. It elects a Credentials Committee which goes into the credentials of all the delegates and submits a report to the Congress.

4. The Congress shall elect a Presidium for the conduct of its business.

Central Committee

1. (a) The Central Committee shall be elected at the Party Congress, the numbers being decided by the Party Congress.

(b) The outgoing Central Committee shall propose to the Congress a panel of candidates.

(c) The panel of candidates shall be prepared with a view to creating a capable leadership, closely linked with the masses, firm in the revolutionary outlook of the working class and educated in Marxism-Leninism.

(d) Any delegate can raise objection with regard to any name in the panel proposed as well as propose any new name or names, but the prior approval of the member whose name is proposed is necessary.

(e) Any one whose name has been proposed shall have the right to withdraw.

(f) The panel proposed, together with the additional nominations by the delegates, shall be voted upon by secret ballot, and by the method of single distributive vote. In case there is no additional nomination, approval of the delegates will be taken by show of hands.

2. The Central Committee shall be the highest authority of the Party between two all-India Party Congress.

3. It is responsible for enforcing the Party Constitution and carrying out the political line and decisions adopted by the Party Congress.

4. The Central Committee shall represent the Party as a whole and be responsible for directing the entire work of the Party. The Central Committee shall have the right to take decisions with full authority on any question facing the Party.

5. The Central Committee shall elect from among its members a Polit Bureau including the General Secretary. The number of members in the Polit Bureau shall be decided by the Central Committee. The Polit Bureau carries on the work of the Central Committee between its two sessions and has the right to take political and organisational decisions in between two meetings of the Central Committee.

(a) The Central Committee shall elect a Secretariat from among its members. The number of members of the Secretariat shall be decided by the Central Committee. The Secretariat will, under the guidance of the Polit Bureau, look after the day-to-day work of the Party Centre and assist the Polit Bureau in the implementation of Central Committee decisions.

6. The election of the secretaries of the State Committees and of editors of state Party organs shall require the approval of the Central Committee.

7. (a) The Central Committee shall remove any member from itself for gross breach of discipline, misconduct or for anti-Party activity by two-thirds of the members present and voting and in any case by more than half the total strength of the Central Committee voting for such removal.

(b) It can fill up any vacancy occurring in its composition by simple majority of its total members.

(c) In case a member or members of the Central Committee are arrested the remaining members can coopt substitute member or members and they shall have full rights as the original members but should vacate their places as and when the arrested members get released and assume their duties.

8. The time between two meetings of the Central Committee shall not normally exceed three months and it shall meet whenever one third of its total members make a requisition.

9. The Central Committee shall discuss and decide political and organisational issues and problems of mass movements and guide the State Committees and all-India Party fractions in mass organisations.

10. The Central Committee is responsible for the Party’s finances and adopts the statement of accounts submitted to it by the Polit Bureau once a year.

11. The Central Committee shall submit its political and organisational report before the Party Congress, whenever it is convened.

12. With the aim of strengthening the revolutionary leadership of the Party and ensuring a check-up over the State and District organisations, the Central Committee sends representatives and organisers, who must work on the basis of special instructions laid down every time by the Central Committee or Polit Bureau.

13. The Central Committee may when it deems necessary convene an extended session of the Central Committee, or Plenum or Conference. The Central Committee shall decide the basis of attendance and method of election of delegates for such bodies.

14. In case of emergency or in case of large-scale arrests, the Central Committee, the State Committees, and the District Committees shall be reorganised into smaller compact bodies. The names for such reorganisation of Central Committee are prepared by the remaining members of the P.B. and should be approved by the members of the Central Committee inside and outside. The names for the reorganisation of State and District Committees are prepared by the remaining members of the respective committees and are to be approved by their next higher committee. They can form sub-committees as they deem it necessary, to discharge their functions and responsibilities. The reconstituted Central Committee is empowered to frame new rules for safeguarding the Party organisation. But when the situation normalises the elected Committees are restored.

15. No person can hold the position of the General Secretary for more than three full terms. Full term means the period between two Party Congresses. In a special situation, a person who has completed three full terms as General Secretary may be re-elected for a fourth term provided it is so decided by the Central Committee with a three-fourth majority. But in no case can that person be elected again for another term in addition to the fourth term.

16. The Central Committee may fix an age limit eligibility for members to be elected to the Central Committee. The Central Committee may also fix a quota for women to be elected to the Central Committee. The Central Committee may prescribe guidelines to fix age limit and quota for women to be elected to the State Committees.

ARTICLE XVI

State and District Party Organs

1. The highest organ in the State or District shall be the State or the District Conference which elects a State or District Committee.

2. (a) The organisational structure, the rights and functions of the State or District Party organs are similar to those enumerated in the Articles concerning the Party structure and functions at the all-India level, their functions being confined to the State or District issues and their decisions being within the limit of the decisions taken by the next higher Party organ. In case it becomes necessary to increase the number of members of these Party Committees they can do so with the permission of the next higher committee.

(b) The State or District Committee shall elect a Secretariat including the secretary. But the State or District Committee may not have a Secretariat if permitted by the next higher committee.

(c) The State or District Committee shall remove any member from itself for gross breach of discipline, misconduct or for anti-Party activity by a decision of majority of the total members of the State Committee or District Committee.

3. (a) The State Committee shall decide on the area of the District Committee taking into account the needs of the movement. It may not necessarily be confined to an administrative division.

(b) The State Committee shall decide on the various Party organs to be set up between the primary unit (the Branch) and the District or the region and shall make necessary provisions relating to their composition and functioning. This will be done in accordance with the rules laid down by the Central Committee.

4. No person can hold the position of Secretary of the State/District/intermediate committee for more than three full terms. Full term means, the period between two Party conferences of the respective committee. In a special situation, a person who has completed three full terms as Secretary may be re-elected for a fourth term provided it is so decided by the respective committee with a three-fourth majority and with the approval of the state committee. In the case of State Secretary, it will have to be approved by the Central Committee. But in no case can that person be elected again for another term in addition to the fourth term.

ARTICLE XVII

Primary Unit

1. (a) The primary unit of the Party is the Party Branch organised on the basis of profession or territory;

(b) Party members are to be organised on the basis of their occupation or vocation, when they are working in a factory or an institute or any industry. When such Branches are organised the members of such Branches shall be associate members of the Party Branches in place of their residence or organised as auxiliary Branches there. The work to be allotted in their place of residence shall not be detrimental to the work allotted to them by their basic units in the factory or institute or occupation;

(c) The number of members in a Branch shall not be more than fifteen. The functions and other matters related to the Branch will be determined by the State Committee.

2. The Branch is the living link between the masses of workers, peasants and other sections of the people within its area or sphere and the leading committee of the Party. Its tasks are:

(a) To carry out the directives of the higher committee;

(b) Win the masses in the factory or locality for the political and organisational decisions of the Party.

(c) Draw in militants and sympathisers into activity to enroll them as new members and educate them politically.

(d) Help the District, local or town committee in its every day organisational and agitational work.

3. To carry out the current work, the Branch elects its Secretary who is confirmed by the next higher committee.

ARTICLE XVIII

Central and State Control Commission

1. The Party Congress shall directly elect a Central Control Commission consisting of not more than five members. The Chairperson of the Central Control Commission will be an ex-officio member of the Central Committee.

2. The Control Commission shall take up:

(a) Cases of disciplinary action referred to it by the Central Committee or Polit Bureau;

(b) Cases of appeal where disciplinary action has been taken by the State Committee.

(c) Cases involving expulsion, suspension from full Party membership and decisions of droppage from Party membership against which an appeal has been made to the State Committee or to the State Control Commission and rejected.

3. The decision of the Central Control Commission will be final and binding. But the Central Committee can withhold, modify or reverse the decisions of the Central Control Commission in extraordinary cases. Any such decision shall be supported by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members present and voting. All such decisions shall be reported to the next all India Party Congress.

4. The detailed rules for the functioning of the Control Commission shall be framed by the Central Committee after consultation with the Control Commission.

5. In the eventually of a vacancy arising in the Central Control Commission between two Party Congresses, the Central Committee shall have the right to fill the vacancy.

6. The State Conference may elect a State Control Commission to go into the cases of disciplinary action. In whichever state the State Control Commission is set up, the functions and authority will be similar to that of the Central Control Commission, but within its own state.

ARTICLE XIX

Party Discipline

1. Discipline is indispensable for preserving and strengthening the unity of the Party, for enhancing its strength, its fighting ability and its prestige, and for enforcing the principles of democratic centralism. Without strict adherence to Party discipline, the Party cannot lead the masses in struggles and actions, nor discharge its responsibility towards them.

2. Discipline is based on conscious acceptance of the aims, the Programme and the policies of the Party. All members of the Party are equally bound by Party discipline irrespective of their status in the Party organisation or in public life.

3. Violation of the Party Constitution and decisions of the Party as well as any other action and behaviour unworthy of a member of the Communist Party shall constitute a breach of Party discipline and is liable to disciplinary action. This includes domestic violence or any acts which constitute sexual harassment.

4. The disciplinary actions are :

(a) Warning

(b) Censure

(c) Public censure

(d) Removal from the post in the Party

(e) Suspension from full Party membership for any period but not exceeding one year

(f) Expulsion

5. Disciplinary action shall normally be taken where other methods, including methods of persuasion, have failed to correct the comrade concerned. But even where disciplinary measure has been taken, the efforts to help the comrade to correct himself shall continue. In case where the breach of discipline is such that it warrants an immediate disciplinary measure to protect the interests of Party or its prestige, the disciplinary action shall be taken promptly.

6. Expulsion from the Party is the severest of all disciplinary measures and this shall be applied with utmost caution, deliberation and judgement.

7. No disciplinary measure involving removal from the post held in the Party, suspension from full Party membership other than suspension pending enquiry, expulsion from the Party, shall come into effect without confirmation by the next higher committee. In case of expulsion the penalised Party member shall be removed from all Party activities pending confirmation. The expelled member stands suspended from the Party till the expulsion is confirmed by the next higher committee. The higher committee will have to communicate its decision within six months.

8. The comrade against whom a disciplinary measure is proposed shall be fully informed of the allegations, charges and other relevant facts against him or her. He or she shall have the right to be heard in person by the Party unit to which he or she belongs and shall have the right to submit his or her explanation to any other unit which takes action against him or her.

9. When a member is simultaneously a member of two Party units, the lower unit can recommend disciplinary action against him or her but it shall not come into operation unless accepted by his or her higher unit.

10. Party members found to be strike-breakers, drunkards, moral degenerates, betrayers of Party confidence, guilty of grave financial corruption can be summarily suspended from Party membership and removed from all responsible positions in the Party by the Party unit to which he belongs or by a higher Party body pending the issue of the charge-sheet to him and getting his explanation. This summary suspension and removal from all responsible positions in the Party cannot be extended for a period of more than three months.

11. There shall be right of appeal in all cases of disciplinary action.

12. The Central, State or District Committee has the right to dissolve and appoint new committees or take disciplinary action against a lower committee in cases where a persistent defiance of Party decisions and policy, serious factionalism, or a break of Party discipline is involved. But the State and District Committee will immediately report such action to the next higher committee for whatever action it deems necessary.

13. In exceptional circumstances Party Committees in their discretion may resort to summary procedure in expelling members for grave anti-Party activities.

Party Members in Elected Public Bodies

1. Party members elected to Parliament, State Legislature or Administrative Council shall constitute themselves into a Party group and function under the appropriate Party Committee in strict conformity with the line of the Party, its policies and directives.

2. Communist legislators shall unswervingly defend the interests of the people. Their work in the legislature shall reflect the movement and they shall uphold and popularize the policies of the Party.

The legislative work of the communist legislators shall be closely combined with the activity of the Party outside and mass movements and it shall be the duty of all communist legislators to help build the Party and mass organisations.

3. Communist legislators shall maintain the closest possible contact with their electors and masses, keeping them duly informed of their legislative work and constantly seeking their suggestions and advice.

4. Communist legislators shall maintain a high standard of personal integrity, lead an unostentatious life and display humility in all their dealings and contact with the people and place the Party above self.

5. Salaries and allowances drawn by communist legislators and local body members are considered to be Party money. The Party Committee concerned shall fix up the wages and allowances of the members.

6. Party members elected to local bodies such as corporations, municipalities, town or area committees, zilla parishads, block samities, gram panchayats shall function under the appropriate Party Committee or Party Branch. They shall maintain close day-to-day contacts with their electors and the masses and defend their interests in such elected bodies. They shall make regular reports on their work to the electors and the people and seek their suggestions and advice. The work in such local bodies shall be combined with intense mass activity outside.

7. All nomination of Party candidates for election to Parliament, Legislatures or Councils or Centrally Administered areas shall be subject to approval by the Central Committee.

Rules governing the nomination of Party candidates for corporation, municipalities, district boards, local boards and panchayats shall be drawn up by the State Committees.

ARTICLE XXA

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) shall bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established and to the principles of socialism, secularism and democracy and would uphold the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India.

ARTICLE XXI

Inner-Party Discussions

1. To unify the Party, free and business-like discussions of Party policy in the various organisations of the Party as a whole are useful and necessary. This is the inalienable right of Party members arising from inner-Party democracy. But interminable discussions on issues of Party policy which paralyse the unity and will of action of the Party would be a gross misuse of inner-Party democracy.

2. Inner-Party discussion shall be organised on an all-India scale by the Central Committee:

(a) Whenever it considers it necessary.

(b) Whenever over an important question of Party policy there is not sufficient firm majority inside the Central Committee.

(c) When an inner-Party discussion on all-India scale is demanded by State Committees representing one-third of total Party membership.

3. A State Committee can initiate inner-Party discussion on an important question of Party policy concerning that particular State, either on its own, or on a demand of District Committees representing one-third Party membership in the State with the approval of the Central Committee.

4. Inner-Party discussion shall be conducted under the guidance of the Central Committee which shall formulate the issues under discussion. The Central Committee which guides the discussion shall lay down the manner in which the discussion shall be conducted.

When the State Committee initiates the discussion, it can formulate the issues under discussion and the manner in which the discussion shall be conducted, with the approval of the Central Committee.

ARTICLE XXII

Discussion Preparatory to Party Congress And Conferences

1. Two months before the Party Congress, the Central Committee will release the draft resolution for discussion by all units of the Party. It is obligatory on the part of the State Committees to render it into respective languages and forward to all Branch Committees the required number of copies in the shortest possible time after its release by the Central Committee. Amendments to the resolution will be sent directly to the Central Committee which will place its report on them before the Party Congress.

2. At each level, the Conference shall take place on the basis of reports and resolutions submitted by the respective Committees.

ARTICLE XXIII

Party Members Working in Mass Organisations

Party members working in mass organisations and their executives shall organise themselves into fractions or fraction committees and function under the guidance of the appropriate Party Committee. They must always strive to strengthen the unity, mass basis and fighting capacity of the mass organisations concerned.

ARTICLE XXIV

The Central Committee may frame rules and bye-laws under the Party Constitution and in conformity with it. Rules and bye-laws under the Party Constitution and in conformity with it may also be framed by the State Committees subject to confirmation by the Central Committee.

ARTICLE XXV

The Party Constitution shall be amended only by the Party Congress. The notice of proposals for amending the Constitution shall be given two months before the said Party Congress.

RULES UNDER THE CONSTITUTION

Under Article IV, Section 10:

Regarding Transfer of Member from one unit to another or from one state to another:

(Explanation: Though in practice all transfers from one State to another are done by the CC, the particulars mentioned generally are inadequate. Therefore when a State asks the Centre to transfer a comrade to another State, it must specify the following so that a proper record is kept of each Party member at each level. The same would apply to transfers within the State.)

Rules : Transfer of Membership

The following particulars must be supplied along with the letter of transfer:

Name of comrade

Year of joining the Party

Unit to which he/she belonged

Mass organisation in which he/she worked

Levy amount per month and paid up to

Any record of disciplinary action

State from which he/she is to be transferred

State to which he/she is to be transferred

Year of renewal of Party membership

Address where he/she can be contacted

Auxiliary Groups:

(Explanation: The Salkia Plenum has directed that militants thrown up through mass struggles should be put into auxiliary groups, trained and educated so that they can be recruited as Party members. For this provision is to be made in the rules.)

1. Party units should take steps to organise active participants and militants thrown up in the course of mass movements and from the mass organisations into auxiliary groups which are groupings of broad sympathizers.

2. Party Committees should arrange for the education and training of such auxiliary group members about the Party Programme and basic policies, so as to equip them in a reasonable period of time to be capable of joining the Party as candidate members.

Under Article VI:

The Constitution provides for the membership records to be kept under the supervision of the District Committee. While the final authority for veracity of the records and its authenticated copy will be the DC, the maintenance of records can be delegated to the intermediate/local committee in a State, if so decided by the State Committee concerned.

Under Article VII:

(Explanation: Clause (1) states that a Party member may be dropped from membership who “for a continuous period and without proper reason has failed to take part in Party life and activity or to pay Party dues”. This is to safeguard against arbitrary droppages without the due reasons stated in the Constitution. Some specific rules are required on the procedure to be adopted.)

(1) The unit concerned which wishes to drop a member must do so after giving the member a chance to explain his or her position. The Branch must convey the decision to drop the member in writing to the next higher committee.

(2) The higher committee, when confirming and registering the membership, must examine the list of droppages and give its specific opinion on the same.

(3) The committee concerned must submit a renewal report to the next higher committee giving details of the Party membership enrolment, droppages, transfers and composition of the membership.

(4) For renewal of Party membership there should be a renewal form to be filled up by the member concerned every year which includes basic data such as age, year of joining the Party, income and front in which working.

(5) The receipt for the membership fee has to be given to the member concerned.

(6) The concerned Party unit should inform the Party member about the decision to drop the member from Party membership within 30 days from the date of confirmation of the decision to drop the member.

(7) The appeal against droppage from Party membership should be filed by the concerned comrade within 30 days of intimation of droppage from Party membership.

 Under Article IX:

Renewals: (Explanation: Article IX, Clause 1 states that the annual membership fee is to be paid by a member by “March end of each year to the Branch or unit secretary by the member concerned.”

If membership fees are deposited only by March end to the units, by the time it is forwarded to the District/State Committees, it takes time. So in practice now the CC gets the consolidated membership fees from the State over a varied period of time. Now the duration stretches from April to December even. There has to be a cut-off date by which the membership fees should reach the Centre.)

(1) Renewal of Party membership each year must be completed by March 31 st .

(2) The State Committees must deposit the membership fees with the Centre by 31 st May each year.

(3) In case of any contingency the date can only be extended by the Central Committee/PB.

(4) New enrolment during the current year of candidate membership fees to be remitted by the end of the year or before.

Note: New enrolment of candidate members (after the renewal period) continues throughout the year. Their fees are to be deposited with the Central Committee separately.

Under Article X:

1. Party members levy rates: The Central Committee has decided that the levy from Party members shall be collected as per the following rates:

2. If a member is to pay quarterly or annually, calculate his/her monthly income on the basis of his/her annual income and calculate amount which he or she has to pay applying the above rates.

3. If spouse or any other member earning and contributing to the family income, is not a Party member, their income is not to be included, for calculation of levy rates.

1. Income means with regard to salaried employees and wage earners, all their total gross income, including DA and other allowances. Apart from this, if the member has additional income from land, business or buildings, that too is to be added.

2. In case of peasants, income will be calculated after excluding actual amounts expended towards agricultural production.

3. If a person is living off joint family income, then his share of income only has to be taken into account.

4. In extreme cases, unemployment, drought or illness, if exemptions are to be given, it is for the respective State Committee to take necessary decision.

Note: The percentage share of local, area, district and state is to be decided by the State concerned.

Under Article XV, Section 10:

Central Committee Finances

1. The Central Committee is authorised to appoint a Trust to manage its properties.

2. The Central Committee is to decide each year, or as the case may be, the quantum each State will pay towards Party fund or special Party fund drive to run the Party’s central apparatus.

3. The Polit Bureau will constitute a Finance Sub-Committee which will meet and

(a) Take decisions on financial matters and expenditure involving amounts upto Rs. ten thousand only. Expenditure exceeding this limit will be referred to the P.B.

(b) Finance Sub-Committee will place quarterly accounts of the CC and its establishment to the Polit Bureau.

(c) Finance Sub-Committee will submit yearly accounts as approved by the PB to the Central Committee for its approval (as laid down by the Party Constitution).

(d) One member of the Sub-Committee will be incharge of the income and disbursement of the Party finances after which these will be passed over to the accounts incharge for finalisation and compilation.

(e) Half-yearly accounts of the Party organs and other establishments (if any) to be submitted to the Sub-Committee.

 Under Article XVI, Section 1:

If any District Committee is divided into two by the decision of the State Committee in between two Party conferences on account of administrative division, or, taking into account the needs of the movement, both the committees will have the status of District Committees.

Under Article XVI, Section 3, Sub-Section (b):

 State and District Party Organs, Setting up of Intermediate Committees

(Explanation: Clause 3(b) states, “The State Committee shall decide on the various Party organs to be set up between the primary unit (the Branch) and the District or the region and shall make necessary provisions relating to their composition and functioning. This will be done in accordance with the rules laid down by the Central Committee.”)

The State Committee can decide to set up intermediate committees between the primary unit and the District Committee or the region under the following rules:

(a) The State Committee will decide the size of the committee to be set up.

(b) Such a committee will be elected by the conference of delegates at that level. The committee should elect a Secretary and /or the Secretariat.

(c) The criteria of election of delegates to the conference of the intermediate committee will be decided by the State Committee.

(d) The intermediate committee (local, area, zonal etc.) will exercise all those functions enumerated for the State/ District Committees, their function being confined to the local area or zone under its jurisdiction.

(e) Committees set up on an ad-hoc/nominated basis for coordination purposes will not have the general powers laid out for full-fledged elected committees. Their scope of work is to be guided by the decisions of the respective committees who appointed them.

(f) The number of delegates to the District Conference and the conferences of committees below the district will be decided by the State Committee.

Under Article XVI:

Rules on Party Finances & Accounts

For Committees Below the CC (States & District Party Organs )

(Explanation: Similar to the rules framed for the CC finances and accounting, the following rules will apply to all the lower level elected committees)

(a) At State level (and for the intermediate/District Committees as decided by the State Committee) finance sub-committee of the committee concerned will be constituted by the Secretariat.

(b) The sub-committee will be responsible for the disbursement of the money and maintenance of the accounts under the supervision of the Secretariat.

(c) The sub-committee will submit a six-monthly account to the Party Committee and this statement should be forwarded to the next higher committee.

(d) Annual accounts should be audited by the sub-committee and placed before the Party committee for approval.

(e) The District Committee will submit the consolidated statement of account of its and all the lower elected committees to the State Committee before July 31 every year after being duly audited by a chartered accountant.

(f) The State Committee will submit the consolidated statement of accounts of its and all the lower elected committees before August 31 every year to the Central Committee after being duly audited by a chartered accountant.

Under Article XVIII:

Rules For The Functioning Of The Central Control Commission

1. On receipt of a reference or an appeal under Article XVIII, the Central Control Commission should take steps to investigate and decide upon the issue.

2. No appeal can be preferred by any one other than the aggrieved Party member.

3. The Central Control Commission shall have the right to directly correspond with and examine the unit/units or persons concerned in order to ascertain facts and to arrive at conclusion.

4. The Central Control Commission will ordinarily meet once in three months. The Chairperson shall call a meeting of the Central Control Commission after giving 14 days prior notice.

5. Majority of the members will constitute the quorum of the meeting. The Central Control Commission can take a decision only if all the members agree or a majority of the members of the Central Control Commission agree. Decisions taken may be informed to the absent member or members.

6. The Central Control Commission may take decisions by consultation by correspondence among its members on such issues which are simple and not complicated.

7. The Central Control Commission will communicate its decision to the appellant and the respective State Committee and the decision of the Central Control Commission has to be implemented immediately by the respective committees.

8. The Central Control Commission will present before the Central Committee a consolidated report of its activities and decisions at least once in a year.

9. These rules shall apply mutatis mutandis to State Control Commissions.

Procedural Rules For

Central Control Commission to Conduct Business

1. On receipt of an appeal, the Chairperson of the Central Control Commission shall intimate about the case to the other members.

2. The Chairperson shall also propose the immediate steps to be taken up for the investigation in a particular case. The other members of the Central Control Commission may send their proposals regarding the same.

3. The Central Control Commission has the right to ask for any information which is required for deciding the appeal from the concerned committees and members and they should provide such information to the Central Control Commission within a period of two months and if no such information is received within this period, the Central Control Commission may proceed with the case.

Procedural rules for the Central Committee

The Central Committee shall consult the Central Control Commission before a final decision is taken to withhold, modify or reverse a decision of the Central Control Commission in extraordinary cases under Article XVIII, Section 3.

Under Article XIX, Section 3

As mandated by the law for protection against Sexual Harassment at the Workplace, an Internal Committee to inquire into any complaints of sexual harassment is to be set up at the central level by the Polit Bureau and at the state and district level by the State and District Committees respectively. The procedures for the IC will be issued by the Polit Bureau and will be applicable to the functioning of all such committees at different levels.

Under Article XIX, Section 11

1. The Party unit which took disciplinary action against a Party member should inform the Party member concerned about the decision within 30 days after the decision or within 30 days after confirmation by the next higher committee, if confirmation is required as per clause 7 of Article XIX.

2. The appeal against the disciplinary action should be filed by the concerned Party member within six months from the date of communication of disciplinary action.

Under Article XIX, Section 13:

Provision for summary expulsion in exceptional circumstance is meant for “grave” anti-Party activities. This means that only under extremely serious circumstances such as when a member is found to be a spy or enemy agent or when the member’s activities seriously compromise the Party’s position, should it be invoked.

Under Article XX:

Party Members in Elected Bodies

1. Each CPI(M) Parliament member has to pay levy amount as decided by the Central Committee to the Central Committee.

2. The percentage of the levy share as fixed by the PB for the State will be remitted to the State Committee concerned (to the State to which the member belongs) each month.

(Explanation: Article XX Sub-clause (5) in the Constitution states that salaries and allowances drawn by Communist legislators and local body members are to be considered Party money. Earlier there was no system of pensions for MPs/MLAs. Now it is there. So the following rule.)

3. Salaries and allowances of Communist legislators, local body members include pensions drawn by them, if any.

Under Article XXII

Discussions Preparatory To Party Congress And Conferences

The forums of the Party conferences will be utilised to discuss and review the work report since the past conference and political-organisational questions related to the implementation of the line laid down in the past conference/Congress. The discussion on the draft political resolution of the Congress will be conducted separately as per the provisions laid down in the Constitution.

Under Article XXIII

1. The Party Committee at Central, State and District levels may form sub-committee from amongst its members and any other member considered suitably equipped to guide the work of the Party members working in different mass fronts. They will specialise in the problems of the front, check up on Party building, guide and coordinate the activities of the Party members in different mass organisations, whether they exist as Party units or fraction committees, and see that Party policy is being followed and implemented.

2. All the Party members working in a mass organisation or the elected bodies of that organisation at various levels constitute the fraction of that body. They have to function under the guidance and decisions of the respective Party committees.

3. Fraction committees are to be set up from amongst the fraction members where there are large number of them working at different levels in a mass organisation. The fraction committee will be set up by the respective Party committee by including those comrades, apart from members of the Party committee if any, who are equipped with the required level of maturity or mass experience considered necessary by the Party committee.

4. The fraction committee, as constituted above, should carry out the decisions of the respective Party committees in the Executive or General Council of the particular mass organisation, and all necessary measures to implement the decisions of Party Committees by the fraction in that mass organisation shall be taken by the fraction committee.

Constitution adopted by the Eighth Congress, Cochin, December 23-29, 1968 incorporating amendments made to the Constitution upto the XXIII Congress, April 2022.

Rules adopted by the Central Committee at its meeting, April 8-10, 1988 and subsequently upto July 30-31, 2022 have been incorporated.

August 2022

Communists in India: Relevance and Challenges in Contemporary Politics

• April 16, 2023
• Insights , Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies , International Relations and Strategic Studies

In 1994, when Kim Jong-il succeeded his father Kim Il-sung as the supreme leader of North Korea, ET’s cartoonist E P Unny drew the communist theoretician E M S Namboodiripad trying to hide his totally naked self behind a tree, while peering, bemused, at the principal character of the communist world’s first dynastic succession in full military uniform. ‘Kim karaneeyam?’ ran the caption. That is, of course, Sanskrit for ‘what is to be done?’ The caption played on the Kim name and the dilemma of devout communists over this stark flouting of all democratic norms, while harking back to a tract famous in the Marxist universe, Lenin’s ‘What is to be done?’

Indian communists did nothing then. Ditto, when Jong-il was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-un. Now that Jong-un seems to be grooming his daughter to succeed him, Indian communists again display virtuous consistency. Why should we waste our time over a dictator who loves geopolitical fireworks more than his own starving people and a party that has been decimated in two of its traditional strongholds in West Bengal and Tripura, holds on in Kerala on the strength of Faustian bargains and struggles as an endangered species elsewhere, on the charity of the Congress it pretends to despise in Kerala?

The communists remain true to the Nehruvian project of building inclusive democracy in India, at least as the first stage of the political transformation they seek. They are committed to the cause more than the party that swears by Nehru and is in thrall to his epigones. use more than the party that swears by Nehru and is in thrall to his epigones. The communists still attract a lot of young idealists, who take up political work as a route not so much to power and riches as to building a less unequal and iniquitous society.

India’s polity needs renewed, energetic commitment to building democracy more than ever before, and it is vital for communists to stop sleepwalking ever-deeper into the shadows of irrelevance, listening to unchanging dogma, chanted with the conviction of catechism by bespectacled ideologues who are too old and too tired to think outside their familiar rut. And North Korea’s relevance is that it presents itself as the embodiment of communist dogma when realized in practice, both in regard to the dogma’s non-capitalist ambitions and enforcement of unquestioning centralism in the party.

What of China?

China does not demur on fostering capitalism, even if it chooses to call it the lower stage of socialism or socialism with Chinese characteristics. Labour is a commodity in China, bought and sold just like other commodities. That is the quintessential characteristic of a capitalist economy. And the official ideology, since Deng’s time, of letting the cat catch mice, regardless of their color, asserting that it is glorious to get rich, has helped improve living standards in China and made the nation powerful.

But China also offers a picture of the consequences of one-party rule: workers in China are less free than in Kerala or Western Europe and live at the mercy of the party and its leader’s whims, devoid of rights or a mechanism to enforce rights. China is aggressively expansionist, with territorial claims on practically all neighbors, save Russia, including India.

China oppresses its minority nationalities and ethnic groups, in particular Buddhist Tibetans, the Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang, and Inner-Mongolians. The Hukou system ties people to particular places, generally of their birth, and imposes a huge cost on migrants who work outside their Hukou domain. Mao said women hold up half the sky but women who assert their equality are ill-treated, even beaten up, and the courts rule feminism a deviant tendency. Party monopoly of power has led to systematic abuse of power and corruption, Xi Jinping’s fight against which is as much settling of scores with party rivals as reform.

Clearly, Indian communists need to shed both the notion that capitalism has become historically obsolete and that it is toxic for human progress. Broad-based capitalism has been history’s biggest force for socializing production, delivering people from the drudgery of poverty and supporting relentless exploration of the limits of human possibility.

If communists present themselves as champions of broad-based prosperity, rather than as its ideological roadblock, it would go halfway to regaining relevance. Commitment to internal democracy, abandoning democratic centralism and other such synonyms for the dictatorship of the general secretary – or of the party secretary of the one state that supplies the bulk of the party’s funds – would cover the rest of the distance.

Creating a democratic sensibility in India calls for a cultural overhaul, undermining caste hierarchy, patriarchy, hero worship, superstition, cant, and ritual, while valorizing democracy, equality of opportunity, the potential of hard work, and assiduous nurturing of human capacity. Overt political mobilization can work only on top of such an attack on pre-modern, anti-democratic social sensibility.

Music, theatre, movies, computer games, poetry, literature, social media memes and posts, short videos, and the reclaiming of history and India’s traditional rejection of deviance in theology – every arena calls for concerted pro-democracy intervention. Communists need to be part of the ferment in the crucible of Indian democracy, not march toward North Korea.

The article was first published on The Economic Times as Communists, once a player in India’s democracy, is sleepwalking into irrelevance on April 11, 2023.

Read more by the author: Making Healthcare Right: Lessons from Rajasthan’s Conflict on Right to Health Bill

IMPRI, a startup research think tank, is a platform for pro-active, independent, non-partisan and policy-based research. It contributes to debates and deliberations for action-based solutions to a host of strategic issues. IMPRI is committed to democracy, mobilization and community building.

TK Arun is a Senior Journalist and Columnist based in Delhi.

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