Tomorrow is Ours: The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon, 1935-48

Tomorrow is Ours The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon 1935-48

Charles Wesley Ervin

Social Scientists' Association

2006

© Charles Wesley Ervin 2006

ISBN 955-9102-83-4

Published by Social Scientists' Association No. 12, Sulaiman Terrace Colombo 05, Sri Lanka.

Printed by Karunaratne & Sons Ltd 67, UDA Industrial Estate Katuwana Road, Homagama, Sri Lanka.

Contents Preface ............................................................................................ . Introduction by Hector Abhayavardhana ............ .......... ...................

VB

List of Illustrations ..................... ........ ...... ............... ........................

XB

1.

.Background ........................................•....................................

1

2.

The Pioneers ............................................................................ 48

3.

The Formation of an Indo-Ceylonese Party........................ 94

4.

The Quit India Revolt ............................................................ 113

5.

The Interlude ..........................................•............................... 131

6.

Rifts in the Party .................................................................... 154

7.

Ballots, Barricades, and Bloodshed ...................................... 173

8.

A Race Against Time .............................................................. 192

9.

The Breakthrough .................................................................. 208

10. Independence .......................................................................... 218 11. Demise and Regeneration ...................................................... 232

Appendix A: Biographical Notes ................................................... 250 Appendix B: Program of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India (1942) .................................................................................... 278 Bibliography ................................................................................... 335 Index ............................................................................................... 356

Preface Many books of this genre grow out of a PhD thesis. In this case that is only half tme. My interest in the Trotskyist movements of India and Ceylon did begin while I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s. But I was studying Indian art history, not political science. My involvement with Trotskyism was purely extracurricular. For a while I pursued both with equal passion. But the extracurricular got the upper hand. I ended up abandoning my academic career. Yet I never lost interest in my "Indian Trotskyism project." It remained a hobby that I pursued, on and off, as circumstances permitted, for the last thirty years. This book is the result. In 1935 a group of bright young Ceylonese socialists, led by the firebrand Trotskyist, Philip Gunawardena, launched the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP). The young radicals rattled the British colonial government and complacent Ceylonese plantocracy with their populist message of freedom and equality. The LSSP grew rapidly. Yet the Ceylonese Trotskyists, following the doctrine of their hero, didn't think that socialism could be built in one country, certainly not a little island with hardly any industry. In their view India was where the British Raj would be defeated. The LSSP formed fraternal links with the Congress Socialist Party and sent delegations to the annual sessions of the Indian National Congress. It was through these connections that they met likeminded socialists in India. When WWIl started, the Ceylonese government clobbered the LSSP for its anti-war propaganda. Many cadres, including four leaders, were jailed. The LSSP was forced underground. In early 1942 the party rescued their imprisoned leaders in a daring jailbreak that became legendary. With the police hot on their trail, many of the Ceylonese Trotskyists escaped to India, where they joined with their Indian co-thinkers to form the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India and Ceylon (BLPI).

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That pretty much summarizes what I had been able to discover from the sources available to me in the early 'seventies. I I wanted to know more. Who were these Indian Trotskyists? And what became of this ambitious venture to form an Indo-Ceylonese party? In 1973 I went -to India for a year to complete my PhD research. Shortly after I arrived, I made a bee line to one of the veteran Trotskyists in Bombay. He had joined the first Trotskyist group in the late 'thirties and remained faithful to the cause for the next four decades. As I sat scribbling notes, he recounted the history of the movement from the very beginning. It was fascinating. He gave me names and addresses of others to interview. I now had a trail to follow. As I travelled all over India, visiting the art museums and photographing old monuments, I looked up more "old timers" in my spare time. Each interview gave me more pieces of the puzzle. I discovered that in the turbulent years after WWII the Trotskyists made impressive headway on the labor front in several areas. In Madras the Trotskyists captured the largest and oldest union in India, and in 1947 led a huge lOO-day strike, much to the chagrin of the Communist Party. I felt that I was uncovering a buried chapter in history that deserved to be documented. In 1988 I wrote the first part of what I hoped would be a three-part article on Indian Trotskyism for the Britishjoumal, Revolutionary History. 2 In that article I covered the origins of the Indian Trotskyist groups in the late 'thrities and the struggle of the BLPI during WWII.

At that point the most informative source was Leslie Goonewardene, A Short History of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Colombo, 1960). The section on the BLPI consists of only a few paragraphs. The American academic, George Jan Lerski, published an in-depth study of the LSSP in 196&. George Jan Lerski, Origins of Trotskyism in Ceylon (Stanford, 196&). However, he took the history only up to the onset ofWWIl. Charles Wesley Ervin, "Trotskyism in India: Origins through World War II (193545)," Revolutionary History, vol. 1, no. 4 (Winter 19&&-&9), pp. 22-34; translated and reprinted as "Le trotskysme en Inde pendant la guerre," Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no. 39 (September 19&9), pp. 77-111.

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However, before I could produce the next installment, new sources of documentary information suddenly opened. In 1991 the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the US section of the Fourth International from the start, donated its vast collection of Trotskyist literature to the Hoover Archives at Stanford University. 3 Those archives contain the single largest collection of Indian and Ceylonese Trotskyist documents in the world. Energized by all this new material, I wrote my second installment on Indian Trotskyism for Revolutionary History in 1997. 4 In that article I concentrated on the activities of the BLPI in the crucial postwar period, from 1945 to 1948. In England another treasure trove was unlocked in the 'nineties. Thanks to the Public Records Act, the government had to finally de-

The SWP had been the official American section ofTrotsky's international movement since 1929, when its founding leaders were expelled from the Communist Party. In the 'thirties the American party played a key role in helping Trotsky, who was then in exile, cohere his followers, scattered all over the world, into the International Left Opposition, which in 1938 became the Fourth International. On the eve of WWII, the SWP established mail contact with the LSSP and Trotskyists in India. Once the war started, however, the mail was no longer reliable. The SWP secretly started a very risky operation to re-establish contact with the Trotskyist groups that had been forced underground throughout Europe and Asia. The SWP had its sailor members sign up for supply ships sailing to Asia. Setting ashore in Colombo or Calcutta, they would contact the underground Trotskyist groups, exchange letters and literature, and carry the contraband back to the US, where it was sent to SWP headquarters in New York City. As a result.ofthese heroic operations, the SWP amassed an archive of old Trotskyist newspapers, leaflets, internal bulletins, and other party documents available nowhere else. Unfortunately, the SWP kept these archives private. In the 1960s the SWP began to veer away from its Trotskyist heritage and in the 1980s openly repudiated Trotskyism. In 1991 the SWP literally jettisoned its past. It deposited its international files in the Hoover Archives and the domestic records in the Wisconsin Historical Society. The SWP archives at Hoover are divided into two collections, the Socialist Workers Party Records and the Library of Social History Collection. I abbreviate these in the footnotes as SWP Papers and LSH, respectively. In addition: a number of SWP leaders deposited their own archives at Hoover. Charles Wesley Ervin, "Trotskyism in India, 1942-48," in Al Richardson (ed.), Blows Against the Empire: Trotskyism in Ceylon (London, 1997), pp. 218-241.

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classify some of the official documents from the era of the Raj that had been kept under wraps in the India Office Library, including the Indian Political Intelligence Service files, which alone fill more than 700 boxes. 5 I made five trips to London, over a period of several years, to mine those records, which yielded precious nuggets of information. Given all this new material, I realized that I had to scale back my ambitious plan to write a book documenting the history of Indian Trotskyism from its origins to the present. I decided to limit this book to the colonial period. The year 1948 is an appropriate end point for two reasons. First, by 1948 both India and Ceylon had become independent. Second, the BLPI entered the Socialist Party of India in that year. This was an exercise in what Trotskyists call "entryism"-to merge into a sympathetic left party, build up a Trotskyist left wing, and exit stronger than before. By the time the Trotskyist movement got going in India, the Congress had been in existence for fifty years. Gandhi had already led two tumultuous mass movements. The sun was setting on the Raj. Stalin had become a Red dictator. A defeated but undaunted Trotsky formed the Fourth International. Europe had been through the Great War, the Depression, the victory of fascism in Italy and Germany, and the Spanish Civil War. There is no way a book like this can provide all that background. However, I thought some kind of introduction would be useful. The first chapter attempts to briefly summarize how the British conquered and transformed India, how the Indian nationalists responded, and how the Marxists ahalyzed and intervened in that long, complex, and fascinating process.

The IPI archives consists of surveillance reports and intercepts from MI6, MI5, and the Special Branch, as well as a large number of intelligence summaries and position papers. The collection consists of more than 57,800 pages in 767 files. For brevity in citations I refer to the Oriental and India Office Collections in the India Office Library as IOL. The files of Indian Political Intelligence (lPI) are part of the Public and Judicial Department (Separate) Files, 1913-1947. Following the convention used at the IOL, I abbreviate these files as LlPJ.

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I have provided brief biographical sketches of the leading Trotskyists in an appendix. Whenever a name in the text appears in bold type, that signifies that there is an entry in the appendix. Many people have contributed to this book. First and foremost, I must express my debt to Hector Abhayavardhana in Sri Lanka, one of the very few surviving links to the pre-war LSSP and BLPI. He has been a source of invaluable information over the years and was my guide and gracious host during my last visit to Sri Lanka in 1997. I also must give special mention to Kumari Jayawardena, the secretary of the Social Scientists' Association in Sri Lanka, who has encouraged me to see this project through to publication. She has produced pioneering studies of the origins of the left and labor movements in Ceylon. I thank the staff at the SSA, particularly Rasika Chandrasekera, for their careful preparation of this manuscript for printing and to Prarthana Gama Arachchi for meticulous editing. I thank all those veterans who gave me oral histories, old party documents, and answered my many letters over the last three decades: S. Amamath, S.C.C. Anthony Pillai, K. Appanraj, Sailen Banerji, Jagu Belani, Keshav Bhattacharyya, Tulsi Boda, Dulal Bose, Sudarshan Chatterji, Sitanshu Das, Lionel Dissanayake, Trevor Drieberg, Amaradasa Femando, Meryl Femando, Leslie Goonewardene, Osmund Jayaratne, Jagadish Jha, V. Karalasingham, Ramesh Karkal, Sitaram Kolpe, Minoo Masani, Hiranand Mishra, Basanta Dev Mukherji, Murlidhar Parija, Selina Perera, Senadhira Piyasena, Vinayak Purohit, S.R. Rao, T.R. Rao, Ajit and Annie Roy, Karuna Kant Roy, Purnangshu K. Roy, Edmund Samarakkody, Indra Sen, Onkarnath Shastri, Chandravadan Shukla, Tara Shukla, Mahendra Singh, N. Sivasambu, Regi Siriwardena, S.P. Udyawar, and Michael van der Poorten (aka Mike Banda). Several key leaders who figure prominently in these pages had already died by the time I started my research. I gratefully acknowledge the help I received from their families, in particular Dinesh, Lakmali, and Prasanna Gunawardena (children of Philip Gunawardena); Rupa Gunawardena (wife of Robert Gunawardena); and Gina Ismene Chitty (daughter of Doric de Souza). v

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I also acknowledge the input of prominent Trotskyists in other countries, including former leaders of the Fourth International, who had various connections with the Indian and Ceylonese parties: Marcel Bleibtreu, Pierre Brou<~, Ted Grant, Livio Maitan, Stanley Plastrik, John Archer, Charlie Van Gelderen, Baruch Hirson, and Harry Ratner. Ted Crawford and the late Al Richardson, editors of Revolutionary History in London, have been supportive in many ways over the years. I thank the professional staff at the Hoover Archives, the India Office Library, the British Museum Newspaper Room, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the University of Chicago Library, the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, the Indian National Archives in New Delhi, the Glasgow University Library, the Karl Marx Memorial Library in London, the Tamiment Library at New York University, the New York Public Library, the Maniben Kara Institute in Bombay, and the Archives ofIndian Labour in Noida, India. I thank Wellred Publications in London for permission to reproduce quotes from the published writings of Leon Trotsky. Last but not least, I want to express my gratitude to my wife, Wendy, who patiently allowed me to pursue this labor of love.

Charles Wesley Ervin

2006

Introduction Hector Abhayavardhana In 1935 a group of young radicals formed the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in colonial Ceylon. Unlike in neighboring India, a mass nationalist movement had never developed on our island, which was a relatively privileged Crown Colony. The Ceylonese elite supplicated the local Governor and Colonial Office in London for concessional doses of administrative responsibility. The LSSP defiantly called for a popular uprising to drive out the British and usher in sama samaj - an "equal society." The party had passionate, powerful orators, like Philip Gunawardena and N.M. Perera, who galvanized the crowds that flocked to LSSP meetings. Less than a year after the party was formed, Gunawardena and Perera were elected to the State Council. That was the breakthrough. They used the chamber to publicize their politics, denounce injustice, and propose reforms which even their opponents were often hard put to oppose. All this was new and for me, a student just awakening to politics, very exciting. I joined the LSSP in 1939. In its public pronouncements the LSSP tended to avoid divisive doctrinal issues, such as the "Stalin-Trotsky conflict." However, I soon became aware that some of our party leaders, notably Phi lip Gunawardena, sided with Trotsky. The controversy within the LSSP intensified when a crop of young students returned from their studies in Britain, having been recruited to the Trotskyist cause there. I got a copy of Trotsky's book, The Revolution Betrayed, and,that completed my conversion. In that masterpiece, Trotsky explained Why and how Stalin had been able to consolidate his dictatorial regime' in the USSR. Trotsky nevertheless continued to regard the USSR as a "workers state," despite its reactionary bureaucratic deformations. He called upon the Soviet workers to sweep away the Stalinist incubus and restore "workers democracy" in the form of revitalized Soviets. Trotsky warned that unless the Stalin regime was thus removed, the USSR would eventually be destroyed, either through external intervention or through internal collapse. And that is exactly what happened in 1990-91.

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Shortly after I joined the LSSP, Stalin signed his infamous pact with Nazi Germany. That was a bombshell. The differences in the party could no longer be contained. The Trotskyist majority in the LSSP Executive Committee expelled the pro-Stalin faction and for the first time openly proclaimed solidarity with the Fourth International, which Trotsky had formed in 1938 as an alternative to Stalin's Third International. Up to that point the LSSP had no direct contact with Trotsky, who was living precariously in Mexico. Stalin had already murdered his son in Paris. One of our comrades, Selina Perera, was sent to England to establish contact with the British Trotskyists. She proceeded to New York and met the leaders of the American section of the Fourth International. She tried to enter Mexico to visit Trotsky but was stopped at the border. That was our last chance. Stalin sent a henchman to murder Trotsky less than a year later. And so, the LSSP never had the opportunity to collaborate with Trotsky himself. We got our Trotskyism from books, in isolation. Those books, however, were powerful. The Permanent Revolution, first published in English translation in 1930, laid out his program for revolution in colonial countries like Ceylon and India. Trotsky posited that the national bourgeoisie lacked the strength and fortitude to drive out the imperial power and carry through the tasks associated with a classic "bourgeois democratic revolution." In his view, only the urban workers, supported by the multitudes of rural poor, could wage such a fight, and in so doing they would have to go beyond purely democratic reforms and encroach upon capitalist interests. In contrast, Stalin insisted that the Communist Parties support and bolster the so-called "anti-imperialist" bourgeoisie. For us in the LSSP, that was absurd. Our native elite was so conservative that many opposed the introduction of universal suffrage in 1931! Prior to his death, Trotsky predicted that the coming world war would be the mother of revolution. That idea became our lodestar in the LSSP. Our leaders articulated the view that the showdown with British imperialism would take place on the mainland. However, without a revolutionary leadership, the battle would be lost. Therefore, since there was no mass revolutionary party in India, we concluded that

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it was our duty to help build· such a party in order to intervene in the mass struggles that were sure to come. The LSSP already had connections with important Congress Socialists in Bombay and other cities. Moreover, our leaders also had established contact with small groups of Indian Trotskyists. And so in 1940, the LSSP started sending cadres up to India. The plan was to establish a beachhead of sorts in Madura and Madras, as they were then called. Our leaders had a theory for this, too. In Ceylon the urban working class was tiny, compared to India, and retained rural ties. The true "proletariat" was the Tamil tea plantation workers in the hill country. The LSSP had started to make inroads on several plantations and led a wave of militant strikes in 1939, causing the British plantocracy to scream for the suppression of the Trotskyist troublemakers. Just across the Palk Straits were many millions of Tamils. So the LSSP saw the Tamils as a human bridge, if you will, linking Ceylon and India. The fuse could be lit at either end. Our salvation would be the masses of Indian workers and poor peasants, especially the Tamils. Those were the days when the LSSP was proud to be called a "proIndian" party. In 1942 the Ceylonese organizers working in India succeeded in unifying the scattered Indian Trotskyist groups into the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India (BLPI). In Ceylon the LSSP had been driven underground. The island had become an armed camp. A British admiral was installed with virtually unlimited powers over the local scene. Kandy became the staff headquarters of the British South-East-AsiaCommand. When the Japanese staged air raids over Colombo and Trincomalee, the LSSP decided that the time had come to rescue the senior LSSP leaders who had been jailed in Kandy since 1940 for opposing the war. That began the clandestine exodus of our cadres to the mainland. I made my way to Bombay with a dozen or so other comrades. Little did I know at the time tha my sojourn in India would last for two decades. Looking back, some have dismissed the formation of the BLPI as hopelessly idealistic. That is debatable. My own view, which I have

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expressed before, is that this venture represented perhaps one of the most significant episodes in the modern political history of Sri Lanka. On our own, the people of Sri Lanka were unable to generate a mass movement for national freedom despite nearly 150 years of direct British rule. The British occupation was preceded by nearly three centuries of Portuguese and Dutch rule over large parts of the island. Yet we were unable to replicate the experience of popular struggle against colonial domination that established a pantheon of national heroes and heroines, as in India, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The absence of a national movement opened the way for the advancement of partial aims and fostered social divisions based on caste and ethnicity, with all their malignant consequences. I must add that the British authorities regarded our small party as a potential threat. What bothered them most was precisely the internationalist aspect of the Trotskyist program. After my arrest in Bombay in 1943, one of my interrogators, a British Commissioner of Police, frankly appraised the danger they feared from our direction. He said: "You represent the most dangerous contagion that has been brought into this country. Whether in jail or outside we will not allow you to infect the educated youth. We shall see to it that you are effectively isolated." That they did. The government repeatedly smashed the BLPI branches in India during the war. We had to start over, again and again. As a result, when mass protests erupted after the war, just as Trotsky had predicted, we were not strong enough, not rooted enough, to seize the leadership. We seethed in frustration as the Communist Party of India actively collaborated with the Congress and Muslim League to defuse the situation. Trotsky once said that no revolutionary crisis lasts long. If not plucked, the ripe fruit will rot. That's what happened in India in 1947. By the time the BLPI got on its feet, especially irl Bengal and Madras Provinces, the tide had already turned. We had to helplessly witness the horrible Hindu-Muslim riots in Bengal and the massacres in Punjab that accompanied Partition. The war didn't beget the revolution we anticipated. Most of the Ceylonese cadres returned home. The LSSP tacitly abandoned the thesis of the subcontinental revolution. A few of us

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remained in India. The BLPI, after much internal debate, decided to join the Socialist Party in 1948 with the perspective of building up a strong left wing in that party and eventually exiting to re-form the BLPI stronger than before. Thus began the next phase of the Trotskyist movement in India. Some ten years ago I received a letter from the author of this book, seeking my help in what he described as a personal research project in Indian Trotskyism. I replied to him with a challenge: "I respect your wish to write a historical account of the Trotskyist episode in Indian revolutionary history. This will have to be against the background of more than fifty years in India that scintillate with fabulous accounts of bold thinking, fearless confrontation with the imperial state, and incredible inventiveness of strategy and tactics in the quest of popular unity in a society teeming with all manner of divisiveness." I am delighted with the result of his work. Charles Wesley Ervin has produced a meticulously researched monograph, written in lucid pose, free of all that obscure jargon that disfigures so many academic books these days. He discusses the debates within the party over each new challenge that we had to face- our policy on the war, the question of Muslim self-determination, our attitude towards the Constituent Assembly, and the meaning of the independence that was promised in 1947. But this is not just a history of ideas. The author shows how difficult it is to build a revolutionary Marxist party that can put its program into effective practice in a country like India. Today we hear a lot about the "death of communism" and everlasting life of individualism, consumerism, and liberal democracy. It is not Marxism or Socialism that has died. It is Stalinism. I hope this book contributes to the renewed interest in the ideas of Leon Trotsky. Hector Abhayawardhana Colombo May 2006

Illustrations Phi lip Gunawardena with brothers Harry and Robert, Colombo, circa 1920 Murray Gow Purdy with African trade unionists, Johannesburg, 1934 Samaj, the first Trotskyist newspaper in India, 1937

Philip and Kusuma Gunawardena, Colombo, 1939 Caroline Anthony Pillai (nee Gunawardena) Colombo, circa 1940 Philip Gunawardena, Colvin de Silva, N.M. Perera, and Edmund Samarakkody, Kandy prison, circa 1940 - 42 Ajit Roy, London, circa 1944 - 45 .RIN ratings demonstrate in Bombay, 1946 V.S.S. Sastry, London, 1945 Colvin de Silva, Paris, 1946 Ajit Roy, Bombay, 1947 S.C.C. Anthony Pillai, Colombo or Madras, circa 1945 Anant Mandekar, Bombay, 1947 Murray Gow Purdy, Bombay or London, 1947 Philip Gunawardena and members of the LSSP, Colombo, 1947 Colvin de Silva, Colombo, circa 1950 Bemard Soysa, Colombo, circa 1950 Robert Gunawardena, Colombo, circa 1950 Selina Perera, Colombo or Calcutta, circa 1950

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Unification conference of the LSSP and BSP, Colombo, 1950 Doric and Violet de Souza, Colombo, 1953 V. Karalasingham, Colombo, circa 1975 Leslie Goonewardene, Colombo, circa 1980

V. Balasubramaniam P.V. Durairaj, and Siddhaman, Madurai, 1991 B.M.K. Ramaswamy, Madras, 1991

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The Gunawardena brothers: Harry (left), Robert (center), and Philip (right), circa 1920. Photo: AIjuna, Pilip Gunavardhana caritaya (1969).

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Murray Gow Purdy (right) with Z. Mugade, organizer for the Laundry Workers Union, Johannesburg, 1934. Photo: Baruch Hirson, London.

Murray Gow Purdy (holding hat) with comrades of the Native Laundry Workers Union, Johannesburg, 1934. Photo: Baruch Hirson, London.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

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Samaj, the first Trotskyist newspaper in India, 1937. Copy: Onkarnath Shastri, Allahabad

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Philip and Kusuma Gunawardena, 1939. Photo: Arjuna, Pilip Gunavardhana caritaya (1969).

Caroline Anthony Pillai, circa 1940. Photo: K. Appanraj, Anja Nenjan: Thoyizh Sangha Medai S.c.c. Antoni Pillai Vazhkai Varalaru (1995).

LSSP leaders in prison at Kandy (left to right): Philip Gunawardena, Colvin de Silva, N.M. Perera, and Edmund Samarakkody, circa 1940-42 Photo: Arjuna, Pilip Gunavardhana caritaya (1969).

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Ajit Roy speaking in Hyde Park, London, circa 1944-45. Photo: Ted Grant, London.

RIN ratings demonstrate in Bombay, 1946. Photo: Times of India, 20 February 1946.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

V.S.S. Sastry (left) with RCP comrades during Neath Bye-Election campaign, London, 1945. Photo: Ted Grant, London.

Colvin de Silva (standing) speaking at meeting of the Fourth International, Paris, 1946. Seated to his immediate left are Jock Haston and Pierre Frank. Photo: Ted Grant, London.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

s.c.c. Anthony Pillai, circa 1945. Ajit Roy in Bombay, 1947. Photo: New Spark, 25 October 1947.

Anant Mandekar, BLPI candidate for Bombay Municipal Corporation, Bombay, 1947. Photo: New Spark, 24 May 1947.

Photo: K. Appanraj, Anja Nenjan: Thoyizh Sangha Medai S. C. C. Antoni Pillai Vazhkai Varalaru (1995).

Murray Gow Purdy, after release from prison in Bombay, circa December 1947. Photo: Socialist [Bombay], 25 April 1948.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Philip Gunawardena (center, holding newspaper) with comrades of the LSSP, Colombo, 1947. Standing next to Philip are Assaf Fernando (left) and GP. Perera (right), nicknamed "Elephant" Perera, since he started his tradeunion career working in the factory that made the Elephant brand cigarettes Photo: Arjuna, Pilip Gunavardhana caritaya (1969).

Colvin R. de Silva, Colombo, circa 1950. Photo: Colvin de Silva, Left-Disunity: A Reply to a Critic, (1950).

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··il"

Bernard Soysa, circa 1950. 'Photo: Samasamajist, 1950.

Robert Gunawardena, circa 1950. Photo: Samasamajist, 1950.

Selina Perera, circa 1950. Photo: Samasamajist, 1950.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

N.M. Perera addressing LSSP-BSP Unification Conference, Colombo, 1950. Photo: Personal collection of C.W. Ervin.

Doric and Violet de Souza, passport photos, 1953. Photo: personal collection of Gina Ismene Chitty (nee de Souza).

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V. Karalasingham, circa 1975 Photo: V. Karalasingham, The Way Out/or the Tamil Speaking People (1977).

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Leslie Goonewardene, circa 1980 Photo: Wimal Rogrigo

Veteran Tamil Trotskyists: V. Balasubramaniam, P.V. Durairaj,

Siddhaman, 1991. Photo: Raghu Krishnan, Toronto.

Veteran Tamil Trotskyist: B.M:K. Ramaswamy, 1991. Photo: Raghu Krishnan, Toronto.

CHAPTER ONE

Background· In 1608 an English ship dropped anchor at the Indian port of Surat. When Captain William Hawkins stepped ashore, he marveled at the bustling markets where merchants hawked "everything from peacock feathers to white elephants, from coarse grain to opium, from palm leaves to gold." I Hawkins had been sent by the English East India Company to petition the Mughal emperor for permission to establish a trading outpost. The Portuguese and Dutch mercantile companies were already making a fortune in the India trade. The English wanted a piece of the action. At that time Mughal India was regarded the world over as an economic superpower, second only to China. India manufactured ten times more output than England. 2 The textile industry in India was world-class; the workshops in flourishing urban centers, from Surat to Murshidabad and the Coromandel coast, wove the finest textiles for export to Europe, the Near East, China, and Southeast Asia. 3 In the villages the artisans spun cotton, while the farmers grew cash crops for regional and foreign markets. 4 The European traders were amazed at the sophistication and reach of the banking system. In Ahmedabad the merchants, using what today we call commercial paper, conducted

Stanley Wolpert, A New History ofIndia (New York, 1977), p. 143. Paul Bairoch, "International Industrialization Levels from 1750 to 1980," The Journal of European Economic History. vol. 11, no. 2 (Fall 1982), pp. 294 and 296. Kanakalatha Mukund, "Indian Textile Industry in the 17th and 18th Centuries: Structure, Organization, Responses," Economic and Political Weekly, 19 September 1992, pp. 2057-65; and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "Rural Industry and Commercial Agriculture in late Seventeenth Century South-Eastern India," Past and Present (February 1990), p. 92. John F. Richards (ed.), The Imperial Monetary System of Mughal India (Delhi, 1987), p. 11; and Frank Perlin, "Proto-Industrialization and Pre-Colonial South Asia," Past and Present, no. 98 (1983), pp. 74-75.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

complicated transactions over long distances without money changing hands. . William Hawkins was eager to trade. But the Indian merchants had little interest in coarse English broadcloth. The traders had to purchase Indian products with silver and gold. Nevertheless, the investors in the East India Company reaped double-digit profits. As the late Andre Gunder Frank so aptly said, "Europe used its American money to buy itself a ticket on the Asian economic train." 5 Without the plunder of precious metals from the Americas, "Europe would have been almost entirely excluded from any participation in the world economy." 6 A hundred years later the balance of world power had changed dramatically. The once mighty Mughal Empire, beset with civil wars, began to fragment. The British and French forces in India meddled and manuevered for advantage, wading deeper and deeper into the anarchy. Initially the French got the upper hand, capturing Madras from the English. In 1756 their ally in Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah, captured the British Fort at Calcutta and crammed the survivors into the infamous Black Hole, where most suffocated. The British got their revenge. Robert Clive recaptured Calcutta, routed Siraj at Plassey, and dislodged the French in South India. In 1783 Parliament declared that "to pursue schemes of conquest and expansion of dominion in India are measures repugnant to the wish, the honour, and policy of this nation." It was a bit late for such a lofty policy of non-intervention. With the conquest of Bengal the East India Company had become the effective ruler of a province four times more populous than England, so rich and fertile that the Mughals called it "paradise on earth." Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, 1998), p. 356. Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient, p. 75. Others have made the same point. D.A. Washbrook has shown that in the seventeenth century England was still peripheral to India's dynamic trade networks. D.A. Washbrook, "Progress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History," Modern Asian Studiell, vol. 22, no. I (1988), p. 60.

2

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

A Mafia Raj

Clive and his cronies looted the Mughal treasury in Bengal, which was like the Fort Knox of its time. Enriched with stolen wealth, the Company men muscled their way into one profitable trade after another. The Bengali weavers were forced to sell their goods at reduced rates to gun-toting Company traders. The Company monopolized the opium trade, creating what would today be called a drug cartel. Forget about a civilizing mission. This was a mafia Raj. Fearful for his throne, the Mughal Emperor in Delhi granted the Company the right to take over the collection of taxes in Bengal. The Mughals financed' their state by confiscating a share of the total produce grown by each village. The Mughals assigned revenuecollection rights to appointed aristocrats and military commanders, who in turn gathered the specified tribute from the local gentry and farmers, called zamindars and taluqdars. These landlords were allowed to keep a tenth of the tribute to support their soldiers, build and maintain irrigation systems, patronize cultural and religious activities, and lead an opulent life of their own. Driven by greed, the Company promptly put the squeeze on the landlords, collecting twice the revenue in the first year alone. Landlords who resisted got the strong-arm treatment. 7 It was the peasants who sl:lffered most. Forced to hand over much of the harvest, the farmers had little left to fall back on when the crop failed. In 1770 one third of the population of Bengal starved to death. "Enormous, fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta," wrote Thomas Macaulay, "while thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the last extremity of wretchedness." 8

In 1767 the Company instructed its men in the field to "rout out" zamindars who did not "submit and engage for the regular payment of tht:ir revenues." Quoted in Chitta Panda, The Decline o/the Bengal Zamindars: Midnapore 1870-1920 (Delhi, 1996), p. 9. 8

Macaulay s Essay on Lord Clive (New York, 1912), p. 64.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The New Despotism

In 1790 the Governor-General in Calcutta, Lord Cornwall is, reported that "the heavy drain of wealth" had produced "langour" in the villages of Bengal. 9 The Company was killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. Cornwallis and his colleagues debated what to do. The outcome of that debate had far-reaching and profound consequences. It also sheds light on the murky matter of whether or not pre-colonial India was "feudal," a subject which has been and continues to be hotly debated. 10

Quoted in Irfan Habib; "Colonization of the Indian Economy 1757-1900," in I. Habib, Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception (London, 2002), p. 301. n. 21. 10

4

The thesis that feudalism existed in India was mooted in the 1950s by the Marxist, D.D. Kosambi, who suggested that a "feudalism from above" developed in the Gupta period, followed by a "feudalism from below" in the Delhi Sultanate. Damodar D. Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (Bombay, 1956), p. 294. He was the godfather of what became the controversial Indian Feudalism School. See R.S. Sharma, Indian Feudalism, c. 300-1200 (Calcutta, 1965); B.N.S. Yadava, Society and Culture in Northern India in the Twelfth Century (Allahabad, 1973); D. N. Jha (ed.), Feudal Social Formation in Early India (Delhi, 1987); Y.K. Thakur, Historiography ofIndian Feudalism (New Delhi, 1989); and GC. Chauh!ln, Origin and Growth of Feudalism in Early India (New Delhi, 2004). In 1979 Harbans Mukhia poked holes in the feudalism thesis. H. Mukhia, "Was There Feudalism in Indian History?", reprinted in H. Kulke (ed.), The State in India, 1000-1700 (Delhi, 1995), pp. 86-133. Om Prakash challenged the feudal interpretation of the royal land grants. O. Prakash, Early Indian Land Grants and State Economy (Allahabad, 1988), p. xi. See also D. C. Sircar (ed.), Land System and Feudalism in Ancient India (Calcutta, 1966), p. 42 and Noboru Karashima, Towards a New Formation: South Indian Society under Vijayan.agar Rule (Delhi, 1992), pp. 5-8. Others maintain that feudalism emerged in the Mughal era. See Nurul Hasan, "The Position of the Zamindars in the Mughal Empire," Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 1, no. 4 (1964); P.B. Mayer,. "South India, North India: The Capitalist Transformation of Two Provincial Disticts," in H. Alavi (ed.), Capitalism and Colonial Production (London, 1982); H. Alavi, "India: Transition from Feudalism to Colonial Capitalism," Journal of Contemporary India, vol. 10 (1980), pp. 359-99; and A. I. Tchitcherov, India: Changing Economic Structure in the Sixteenth-Eighteenth Cen.turies (New Delhi, 1998). Irfan Habib, on the other hand, considers the "Mughal feudalism" thesis untenable. Irfan Habib, "Classifying Pre-Colonial India," in T.J. Byres and H. Mukhia (eds.), "Feudalism and Non-European Societies," special issue of the

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

In England the feudal aristocracy actually owned their lands. The Crown acknowledged their rights and levied taxes on their estates. In India, on the other hand, the Mughal aristocracy did not really own their domains, at least in any comparable way. The Mughal throne doled out land grants (called jagirs) to its military commanders and regional governors, who were thus entitled and obligated to collect the specified tribute from the villages in their jagirs. The Mughal regime could revoke the land grants at will; in fact, the land grants were routinely re-assigned, in order to prevent the revenue collectors from sinking roots as an independent landed class. 11 The Mughal aristocrats were often given estates far away from where they were stationed. One Company officer in Calcutta, Alexander Dow, ridiculed the suggestion that the Mughalland grants were a form of feudal property. "These are the fables of men who carried the feudal ideas of Europe into their relation of the state of India." 12 The Mughal nobility could not freely buy and sell the land under their jurisdiction. However, they could, and did, parcel out rights to a share in the revenue. In the early stages of the system some nobles granted revenue-collection rights to troops under their command in lieu of pay. In time that practice expanded into outright rent-farming (ijara); merchants and farmers would bid in auctions for leases that enabled

Journal of Peasant Studies. vo!. 1, nos. 2-3 (1985), pp. 44-53. For a survey of the changing "official" Marxist views on India see Brendan O'Leary, The Asiatic Mode of Production: Oriental Despotism. Historical Materialism. and Indian History . (Oxford, 1989), pp. 262-39. 11

"The Mughal nobility, unlike contemporary European nobility, was not tied to the land. Their jagirs (or revenue assignments) were transferred from one place to another as a matter of routine, and many of them were naqdis. i.e., they received their pay in cash directly from the treasury. But if the Mughal notables were not hereditary landlords, it does not follow that they were a commercialized ruling class. Salary, not commercial profit, was their main object in life. Nor did they, or any substantial number of them, rise from a mercantile 'middle class', as was they case with a big section of contemporary English 'oligarchy'." M. Athar AIi, The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb (Delhi, 1997), p. 154.

12

Quoted in Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement (Durham NC, 1981), p. 33.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

them to claim a share of the tribute for a specified period of time. 13 As a result, the land-tenure relationships were often a tangled mess. One Company agent lamented the "difficulty of ascertaining the actual proprietors." 14 Having displaced the old Mughal nobility, the Company officials debated who should be taxed as the "real" owner of the land-the zamindars, the peasant tenants, or the village collective. Philip Francis proposed that the British "settle" with the zamindars once and for all. The rationale was that if the zamindars were given property rights, they would be grateful, improve the estates, incent their tenants to produce more, and otherwise start behaving like good gentry. Lord Cornwallis, a Whig country gentleman himself, agreed. And so in 1793 Cornwallis issued a proclamation, known as the Permanent Settlement, that fixed "for ever" the revenue that the landlords would have to pay. Rather than producing prosperous stability, the Zamindari Settlement upheaved the traditional village society. The revenue demand was set at 91 percent of the rent. If a zamindar fell in arrears even one month, he was imprisoned. and his estate sold at, public auction. One tax collector called these coercive measures "probably the strongest engines of terror and compulsion which could be devised." IS A district magistrate reported that "the old landholders in Midnapore for the most part were ruined." 16 Zamindars sold plots to moneylenders and speculators in order to raise cash. One estate was subdivided into 303 pieces in just seven years.

13

C.A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 164-65; and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (ed.), Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India (Delhi, 1990), p. 13.

14

Quoted in Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, "Land Market in Eastern India, 1793-1940. Part I: The Movement of Land Prices," Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 12, no. 1 (January-March 1975), p. 3.

IS

Quoted in B.B. Chaudhuri, "Land Market in Eastern India, 1793-1940, Part I," p. 14.

16

Quoted in Chitta Panda, The Decline of the Bengal Zamindars, p. 12.

6

The Tlvtskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The peasants lost the security of their traditional tenancy right. If a peasant couldn't pay his tax, he borrowed from the moneylender or landlord (often one and the same). And if he defaulted, the moneylenders had a new power, the British courts, to seize his land . . More and more peasants were impoverished and evicted. 17 Meanwhile, speculative and parasitic rack-renting grew rapidly. 18 Outsiders bought and traded sub-leases which entitled the holder to collect a fraction of the revenue. "Everybody is now anxious to become a zamindar or landed proprietor," reported the Orissa collector. 19 By 1885 ten million peasant farmers had to support one million middlemen. An incident reported in Santhal graphically captured what was happening. Some peasants, hopelessly burdened with debts, butchered their moneylender, chanting with each gory slash, "Four Annas, Eight Annas, Twelve Annas, Paid off!" 20 This was not what Lord Cornwallis envisioned when he impo~ed "the magic touch of property" on a communal society that he never understood. In South India the Company took a different approach. Thomas Munroe, who had started his career as a revenue official, argued against a settlement with the local chiefs (the poligars), who were a rebellious lot. "We have in our anxiety to make everything as English as possible

17

Amit Bhadhuri, "The Evolution of Land Relations in Eastern India Under British Rule," Indian Economic and Social History Review, vo!. 13, no. 1 (January-March 1976), p. 51; H.R. Sharnla, "Evolution of Agrarian Relations in India," Journal of the Indian School of Political Economy, vo!. 4, no. 1 (1992), pp. 80-105; N. Hamid, "Dispossession and Differentiation of the Peasantry during the Period of Colonial Rule," Journal of Peasant Studies, vo!. 10 (1982-83), p. 59; P.A. Wadia and K.T. Merchant, Our Economic Problem (Bombay, 1959), pp. 87-88; and Bipan Chandra, "Re-interpretation of Nineteenth Century Indian Economic History," Indian Economic and Social History Review, vo!. 5, no. 1 (March 1968), pp. 46-59.

18

B.B. Chaudhuri, "Land Market in Eastern India, 1793-1940, Part II: The Changing Composition of the Landed Society," Indian Economic and Social History Review, vo!. 12, no. 2 (April-June 1975), pp. 133-67.

19

Quoted in B.B. Chaudhuri, "Land Market in Eastern India, 1793-1940. Pali I," p. 9.

20

Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (New York, 1997), p. 194.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

in a country which resembles England in nothing," he wrote, "attempted to create at once, throughout extensive provinces, a kind of landed property which had never existed in them." Munroe favored direct taxation of the peasants (ryots), on a plot-by-plot basis. In theory the Ryotwari Settlement would foster the development of a prosperous class of free peasant smallholders. In reality the government levied such high taxes that most peasants struggled just to survive. If the harvest was good, the British revenue officers raised the tax due for that year. If it was bad, they would take everything and leave the peasant empty-handed. In 1818 the Madras board of revenue described the state of affairs: "In pursuit of this supposed improvement, we find them [the tax officials] unintentionally dissolving the ancient ties, the ancient usages which united the republic of each Hindu village, and by a kind of agrarian law, newly assessing and parcelling out the lands which from time immemorial had belonged to the Village Community collectively ... binding the Ryot by force to the plough, compelling him to till land acknowledged to be over-assessed, draggng him back to it if he absconded, deferring their demand upon him until his crop came to maturity, then taking from him all that could be obtained, and leaving him nothing but his bullocks and seed grain, nay, perhaps obliged to supply him even with these, in order to renew his melancholy task of cultivating, not for himself, but for them." 21 A Cruel Revolution from Above

In his famous articles on India, written in 1853, Karl Marx described the devastating impact of the British land policies. "The Zemindari and the Ryotwari were both of them agrarian revolutions, effected by British ukases, and opposed to each other; the one aristocratic, the other democratic; the one a caricature of English landlordism, the other of French peasant-proprietorship; but pernicious, both combining the 21

Quoted in Romesh Dutt, The Economic History ofIndia. Vo!. 1 (London, 1902), p. 107.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

most contradictory character-both made not for the people, who cultivate the soil, nor for the holder, who owns it, but for the Government that taxes it." 22 Studying the rich sources of information at his disposal in the British Library, Marx concluded that the "village republics" of India had rested on a socio-economic foundation different from the feudal societies of the West. 23 Ifprivate property in land had never developed, then there was no inherent motor force for progressive change - Indi~ was like a clock without a spring, frozen in time. The British were the first ruling class to disrupt, convulse, and transform the economic basis of society. Marx had to admit that, "abominable as they are," the settlements created "forms of private property in Land-the great desideratum of Asiatic society." 24 The Company used the taxes to purchase Indian goods for export to England, where they were sold or re-exported to Europe. In other words the Indians were essentially being robbed. This was the "drain" that Indian nationalists later documented. The one-way transfer enabled Britain to get a competitive advantage over its Continental rivals and

22

Karl Marx, "India" (5 August 1853), reprinted in K. Marx, On Colonialism (Moscow, n.d.), p. 73.

2)

The French physician, Franl10is Bernier, who served as court physician to the Mugha1s for twelve years, reported in his memoirs that the State, rather than the nobility, owned the land in India. Franyois Bemier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D~ 1656-1688 (Westminster, 1891), p. 224. This book influenced the thinking of many leading lights of the Enlightenment, such as John Locke and Montesquieu, who cited the lack of private property in land as one of the root causes of what he called "Oriental despotism." When Marx read Bernier, lights went off in his head, too. He wrote to Engels that what Bernier reported about the absence of private property in land was "the key" that unlocked the mystery of "the East." Ka"rl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Correspondence (Moscow, 1975), pp. 73-6. Marx regarded the village economy of India to be based on what he called "the Asiatic mode of production," a form of communal property which had evolved over much of the globe as a parallel path to the Western European sequence of class societies (slavery-feudalism-capitalism) which he described in the Communist Manifesto.

24

Karl Marx, "The Future Results of the British Rule in India" (22 July 1853), reprinted in On Colonialism, p. 77.

9

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

helped to fuel the Industrial Revolution. Marx maintained that the plunder of India, coupled with the profits from the African slave trade, provided the stimulus. "The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement, and murder floated back to the mother-country and were there turned into capital." 25 The De-industrialization of India

As the Lancashire textile industry grew, the demand for imported Indian cloth started to decline. In 1802 the Company's Directors reported that their Dacca factory had to make "a considerable reduction" in output, due to "the altered state of the markets which are now overflowing with substitutes for these goods from British looms, at rates of price that preclude all prospect of gain on such articles in our sales." 26 The English capitalists were not yet strong enough to compete on a level playing field. The Lancashire lobby clamored for protective tariffs. In 1813 the government slapped a 85 percent duty on Indian

25

26

10

Karl Marx, Capital (1906 edition), p. 826. Brooks Adams, the grandson of the V.S. President, saw a causal connection. "Very soon after Plassey the Bengal plunder began to arrive in London, and the effect appears to have been instantaneous." Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay; An Essay on History (New York, 1896), p. 313. On the other hand Christopher Hill, who wrote the book on seventeenth century England, argued that while "spectacularly large sums flowed into England" from the slave trade and the looting oflndia, "we should attach even more significance to family and group savings of small producers who ploughed back their profits into industry or agriculture." Christopher Hill, Reformation to Industrial Revolution, 1530-1780 (London, 1967), pp. 2000-01. However, as recent studies have shown, the colonial tribute and domestic savings rate were connected. "The colonial transfer, in short, enabled Britons to have their cake and eat it too: to invest substantially even while saving very little out of domestic income." Vtsa Patnaik, "New Estimates of Eighteenth-Century British Trade and their Relation to Transfers from Tropical Colonies," in K.N. Panikkar (ed.), The Making.of History: Essays Presented to Irfan Habib (London, 2002), pp. 389-90. Quoted in H.R. Ghoshal, "Changes in the Organization of Industrial Production in the Bengal Presidency in the Early Nineteenth Century," in Birendranath Ganguli (ed.), Readings in Indian Economic History (Delhi, 1961), pp. 128.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

textiles. The export of textile machinery to India was prohibited. In 1833 Parliament revoked the Company's monopoly (except for salt and opium). India was flooded with Lancashire cotton. "Had not such prohibitory duties and decrees existed," wrote one contemporary historian, "the mills of Paisley and Manchester would have been stopped in their outset and could scarcely have been set in motion even by the power of steam." 27 The Indian weavers, using pre-industrial technology, struggled to compete in an unequal contest. While British exports to India surged fifty fold, Indian exports to Britain plummeted 75 percynt. To make matters worse for the Indians, the Napoleonic wars disrupted their trade with Europe. Gradually the handicraft industries declined. 28 Dacca, Murshidabad, and Surat dwindled. Faced with bleak prospects, some unemployed weavers tried to eke out a living on the land, while others became wandering beggars (vairagis) who went door-to-door singing sad songs about the futility of life. The "Dual Role" of Colonialism

In his seminal articles on India, written for The New York TriQune in 1853, Marx described how the onslaught of British cotton exports was undermining the premier industry of India. 29 Nevertheless, while he denounced the greed and cruelty of the British, Marx also thought that Britain was carrying out a "double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating-the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia." 30

27

Horace Hayman Wilson, The History of British India: from 1805 to 1835, vo!. I (London, 1848), p. 385. .

28

Michael J. Twomey, "Employment in Nineteenth Century Indian Textiles," Explorations in Economic History, vo!. 20, no. 1 (January, 1983), p. 55. In 1830 the balance of trade finally tipped in England's favor. K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World ofAsia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 456.

29

Karl Marx, "The British Rule in India" (10 June 1853), reprinted in On Colonialism, p. 36.

30

Karl Marx, "The Future Results of the British Rule in India," p. 77.

11

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Marx was quick to add, however, that so far the British had destroyed at lot and regenerated very little. "England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society, without any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing. The loss of his old world, with no gain of a new one, imparts a particular kind of melancholy to the present misery of the Hindoo." 31 Marx was skeptical that the British would really create a "Western society" in India. "The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the BritIsh bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindus themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether." 32 Written in 1853, those were truly prophetic 'words. The First Popular Rebellion

In 1856 Governor-General Dalhousie annexed Oudh [Awadh], the heartland of the old Mughal Empire, and expropriated the Oudh taluqdars [hindlords]. "Our gracious queen," wrote a smug Dalhousie, "has five million more subjects and 1.3 million pounds more revenue than she had yesterday." 33 That turned out to be the last straw. Many Indian soldiers in the Bengal Army were from Oudh. On May 10, 1857 a soldier at Meerut shot his commander. The mutiny spread quickly, drawing in both Muslim and Hindu soldiers. The Oudh landlords backed the rebellion and reclaimed their estates. Villagers paid off old scores. The rebels massacred the English communities trapped in Delhi, Kanpur, and Lucknow, 'including women and children. But the insurgents lacked effective, unified leadership. The British military, initially taken by surprise, recaptured

31

Karl Marx,'''The British Rule in India," p. 33.

32

Karl Marx, "The Future Results of the British Rule in India," p. 80.

33

Quoted in Simon Schama, A History a/Britain. Vol. 3. The Fate of Empire, 17762000 (New York, 2002), p. 327.

The Trotskyist Movement in lfidia and Ceylon

their territory with the aid of loyal Indian troops after six months of sieges, forced marches, heroism, and brutality. Reading the slanted newspaper reports in England, Marx and Engels recognized that some of the Indian rebels were fighting for reactionary goals, such as restoring the ancien regime, whether Mughal or Mahratta. But the fact that the rebel forces moved through the countryside so quickly suggested that they had popular support. Marx called the Mutiny a "nationl;ll uprising" led by a "revohltionary league." 34 Writing for the New York Herald Tribune, Marx asked rhetorically: "In view of such facts, dispassionate and thoughtful men may perhaps be led to ask whether a people are not justified in attempting to expel the foreign conquerers who have so abused their subjects." 35 Radical Reconstruction in Reverse

The Mutiny was a wake-up call in London. In 1858. Parliament ended Company rule and took over the administration ofIndia. The government promptly reversed the Oudh land reform and gave the taluqdars powers to expropriate the tenants. 36 The grateful landlords formed the British India Association to help "Her Majesty's administration i1i Hindoostan

34

Karl Marx, "The Revolt in India" (18 September 1857), reprinted in K. Marx and F. Engels, The First Indian War of Independence, 1857-1859 (Moscow, 1959), p. 88. Marx and Engels took a similar attitude to the Taiping Revolt that was sweeping China that time. The Taiping rebels attacked the Ch'ing (Manchu) dynasty, espoused social equality, abolished private property, and banned opium and alcohol, until their defeat in 1864. Marx called their struggle "a popular war for the maintenance of Chinese nationality, with all its overbearing prejudice, stupidity, learned ignorance and pedantic barbarism if you like, but yet a popular war." Karl Marx, "Persia-China" (5 June 1857), reprinted in Marx on China, 1853-1860 (London, 1951), p. 50.

35

Karl Marx, "Investigation of Tortures in India" (28 August 1857), reprinted in The First Indian War of Independence, 1857-1859, p. 69.

36

In 1863 a British settlement officer described the situation, "The talookdar is in the saddle, and the underproprietor has to unhorse him; this he can seldom do, and he loses all in the encounter." Quoted in Thomas R. Metcalf,Land, Landlords and the British Raj: Northern India in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 1979), pp. 241-42.

13

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

and especially in Oudh." One British official called the landlords "a most useful auxiliary to an alien Government such as ours." 37 After the Mutiny the government initiated what became a massive program of building railways. In part the motivation was military; troops could be rushed to future trouble spots quicker. But there was also an economic incentive; the railways would open up new markets in the conquered territories. As farmers switched to growing cash crops for export, the value of the land boomed. 38 Hence the strident loyalism of the Oudh and Punjab llindlords had an economic basis. The government stopped deposing Princes, who at that point ruled about one third of the territory of India. The government offered the remaining Princes a deal-bow to the British state power and you can keep your throne and land. That was an offer most couldn't refuse. The goal was to make the Native States a bulwark. "It would be difficult for a general rebellion against the British to sweep India," wrote one official, "because of this network of powerful, loyal Native States." 39 After the Mutiny the ideologues of colonialism played up the "feudal" character of the Princes, thereby fostering the myth that Britain was modernizing a medieval society. 40 The British bestowed on the Princes pompous feudal titles and staged theatrical pageants worthy of Bollywood. In fact the Princes had been politically expropriated. The Governor-General oversaw the most powerful rulers: the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Maharaja of Mysore, the Maharaja of

37

Quoted in Jagdish Raj, Economic Conflict in North India: A Study of LandlordTenant Relations in Oudh. 1870-1890 (Bombay, 1978), preface p. x.

38

In the United Provinces the average land price increased more than fivefold from 1861 to 1900. Shireen Moosvi, "The Indian Economic Experience 1600-1900: A Quantitative Study," in K.N. Panikkar (ed.), The Making of History: Essays Presented to Irfan Habib. pp. 346-47.

39

40

14

Quoted in Penderel Moon, Strangers in India (New York, 1945), p. 48. In 1875 Alfred Lyall, an influential British official, reported that "the whole feeling of this country is medieval." Another official described the Sikh states as "a complete and fully organized feudal system," similar to medieval Germany. Quoted in Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 72 and 73.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Jammu and Kashmir, and the Gaekwar Maharaja of Baroda. Subordinate bureaucrats managed the hundreds of small fry. After the Civil War in the United States the northern government took steps to transform the defeated South. Protected by the occupying Union Army, the Radical Reconstructionists reformed local governments, framed democratic state constitutions, and redistributed land to the emancipated black people. After the defeat of the Indian Mutiny the British immediately revoked their earlier reforms, expropriated the peasant smallh<;>lders, propped up the Princes, sanctioned indentured labor, and deliberately sowed communal discord. 41 It was like Radical Reconstruction in reverse. A Belated Industrial Revolution

In 1845 a Parsi businessman proposed to build a textile mill in Bombay. He saw manufacturing as a way to hedge the risks of his cotton trading business. If demand slumped, he could process the cotton into lowcount yarn for the China market. However, the plan was risky. He'd have to import the coal from Bengal, the raw cotton from Gujarat, the machinery and technicians from England, and labor from the hinterlands. He failed to raise the necessary capital. In 1851. another Parsi entrepreneur, Cowasji Davar, tried again. In order to reduce the risks he utilized a form of limited liability company; called a managing agency. He raised the necessary capital from fellow Parsi families, Gujarati merchants, and two English businessmen. This became the successful model. 42 By 1875 there were 27 textile mills in Bombay, and over the next ten years the number of mills there increased

41

In 1862 the Secretary of State for India, Sir Charles Wood, wrote to the Viceroy: "We have maintained our power in India by playing off one part against the other and we must continue to do so ... Do all you can, therefore to prevent all having a common feeling."

42

Gijsbert Oonk, "Motor or Millstone? The Managing Agency System in Bombay and Ahmedabad, 1850-1930," Indian Economic and Social History Review, vo\. 38, no. 4 (2001), pp. 419-52; and Blair King, "The Origins of the Managing Agency System in India," Journal ofAsian Studies, vo\. 26, no. 1 (1966), pp. 37-48.

15

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

fivefold. "Bombay has long been the Liverpool of the East," boasted one newspaper, "and she is now becoming the Manchester also.",43 All the horrors of the Industrial Revolution were recreated in India. Unfettered by labor legislation, the mill owners kept wages at a subsistence level. The mill hands had to work dawn-to-dusk, often 18 hours a day, seven days a week. The ill-ventilated textile mills became dusty ovens in the summer. In the makeshift slums which grew up around the mills six or more workers would share a single, windowless, verminous room. Children played in reeking sewers. More than half of newborns died. One contemporary called these degraded slums "pestilential plague spots." 44 In India the formation of an industrial "proletariat" was more protracted and ambiguous than in England or Germany. Most mill hands were peasants fresh from the village who worked only to payoff their debts, hold onto their land, or retain their crop shares. 45 They'd return home for festivals, planting, and harvesting. Moreover, the workers were recruited in the villages, housed in the slums, and organized in the mills along caste lines. The very process of industrialization tended to perpetuate, ifnot reinforce, caste consciousness. 46 Nevertheless, the Indian workers resisted exploitation just like their counterparts in Lancashire. By the early 1890s strikes had become a "frequent occurrence in every one of the mills in the city." 47

43

Morris David Morris, The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854-1947 (Berkeley, 1965), p. 18.

44

Quoted in Dick Kooiman, Bombay Textile Labour: Managers, Trade Unionists and Officials, 1918-1939 (New Delhi, 1989), p. 16.

45

Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, c. 1850-1950 (Cambridge, 1998), p. 66.

46

Susan Bayly; Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge, 1999), p. 226; and Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princetan, 2001), p. 5. In Czarist Russia the advent of industrialization likewise resulted in "a strengthel)ing of serfdom as the fundamental form oflabour organization." Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution (London, 1932), p. 25.

47

Cited in M.D. Morris, The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India, p. 178.

16

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Despite their success in textiles, the Indian industrialists remained a niche bourgeoisie. The British dominated the economy. Even in textiles British capital held stakes in many Indian mills through the managing agency system. Wealthy Indians had plenty of money. What they lacked were investment opportunities and political power. 48 That frustration led to the emergence of the Indian nationalist movement. Her Majesty's Nationalists

Having conquered a highly civilized country, the British had to contend with a sophisticated and articulate intelligentsia. Indians read about the virtues of democracy out lived in a racist autocracy. No matter how much Milton he might memorize, no Indian had a chance at any position of real power in the government. Only twelve Indians had been admitted to the Indian Civil Service in 25 years. Indians were not promoted above the rank of brigadier in the military. The Commanderin-Chief, Lord Roberts, stated that no Indian, no matter how brave in battle, could ever be regarded "as an equal b.y the British officer." 49 Indian intellectuals formed patriotic organizations to press for reforms. 50 They quoted the great English democrats to shame the government for its "un-British" rule in India. Like Edmund Burke, the godfathers of Indian nationalism condemned the evils of colonialism but didn't think independence was the solution. With the memory of the Mutiny still fresh, the Indian elite feared that another elemental revolt would unleash dark forces of retrogression. They argued that Britain had a duty to improve the lot of the colonial peoples and gradually introduce measures of self-government.

48

49

so

Shyam Rungta, The Rise of Business Corporations in India, 1851-1900 (London, 1970), pp. 184-85, 269; Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Pr.ivate Investment in India, 19001939 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 3-5,47-48,420-25. Quoted in George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener. Vo!. 2 (New York, 1920), p. 177. Briton Martin, New India 1885: British Official Policy and the Emergence of the Indian National Congress (Berkeley, 1969), pp. 40-52.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The nationalists found an important champion in Allan Octavian Hume, a liberal reformer who had retired from the Indian government. Hume was a controversial character. He had an eccentric side, expressed in his fascination with Theosophy and the occult. 51 He warned that the Raj was "truly in extreme danger of a most terrible revolution" and that a "safety valve for the escape of great and growing forces" was urgently needed. 52 He backed the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 to, in his words, "limit, control, and direct" the discontent of the Westernized intellectuals into "safe channels." 53 The founding fathers of the Congress were loyal to the British. At the inaugural session Surendranath Banerjea appealed to England "gradually to change the character of her rule in India, so that, in the fullness of time, India may find its place in the great confederacy of free states, English in their origin, English in their character, English in their institutions, rejoicing in their permanent and indissoluble union with England." 54 AlIan Octavian Hume was elected Secretary. He led the group in cheers for Her Majesty. In its first two decades the Congress was more like an elite caucus than a political party. The Congress met once a year, passed resolutions, and then disbanded. The Congress regarded itself as the progressive voice of the entire people. But it had a definite class bias. The early nationalists, who were mainly from the well-to-do middle classes, regarded the capitalist development of India as the road to progress.

51

The Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, dismissed Hume as "cleverish, a little cracked, extremely vain and absolutely indifferent to truth." Quoted in Bipan Chandra, Indias Struggle for Independence, 1857-1947 (New Delhi, 1988), p. 70.

52

William Wedderburn, Alan Octavian Hume: 'Father of the Indian National Congress '1829-1912. A Biography. (New Delhi, 2002), pp. 63-64 and p. 66. Hume may not have been so paranoid after all. In 1875 peasants in the Deccan rioted. In 1879 a young Maharatta nationalist organized the first armed uprising against the British since the Mutiny. Quoted in Daniel Argov, Moderates and Extremists in the Indian Nationalist Movement (New York, 1967), p. 63.

53

54

18

Quoted in S.M. Burke and Salim AI-Din Quraishi, The British Raj in India (Oxford, 1995), p. 49.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Yet the Indian bourgeoisie itself was still in its infancy. In that sense the Congress had a vicarious quality and functioned as a surrogate for a domestic class that was still in the process of formation. Not all nationalists were Anglophiles content to patiently plead and petition for reforms. Bal Gangadhar Tilak was a fiery populist from the militant Mahratta school who espoused an indigenous nationalism based on the Hindu revivalist movement. His motto was "Organize, educate, and politicize the common people." Tilak was the first nationalist to demand complete freedom. "Swarai is my birthright and I will have it." Tilak was associated with other radical nationalists, such as Bipin Chandra Pal in Bengal, Chidambaram Pillai in Madras, and Ajit Singh in the Punjab. This group was called the "Extremist" wing of the Indian National Congress. The Bourgeois Nationalists and the "Feudal" Aristocracy

In the West the nascent bourgeoisie had been pitted against the landed aristocracy derived from the feudal era. In India, however, the modern bourgeoisie was tied to the whole system oflandlordism that the British created. In Bengal many of the educated nationalists came from prosperous families who derived income from estates that had been obtained in the various Zamindari settlements. Hence it is not surprising that the Congress did not oppose the two "feudal" institutions in India-the Princely States and the system of landlordism. Most Congress leaders, Moderates and Extremists alike, praised the Princes and pointed to the Native States as proof that Indians could govern themselves. Most Princes did not reciprocate; few actively supported the Congress in the beginning. Nevertheless, the Congressmen deliberately avoided confrontation. Tilakwrote: "Once we attain Swaraj, it would not be difficult to pressurize the princes for liberalizing their autocratic regimes." 55 ss

Quoted in Shanta Sathe, Lokmanya Tilak: His Social and Political Thoughts (Delhi, 1994), p. 79.

19

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Likewise, the Congress supported the Zamindari system and asked that it be extended throughout India. The nationalist ideologue, Romesh Chunder Dutt, wrote that "the Permanent Settlement of 1793 is the wisest and most successful measure which the British nation has ever adopted in India." 56 At various times the nationalists joined with the landlords to oppose tenancy acts that formally gave the peasants occupancy tenure. 57 The nationalists used their wealth, status, and education to challenge the autocratic government. Yet the Congress dared not attack the social bases of the Raj. "This situation," notes one historian, "prevented the crystallization of a true bourgeoisie armed with a conquering ideology." 58 The First Mass Protest Movement

In 1903 Viceroy Curzon announced that the province of Bengal would be partitioned, supposedly to enable the government to better adminster the smaller units. The nationalists cried, "Divide and Rule!" Their opposition was perhaps not entirely altruistic. The value of their land had been steadily declining over the past three decades. If Bengal were divided, the government could raise the revenue demand (taxes), which had been fixed "for ever" by the Permanent Settlement in 1793. 56

Romesh Dutt, The Economic History of India. Vol. 1, pp. 67-68.

57

In 1859 the Ripon administration passed a tenancy act that gave the tenant farmer the right to occupy his land after he had tilled it for twelve consecutive years. The zamindars thwarted the law by shifting tenants from one plot to another or raising the rent so much that the tenant had to move before the twelve years had passed. That eventua1ly provoked peasant outbursts in Bengal from 1873-75. To de-fuse the situation Viceroy Dufferin proposed a new tenancy bill that gave the peasant occupancy tenure and limited the ability of the zamindars to raise rents. Briton Martin, New India 1885, p. 32. Likewise the Punjab Alienation Act of 1900 prevented the transfer of land to non-cultivating classes. The moneylenders put pressure on Congress to oppose the act in the name of protecting the land and credit markets. D.N. Dhanagare, Peasant Movements in India 1920-1950 (Delhi, 1983), p. 46.

5S

Claude Markovits, Indian Business and Nationalist Politics, 1931-1939: The Indigenous Capitalist Class and the Rise of the Congress Party (Cambridge, 1985), p. 19.

20

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

In 1906 the Congress called for a boycott of British goods until the Partition of Bengal Act was revoked. The nationalists asked Indians to buy domestic products, called Swadeshi [own country], rather than British imports. For the first time the Congress appealed to the people to come into the streets for demonstrations and rallies. In Calcutta patriotic Bengalis gathered and burned their British clothing in big bonfires. Surendranath Bannerjea, the old Moderate, delivered such rousing speeches that he got the nickname, "Surrender Not." The boycott was a boon to the Indian textile industry. The Ahmedabad mills, for example, doubled their production to meet the surging demand for swadeshi cloth. Many Indian mill owners supported the Swadeshi movement in pursuit of their own interests. 59 British imports slumped for a while in Bengal. 60 Encouraged by the Swadeshi movement, J.N. Tata, a Parsi entrepreneur, proposed to build a huge steel plant. He had tried once before, in 1883, and failed for want of government support and British investment. 61 But the times had changed. Belgian and German steel companies were capturing the Indian market. The Viceroy promised Tata the infrastructure and government contracts he needed. 62 But this time Tata didn't need foreign financing. Thanks to the nationalist fervor, he raised his capital in just three weeks from rich Indians, including the "feudal" Prince of Gwalior. 59

A.P. Kannangara, "Indian MiIlowners and Indian Nationalism Before 1914," Past and Present [Oxford], 40 (July 1968).

60

Like all consumer boycotts, the Swadeshi campaign didn't make. a lasting dent. While British imports to Bengal slumped during 1905-06, they actually increased in Bombay. And even in Bengal, the success was short-lived. By 1908 the import of Manchester products had recovered and exceeded the 1905 level.

61

In 1883 Tata wanted to build an iron and steel plant in Bihar, close to the source of the coal. The Viceroy was cooperative, but the Secretary of State in England was hostile. Moreover, Tata's agent in London reported that British capitalists "would not think of putting their money in the new enterprise especially when old and tried industries were offering a more favourable and safer investment." Quoted in Vinay Bahl, The Making ofthe Indian Working Class: The Case of the Tata Iron and Steel Co., 1880-1946 (New Delhi, 1995), pp. 72-73.

62

V. Bahl, The Making of the Indian Working Class, p. 73.

21

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Birth of the Revolutionary Movement

As the protests in Bengal grew, the authorities cracked down hard. The police whipped students who paraded the streets and dispersed Congress meetings at gunpoint. The nationalist paper, Jugantar [New Era], declared, "Force must be stopped by force." 63 As one radical recalled, "everyone seemed to be saying, 'No. This can't go on. We've got to blowout the brains of one of these bastards' ."64 Some Extremists began recruiting youth for just that purpose. Aurobindo Ghosh, who later became a famous mystic, was the ideologue. His brother, Barin, taught the young patriots how to make homemade bombs. Young Bengalis joined the secret societies "simply out of an innate hatred of British rule." 65 The revolutionaries targeted policemen, judges, and other government officials. The British used to denigrate the Bengalis as an "effete" people, fit only to be clerks, not warriors, like the "manly" tribes of the Northwest Frontier. This was payback time. The nationalist movement polarized. While the Extremists applauded the terrorists and called for expanding the Swadeshi movement, the Moderates got cold feet. In 1907 the Congress split. While the Extremists appealed to the radical youth, the Moderates redefined "swaraj" to mean "colonial self-rule." The government introduced the Morely-Minto Reforms to bolster the Moderates. For the first time an Indian-a laywer and rich landowner-was appointed to the Viceroy's Council. The Extremists went on the offensive. In the Punjab Ajit Singh called upon Hindus and Muslims to rise as one against the British. Violent riots followed in Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Amritsar. The government quickly exiled Ajit Singh and Lala Lajpat Rai to Burma. 63

Quoted in Krishan Mohan, Revolutionary Politics and Indian Freedom Movement (Jaipur, 1999), p. 59.

64

Quoted in Peter Heehs, The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India. 1900-1910 (Delhi, 1993), p. 116.

65

Peter Heehs, Nationalism. Terrorism. Communalism (Delhi, 1998), p. 3.

22

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Similar spontaneous outbursts took place in South India. Chidambaram Pillai was sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1908 Tilak was arrested in Bombay. When he was sentenced to penal exile for six years, the Bombay workers staged a general strike for six days. During the street protests, British troops killed 16 mill hands. The repression subdued the movement, for the time being. The Socialists and the Colonial Question

As his comments on the Indian mutiny showed, Karl Marx would have been delighted to see another popular uprising drive the British out of India. In his mind colonial rule was not only unjust to the subject peoples, but it also served to sustain and even reinvigorate capitalism. 66 In 1882 Engels wrote to Karl Kautsky, his protege and the future high priest of Marxist doctrine in Germany: "India will perhaps, indeed very probably, make a revolution ... The same might also take place elsewhere, e.g. in Algeria and Egypt, and would certainly be the best thing for us." 67 In 1889 the Paris meeting of the International Socialist Congress founded the Second International. Engels advised from the sidelines until his death in 1895. After that, the German Social Democrats 66

67

Marx mused in a letter to Engels: "There is no denying that bourgeois society has for the second time experienced its 16th century, a 16th century which, I hope, will sound its death knell just as the first ushered it into the world. The proper task of bourgeois society is the creation of the world market, at least in outline, and of the production based on that market. Since the world is round, the colonisation of California and Australia and the opening up of China and Japan would seem to have completed this process. For us, the difficult question is this: on the Continent revolution is imminent and will, moreover, instantly assume a socialist character. Will it not necessarily be crushed in this little corner of the earth, since the movement of bourgeois society is still in the ascendant over a far greater area? " Karl Marx to F. Engels, 8 October 1857, reprinted in Shlomo Avineri (ed.), Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization (New York, 1968), p. 439. Friedrich Engels, letter to Karl Kautsky, 12 September 1882, published as appendix to K. Kautsky, Sozialismus und Kolonialpolitik: eine Auseinandersetzung (Berlin, 1907), p. 79. Most of the letter is reprinted in Shlomo Avineri, Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, pp. 447-48.

23

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

provided both the backbone and brains. In 1896 the London congress of the International debated the national question and passed a vague resolution opposing colonialism. 68 However, in practice the Socialist parties in the imperialist countries did not act on that resolution. In Britain the Labour movement tended to regard colonialism as a capitalist distraction. 69 While he opposed British colonialism and German imperialist ambitions, Kautsky stopped short of demanding independence for India. 70 His rationale, however, was impeccably Marxist. As is well known, Marx regarded the Czar as the main threat to European democracy. He viewed the national question in that context. He supported freedom for the Poles and Magyars, on the basis that they would be a buffer, while he opposed the movements of the Czechs and South Slavs, on the basis that they would be stepping stones for further Russian expansionism. Kautsky applied that logic in the case of India. By the 1880s the Czarist state was on a collision course with the British in Afghanistan. Kautsky feared that the "Great Game" would ignite a world war. "Whatever one may think of the British regime in India," Karl Kautsky explained, "a Russian one would without a doubt be worse ... Every particular national interest has to be subordinated to the fight against it [Russian despotism], however important and legitimate it be." 71 "Socialist Imperialism"

In 1901 Henri Van Kol, a Dutch Socialist who had worked in Indonesia for fourteen years, argued that Socialists should adopt a more

68

The resolution merely expressed "sympathy with the workers of any country at present suffering under the yoke of military, national or other despotisms." Quoted in RH. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution. vo\. 1 (New York, 1951), p. 423.

69

Bemard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists (Oxford, 2004), pp. 217-18.

70

K. Kautsky, "Germany, England, and the World Policy," The Social Democrat, vo\. 4, no. 8 (August, 1900), pp. 230-36.

71

Karl Kautsky, Sozialismus und Kolonialpolitik, p. 70.

24

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

"positive" program on the colonies. His own party had turned a blind eye to the question, neglecting to mention Indonesia in their founding program or their election campaign. But Van Kol bent the stick far in the opposite direction. By 1904 he was arguing that the workers had "a powerful interest in the flowering of the colonies." 72 In 1906 August Bebel, the co-founder of German Social Democracy, endorsed the heretical position. "The pursuit of a colonial policy can under certain circumstances be a civilizing deed." 73 At the Stuttgart congress of the Second International the following year the pro-colonial socialists submitted a resolution to that effect. 74 In the debate Eduard Bernstein, the prophet of evolutionary socialism, stated that socialists "should acknowledge the need for civilized peoples to act somewhat like the guardians of the uncivilized." 75 Kol declared that S'ociaIists would have to keep "their" colonies with "arms in hand," if necessary. 76 Kautsky and others attacked this resolution. But the most powerful intervention came quite unexpectedly. Madame Bhikaji Cama, an aristocratic Parsi who had become an ardent nationalist, mounted the podium dressed in a flowing sari. A striking woman, she galvanized the delegates with her fiery denunciation of British imperialism. And then, in an electrifying gesture, she unfurled the tricolor nationalist flag and declared, "This flag is of India's independence. Behold, it is born. It is already sanctified by the blood of martyred Indian youth. I call upon you, gentlemen, to rise and salute the flag of Indian independence." The resolution for a "positive colonial policy" was rejected, albeit in a close vote.

72

Cited in Erik Hansen, "Marxists and Imperialism: The Indonesian Policy of the Dutch Social Democratic Workers Party, 1894-1914," Indonesia. vo1.16 (October 1973), p. 91.

7J

Quoted in Karl Kautsky, Sozialismus und Kolonialpolitik. p. 7.

74

Quoted in Karl Kautsky, Sozialismus und Kolollialpolitik. p. 4.

75

Quoted in Karl Kautsky, Sozialismus und Kolonialpolitik. p. 6.

76

Quoted in Karl Kautsky, Sozialismus ulld Kolonialpolitik. p. 7.

25

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

After the congress Kautsky published a polemic against the procolonial socialists, entitled Socialism and Colonial Policy, which became a Bible of sorts for the Marxist wing of the movement. He rejected the claim that an era of capitalism was inevitable in the "backward" colonies. He had a trump card: a letter that Engels had written to him in 1882. Engels stated that a socialist England would lead the colonies "as rapidly as possible towards independence." 77 He added that if India revolted, the Socialists would have to let the revolution run its course. "One thing alone is certain: the victorious proletariat can force no blessings of any kind upon any foreign nation without undermining its own victory by so doing." The issue of the "positive colonial policy" was never formally resolved. It was a ticking time bomb that would eventually explode the Second International in 1914. The Socialists who had vowed to civilize the colonies ended up supporting the most savage war the world had known. Only a minority, including the Russian Bolsheviks and Trotsky, opposed the "imperialist war" and called for the freedom of all colonies. In 1915 Lenin declared that if the Bolsheviks came to power, "we would propose peace to all the belligerents on the condition that freedom is given to the colonies and all peoples that are dependent, oppressed and deprived of rights." 78 And that is exactly what Lenin and Trotsky did in 1917. 79

77

Appendix to Karl Kautsky, Sozialismus und Kolonialpolitik, p. 79.

78

v.I.

79

26

Lenin, "Several Theses" (13 October 1915), in Collected Works, vo!. 21 (Moscow, 1964), pp. 403-404.

On November 7, 1917 the Bolsheviks seized power. The very next day the Soviet Congress issued a "Decree on Peace," which denounced the Allied powers for not giving the right of self-determination to Ireland, India, and their other colonial possessions. At the Brest-Litovsk negotiations Leon Trotsky, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, blasted the Wilsonian doctrine as "the defense of the most naked, the most cynical imperialism." Trotsky appealed to the peoples of the Allied countries "to found a peace upon the complete and unconditional recognition of the principle of self-determination for all peoples in all states giving this right to the oppressed peoples of their own states." Quoted in Arno J. Mayer, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918 (New Haven, 1959), p. 306.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Setting the East Ablaze

The Third International (Comintern) was founded in early 1919. At that point the Bolsheviks were confident that red revolution was imminent in war-ravaged Europe. Grigori Zinoviev, the flamboyant president of the Comintern, who was later to be executed by Stalin, brashly predicted that Europe would be socialist within a year. The Manifesto of the founding congress, written by Trotsky, proclaimed that "socialist Europe will come to the aid of liberated colonies with her technology, her organization, and her ideological influence in order to facilitate their transition to a planned and organized socialist economy." 80 The Russian Revolution of 1905 had sent tremors through Asia. In Persia reformers revolted against the Shah, elected a parliament, and implemented a democratic constitution. In Turkey young army officers rebelled against the Sultan and forced him to summon a parliament. In China the nationalists overthrew the Manchus and made Sun Vat Sen president of the new republic. In Bombay the textile workers staged their first political strike. Inspired by these developments, Lenin called the awakening working masses of Asia "inflammatory material" in world politics. 81 The Bolsheviks thought that the impact of the October Revolution would be even greater. The Comintern vowed to "set the East ablaze." And there was no lack of combustible material. Muslims, from Turkey to India, were up in arms over the defeat of the Ottomans and mobilized to restore the Caliphate [Khilafat]. The Bolsheviks were eager to encourage their jihad against British imperialism, which at that point was their number one enemy. In India the Ali brothers appealed to their brethern to join the Khilafat movement. Recognizing that the Muslims were a potent force,

80

81

Leon Trotsky, "Manifesto of the Communist International to the Proletariat of the Entire World," reprinted in Jane Degras (ed.), Th.e Communist International, 19191943: Documents, vol. 1: 1919-1922 (London, 1956), p. 43.

v.I. Lenin, "Inflammable Material in World Politics" (5 August 1908), in Collected Works, vol. 15 (Moscow, 1963), pp. 182-83.

27

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Gandhi solidarized with the Khilafat cause and called for nationwide protests against the "Satanic government." He promised that if people followed his non-violent creed, he could win "Swaraj in a year." Though most of the protests were orderly, in Amritsar mobs looted banks, torched government buildings, and killed several Europeans. The local British 'commander retaliated with a mass slaughter, known as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. 82 With that infamous act, the British set India on fire for the Bolsheviks. The Formulation of Communist Policy

Given the turmoil in India and elsewhere, Lenin and Trotsky recognized the need for a Communist policy in "the East." 83 But they had to start almost from scratch. Not only was the world a very different place after the war. But they didn't have much in terms of Marxist theory to build upon. As we have seen, the Second International produced very little on the question.

82

Although the governor of the Punjab had banned all public meetings, thousands gathered peacefully in a walled park in Amritsar, known as the Jallianwala Bagh, for an annual spring celebration. The local commander, Brigadier-General Dyer, marched his troops to the park, blocked the single exit, and ordered his men to open fire on the trapped throng. After ten minutes of shooting, hundreds of men, women, and children had been killed. Dyer later testified that he had decided in advance "to do all the men to death," because "it would be doing a jolly lot of good and they would realise they were not to be wicked." Quoted in Savita Narain, The Historiography of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, 1919 (South Godstone [UK], 1998), p. 37.The government forced Dyer to retire, the lightest punishment possible. The House of Lords protested even this gesture, and the Morning Post opened a fund for the "Savior of the Punjab."

83

At that point Trotsky had become the commander of the Red Anny which was fighting anti-Bolshevik armies on all sides. In 1919, after the Reds had broken through Kolchak's forces in Central Asia, Trotsky saw an opening for an offensive towards the Northwest Frontier of British India. In a confidential memorandum to the party leadership back in Moscow Trotsky posed the possibility of using the Red Army to incite uprisings against the British. "The road to India may prove at the given moment to be more readily passable and shorter for us than the road to Soviet Hungary." Jan M. Meijer (ed.), The Trotsky Papers 1917-1922. vo\. 1 (The Hague, 1964), p. 623.

28

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Moreover, the Bolsheviks couldn't just "go back to Marx," like Lenin had done when he wrote his State and Revolution. The articles that Marx had written on India and China, as well as most of his letters to Engels on the subject, were buried in obscurity-an important point that historians seem to have missed all these years. The key articles that Marx penned for the New York Tribune were not unearthed and published until 1925. 84 As is well known, Lenin drafted a position paper, called the "Theses on the National and Colonial Question," to be placed before the Second Congress of the Comintern. The fact that he joined those two issues-the national and colonial-is significant. Lenin was adamant about the proper handling of the national question. If a party didn't support the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, and fight for that right in practice, then they couldn't be part of the Comintern. His draft theses stated that the. workers in the West, especially in the imperialist countries, had to support the "revolutionary nationalists" in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Lenin circulated his theses to delegates who were arriving in Russia for the Second Congress and requested their comments. One of those delegates was M.N. Roy, the brilliant Bengali terrorist turned Communist. When he read the draft theses, he was taken aback. Communists should support the "revolutionary bourgeoisie"? Roy had participated in the Swadeshi movement as a youth and he had seen how the so-called "democrats" bolted the moment the bombs started flying. That is why he and so many other disillusioned radicals joined the

84

The Russian socialist scholar, David Riazanov (1870-1938), deserves much credit for finding, validating, compiling, and publishing the dispersed works of Marx and Engels. After the October Revolution, Riazanov became director of the MarxEngels Institute in Moscow. In 1925 he published Marx's articles on India from 1853. David Riazanov, "Karl Marx: ilber China und Indien," Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, vo!. 1, no. 2 (July 1925), pp. 370-78. Even then, Riazanov didn't have a complete file of the New York Tribune; in 1931 the Institute announced that it had recently acquired Ha very rare file of the New York Tribune, including the years when Marx and Engels collaborated with it." L.B., "The Marx-Engels Institute," La Critique sociale, no.2, July 1931, pp. 51-52.

29

The Trotskyist.Movement in India and Ceylon

terrorist groups. In his opinion Lenin had gone overboard in attributing a revolutionary role to the colonial bourgeoisie. In his memoirs M.N. Roy recounted his private discussions with Lenin. "He argued that Imperialism had held the colonial countries back in feudal social conditions, which hindered the development of capitalism and thwarted the ambition of the native bourgeoisie. Historically, the national liberation movement had the significance of the bourgeois democratic revolution. Every stage of social evolution being historically detennined, the colonial countries must have their bourgeois democratic revolution before they could enter the stage of the proletarian revolution. The Communists, therefore, must help the colonial liberation movement under the leadership of the nationalist bourgeoisie, regarding the latter as an objectively revolutionary force." 85 In his earlier articles on the East, written after the 1905 Revolution, Lenin had in fact hailed the liberal refonners in Turkey, Persia, China, and India as "revolutionary democrats." 86 He enthused that the era of bourgeois-democratic revolutions "has just started in the East and in Asia." 87 Whereas the Western bourgeoisie had turned reactionary after 1848, "in Asia there is still a bourgeoisie capable of championing sincere, militant, consistent democracy, a worthy comrade of France's great men of the Enlightenment and great leaders of the close of the eighteenth century." 88 Roy, on the other hand, thought India was closer to Russia in 1905 than to France in 1789. In his opinion the rising progressive class in Asia was the proletariat, not the bourgeoisie. He was not the first to draw that analogy. In 1917 K.M. Troyanovsky, a Ukrainian Bolshevik, declared that India would play the same role in the East that Russia had

85 86

87

88

30

Manabendranath Roy, M.N. Roys Memoirs (Bombay, 1964), p. 379. v.1. Lenin, "Democracy and Narodism in China" (15 July 1912), in Collected Works. vo\. 18, p. 163. V.1. Lenin, "Theses for a Lecture on the National Question" (January-February 1914), in Collected Works. vo\. 41 (Moscow, 1969), p. 314. v.1. Lenin, "Democracy and Na~odism in China."

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

in the West. 89 In his discussions with Lenin, Roy recited facts to show how much Indian capitalism, and with it the working class, had grown during the war. Lenin was receptive. He asked Roy to contribute supplementary theses. Roy did so, and both theses were submitted to the Colonial Commission which met during the Second Congress. The "Lenin-Roy debate" in the Colonial Commission has been rehashed a thousand times. Basically, the discussion raised more questions than it answered. By all accounts Lenin showed a willingness to reconsider some of his assumptions. He reformulated his controversial thesis on supporting bourgeois nationalists: the Communists should support bourgeois nationalists only if (a) they are "really revolutionary" and (b) they allow the Reds to organize independently. He also agreed that, as a theoretical proposition, the "backward countries" could, with the help of the USSR and socialist workers of the West, proceed to a Soviet order without having to plod through a protracted period of capitalism. However, like Engels in 1882, Lenin refused to speculate about the class dynamics of that process in any given country. He very deliberately left open the question of "stages." After the congress Lenin encouraged Roy to pursue his ideas. In 1921 Roy submitted a report on class relations and the structure of the Indian economy. Lenin was enthusiastic. He asked Roy to develop the report into a book "which would give a realistic picture of contemporary Indian society and open up the perspective of the Indian revolution." 90 In 1921 Roy started work on what would eventually be the book, India in Transition, the first attempt at a Marxist analysis of Indian history.

89

90

Xenia JoukoffEudin and Robert C. North, Soviet Russia and the East: 1920-1927 (Stanford, 1957), p. 92. Troyanovsky called India "the citadel of the revolution in the East." M.N. Roy, Memoirs, p. 552.

31

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The First Marxist Book on India

In his memoirs Roy recounts that the Bolsheviks thought that feudalism was "the predominating social factor in contemporary India." 91 From that assumption, they concluded that the Indian bourgeoisie was a revolutionary force. If Marx's writings on India had been known to them, they probably would have thought otherwise. Marx had made it clear-from his New York Tribune articles in the 1850s up to the copious notes on India he had taken in the year or so before he diedthat he did not regard India as feudal. 92 However, none of those key writings had yet been published. 93 Though he did not know what Marx had written about India, Roy independently arrived at many of the same conclusions. "Contrary to the general notion," the book begins, "India is not under the feudal system. In India, feudalism was destroyed, or more correctly speaking, undermined not by a violent revolution, as in Europe, but by a comparatively peaceful and gradual process." 94 He proceeded to summarize the impact of the British land reforms and destructive trade policies.

91

M.N. Roy, Memoirs. pp. 551-52.

92

In his unpublished notebooks Marx criticized the Russian schohlr Maxsim Kovalevsky for calling pre-British India "feudal." K. Marx, "Excerpts from M.M. Kovalevskij, Obscinnoe Zemlevadenie." in Lawrence Krader, The Asiatic Mode of Production (Assen, 1975), pali II, pp. 373ff. Marx also wrote harsh notes on John Btidd Phear, a British judge in colonial India who authored The Aryan Village in India and Ceylon (1880). "This ass Ph ear calls the constitution of the village feudal." Lawrence Krader (ed.), The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx (Assen, 1974), part II, p. 256.

93

The Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Dkonomie was published in 1939. The Marx-Engels correspondence began to be systematically published in 1929-31. The so-called "ethnological notebooks" were published in 1974. It is not too surprising, therefore, that even the canonical works on Marxism published during the era of the Second International do not mention the "Asiatic mode of production." See for example Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: Geschichteseines Lebens (Leipzig, 1919).

94

M.N. Roy, "India in Transition" (1922), reprinted in Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Selected Works ofM.N. Roy. vol. 1: 1917-22 (Delhi, 1987), p. 189.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Roy did not ignore the vestiges of the old order in British India. But, like Marx, he emphasized that colonialism produced a contradictory amalgam, in which capitalist relationships were "grafted on to the body" of the pre-capitalist society. 95 "The incurable economic bankruptcy of the agrarian population of India is due to the fact that a backward and antiquated method of production has been reduced to the most modern and highly developed form of exploitation." 96 Roy showed that the Indian bourgeoisie emerged not in opposition to the landed aristocracy, as in Europe, but through the system of landlordism that the British created: "the elements that might have given rise to a native bourgeoisie were diverted from their natural development into a landholding class, for the convenience of a foreign bourgeoisie who conquered the political power and wanted to monopolize the right of exploiting the whole popUlation. The modern Indian bourgeoisie is largely derived from this landholding class." 97 Despite its rapid growth during the war, "the Indian bourgeoisie is still very weak and is bound to be unsteady in its purpose." 98 Roy concluded that the bourgeoisie would not lead a national-liberation movement very far: "Therefore, to rely on the national solidarity under purely bourgeois leadership for the purpose of destroying British rule in India may not be always safe. The overthrow of the British rule will be achieved by the joint action of the bourgeoisie and the masses, but how this joint action can be consumated, still remains a question." 99 As Roy was writing those words, Gandhi was leading a mass movement that would put his assumptions and predictions to the test.

95

M.N. Ray, "India in Transition," p. 242.

96

M.N. Ray, "India in Transition," p. 241.

97

M.N. Ray, "India in Transition," p. 192.

98 .

M.N. Ray, "India in Transition," p. 291.

99

M.N. Ray, "India in Transition," p. 208.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Rise and Demise of Non-Cooperation

Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation Movement in January, 1921. "In every square," recalled one youthful participant in Calcutta, "huge crowds stood in serried ranks, listening with excited gestures and shouts, to the harangues of the leaders." 100 While Hindus were more numerous, the Muslims were more militant. In Calcutta the Khilafat Volunteers wore improvised uniforms; elsewhere Muslims mustered for military drills, armed with swords and wooden staves. In the villages the crusade took on a millenarian fen'or. Muslim agitators warned the faithful that they'd burn in hellfire if they didn't oppose the "Satanic government." Hindu volunteers staged open-air dramas portraying Gandhi as the incarnation of Rama. There were rumors that spiders were weaving Gandhi's name in their cobwebs. 101 Some peasants swore they saw visions of Gandhi. 102 "We found the whole countryside afire with enthusiasm and full of a strange excitement," Jawaharlal Nehru recalled. "Enormous gatherings would take place at the briefest notice by word of mouth." 103 Gandhi preached that Non-Cooperation should not stir up class conflicts. He wanted no strikes; "it is dangerous to make political use of the factory workers." He instructed his followers in the rural areas not to withhold taxes from the Government or rent from the landlords. 104 He rebuked Congress activists who did. 105 However, local leaders 100

Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand. Great Anarch! India 1921-1952 (London: 1987), p. 12.

101

David Hardiman, The Coming (Delhi, 1987), p. 4.

102

S. Amin, "Gandhi as Mahatma, Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921-22," in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies, vo!. 3, pp. 1-61.

103

S. Wolpert, Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny (New York, 1996), p. 46.

104

M. Gandhi, "Instructions to U.P. Peasants" (9 March 1921), in The. Collected Works o/Mahatma Gandhi. Vol. 19 (Ahmedabad, 1966), p. 4 1 9 . '

105

Atlury Murali, "Civil Disobedience Movement in Andhra 1920-22: The Nature of Peasant Protest and the Methods of Congress Political Mobilization," in K. Kumar (ed.), Congress and Classes. p. 172; Stephen Henningham, Peasant Movements in Colonial India: North Bihar 19/7-1942 (Canberra, 1982), p. 68.

34

0/ the Devi:

Adivasi Assertion

ill

Western India

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

who weren't under Congress control exhorted peasants to rise up against their landlords. 106 Hindu holy men incited the lower castes. 107 "The non-cooperation movement," stated one newspaper, "has assumed threatening proportions" 108 A Lieutenant-Governor saw "the beginning of something like revolution." 109 One newspaper warned that "a regular civil war" would develop if the rural poor stopped paying taxes to the landlords. The most serious revolt took place in Malabar. Khilafat agitators told the local Muslims, known as Moplahs, that the Raj was collapsing. Village blacksmiths began hammering out knives, swords, and spears. Roving bands of Muslim villagers sabotaged rail lines, cut telegraph wires, blocked roads, burned post offices, and raided police stations. At the height of the uprising an estimated 10,000 Moplahs waged jungle warfare against two brigades of British infantry and Special Forces. The Moplah Revolt epitomized the danger of inciting mobs with demagogic, religious appeals. The Muslims were mainly poor farmers, while the landlords and moneylenders were Hindus. Muslim mobs looted their mansions and destroyed hundreds of Hindu temples. Thousands of terrified Hindus fled to the coastal areas for safety. One Moplah leader warned, "We shall give Hindus the option of death or Islam." 110 106

William F. Crawley, "Kisan Sabhas and Agrarian Revolt in the United Provinces 1920 to 1921," Modern Asian Studies, vol. 5, no. 2 (1971), pp. 104-05; Arvind N. Das, "Peasants and Peasant Organisations: The Kisan Sabha in Bihar," in Arvind Das (ed.), Agrarian Movements in India" Studies on 20th Century Bihar (London, 1982), p. 54; Kapil Kumar, "Peasants' Perception of Gandhi and His Programme: Oudh, 1920-22," Social Scientist (February 1983).

107

Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age, p. 209; and C.A. Bayly, "Rural Conflict and the Roots of Indian Nationalism: Allahabad District since 1800," in Paul R. Brass and Francis Robinson (eds.), The Indian National Congress and Indian Society, 1885-1985: Ideology, Social Structure, and Political Dominance (Delhi, 1987), p. 229.

108

B.B. Chaudhuri, "Agrarian Movements in Bengal and Bihar, 1919-1939," in B.R. Nanda (ed.), Socialism in India (New York, 1972), p. 196.

109

K. Kumar, Peasants in Revolt: Tenants, Landlords, Congress and the Raj in Oudh (New Delhi, 1984), p. 226.

110

Conrad Wood, The Moplah Rebellion and its Genesis (New Delhi, 1987), p. 216.

35

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

On February 4, 1922 the police opened fire on peasants protesting peacefully in Chauri-Chaura, a little village in the United Provinces. An enraged mob torched the station and slaughtered the constables who fled the inferno. Gandhi was horrified. III He demanded an immediate halt to Non-Cooperation and summoned the Congress Working Committee for an emergency session at Bardoli. The Congess leaders deplored "the inhuman conduct of the mob at Chauri Chaura." 112 They instructed the local Congress committees "to advise the cultivators to pay the land revenue and other taxes due to the government." The resolution pointedly stated: "The Working Committee assures the zemindars that the Congress movement is in no way intended to attack their legal rights." Lenin vs. Roy: The Verdict

When he read the news, M.N. Roy grasped the significance. "The interests of the propertied class must have first consideration: British rule may be 'Satanic', but landlordism is sacred." 113 Just as he had predicted, the Indian bourgeoisie was "incapable, even unwilling, to push the Indian nationalist movement ahead towards revolution." 114 The Congress decision proved that "The liberal bourgeoisie, which stands at the head of the national democratic movement, will not play the revolutionary role which the European bourgeoisie played in the 18 th and 19 th centuries.... The preconditions for a pure bourgeoisdemocratic revolution do not exist in India." 115

III

M. Gandhi, "The Crime of Chauri Chaura" (16 February 1922), in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vo\. 22, p. 419.

112

M. Gandhi, "Working Committee's Resolutions at Bardoli" (12 February 1922), in The Collected Works ofMahatma Gandhi, vo\. 22, p. 378.

113

M.N. Roy, "Confusion in the Congress" (15 August 1922), reprinted in Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Selected Works ofM.N. Roy, vo\. 1, p. 537.

114

M.N. Roy, "Confusion in the Congress," p. 540.

115

M. N. Roy, Preface to German edition of India in Transition, reprinted in G Adhikari(ed.), Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India. Volume One, 1917-1922 (Bombay, 1971), p. 364.

36

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Roy rejected a "Menshevik" model for India. 116 "India's freedom will be attained through the efforts of the workers and pauperized peasantry who will go boldly into the struggle, because they have nothing to risk, but everything to gain." 117 But he stopped short of predicting just how far and fast the revolution might unfold. "Whether the democratic revolution can be quickly transformed into a Socialist Revolution (as in Russia) remains an open question depending on the class-relations in the particular society and on the political maturity of the proletariat. What is conclusive is that on the failure of the bourgeoisie to lead the democratic revolution, the proletariat becomes the leaven of the democratic movement, and will exercise the hegemony in the struggle for democratic freedom." 118 At the Second Congress Lenin had insisted that the bourgeoisie of Asia still had a revolutionary role to play in world history. As we have seen, that was the conception he had formed in the period before WWI, when he was still a left ~ocial democrat. Events proved him wrong. The Asian bourgeoisie weren't the budding "revolutionary democrats" he

116

In the late nineteenth century the Russian Social Democrats all agreed that Czarist Russia faced a belated bourgeois-democratic revolution. The Mensheviks held that since the revolution was bourgeois in character, the liberal bourgeoisie would have to lead. The Bolsheviks countered that the Russian bourgeoisie was too weak and vested in the old order to carry out a radical democratic revolution. Lenin posed the working class as the driving force. However, given the huge preponderance of the peasantry, he believed that the working class would have to shate power with the peasantry for a certain transitional period, which he called the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry." Trotsky, who stood outside both factions, projected a third alternative, which he called the "permanent revolution." He agreed with Lenin on the need for the worker-peasant alliance. However, he denied that a two-class dictatorship (worker and peasant) was feasible. The democratic revolution would result in a workers government, supported by the poor peasantry. And that government would be forced by the class struggle which brought it to power to carry out socialist tasks. In other words, the bourgeois revolution would "grow over" into the socialist revolution without interruption.

117

M.N. Roy, "Danger Ahead" (15 June 1922), reprinted in S. Ray (ed.), Selected Works of M.N. Roy, vol. I, p. 394.

118

M.N. Roy, "The Future of Indian Politics" (1926), reprinted in S. Ray (ed.), Selected Works ofM.N. Roy. vol. 2, pp. 517-18.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

had imagined. Gandhi defended the landlords against the peasants. The progressive Turk, Mustapha Kemal, took Russian aid and then suppressed the Communist Party in 1922. The heirs of Sun Yat Sen would soon do much worse. At the next Comintern Congress Roy diplomatically implied that the Comintern line was wrong. After reviewing recent events in India, Turkey, and Egypt, he concluded: "although the bourgeoisie and the feudal military clique in one or other of these countries can assume the leadership of the nationalist revolutionary struggle, there comes a time when these people are bound to betray the movement and become a counter-revolutionary force."· 119 He was, of course, absolutely right. From the United Front to the People's Party

In 1918 the Bolsheviks expected their revolution to spread quickly. But one uprising after another went down in costly defeat. The German Communist Party, which the Bolsheviks regarded as their salvation, wasted itself in failed insurrections. 120 Lenin exhorted the Communist parties to cool down, gather more support, and form united fronts with the Social Democrats and other left-wing parties to defend the working class as a whole. At the Third Congress of the Comintern (1921) Karl Radek, the secretary of the Executive Committee (ECCI), advanced the united front tactic: "Comintern tactics must emphasize organization and 119

120

38

N.M. Roy, "Report on the Eastern Question" (1922), reprinted in S. Ray (ed.), In Freedom's Quest: Life o/M.N. Roy, vo!. 1 (Calcutta, 1998), pp. 478-79. In early 1921, as inflation and unemployment soared, there were violent strikes in Gennany. The government security chief, a Social Democrat, sent police to occupy the mining district of Mansfeld, where strikers were fighting the local police. The Gennan Communist Party (KPD) appealed for resistance: "Every worker should defy the law and take anns where he can find them." The strike spread, workers seized their factories, and there was fighting throughout the district. On March 24 the KPD called for a general strike. The Social Democrats and their trade unions denounced the attempted "rising. " The KPD rescinded the strike order a week later. The damage to the KPD was severe. As a result of the putschist policy, the party lost several leaders and a hundred thousand members, including many trade union cadres.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

agitation rather than preparation for civil war." 121 Although the focus was on Europe, Radek thought the tactic could also be applied in Asia. The Comintern representative in China, Maring, wanted the Communist Party (CCP) to join Sun Vat Sen's nationalist-populist party, the Kuomintang. The CCP leaders, who sized up Sun better than Maring, resisted that proposal. Radek, however, worried that the CCP might indulge in the same putschism that had cost the German party so dearly. He backed Maring, and in 1922 the CCP reluctantly joined the Kuomintang. 122 Up to that point the Bolsheviks had defined the united front as an episodic alliance between separate organizations for a specific purpose. Or in Lenin's famous slogan: "March separately, strike together." The Communist-Kuomintang merger broadened that concept considerably. At the Fourth Congress of the Comintern (1922) Radek and Roy downplayed the significance of the new policy. Radek mentioned the "people's party" only at the end of his speech, as an afterthought. 123 M.N. Roy, after emphasizing the need to "develop our parties in these countries," added, rather ambiguously, that only "a political party representing the workers and peasants" could ensure the "final victory." 124

121

Quoted in Jim Tuck, Engine of Mischief An Analytical Biography of Karl Radek (New York, 1988), p. 62.

122

For the genesis of the Communist-Kuomintang alliance see Alexander Pantsov, The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927 (Honolulu, 2000), pp. 45-69; Tony Saich, "Interpreting China: The Case of Maring," in Kurt Werner Radtke and Tony Saich (eds.), China 50 Modernisation: Westernisation and Acculturation (Stuttgart, 1993), pp. 59-82; and Hans J. Yan de Yen, From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party. 1920-1927 (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 99-108.

12l

"One more thing: In this work, after we have rallied the workers around us, you must go to the peasants and to the artisans, and you must become not only the nucleus of the future workers party, but also of the future people's party." Cited in M.N. Roy, "Eastern Question in the World Communist Congress" (I January 1923), reprinted in Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), In Freedom 50 Quest: Life of M.N. Roy. vo!. I, p. 472.

124

M.N. Roy, "Report on the Eastern Question," pp. 479 and 481.

39

The Trotskyist Movement in India and eeylon

After the Fourth Congress Roy pursued the People's Party strategy for India. He wrote article after article, and ultimately a whole book, on how to transform the Congress into "a democratic party of the people with a programme of Revolutionary Nationalism." 125 He began to portray the capture of Congress as a necessary stage: "The capture of the Congress by a mass party will have to take place before the goal of national independence can be reached." 126 In 1923 the Communist movement suffered its biggest setback yet. The German Communist Party botched what might have been a revolutionary situation. 127 The Fifth Comintern Congress (1924) met under the shadow of that defeat. The question of the united front in Europe took on even greater urgency. In his speech on the colonial question Roy implicitly repudiated his earlier position that Bolshevik parties were possible and indispensable in the East. "As in most colonial and semicolonial countries capitalism is not fully developed, it would be romantic to speak of a purely proletarian movement or a purely proletarian party; there are, however, in these countries throngs of peasants who are potentially the most revolutionary factor ... This requires the application of the united-front tactics on a far broader basis." 128 125

M.N. Roy, "The Future of Indian Politics," pp. 531.

126

M.N. Roy, "What is a Programme?" (October 1922), reprinted in S. Ray (ed.), In Freedom s Quest: Life of M.N. Ray, vo!. 1, p. 450.

127

In January 1923 the British and French occupied the Ruhr, provoking mass protests that destabilized the already wobbly Weimar Republic. The Comintern Executive called upon the Germany party to form a United Front to get a majority of the workers. In August, after a general strike toppled the Cuno government, Trotsky asked the Bolshevik Politburo to approve an insurrection in Germany. The German Communist leaders were divided. Zinoviev, the Comintern chief, arbitrarily set the date for the uprising in October, to coincide with the anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution in the USSR. The result was a fiasco. See Mike Jones, "The Decline, Disorientation, and Decomposition of a Leadership. The German Communist Party: From Revolutionary Marxism to Centrism," Revolutionary History, vo!. 2, no. 3 (Autumn 1989), pp. 1-19; and Mike Jones, "Germany 1923: The Communist Party of Germany and the Role of the Communist International," Revolutionary History, vo1. 5, no. 2 (Spring 1994), pp. 107-29.

128

M.N. Roy, "On the National and Colonial Question" (1 July 1924), reprinted in S. Ray (ed.), In Freedom s Quest: Life of M.N. Roy, vo!. 2, pp. 293-94.

40

The Trotskyist Movement in Illdia and Ceylon

Roy was beginning to toy with the idea that other classes could be pressured to start the revolution. "We must mobilize the workers and peasants and lead this organized revolutionary army to support the national middle class in its struggle against imperialism ... Our tactics must force the indigenous bourgeoisie to put forth increased demands and to make greater inroads into the sphere of power ofImperialism. In a word we must prevent the fight for independence from being sacrificed on the altar of compromise between the native middle class and the imperialists." 129 He was not alone in this wishful thinking. From 1923 on, the Comintern Executive pursued precisely that policy in China. The Comintern representative, Mikhail Borodin (who perished in a Stalinist gulag in 1951), pushed the Chinese Communists deeper and deeper into the Kuomintang. Revolution in China

In June 1925 British and French troops opened fire on a student demonstration in China. The workers of Canton and Hong Kong responded with a strike that lasted for over a year and paralyzed foreign commerce. In Canton the nationalists cleared out the opium dens, closed down gambling joints, and improvised an embryonic soviet. The ferment spread into the countryside. With a revolution brewing on their Eastern border the Bolsheviks could no longer afford· abstract and ambiguous theses on Asia. The Communist-Kuomintang alliance seemed to be working well. The Communists held key positions in the Kuomintang. Their ranks and influence were growing by leaps and bounds. The Kuomintang Lefts looked like solid allies. In early 1926 a Kuomintang representative declared before the Comintern Executive, "On basic questions the teachings of our great leader Sun Yat Sen concur with Marxism and Leninism." 130 The Kuomintang asked to join the Comintern. 129

M.N. Roy, "On the National and ,?olonial Question," pp. 301 and 305.

130

Quoted in Alexander PantsoY, The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 19191927. p. 90.

41

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The pragmatic Stalin believed that the Communists, if they played their cards right, could capture the Kuomintang. Like his friend M.N. Roy, Stalin thought that was the necessary next stage in China. Stalin blessed the ECCI decision to make Chiang Kai Shek an honorary member. On the other side Trotsky worried that the Chinese Communists were in a trap. In the Politburo he voted against the motion to admit the Kuomintang to the Comintern as a sympathizing section. By 1926 he was convinced that the CCP should withdraw from the Kuomintang as soon as possible. Neo-Menshevism

Nikolai Bukharin, who was the brains behind Stalin at that time, concocted the theory of "two-stage revolution" to rationalize the conciliatory line in China. Bukharin argued (contrary to what Marx had written on the subject) that Chinese society was predominantly feudal. 131 Therefore, the Communists had to remain embedded within the Kuomintang to carry out the "anti-feudal" stage of the revolution. Only after the Kuomintang had vanquished the warlords, expelled the foreign interests, and delivered the peasantry from feudal oppression could the CCP begin the second stage, the fight for socialism. Trotsky criticized this policy as warmed-over Menshevism. He pointed out that the Mensheviks had made the same mechanistic arguments against the Bolsheviks with regards to the Russian revolution. That criticism had a sting; the two leading Stalinist experts on China-Martynov and Rafes-were both former Mensheviks. Moreover, the Mensheviks themselves, in their emigre newspaper, praised Martynov for analyzing the Chinese situation in such a "Menshevik manner." 132 Trotsky demanded that the CCP begin to organize peasant soviets and fight for 3,n agrarian revolution.

131

Cited in Alexander Pantsov, The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 19191927, p. 135.

132

Feodor Dan, "Tuchi s vostoka" [Clouds Out ofthe East], Sotsialistichesldi Vestnik, no. 8 (23 April 1927), p. 4.

42

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Comintern Executive, following the Stalin-Bukharin line, instructed the Soviet agents in China (who now included M.N. Roy) to press ahead with the "Communization" of the Kuomintang. But Chiang Kai-Shek was no fool. He was not going to let Moscow steal his party. On March 20, 1926 he carried out an anti-Communist coup in Canton. He arrested the commissars attached to his troops, put the Soviet advisors under house arrest, disarmed the strike committee, and dispersed the League of Chinese Military Youth and other Communistcontrolled organizations. The March coup was a blow to the Stalin-Bukharin policy. The Chinese Communists wanted to strike back. But Stalin told the CCP to placate the Kuomintang. 133 In April, 1926 the Politburo majority rejected Trotsky's motion for the CCP to exit the Kuomintang. The ECCI hastily patched up the fragile relationship with Chiang Kai-Shek. The Stalinist majority kept the party in the dark about what really happening in China; Bukharin, the editor of Pravda, censored news that was unfavorable to the official policy. Trotsky, however, had his own listening post in the person of Karl Radek, who was rector of the Sun Yat Sen University in Moscow. Radek had sent an agent to China to investigate and he returned with an alarming report. In March, 1927 at a debate in the Communist Academy Radek warned that Chiang Kai Shek would soon betray. 134 Stalin ridiculed the warnings. At a party meeting in Moscow he assured the comrades that Chiang "is leading the army and cannot do otherwise than lead it against the imperialists." He boasted that the Chinese Communists would use Chiang and then toss him aside like a "squeezed lemon." 135 Ten days later Chiang, in collusion with the !3J

Conrad Brandt, Stalin 50 Failure in China, 1924-1927 (New York, 1958), p. 78.

134

Warren Lemer, Karl Radek The Last Internationalist (Stanford, 1970), p. 143.

135

Given what happened a week later, the Opposition demanded that this speech be published. The Stalin faction refused. At the Eighth plenum of the ECCI, which met in May 1927, the Serbian Communist Vujo Vujovic confronted Stalin with his own words, which Vujovic had written down in his own notes at the time. Stalin did not deny that he had made the speech and used those words. But he still refused to let the speech be published. Alexander PantsoY, The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927, p. 241, footnote 31.

43

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

foreign diplomats in Shanghai, massacred thousands of Communists and labor militants who had taken over the city. Trotsky and the "Permanent Revolution"

In 1905 Trotsky formulated his theory of the future Russian revolution, which he called the "Permanent Revolution." Trotsky based his theory on the "peculiarities" of Russia's historical development. He did not apply the thesis to any other country, either before the October revolution or for the next ten years. 136 In the recurring debates on the colonial question in the Comintern during 1920-22, Trotsky did not make any original contribution. He tended to back the leftist Roy (as did Stalin at that point). In 1923 Trotsky and forty-six prominent Bolsheviks formed the Left Opposition to fight the growing bureaucratism in the state apparatus and wobbles in the party line. The Opposition made its stand on a series of issues. None had to do directly with colonial matters. Trotsky began to focus on Asia only after the red glow of revolution appeared on the distant border with China. As noted above, Karl Radek was the Opposition's main China expert. Initially, Radek thought the Chinese Communists should remain within the Kuomintang, since the Chinese working class was not strong enough to seize power "at the present, and in the near future." 137 However, the more he studied China, his thinking changed. Though "feudal remnants" existed in China, capitalism was dominant. 138 Therefore, the struggle of the peasantry "will not be directed against

136

Curtis Stokes, The Evolution of Trotsky s Theory of Revolution (Washington DC, 1982), pp. 133ff.

IJ7

Warren Lemer, Karl Radek The Last Internationalist, p. 136.

138

Karl Radek, "'Izmena' Kitaiskoi krupnoi burzhuazii natsional'nomu dvizheniiu" [The Infidelity of the Chinese Big Bourgeoisie to the National Movement], 1927, pp. 42-43. Radek evidently circulated this document within the United Opposition. There is a copy in the Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection at the Hoover Archives, Box 797, folder 2.

44

The Trotskyist Movement ill India and Ceylon

two classes, but only against one, the bourgeoisie." That was a frontal attack on the "two-stage revolution" theory. Trotsky took this insight a step farther: "there is almost no class of landowners in China, the landowners are much more intimately bound up with the capitalists than in czarist Russia, the specific weight of the agrarian question in China is therefore much lighter than in czarist Russia; but for that, the question of national liberation occupies a large place. Accordingly, the capacity of the Chinese peasantry for independent revolutionary political struggle for the democratic renovation of the country can in no case be greater than was the Russian peasantry's." 139 In other words, since no radical peasant party had emerged in China, the Communists would not be compelled to share power in the first stage of the revolution. In April, 1927 Trotsky posited for the first time "the possibility of the democratic revolution growing over into the socialist revolution" in China, provided the CCP could wrest free of the Kuomintang and mobilize the peasantry. 140 In response Stalin stated that Radek had made a "grave error" in denying that feudalism was dominant in China. 141 But Radek had Marx on his side. David Riazanov, the director of the Marx-Engels Institute, had recently published the long-lost Marx articles on India and China, in which Marx stated that these countries had not been feudal. At that point in the power struggle, however, this revelation carried little weight, if it was even noticed at all. Though events in China had vindicated the Opposition, Stalin was master of the party apparatus. On the eve of the fifthteeth party congress Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled. Eventually Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Radek capitulated and were re-admitted to the party. It

139

Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution (New York, 1931), p. 114.

140

Leon Trotsky, "Class Relations in the Chinese Revolution" (3 April 1927), reprinted in Les Evans and Russell Block (eds.), Lean Trotsky on China (New York, 1976), p. 142.

141

lV Stalin, "Talk with Students of the Sun Yat-Sen University" (13 May 1927), in On the Opposition (Peking, 1974), p. 668.

45

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

only postponed their fate; in 1938 all three were executed after the notorious Moscow frame-up trials. Trotsky remained intransigent. He was banished to remote Alma Ata, in Kazakhstan. Oppositionists were expelled, fired from their jobs, and sent to Siberia by the thousands. Stalin and Bukharin foisted the blame for the debacle in China on others (the Chinese Communist leaders, M.N. Roy, etc.), while insisting that their policy had been correct. Bukharin wrote the "twostage revolution thesis" into the program of the Communist International, adopted at the Sixth Congress in 1928. That Congress also made the "survival of feudal remnants" thesis into a dogma. That created a problem for Soviet scholars who were debating the Marx articles on India and China. In 1930 M.S. Godes warned his academic colleagues: "the denial of feudalism in China, or the theory of it, always leads to political errors, and errors of an essentially Trotskyist order." 142 That was enough to silence most. 143 But Riazanov, the director of the Marx-Engels Institute, was much too honest to falsify Marxist doctrine. In 1931 Stalin had him arrested and exiled to the forced labor camp at Saratov, where he perished during the Purges, as did other historians who dared to defend Marx. 144

142

Stephen P. Dunn, The Fall and Rise of the Asiatic Mode of Production (London, 1982), p. 32.

143

The British Stalinist theoretician, R. Palme Dutt, was put on the spot. In 1925 he had published the Marx articles on India and China in his Labour Monthly. Later that year Dutt, translated the two key articles on India from the Gemlan journal and published them in Labour Monthly, noting that the articles "were recently rediscovered by Mr. Riasanov." Karl Marx, "India under British Rule," Labour Monthly, vol. 7, no. 12 (December 1925), pp. 717-28. As always, Dutt toed the Moscow line. He explained that Marx really envisioned the Asiatic mode of production as "an Oriental form of Feudalism." R.P. Dutt (ed.), Karl Marx: Articles on India (Bombay, 1943), p. 67.

144

46

Liudvig I. Mad'iar, a leading proponent of the "Asiatic mode of production" in the Soviet debates of 1925-31 was purged in 1934 and perished in the Stalinist Purges. See Marian Sawer, Marxism and the Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production (The Hague, 1977), photo caption on back cover.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Big Leap

In 1929 Trotsky published his landmark book, The Permanent Revolution, in which he set forth his program for colonial countries like India. "The theory of the permanent revolution ... pointed out that the democratic tasks of the backward bourgeois nations lead directly, in our epoch, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and that the dictatorship of the proletariat puts socialist tasks on the order of the day." 145 In other words Trotsky concluded that his theory originally derived from the "special case" of Russia in fact had a generalized validity for all countries of belated capitalist development. In 1930 Trotsky argued that the prospects for socialism in India were more promising and likely than they had been in Russia in 1905 or 1917. "If today the Indian proletariat is numerically smaller than the Russian, this in itself does not mean that its revolutionary possibilities are not as great... On the contrary, all the social peculiarities that made the October Revolution possible and inevitable exist in India in a more acute form. In this country of poor peasants, the hegemony of the city is no less established than in Czarist Russia. The concentration of industrial, commercial, and banking power in the hands of the big bourgeoisie, primarily the foreign bourgeoisie, on the one hand, _and the swift growth of an industrial proletariat on the other, exclude the possibility of the independent role of the urban petty bourgeoisie and, to a certain extent, even of the intellectual. This transforms the political mechanics of the revolution into a struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie for the leadership of the peasant masses. There is 'only' one condition missing: a Bolshevik party. And this is where the problem lies now." 146 That is a bold string of assumptions. Yet Trotsky was convinced that further analysis of the Indian situation would confirm his analogy. Trotsky keenly followed events in India. But he did not return to the question in any depth. It was up to his followers to apply the theory to the specifics of India. And ultimately only history could deliver the verdict. 145

Leon Trotsky, introduction to the Russian edition of Permanent Revolution (1929).

146

Leon Trotsky, "The Revolution in India, Its Tasks and Dangers," reprinted in Writings of Leon Trotsky [1930} (New York, 1975), pp. 245-46.

CHAPTER TWO

The Pioneers If anyone person could be said to have pioneered the Trotskyist movement in South Asia, it would surely be Philip Gunawardena. He has been called "the father of socialism" in Sri Lanka, the driving force behind the formation and spectacular growth of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), one of those few Trotskyist parties to ever achieve a mass following for a long period of time. I That alone would secure his place in history. Yet what is not so widely known is that Philip Gunawardena also played a significant role in the Indian Trotskyist movement. So we begin this book with him. Don Philip Rupasinghe Gunawardena was a son of the soil. 2 His ancestors had resisted the Portuguese colonialists, and his father, a prosperous landowner, taught his children to be proud Sinhalese patriots. Philip matured at an exciting time. The Non-Cooperation movement in India was in full swing. Philip had no desire to go to university in England and become another brown sahib. He decided to study in America, build the family's business, and the British be damned. In 1922 he enrolled at the University of Illinois in UrbanaChampaign, a state agricultural school in the American heartland. After two years he transferred to the more progressive University of Wisconsin at Madison. That turned out to be the turning point in his

There are several landmark studies devoted to the LSSP: George J. Lerski, Origins of Trotskyism in Ceylon (Stanford, 1968); Y. Ranjith Amarasinghe, Revolutiol1G1Y Idealism and Parliamentary Politics: A Study of Trotskyism in Sri Lanka (Colombo, 1998); and AI Richardson (ed.), Blows Against the Empire: Trotskyism in Ceylon (London, 1997). The material on Philip Gunawardena in this chapter is drawn from my two biographical studies: Charles W. Ervin, Philip Gunawardena: The Making of a Revolutionary (Colombo, 2001) and Pilip Gunavardhana: Viplavavadiyakuge Hadagasma (Colombo, 2005).

48

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

life. At Madison he bonded with an Indian chemistry student, Jayaprakash Narayan, the future leader of the Congress Socialist Party.3 The two discussed politics and devoured Marxist books. Another classmate, Avrom Landy, introduced them to members of the Communist party. 4 Philip had found his calling. In 1925 Philip moved to New York City and enrolled at Columbia University for his graduate studies. Radicalism was in the air, and Philip breathed deeply. It didn't take him long to make connections with the Indian nationalists in New York City. In 1927 he joined the League Against Imperialism, a Comintern front group which had just been formed. 5 Philip worked with the Mexican nationalist, Jose Vasconcelos, who had been connected with the Mexican Communist Party in the 'twenties. 6 He learned Spanish· well enough to translate League pamphlets. Jayaprakash Narayan (1902-1979) was born in a little Bihar village, worked his way through college in the USA, returned to India in 1929, and formed the Congress Socialist Party in 1934. During the Quit India struggle he organized guerrilla groups to harass the British. After Independence he lost faith in Marxism and joined the neo-Gandhian Sarvodaya movement. He was jailed in the 'seventies for protesting Indira Gandhi's "Emergency." Avrom Mendel Landy (1904-1992) was raised in Cleveland, earned a BA from Ohio State University and an MA from Madison. Abandoning a promising academic career, Avrom and his wife, Goldie, moved to New York City, where he became City Editor for the Daily Worker and Educational Director for the Communist Party. He published Marxism and the Woman Question (1943) and Marxism and the Democratic Tradition (1946). He quit the Communist Party in 1947. In 1926 Willi Miinzenberg, an important German Communist wheeler-dealer and agitprop czar, staged a conference against colonial oppression in Brussels, which attracted such luminaries as Jawaharlal Nehru and Chiang Kai-shek. The Brussels conference led to the formation of the League Against Imperialism in 1927. The old Indian revolutionary, Virendranath ChaUopadhyaya, became the general secretary. Munzenberg duped the likes of Albert Einstein, Henri Barbusse, and Upton Sinc1air to adorn the Executive Committee. Jose Vasconcelos Calderon (1882-1959) headed the Secretariat of Public Education after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-17. He created a public primary school system, presided over the National University, and patronized leftwing artists, such as Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. He taught for a while at the University

49

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

In 1928, after finishing at Columbia, Philip went to England. He made a beeline to the British Communist party (CPGB). Philip tried to be covert, but Scotland Yard wasn't fooled. The police had spies aplenty. The government was watching him closely. 7 The Stalinization of British Communism

In the early 1920s the Comintern Executive relied on M.N. Roy to develop, from afar, Communist cadres in India. Roy developed his own network of resources in Mosow, Berlin, and Paris. He often complained that the Communist parties weren't paying enough attention to colonial questions. In 1924 the Fifth Congress of the Comintern resolved that there should be "very close contact between the sections in the imperialist countries with the colonies of those countries." In early 1925 the CPGB formed a Colonial Committee to focus on this work. The Indian Communist Shapurji Saklatvala played a key role, as did Clemens Dutt and his brother, R. Palme Dutt, the editor of Labour Monthly. Palme Dutt established his own credentials as a leading Communist theoretician and interpreter of Indian affairs. In 1926 he published Modern India, which updated and in some ways improved upon M.N. Roy's India in Transition (1923). Palme Dutt played a key role in the StaIinization of the CPGB. He was a brilliant intellectual in a party with more than its fair share of plodding leaders. He was also well-connected, via his wife, to the upper echelons of the Comintern apparatus in Berlin and Moscow. Dutt

of Chicago and in 1926 attended the Brussels congress that led to the League Against Imperialism. He was defeated in the 1929 Mexican presidential election and forced into exile. Later he became an ardent Roman Catholic, a critic of democracy, and a zealous supporter of Spanish tradition. The Indian Political Intelligence (IPI), formed in 1921, was a special agency responsible for keeping tabs on known and suspected troublemakers in England, Europe, and America. The IPI reported to the Secretary of the Public and Judicial Department of the India Office and the Director of Intelligence Bureau (DlB) in India. The IPI worked hand in glove with Scotland Yard and MI5. The IPI maintained a dossier on Philip Gunawardena. IOL: LlPJ/12/409.

50

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

always bet on the winning horse. He used the pages:of Labour Monthly to explain, and justify, whatever the ruling clique lriMoscow said and did. When Zinoviev opened his attack on Trotsky in 1923-24, Dutt joined the smear campaign; Labour Monthly printed article after article on the "errors" of the Opposition. Dutt, however, was a lot more sophisticated than most of the hacks. By the time Phi lip joined, the CPGB was already poisoned against Trotsky and the Opposition. The Dutt brothers quickly recognized that Philip was a good catch and took him under their wings. They co-opted him into the Colonial Committee and gave him important assignments in the League Against Imperialism and the Indian Bureau, a subcommittee that worked with student contacts .and recruits in the various universities. Patronized by the top brass, Philip rose quickly. He was put on the staff of the Daily Worker. He took over the Workers Welfare League of India, an organization founded by Saklatvala in 1917. And he became a trusted courier, making frequent trips to Paris, Brussels, and Berlin to deliver party documents to high Communist officials. 8 He certainly must have known more about all the behindthe-scenes struggles and intrigues in the Comintern than most British party members. The Ultra-Left Binge

When Philip joined the CPGB, the party was beginning its lurch to the left, following the new line introduced at the Sixth Congress of the Comintern (1928). Most historians agree with Trotsky that the sharp left turn was motivated by the factional struggle in JV1oscow. Under fire from the Opposition, Stalin had to find scapegoats for the debacle in China. He blamed Bukharin, M.N. Roy, and the Chinese Communists who had carried out his orders. Stalin took up a posItion that seemed more left than that of the Opposition. He sounded the bugle for a revolutionary offensive everywhere.

8

IOL: LlPJ/12/409, folio 17.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Trotsky criticized the flip-flop as an irresponsible and reckless attempt to stampede the working class into a revolution. But Stalin had state power and he could roar a lot louder. Moreover, a lot of Communists, including Philip Gunawardena, liked the militant "class against class" line. After years of ambiguous resolutions, the Comintern Executive at last characterized the Congress as "the party of the Indian bourgeoisie." 9 The Comintern belatedly criticized the Indian Communists for building two-class parties (the Workers and Peasants Parties) while neglecting to build their own party-criticisms that Trotsky had been making for the last several years. 10 Stalin claimed that the Socialists and Fascists were "twins" (this was his infamous thesis of "social fascism"). But since the Socialists could still dupe the workers, they were more dangerous. Dutifully following this line, the CPGB snarled at the Labour leaders, who in return excluded Communists from the mass organization of the British working class. The Stalinists spit invective at Gandhi, calling the brave old man In the 1920s M.N. Roy described the Indian National Congress as a "political movement," rather than a political party, in which various caucuses jostled one another for influence and power. In his view the early Congress was simply a "bourgeois platform." However, during the Non-Cooperation movement the Congress was transformed into "a gigantic mass organization focusing the revolutionary will of the entire people." M.N. Roy, "The Indian National Congress" (13 January 1927), in S. Ray (ed.), Selected Works ofM.N. Roy, vo!. 2, pp. 560-61. Roy held open the possibility that the. Communists could capture the Congress and transform it into a revolutionary of!~ailjzation. 10

52

In his critique of the Comintern Program (1928) Trotsky devoted an entire chapter to ripping apart the Stalin-Bukharin theory of two-class parties. L.D. Trotsky, The Draft Program of the Communist International: A Criticism of Fundamentals (New York, 1929), pp. 123-34. He thought the Comintern line had sterilized the Indian party: "It is doubtful if greater harn1 could be done to the Indian proletariat than was done by Zinoviev, Stalin, and Bukharin through the medium of Roy. In India, as in China, the work has been and is oriented almost totally toward bourgeois nationalism." L. Trotsky, "Who is Leading the Comintern Today?" (September 1928), in The Challenge of the Left Opposition 1928-29 (New York, 1981), p. 200. Trotsky recognized, belatedly, that the Opposition should have fought this line much earlier, during ·1923-25, when it was being formulated and implemented experimentally. Leon Trotsky, "The Opposition's Errors-Real and Alleged" (23 May 1928), in The Challenge of the Left Opposition 1928-29, p. 90.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

an "imperialist stooge." The Comintern warned that Subhas Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru were "assistants of British imperialism" who formed the Independence for India League as a "fascist manouever." 11 Phi lip Gunawardena got tipsy on the strong rhetoric dished out by Saklatvala and the Dutts. He wrote overheated articles for the Daily Worker that portrayed the violent strikes and riots in India as harbingers of revolution. He described the Communist Party ofIndia, which in fact was in pitiful disarray, as the "vanguard of the Indian proletariat." He lived the fantasy. He became part of a squad of hotheads who were sent to disrupt meetings of opponents (which meant everyone who didn't fully agree with the CommunIst line). On more than one occasion his outbursts led to fist fights. If such antics were farcical, the real tragedy was playing out in Germany. The Nazis, who had been a marginal party just a few years before, now had more armed men than the German army. As the elections approached, the Na:?:is brawled in the streets with the Communists. The leaders ofthe German Communist Party (KPD), following the Stalin line, foolishly regarded fascism as the lesser evil, if not a blessing in disguise. 12 From exile Trotsky appealed in vain for a KPD-Socialist united front to roll back the Nazis. But the Socialists put their faith in the wobbly Weimar Republic, while the KPD attacked Socialists, courted "left" storm troopers, and recruited nationalistic German officers, one of whom gave Hitler the KPD membership list. The KPD would pay dearly for its stupidity. So would six million innocent Jews.

11

Quoted in Shashi Joshi, Strugglefor Hegemony in India, 1920-47: The Colonial State, the Left and the National Movement. Vo!. I: 1920-34 (New Delhi, 1992), pp. 113 and 176-77. See also Sitanshu Das, Subhas: A Political Biography (New Deli, 2000), p. 188.

12

The KPD held that if the fascists took power, they would destroy capitalism and thereby hasten the red revolution. This view was expressed in their slogan, "After Hitler - us!" The German Trotskyist Opposition protested: "We consider that the idea of retreating and so letting the Fascists seize power 'provisionally,' so that we can strengthen ourselves at its expense, is a betrayal of the proletariat." Quoted in Oskar Hippe. And Red is the Colour of Our Flag (London, 1991), p. 127.

53

The Trotskyist Movement.in India and Ceylon

Encounter wit., Trotskyists

In the midst of the ultra-left madness Philip encountered two leftwing critics of Stalinism-Frank Ridley and Hansraj Aggarwala. Both were active in the League Against Imperialism. Ridley was a brilliant Marxist intellectual who admired Trotsky and circulated his pamphlets in the Independent Labour Party (ILP). 13 Aggarwala, a Punjabi from Amritsar, had come to Britain in 1926 to study law, became active in student circles,· and was elected to the Executive Committee of the London branch of the Indian National Congress. In 1929 Ridley and Aggarwala formed the Marxian Propaganda League. 14 The members sold the American Trotskyist newspaper, The Militant, and pamphlets by Trotsky on the situation in Germany. The group sponsored lectures, debates, and open-air meetings on various topics, including India. Philip began attending in October, 1930. On several occasions he was a featured speaker. 15 Ridley remembered Phi lip as a "small, active fellow who was a very good talker." 16 Philip was taking a risk by associating with "Trotskyites." Aggarwala had alrelldy antagonized the CPGB leaders. 17 The Daily Worker refused to accept advertisements from the League. 18 To deflect suspicion Phi lip spread the word that he had broken off relations with the League. But; Scotland Yard reported, he discreetly maintained his connection. Restarted to read books by Trotsky in the British

as

Il

Francis Ambrose Ridley (1897-1994) had studied divinity and wrote extensively on historical and ecclesiastical subjects. He worked in the ILP as an independent Marxist. He subsequently rejected Trotskyism and concluded that socialism was not possible in the colonial world. See Al Richardson, "EA. Ridley (1897-1994): An Appreciation," Revolutionary History, vo!. 5. No. 3 (1994), pp. 209-10.

14

Sam Bomstein and Al Richardson, Against the Stream: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain, 1924-38 (London, 1986), pp. 50-60.

15

IOL: LlPJ/12/409, file P&J(S) 17/1930, folio 12.

16

Letter from Ellis Hillman, Revolutionary History (Summer 1988), p. 56.

17

IOL: LlPJ/12/42, file P&J(S) 759/1931.

18

IOL: LlPJ/12/363, file P&J(S) 1729/1930.

54

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Museum library. 19 Those visits wouldn't arouse suspicion; many leftwing students from the colonies used to use the British Museum as a safe place to meet. The Marxian League wanted to affiliate with the International Left Opposition, which Trotsky had formed in 1930 to gather together Opposition groups around the world. But Ridley and Aggarwala didn't see eye-to-eye with Trotsky on several important issues, such as the need to reform the Comintern and to fight fascism with a CommunistSocialist united front. 20 They regarded fascism as inevitable and wanted Trotsky to form a new.International forthwith. 21 The ILO Secretariat in Paris unanimously rejected these positions. 22 Trotsky wrote that it would be "very sad" if British Communists thought the Left Opposition stood for the views of Ridley and Aggarwala. 23 Ridley was too much the maverick to submit to discipline from Paris or Prinkipo. He washed his hands of the Opposition. Philip Gunwardena, on the other hand, solidarized with Trotsky. In 1932 he decided to make the long journey to Prinkipo to meet the great man in person. 24 He purchased a ticket on the Orient Express. When the train reached Sofia, he got down to stretch his legs. Suddenly, he was face to face with a British police officer. He had been trailed, and the game was up.

19

10L: LlPJ/12/409, file P&J(S) 17/1930, folio 13.

20

F.A. Ridley and H.R. Aggarwala, "Theses on the British Situation, the Left Opposition, and the Comintern," 23 October 1931. Harvard: Trotsky Papers, document number 15845. This document is sometimes referred to as the "RidleyRam Thesis," since Aggarwala used pseudonym "Chandu Ram."

21

F.A. Ridley, "Marxism, History and a Fourth International," reprinted in Revolutionary History, vol. 5. No. 3 (1994), pp. 211-16.

22

Letter from Glotzer to Reg Groves, 27 October 1931, in the Albert Glotzer Papers at the Hoover Archives (Box 2).

the

23

24

Leon Trotsky, "The Tasks ofthe Left Opposition in Britain and India" (7 November 1931), in Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1930-31 (New York, 1973), p. 337. Lakmali Gunawardena, Philip: The Early Years (Boralugoda [Sri Lanka], 1996), p. 16-17.

55

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Excommunication

Back in London Philip continued to carry out his party assignments. Inside the party, however, he was a cautious critic. He evidently expressed doubts about the Comintern's line on China. That was all it took in those days to set alarms ringing at party headquarters. Clemens Dutt wrote Phi lip a letter (intercepted as usual by the police) suggesting that he elaborate upon his "interesting views." 25 That was an invitation to political suicide. Philip temporized. The showdown came in May, 1932, at the British conference of the League Against Imperialism. Harry Pollitt, the general secretary of the CPGB, introduced the main resolutions. In the discussion period Philip and others raised "heated protests." 26 Philip introduced a counterresolution on India. "The discussion which followed," the Daily Worker subsequently reported, "showed that there was something much deeper in the minds of some comrades than a mere argument over words." The cat was out of the bag. The British Communist leaders discovered that Philip Gunawardena "was secretly a Trotskyist." 27 He was booted out of the party, and the Stalinists started their usual campaign of character assassination to discredit him. The "T Group"

Philip, however, had already cultivated his own following outside the CPGB. His circle included several Indians who were active in the League Against Imperialism. Philip also was in touch with Ceylonese students who were studying at Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and the London University. He had already pulled together a study group which included the very bright students who would later help him form the LSSP. 28 25

IOL: LlPJ!l2/409, file P&J(S) 1711930, folio 44.

26

IOL: LlPJ!l2/272, file P&J(S) 676/1932.

27

IOL: LlPJ/12/409, file P&J(S) 1711930, folio 61.

28

Visakha Kumari Jayawardena, "Origins ofthe Left Movement in Sri Lanka," Social Scientist, vol. 2, no. 6/7 (January/February 1974), p 12.

56

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Colvin R. de Silva was a wunderkind. He was the youngest ever to receive a PhD from King's College. He went on to read law and was admitted to the bar. Leslie Goonewardene, the son of a Christian doctor, graduated from the London School of Economics, studied law at Gray's Inn, and was admitted to the bar. His roomate, N.M. Perera, was studying economics under Harold Laski at the London School of Economics. He ended up with a double doctorate. 29 Vernon Gunasekera passed the bar with energy to spare for politics (and, according to legend, romantic adventures). As N.M Perera recalled, they would meet "in dingy digs" and discuss politics. 30 Philip was their guru. He introduced them to Trotskyism. While not all were convinced at that point, the group became known as the "T Group." 31 One LSSP veteran has written that were it not for Philip, these Ceylonese students would never have joined the revolutionary movement. 32 No Passage to India

Philip wanted to go to India and build a new Communist Party. 33 Even before he was excommunicated from the CPGB, he had convened secret nocturnal discussions on that subject with several of his confidants. But Scotland Yard somehow got wind of his plans. 34 The

29 30

31 32

33

34

N.M. Perera interview with Jeanne Ratnavira, Ceylon Observer, 18 October 1961. Quoted in E.P. de Silva, A Short Biography ofDr. N.M Perera (Colombo, 1975), p.40. W. Howard Wriggins, Ceylon: Dilemmas ofa New Nation (Princeton, 1960), pp. 125. V. Karalasingham, Politics of Coalition (1964), reprinted in Al Richardson (ed.), Blows Against the Empire: Trotskyism in Ceylon, p. 211. The Comintern line pretty much wrecked the Indian Communist Party, or rather, what was left of it after the government arrested most of the leaders in 1929. Following orders from London, the Indian Communists denounced the Congress from the sidelines at the very moment Gandhi was rousing his second great mass movement. The Communists split from the All India Trade Union Congress and set up a rival "Red" federation, consisting of a dozeh new, unregistered unions. Their strikes went down in defeat. By 1930 even the Comintern had to admit that the Indian movement was in shambles. IOL: LlPJ/12/409, file P&J(S) 1711930, folio 38.

57

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

British government didn't want this Trotskyist troublemaker in India. MJ. Clauson at the India Office sent confidential memos to the Home Office proposing extraordinary measures to keep Philip out of India. 35 Phi lip had no choice: he had to return home. Philip left London in early September, 1932. Whether he knew it or not, the police were on his tail. 36 Philip contacted the French Left Opposition in Paris and then headed for Spain. He abandoned his books, hiked over the Pyrennes, and made his way to Barcelona, where he contacted the Spanish Trotskyist group. 37 After a week in Barcelona, he traveled around southern Europe. On October 14 he boarded the SS Explorateur Grandidier at Marseilles. Philip arrived in Ceylon on November 1, a very different man from the callow youth who had left home ten years earlier. The Youth Leagues

Phi lip Gunawardena had a handful of devoted followers. His younger brother, Robert Gunawardena, was determined, energetic, and brave to the point of recklessness. Leslie Goonewardene, just returned from England, was another lieutenant. Like the Gunawardenas, he had the financial means to pursue politics full time. Colvin de Silva and Vernon Gunasekera established law practices to support their political activites. N.M. Perera got a job as a lecturer at University College. Like Plekhanov in Czarist Russia, Philip had to develop this nucleus into a Marxist party. Philip and his comrades joined the Youth Leagues, a nationalist organization that the Sinhalese socialist, A.E. Goonesinha, had started 35

Clauson "strongly recommended" that Philip be given "a document (such as an Emergenc;:y Certificate) which is valid for a single journey to Ceylon direct by sea from England." Furthermore, "no travel document of any sort should be issued to Gunawardena until he produces a ticket or receipt showing that he has booked a passage by a direct sea route to Ceylon. This should make the procedure as watertight as possible." lOL: LlPJ/12/409, file P&J(S) 1711930, folio 48.

36

rOL: LlP!/l2/409, file P&J(S) 1711930, folio 63.

37

K. Jayawardena, "Origins of the Left Movement in Sri Lanka," p. 12.

58

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

in the 'twenties. 38 With boundless energy Philip convened meetings all over the island and rejuvenated moribund branches. 39 He was at last in his element. He recruited the young and the old, the poor and the p1antocracy, Sinha1ese and Tamils. Philip recruited young women, like Susan de Silva, who dared to defy cony~ntional society. She was a feisty feminist who dressed in slacks and wore her hair short in the Roaring Twenties fashion. 40 In 1933 the Youth Leaguers got an opening on the labor front. The Colombo 1abor boss, A.E. Goonesinha, tried to foist a settlement on the workers at the Wellawatte Spinning and ~~aving Mills, one of the few large factories on the island. Philip intervened, and he was elected leader of the strike committee. Although the strike failed, his group got an important base of support in the mill. They published a paper, Kamkaruwa [The Worker], opened reading rooms for workers, and started a Workers Education League. Thee?,perience that Philip got in London was paying off. The socialists also intervened in the Shriya Mal movement. Every year on Remembrance Day the British cOp:1munity would sell poppies and donate the proceeds to war veterans. The nationalists felt that the Ceylonese servicemen were slighted. And so on that day Ceylonese would sell the suriya flower and donate the proceeds to native veterans. It was a tame protest. But the socialists injected a strong dose of antiimperialism. 41 As N.M. Perera recalled, Philip "split the youth 38

Alexander Ekanayake Goonesinha (1891-1967)forined the Ceylon Labour Union in 1922 and led the first general strike in Ceylon the following year. In 1928 he formed the All Ceylon Labour Union and the Ceylon Labour Party. The tram car strike in Colombo the following year is considered the high point of his career as a militant socialist labor leader. He was elected to'the S!ate Council in 1931 and 1936 and to Parliament in 1947. See Visakha Kun'uid Jayawardena, The Rise of the Labor Movement in Ceylon (Colombo, 1972) .•'

39

K. Jayawardena, "The Background to the Forr.nation of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party," Young Socialist, no. 1 (March 1980), pp. 11-26.

40

Reggie Perera, "Journey Into Politics," Ceylon Observer, 12 August 1962.

4\

Samasamajist, 14 February 1952. See also Vernon Gunasekera, Pilip: ohuge jivitaya ha desapalana satan [Philip: His Life and Political Experiences] (Colombo, 1960), p. 10.

59

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

movement into a Left and a Right," and while the Right decayed, "the Left developed at his hand." 42 In 1933-34 a malaria epidemic ravaged the island. The socialists trekked to stricken villages and dispensed food and medicine. Most of these young middle-class activists had never seen such suffering up close. "The more they realized the alienation of the established national political leaders from the common people, the more they became convinced of their own potentiality as a political force in the country. It was imperative that they should have a proper political organization if the young Suriya Mal workers were to enter, in a big way, the political arena." 43 The Ceylonese socialists were inspired by recent developments in India. In 1934! J.P. Narayan, Philip's old friend from Madison, and other Indian Marxists formed the Congress Socialist Party (CSP). Like Philip, l.P Narayan had broken with the Communists over the ultraleft line. 44 Some of his comrades agreed with his rejection of Stalinism, but others weren't ready to go that far. And so the CSP stressed the need for anti-imperialist unity. Philip Gunawardena apparently regarded the CSP as a good model. But there was one big difference. In India the socialists had a mass organization in which to function. That didn't exist in Ceylon. The Ceylon National Congress, formed only in 1919, was an elite, conservative club, reminiscent of the Indian Congress fifty years earlier. If there was to be a mass movement in Ceylon, Philip and his little band would have to create it and lead it.

42 43 44

60

"The Passionate Socialist," Ceylon Daily News, 28 March 1972, p. 4. Y.R. Amarasinghe, Revolutionary Idealism and Parliamentary Politics, p. 13. Narayan regarded "the disruptive policies" carried out in Germany to be "the gravest of Stalin's mistakes-the costliest and most criminal." Bimla Prasad (ed.), Socialism, Sarvodaya and Democracy: Selected Works of Jayaprakash Narayan (New York, 1964), p. 144.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Formation of the LSSP

In December, 1935 about 40 activists launched the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP). The party brimmed with youthful idealism. Like the CSP in India, the party's manifesto called for independence and socialism in broad terms. The program listed specific demands aimed at improving the welfare of the working people. The conference decided that Colvin de Silva, a lawyer with great oratorical flair, should be the president of the party. Phi lip, however, was the undisputed leader. The LSSP established links with the CSP in India. Starting in 1936 the LSSP sent delegations to the annual Congress sessions. These visits enabled the Samasamajists to make valuable contacts in the Congress and to meet other radicals, including, as we shall soon see, the pioneer Trotskyists who likewise attended these huge gatherings. The LSSP was not a Leninist vanguard party at the start. Indeed, in hindsight, there was much about the early LSSP that might seem "Menshevik" or "reformist." This is a case where context is critical. The LSSP was really the first political party that had ever been formed in sleepy Ceylon. Everything about it was new and, to many, quite scary. The Samasamajists paraded in red shits, waved the red flag, and raised the clenched fist salute. They went around painting the hammer and sickle on walls. The government and the Ceylonese establishment saw red. Like the CSP, the LSSP avoided divisive doctrinal issues. Even the name Sama Samaja-literally "equal society"-was neutral. "At a time when Constitutions are being changed overnight," wrote Colvin de Silva to the local newspaper, "Communists or Socialists cannot confine themselves to any particular method." 45 Philip Gunawardena, however, made it clear that the LSSP did not take orders from Moscow. In a speech he stated that the LSSP "is much less militant and less demanding than the Communist or Third International." 46 No doubt

45

Colvin de Silva, "What is Communism?" (1935), reprinted in Young Socialist [Colombo], vol. 4, no. 4 (November 1969), p. 141.

46

Quoted in G. Lerski, Origins of Trotskyism in Ceylon, p. 26.

61

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

this was also a defensive p()sture. In India the government had just banned the Communist party. Philip didn't want to put his neck in that noose. Speeches and Street Fights

In 1935 the government of Ceylon announced that elections for a second State Council would be held early the following year. The LSSP fielded four candidates: Dr, Wickremasinghe, Philip Gunawardena, N.M. Perera, and Leslie Gqonewardene. LSSP activists trooped from village to village with portable speaker's platforms. Crowds flocked to the meetings just to hear the stirring oratory. Philip Gunawardena and N.M. Perera were elected.. ' The two Samasamajists' used the State Council as another podium to spread their message to the people outside. Session after session, they attacked the governrri~nt and the Ceylonese establishment with flaming indignation and ca1.lstic wit. They introduced proposals on a wide range of subjects. One council member complained: "It is intolerable to see these two members get up as if they were authorities on all possible subjects under the sun ... They are playing to the gallery." 47 One LSSP veteran recalls the division oflabor, "N.M. was a real parliamentary debater. He studied the order papers thoroughly... Philip was a man for the big occasion." 48 Outside the State Council, Philip Gunawardena and N .M. Perera worked their magic on the labor front. Both were, in their own ways, naturallabor leaders. Many of the workers, especially in the Colombo harbour, were Indians from what is now Kerala. They suffered a double stigma. They were ignorant "coolies" and they were also "koochies." Phi lip and Perera could mingle with these workers with ease. One LSSP old timer told me, with a chuckle, how when he joined the LSSP, his parents were horrified that he was associating with "those low-caste people." 47

Quoted in G. Lerski, Origins ofTrotskyism in Ceylon, p. 40.

48

Cholomondoley Goonewardene, quoted in The Island, 22 September 2002.

62

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

This was rough and tough work. The LSSP was out to unseat A.E. Goonesinha, and he was not one to go without a fight. He sent armed goons to attack LSSP meetings. One one occasion Philip was badly bloodied. The LSSP fought back. Robert Gunawardena walked with a steel-tipped cane in one hand and pistol in his pocket just in case. Philip went to public rallies with bodyguards. Party comrades jokingly referred to these worker militants as "Philip's cossacks." The Popular Front

When Philip Gunawardena joined the British Communist Party in 1928, the Comintern was swinging to the left. Seven years later, when he formed the LSSP, the Comintern was recoiling to the right. If the ultra-left period had been prompted by the defeat in China, this sea change was the result of the debacle in Germany. In January 1933 Hitler became Chancellor. He moved swiftly. He banned the KPD press, arrested thousands of Communists and Socialists, and prevented their candidates from campaigning. With the left in disarray, the Nazis and their allies won a majority in the Reichstag elections in March, and Hitler was given total dictatorial power. The KPD put up no serious resistance. The Comintern Executive reaffirmed its full support for the line in Germany. Trotsky seethed with anger. He grasped the magnitude of the setback in Germany. He concluded that the Comintern had crossed its Rubicon. "In all our subsequent work," Trotsky wrote, "it is necessary to take as our point of departure the historical collapse of the official Communist International... The Left Opposition ceases completely to feel and act as an 'opposition'. It becomes an independent organization, clearing its own road." 49 And that road would lead to the Fourth International.

49

L. Trotsky, "It is Necessary to Build Communist Parties and an International Anew" (15 July 1933), in Writings ofLeon Trotsky 1932-33 (New York, 1972), pp. 306, 311.

63

The Trotskyist Movement in India and eeylon

At that point Stalin was hardly the great anti-fascist. He actually tried to come to terms with Hitler. 50 That was his Plan A. Hitler, however, remained hostile. Stalin hoped for a split in the Nazi party. But in 1934 Hitler purged his rivals. Stalin saw that a Soviet-German alliance was not in the cards. He shifted to Plan B-an alliance with France to hem in Hitler. 51 That strategy lasted five years, until Stalin was finally able to consumate Plan A (the Stalin-Hitler Pact in 1939). In February 1934 the fascists in France staged an armed attack on the National Assembly in a bid to topple the government. Alarmed by the threat, the ranks of both the Socialist and Communist parties clamored for unity. 52 The French Communists formed an electoral "front populaire" with the Socialists and the Radicals. In May, 1936 the Popular Front was swept into power, winning 376 out of the 618 seats in the National Assembly. Leon Blum, the Socialist leader, became prime minister, with the support of the Communist Party.

so

In December 1935 Sergei Bessonov proposed a mutual non-aggression pact during a visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin. Stalin sent Karl Radek as his confidential emissary to top-secret private meetings with German officials in Danzig and the Gennan ambassador in Moscow. Radek, who knew too much for his own good, was executed in 1939. Albert L. Weeks, Stalin's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939-1941 (Lanham [MD], 2002), p. 40; also Warren Lerner, Kart Radek: The Last Internationalist (Stanford, 1970), pp. 156ff.

SI

It was only after Hitler's "second coup" against Ernst Roehm and his storm troopers (the Night of the Long Knives) that Stalin turned to the League of Nations, actively promoted collective security, and supported the French in their alliance system in Eastern Europe.

52

On February 6, 1934 thousands of anned fascists tried to stonn parliament. The Communist party called for a protest demonstration for February 9. The Socialists did likewise but set their date three days later. The police attacked the Communist demonstration, killing six and injuring 100. Then the Communist leaders announced that they would join the demonstrations that the Socialists and CGT labor confederation had called for February 12. In Paris the Socialists and Communists planned to march to the same destination. Given the previous hostilities, the mood was tense. But when the two mammoth columns converged, shouts of solidarity rose' from the marchers on both sides; the two columns spontaneously melted into one. The French workers thus forced their leaders to make the common front that both had resisted for so long.

64

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Seventh Comintern Congress was convened two months later to bless this new strategy. The message was simplistic: "Fascist Germany threatens the Socialist Fatherland. We must pressure the Democracies to ally with Russia. In order to do that, we have to build up powerful movements for peace and democracy-Popular Fronts against Fascism. These movements must not threaten our allies. Once we defeat our main enemy, we will resume the struggle for socialism." Trotsky had been calling for a united front against the Nazis long before Hitler seized power. But the Popular Front was something very different. Stalin made it perfectly clear that the Communists were to include "bourgeois" parties, like the French Radicals, in the Popular Front. Trotsky ripped into this strategy as a formula for outright "class collaborationism," not different from the old reformism of the Social Democracy. 53 It seemed obvious to him that the Communists would have to restrain the workers in order to keep their bourgeois allies from bolting the front. And that is exactly what would soon happen. With this new turn, the Comintern dropped all the "class against class" rhetoric and started talking about the Democratic Good Guys versus the Fascist Bad Guys. Trotsky was appalled at how low the Comintern had sunk. In his articles directed at the Communist rankand-file, he patiently pointed out the falacies. Wasn't Bad Guy Mussolini in fact an ally of Good Guy France? Weren't there plenty of "democratic" British politicians who were angling for their own deal with Hitler? The LSSP and Moscow

Phi lip Gunawardena steered the LSSP on its independent course. The LSSP neither denounced nor endorsed the Popular Front. But on the

53

Jean Jaures, the French Socialist leader, called for an alliance of "pure republicans" against the "reaction." This led to the bloc of the Socialists with the Radicals. However, even the Socialists never went so far as to set up a common government with the Radicals. They confined their policy to electoral agreements and common parliamentary votes.

65

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

really critical issues of the day, such as militarism and independence for the colonies, the LSSP diverged from the Moscow line. The Comintern talked out of both sides of its mouth. It said German and Japanese militarism was bad, but French militarism was necessary. In 1934 Stalin signed a pact with France that explicity sanctioned French military build-up. The French Communists halted their anti-conscription campaign and in the National Assembly the Communist deputies voted for the government's war budget. In contrast the LSSP opposed all militarism. Philip Gunawardena declared in the State Council, "As long as we remain in this House we will try our best to prevent even one red cent being spent for the Ceylon Defence Force or any other imperialist army." 54 The LSSP appealed to the people "not to participate in any way in the coming Imperialist war." 55 Similarly, the Comintern shook its fist at German and Japanese imperialism, while tolerating French and British colonialism. In France the Communists supported the Popular Front government, even as French troops crushed revolts in Morocco, Syria, and Indo-China. 56 In England the Communists put the emphasis on reforms, rather than independence for India. 57 Manuilsky, the Comintern secretary, stated that the Indian Communists should "subordinate the realization of this right of secession .. .in the interests of defeating fascism." 58 To prove

54 55 56

57

58

66

Quoted in G. Lerski, Origins ofTrotskyism in Ceylon, p. 192. Quoted in G. Lerski, Origins ofTrotskyism in Ceylon, p. 151. Tony Carter and Amanda Sackur, French Colonial Empire and the Popular Front (London, 1999). The Socialist head of the Popular Front government, Leon Blum, had always supported "progressive colonialism." In 1924 Blum stated: "We are too imbued with love of our country to disavow the expansion of French thought and civilization ... We recognize the right and even the duty of superior races to draw unto them those who have not arrived at the same level of culture." Quoted in Robert Aldrich, A Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (London, 1996), p. 113. The CPGB started talking in vague terms about "immediate and substantial improvement in the economic and political position of the people in the colonies." Daily Worker, 18 April 1938. Pravda, 12 March 1939. Quoted in L. Trotsky, "The Riddle ofthe USSR" (21 June 1939), in Writings of Leon Trotsky (1938-39) (New York, 1974), p. 354.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

its bona fides Moscow cut off funds to the Indian Communist Party. S9 The Director of the Intelligence Bureau reported that "the active promotion of a communist revolution in India has: receded from its current politics." 60 In contrast the LSSP was vocal in its demand for the independence of Ceylon and all colonies, no matter whether the imperial power was democratic or fascist. When the matter of constitutional reform was raised in the State Council, N.M. Perera stated: "So far as the LSSP is concerned, we are not satisfied with responsible government. We stand out for national independence." 61 Spain

The Popular Front was put to its greatest test in Spain during the civil war (1936-39). Initially Stalin took a neutral position. 6~ However, once Hitler started sending military aid to Franco, Stalin sent weapons and

S9

The Director of the Intelligence Bureau (DIB) in New' Delhi noted "the comparatively recent closing down of the liberal supply of communist funds, which used to reach India and other countries from Moscow and' the Comintern." "Communist Activities in India. Extracts from Weekly Reports of the Director, Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, Government of India;" No. 23, 11 June 1938. IOL: LIPJ/12/431, file P&J(S) 592/1938. In a subsequent report he stated that there is "no Moscow gold" going to the CPI, the CPGB "has no money for India" and the Indian Communist newspaper, National Front, was "rescued from imminent bankruptcy" only by a special. donation from Communist students at Cambridge "Communist Activities in India," No. 28, 27 July 1939. IOL: LlPJ/121 431. Victor Kiernan, one of the famous Cambridge Communists who went out to India in 1938, recounted how he carried a document to the Indian party explaining why "Moscow could not campaign at present for the legalization of the Indian Party; the reason of course was Soviet eagerness for a collective security agreement with Britain." Victor Kiernan, "The CPI and the Second World War" (1987), reprinted in Prakash Karat (ed.), Across Time and Continents: A Tribute to Victor G. Kiernan (New Delhi, 2003), p. 210.

60

IOL: LlPJ/12/431, file P&J(S) 812/1939.

61

Quoted in G Lerski, Origins ofTrotskyism in Ceylon, p. 97.

62

Stanley G Payne, The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism (New . Haven, 2004), pp. 126-27.

67

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

"advisors" to help the Republican government. But Stalin did not want the civil war to ignite a socialist revolution. The Comintern warned the Communists not to do anything to destabilize the Popular Front or the Azafia government. In April 1936 Dimitrov and Manuilsky stated that "in the present situation the creation of soviet power is not the order of the day." 63 The Spanish Communists began to discourage strikes and dropped its demand for land confiscation without compensation. In May 1937 Catalan security forces under the personal command of the Communist commissioner of public safety, Salas, tried to seize the CNT-controlled telephone building in Barcelona. The attack triggered an insurrection. Within hours barricades were raised· all over the city. The insurrection spread to Lerida, Tarragona, Gerona, and the Aragon front. The anarchist ministers, Montseny and Garcia Oliver, induced the CNT workers to lay down their arms and return to their homes. After that, government assault guards seized Barcelona. The Stalinists smeared the Barcelona commune as a "fascist uprising." 64 Soviet agents murdered the POUM leader, Andres Nin, and scores of Trotskyists, anarchists, and other revolutionary militants. "In Catalonia," boasted Pravda, "the elimination of Trotskyites and Anarcho-Syndicalists has already begun; it will be carried out with the same energy as in the USSR." 65 The LSSP, like leftists the world over, championed the Republican cause in Spain. In early 1937 Leslie Goonewardene visited Spain and returned with an eye-witness report. In public the LSSP avoided criticizing the Spanish Popular Front and tbe role of the Comintern. 66 But, especially after the Barcelona insurrection, the Trotskyists

63

Quoted in S. Payne, The Spanish Civil War, p. 94.

64

Quoted in Pierre Broue and Emile Temime, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain (London, 1972), p. 300. In 1989 the Communist Party of Catalonia published an editorial statement admitting that the old charges were false. Reprinted in Wilebaldo Solano, El POUM en la historia: Andreu Nin y la revolucion espafiola (Madrid, 1999), appendix.

65

Pravda, 17 December 1936.

66

G. Lerski, Origins ofTrotskyism in Ceylon, pp. 116, 118.

68

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

concluded that the Comintern intervention in Spain "appeared to be dictated not by the needs of the Spanish revolution, but by the foreign policy needs of the Soviet government." 67 As Colvin de Silva later stated, the Spanish Civil War made the LSSP leaders "conscious of the necessity of taking a definite stand on Stalinism." 68 The Moscow Trials

At the height of the Popular Front period Stalin unleashed the Great Terror in the USSR. Hundreds of Russian and foreign Communists got that dreaded knock on the door in the middle of the night. The first show trial was staged in 1937; three more followed. A pantheon of Old Bolsheviks, including Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin, were tried for plotting with Trotsky to destroy the USSR and shot. Others of lesser stature didn't even get a show trial. Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, the former secretary of the League Against Imperialism, was executed in obscurity. 69 Many who were sympathetic to the Soviet Union had second thoughts. Jawaharlal Nehru privately expressed his misgivings. Jayaprakash Narayan regarded the trials as "revolting in the extreme." 70 The Ceylonese Trotskyists shared that view. According to Leslie Goonewardene, they "could not believe that the confessions in the trials were genuine and felt compelled to come to the conclusion that they were gigantic frame-ups." 71

67

L. Goonewardene, A Short History of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, p. 14.

68

Quoted in Lewis Scott, "Red Passage to India" [1944], p. 14. Scott, a member of the American Socialist Workers Party and a seaman, visited India in 1944, made contact with the underground Trotskyists, and upon his return submitted to the party this informative and fascinating 28-page report. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

69

Nirode K. Barooah, Chatto: The Life and Times of an Indian Anti-Imperialist in Europe (New Delhi, 2004), pp. 320-21.

70

Bimla Prasad (ed.), Socialism, Sarvodaya and Democracy: Selected Works of Jayaprakash Narayan (New York, 1964), p. 145.

71

Leslie Goonewardene, A Short History of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, p. 14.

,69

The Trotskyist Movem.ent in India and Ceylon

Polarization of the LSSP

In London the LSSP group hotly debated the Spanish Civil war and the Moscow trials. The most senior Samasamajist, Dr. S.A Wickremasinghe, who had returned to London after his defeat in the 1936 elections in Ceylon, had gone over to Stalinism. He was close to the Indian nationalist, Krishna Menon, the leader of the India League who had also fallen for the Popular Front line. The Trotskyist faction consisted mainly of students; including Doric de Souza, S.C.C. Anthony PiIlai, WiIliam Silva, and V. Satchithanandam. Most of these students were associated with the charismatic Trotskyist, C.L.R. lames. C.L.R. lames was an important figure. A native of Trinidad, lames moved to England in 1932 to become a novelist. In 1933 he joined the Labour Party, encountered some Trotskyists, and got converted to the cause. In 1934 he joined the Marxist Group, one of the early Trotskyist groups in Britain. lames recruited a number of Ceylonese and Indian students in London, including the Bengali Ajit Roy, who would later play an important role in the Indian Trotskyist movement. The Marxist Group was a training ground for this cohort of Ceylonese students. 72 In 1937 the Ceylonese Trotskyists started returning to Ceylon, helping to tip the scales in the LSSP even more. At this point Phi lip Gunawardena had a growing faction of hard-core Trotskyists, which included Terrence de Zylva, the founder of Kolonnawa Vidyala, who has not been given sufficient credit in the histories of the LSSP. The Stalinist heavyweights, Wickremasinghe and Keuneman, returned to Ceylon a year or so later and joined the Stalinist minority, which had formed around A. Vaidialingam, a former principal of the Hindu College in laffna. 73 Philip Gunawardena accused the pro-Comintern

72

73

70

"On the Necessity for an Independent Bolshevik-Leninist Organization in Britain," 24 July 1938, in National Bulletin. prepared for the National Conference of the Bolshevik Leninist Organisations in Britain, p. 4. Co Iv in de Silva, Their Politics-and Ours (Colombo, 1954), p. 20.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

group of "trying to smuggle into the party Stalinist contraband." was getting harder to preserve party unity.

74

It

In 1938 Trotsky published his masterpiece, The Revolution Betrayed, in which he analyzed the Stalinist degeneration of the Bolshevik Revolution. Despite the crimes of Stalin, Trotsky insisted that the USSR had to be defended. He argued that the Stalinist regime was paving the way for a restoration of capitalism-a view which stood the ultimate verdict of history pretty well. Several leaders of the LSSP have stated how influential that book was on the ideological development of the Trotskyist wing of the party. 75 In 1939 Colvin de Silva, for the first time, criticized the Popular Front in a party study group that he was leading. 76 Stalin-Hitler Pact

On August 23, 1939 Stalin finally got his deal with Hitler. The USSR entered into a Non-Aggression pact with Gennany. Gennan tanks rolled into Poland, while the Red Army invaded from the East. Many Communists were stunned. Some parties, not grasping what was happening, persisted with the Popular Front line, reaffirming their support for war against Gennany. 77 The Comintern soon deepened their grasp of dialetics. The Good Guys became Bad Guys, and vice versa.

74

Philip Gunawardena, speech before the Magistrate's Court, Kandy, 8 February 1944. Typescript, 2 pp. Reprinted as "Statement ofIndian Trotskyists on Trial," Workers International News (December, 1944), p.15 and Socialist Appeal (December, 1944), p. 3.

7S

Hector Abhayavardhana, "How the LSSP Turned Trotskyist," Lanka Guardian. 15 July 1982, pp. 1,23. The late Doric de Souza has said the same. G. Lerski, Origins ofTrotskyism in Ceylon. p. 157.

76

Hector Abhayavardhana, "How the LSSP Turned Trotskyist," p. 23.

77

Harry Pollitt, How to Win the War, quoted in Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, Two Steps Back: Communists and the Wider Labour Movement. 1935-1945 (London, 1982), p. 63.

71

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Communist parties portrayed the pact as mere diplomacy. But the reality was that Stalin was supplying the Nazi war machine with oil, phosphate, food, platinum, and other vital raw materials. As part of the pact the Soviets also handed over German Communists to the Nazis. 78 That was a death sentence for most. On Stalin's direct orders, the Comintern became a mouthpiece for Hitler's "peace offensive." 79 The Daily Worker blamed Britain for the German invasion of Holland. 80 When Paris fell, Stalin congratulated Hitler on his "splendid" victory. 81 Everything German was extolled. Sergei Eisenstein was ordered to stage Hitler's beloved opera, Wagner's Die Walkiire, at the Bolshoi Theatre. The LSSP did not change its position on the war, or the "unconditional defense of the USSR." On September 5, 1939, when the question of a war budget came before the State Council, Philip Gunawardena stated, "The last world-war of 1914-1918 was an Imperialist war fought for the division of colonies and semi-colonies. This war too is a war between two I~perialist groups, the German Fascist Imperialism and the British and French Imperialisms. This war too is for the division and redivision of the colonies and semi-colonies. We refuse to be a Party to any Imperialist War. We are against all imperialist wars and exploitation." 82 78

79

80

81

82

72

One notable victim was Margarete Buber-Neumann (1901-89), the widow of the German Communist leader, Heinz Neumann, who was executed in Moscow during the purge of 1937,. She was sent to Siberia. After the Stalin-Hitler pact, she was handed over to the Germans at Brest-Litovsk and spent the war at the Ravensbriick concentration camp. She recounted her ordeals in Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler (Munich, 1949), translated as Under Two Dictators (London, 1949). She later became the companion of Kamalesh Bannerji, a founder of the Indian Trotskyist movement who had moved to Europe in 1947 to participate in the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International. As recently discovered archives show, Stalin personally instructed Dimitrov, the Comintern boss, to switch from anti-Nazi propaganda to anti-British propaganda. Alexander Dallin and F. 1. Firsov (eds.), Dimitrov and Stalin 1934-1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives (New Haven, 2000), documents 28 and 29, pp. 153 ff. Daily Worker, 11 May 1940. Albert L. Weeks, Stalin 's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy. 1939-1941. p. 86. Quoted in G. Lerski, Origins of Trotskyism in Ceylon. p. 206.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Links with the Fourth International

In 1938 the Fourth International was founded at a secret meeting in Paris. No doubt, the Trotskyists in the LSSP welcomed the news. In 1939 a leading member of the inner group, Selina Perera, was sent on a mission to establish connections with the new international. Selina was married to N.M. Perera. But she was a well-respected leader in her own right; she has been called the "unsung heroine" of the LSSP. 83 Selina arrived in London in 1939 and contacted the British Trotskyist groups. 84 She couldn't stay very long. When the war began, she left for Ceylon via the USA. Her plan was to meet with the American Trotskyists and then visit Trotsky, who at that point was living precariously in Mexico since January 1937. In New York she contacted the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the American section of the Fourth International. The American Trotskyists had already established contacts with some sympathetic Congre3s Socialists in India and were eager to meet a real comrade. The SWP's interest in India was largely due to Stanley Plastrik ("Sherman Stanley"), an energetic youth leader who had become the party's self-appointed "India expert." 85 Selina Perera gave

83

84

85

Hector Abhayavardhana, "Selina Perera-The Forgotten Socialist Militant," Pravada, vol. 4, no. 10-11 (1997), pp. 19-20. Selina Perera stayed with Charlie van Gelderen (1913-2001), a Trotskyist from South Africa who had joined the Marxist League after he moved to Britain in 1935. He had attended the Founding conference of the Fourth International as an observer. When the Marxist League folded, he joined the Revolutionary Socialist League. Letter from CharIie van Gelderen to author, 28 March 1998. Stanley Plastrik was the nephew of party co-founder, Max Shachtman. He wrote about Indian politics for the party paper, Socialist Appeal, and the journal, New International. He made contacts with Indian nationalists living in New York and got in touch with Minoo Masani, the secretary of the Congress Socialist Party in Bombay, who invited the SWP to submit articles to its journal. Interview with Stanley Plastrik, 7 December 1974. Masani published several: Congress Socialist, 22 January 1939, 26 March 1939, and 25 June 1939. Plastrik wrote report after report to Trotsky, pestering him to write an open letter to the Congress Socialist Party, which he fatuously described as a mass organization with millions of

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

the SWP leaders a full report on the situation in Ceylon. 86 She stated that "only technical reasons" prevented the LSSP from affiliating with the Fourth International. 87 The SWP dispatched this encouraging news to Trotsky in Mexico. 88 At that point the SWP had a special status in the Fourth International. The SWP played an absolutely vital role in providing Trotsky and his household in Mexico with secretaries, bodyguards, and all sorts of other logistical support. In addition, the International Secretariat (IS) of the Fourth International, which had been based in Paris, shifted to New York at the start of the war for safety reasons. Though nominally the highest body of the Fourth International, the IS occupied a small office at SWP headquarters in Greenwich Village. Sam Gordon was the Secretary. Selina requested permission to visit Trotsky. The IS agreed. 89 The plan was for her to go to Texas, cross the border, visit Trotsky in Coyacan, return to the US, and sail from Los Angeles. But when she got to the border crossing, she was turned back on a technicality. She was deeply disappointed. 90 She sent Trotsky a letter from California explaining what had happened and sailed for home. On November 24 Trotsky sent Selina a letter expressing "warmest greetings to yourself

members. Harvard, bMs Russ 13.1, folder 1: letter 5364, folder 2: letter 5369. In July, 1939 Trotsky wrote an "Open Letter" to the Congress Socialists. Leon Trotsky, "Open Letter to the Workers of India," New International. September 1939, pp. 263-66. In his memoirs Masani stated that the Congress Socialists understood that the letter was really an appeal to their party. Masani, Bliss Was It in That Dawn (New Delhi, 1977), p. 140. 86

87

88

The SWP newspaper, Socialist Appeal. also interviewed her. The interview was published in Socialist Appeal. 10 November 1939. The paper identified her only as "a Ceylonese comrade." Letter from Sherman Stanley [Stanley Plastrik] to Leon Trotsky, 2 May 1939. Harvard: Trotsky Collection, bMS Russ 13.1, document 5367. The letters from Plastrik to Trotsky are in Trotsky archive at Harvard, bMs Russ 13.1, folder 1: letter 5364, folder 2: letter 5369.

89 .

"Minutes of the I.E. Club," 21 September 1939.

90

Interview with Selina Perera (Calcutta), 10 February 1974.

74

The Trotskyist Movement ,in India and Ceylon

and to the Ceylon' comrades." This was subsequently published as a letter to an "Indian comrade." 91 The Showdown in the LSSP

When Selina Perera arrived in Ceylon, the situation in the LSSP was tense. Philip Gunawardena and his group had decided that the Stalinist minority could no longer be tolerated in the party. Both sides braced for the showdown. Philip had an overwhelming majority. In December, 1939 the Executive Committee met for what would be a historic session. The Trotskyist faction introduced the following resolution: "Since the Third International has not acted in the interests of the international revolutionary working-class movement, while expressing its solidarity with the Soviet Union, the first workers' state, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party declares that it has no faith in the Third International." 92 The gauntlet was thrown down at last. The resolution passed, 29-to-5. 93 At the next meeting of the executive committee, the Stalinists were expelled from the party. Their faction represented only about a tenth of the membership. But they had a base among the Colombo harbour workers. The Stalinists demanded that the executive committee call a party conference to decide the question of their membership. That took some nerve, given how the Stalinists, treated the Opposition. The Stalinists subsequently formed the United Socialist Party in November, 1940. That group became the Ceylon Communist Party in July, 1943. The LSSP leadership moved qllickly to explain to the party members and periphery what had led to this rupture. Leslie Goonewardene was given that job. In The Third International Condemned he explained how the Popular ,Front policy led the French

91

"A Letter on India," Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40) (New York, 1969), p. 14,

92

Quoted in G. Lerski, Origins of Trotskyism in Ceylon. p. 211.

93

The five Stalinists who cast the dissenting votes were Dr. S.A. Wickramasinghe, M.G. Mendis, K:Ramanathan, W.Ariyaratne, andA. Gunasekera.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

and British Communist parties to a jingoist line. He argued that the onset of a new world war made the split in the LSSP unavoidable. "The Second International betrayed the working class in the war of 1914-18. Today the Third International by subordinating the International revolutionary movement to Soviet Union foreign policy is commiting another betrayal." 94 With that pamphlet the LSSP announced that it had formally become a Trotskyist party in solidarity with the Fourth International. Dissident Communists in India

Meanwhile, in India the first Trotskyist groups had been formed, lTIainly in reaction to the Popular Front policy of the Communist Party of India (CPI). In 1936 the Comintern, working through theCPGB, . applied the Popular Front policy to India. 95 Basically, the CPI cadres were told to apply for membership in the Congress Socialist Party and the Congress itself. (The Socialists in fact required all .members to participate in the Congress.) The Comintern, howeyer,did not explicitly repudiate the former left policy. A lot of Indian Communists were confused. In 1936 the CPI's newspaper, still faithfully spouting the old line, called Congress "definitely a class organization of the Indian bourgeoisie." The Comintern responded with a sternly worded directive demanding that the Indian party shed its "Ultra-Left-sectarianism." 96 All attacks on the nationalist leaders had to stop. The British Communists explained the new line even more bluntly: "We want to think of the CSP as OURS ...

94

L. S. Goonewardena, The Third International Condemned! (Colombo, 1940), p.

9S

R. Palme Dutt and Ben Bradley, "The Anti-Imperialist Peoples' Front," Inprecor, 29 February 1936; and Dutt and Bradley, "Towards a New Clarification," Congress Socialist, 5 June 1937. See also Bhagwan Josh, "Nationalism, Third International and Indian Communists: Communist Party in the United National Front (193439)," in Bipan Chandra (ed.), The Indian Left: Critical Appraisals (New Delhi, 1983).

96

Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPI, "On the Letter from Abroad," Circular No. 8,1 August 1936. IOL: LlPJ/12/430. File P&J(S) 92111936.

10.

76

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

That can only be achieved by our going into the CSP wholesale and on ANY conditions that they lay down; we must work there as true members, and no underhand work or attempts to capture power in haste." 97 Many had a hard time swallowing this capitulation to the Socialists. One of those recalcitrant Communists was Onkarnath Verma Shastri, a young member of the party cell in Benares, a Congress Socialist stronghold. Originally from Allahabad, he joined the Congress at Kashi Vidyapith, the nationalist college in Benares. He courted arrest during the Civil Disobedience movement and served time in Rai Barelli Jail in 1932. At college, according to police records, he "indulged in politics and soon became a prominent socialist; drifted from socialism to communism and became the left-wing leader of the Kashi Vidyapith party." 98 Onkamath was a good platform speaker. In February, 1936 he'took a prominent part in the United Provinces Youth Conference held at Benares. The party sent him to organize similar youth conferences in Kanpur, Allahabad, Lucknow, and Guntur. He attacked the Congress and the Socialists with gusto. One day the CPI leader, P.e. Joshi, arrived in Benares and instructed Onkamath to "form a united front committee with the Congress Socialists for local purposes." 99 He did so half-heartedly. Joshi got wind of his misgivings and demanded that he admit his "errors." 100 Onkamath quit the next day in protest. 97

98

M.S., "Some Rough Notes on the United Front," 6 July 1938, in "Communist Activities in India. Extracts from Weekly Reports of the Director, Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, Government ofIndia," no. 18,7 May 1938. IOL: LlPJ/12/431. The United Provinces Political "Who's Who," 1936. This bound volume, prepared by the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Criminal Investigation Department (Special Branch) at Allahabad, is preserved in the India Office Library as document LlPJ/12/672. "Onkarnath Verma (alias Shastri)" is entry number 234. "Shastri" was not an "alias." It was an educational degree bestowed on those who had mastered Sanskrit to a certain level. The nationalists who earned the degree added "Shastri" to their names as a title, showing their devotion to Mother India and her ancient culture. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who succeeded Nehru as Prime Minister in 1964, is a prominent example.

99

Letter from Onkarnath Shastri to author, received June 1974.

100

Letter from Onkarnath Shastri to author, received June 1974.

77

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Communist leaders spread the word that Onkarnath was a "Trotskyite," a renegade to be avoided. He considered that an insult. So he decided to read Trotsky for himself. He started with The History of the Russian Revolution. By the time he finished, he was deeply impressed by the man he once demonized. He returned to his native Allahabad and, with financial p.elp from local Congressmen of his same caste, he started a weekly vernacular newspaper, Samaj [Society]. Onkarnath used Samaj to tell the truth about Trotsky, explain his ideas in simple language, and criticize the CPI leaders. 101 Onkarnath used it to gather a circle of young followers. One of his early recruits was Karuna Kant Roy. While still a schoolboy in Calcutta, he had participated in the Civil Disobedience protests of 1930. He was beaten several times by the police and jailed. After his release, he walke4 through the countryside to experience village life, as Gandhi recommended. He enrolled at Kashi Vidyapith in Benares. Roy helped Shastri distribute Trotskyist literature. Roy returned to Calcutta and with another comrade, Sheo Pratap, produced a Hindi journal, Avaz [The Voice]. 102 .....

.'

The late Ansar Harvani, a journalist and two-term member of the Lok Sabha, encountered this group of young Trotskyists. Harvani had been a student activist at Aligarh Muslim University. He was influenced by Minoo Masani, the general secretary of the Congress Socialist Party, who was openly sympathetic to Trotsky. 103 In his

101

Hazarilal, "Samyavad ke VishV
102

Interview with Karuna Kant Ray (Calcutta), 30 January 1974. I have not been able to locate any surviving issues. According to KK Roy, only four or five issues were put out in Calcutta, irregularly, before it closed for lack of funds.

103

In that period Masani was aligned with the ILP, which opposed the Popular Front in language that was close to Trotsky's. The ILP staged an anti-war conference in direct opposition to a rival COrfljntern congress. See Partha Sarathi Gupta, "British Labour and the Indian Left, 1919-1939," in B.R. Nanda (ed.), Socialism in India (New York, 1972), p. 116. Masani went on record in defense ofTrotsky during the period of the Moscow Trials.

78

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

memoirs Harvani relates how he went to Acharya Narendr.a Dev, the Socialist professor in Banaras who had taught Onkarnath Shastri, to get help in fighting the Communist attempt to take over the student federation. "He promptly obliged and gave me the names of about a dozen students ofBanaras Hindu University and Kashi Vidyapth." 104 In those days the Socialists and populist leaders, like Swami Sahajanand, were busy organizing kisan sabhas [peasant unions] all over the United Provinces and Bihar. The CPI joined this movement. The peasant leaders demanded the expropiation of the zamindars without compensation. The Congress, having just won the elections to the provincial government with zamindar help, demanded that the kisan sabhas drop that demand. 105 The CPI was in a bind. The CPI used to raise that demand. But with the turn to the Popular Front the Comintern instructed the CPI to drop it. 106 Shastri and his group threw this in the face of the CPI leaders at peasant conferences. The CPI manhandled the Trotskyists who were distributing Samaj. 107

104

Ansar Harvani, Before Freedom and After: Personal Recollections of One of the Key Witnesses of Indian Events Over the Last Half Century (New Delhi, 1989), p. 21.

105

In the election campaign the Congress candidates promised to support the poor peasants. Once in office the Congress started breaking their election promises. Sardar Patel declared, "We shall have to resist the excessive demands Qfthe tenants who have been worked up and expect too much from the Congress Ministries." The Congress Ministry arrested peasant leaders. The Viceroy himself noted, "The policy of the Congress party towards the kisan organizations has been firm, and even repressive." Quoted in Kapil Kumar, "Peasants, Congress and the Struggle for Freedom: 1917-39," in KapiJ Kumar (ed.), Congress and Classes: Nationalism, Workers and Peasants (New Delhi, 1988), p. 247.

106

At the Seventh Comintern Congress the official reporter on the colonial question, Wang Ming, stated that Communists should not demand expropriation of the rich landlords without compensation: "Such demands on the part of our Indian comrades can serve as an example of how not to carry on the tactics of the antiimperialist United Front." Quoted in Shashi Joshi, Struggle for Hegemony in India, 1920-47: The Colonial State, the Left and the National Movement. Vo\. 1: 1920-34 (New Delhi, 1992), p. 112.

107

Interview with Karuna Kant Roy, January 30,1974.

79

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

In 1938 Shastri moved to Kanpur, an industrial city, where the Socialists led the big union federation, Kanpur Mazdoor Sabha (KMS). The CPI formed committees in the textile mills and surrounding slums and organized the Muslim workers, who had been ignored by the Socialists (who were all high-caste Hindus). 108 Having built their own base, the Communists fomented militant strikes, which eventually created a crisis for the Congress Ministry. Harihar N ath Shastri, the Socialist head of the KMS, turned to Onkarnath for help in combatting the Communist takeover. Apart from politics, the two shared other important connections: caste (Kayastha) and the old school tie (the shastri title from Kashi Vidyapith). "Thinking I could expose them to their advantage," Shastri recalled, "Harihar Nath Shastri invited me there." 109 Onkarnath Shastri used the Socialists to recruit his own group of mill workers. 110 At that point Shastri decided he had a sufficient following to form a party-the Bolshevik Leninist Party of the United Provinces and Bihar. In a chronological sense this was probably the first organized Trotskyist group in India. However, as Shastri himself admits, it could be called a "Trotskyist party" only with qualifications. Shastri was pretty much the dada [big brother] who ran the group and formulated its line. Some of the students and young intellectuals might have read the one or two books by Trotsky that were then available in English in India. But the scattered groups of illiterate peasants and the mill hands in Kanpur had no inkling what Trotskyism was all about. This was hardly a unique situation. It was very common in those days for middleclass activists, who had a little money in their pocket and the right caste connections, to gather together a personal following. As it turned out, Onkarnath Shastri didn't have much time to develop his party. The police were watching him closely. In 1939 he

108

S.M. Pandey, As Labour Organises: A Study of Unionism in the Kanpur Cotton Textile Industry (New Delhi, 1970), pp. 44-66.

109

Letter from Onkamath Shastri to author, postmarked in June 1974.

110

Letter from Onkamath Shastri to author, June 1974.

80

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

was arrested and locked up in the Agra Central Jail for making "seditious speeches" against the war. Released, he continued to speak out against the war. The government issued a warrant for his arrest under Section 124A of the defense rules. "I was at Lucknow then, where I went underground." III He had to move from town to town to evade the police. As a result, his followers were left adrift. Unbeknownst to Shastri, there were Communist dissidents elsewhere in I~dia who had taken up the cause of Trotsky. In Ahmedabad a former CPI youth activist, Chandravadan Shukla, formed his own Trotskyist party, also based on groups of students and textile workers. Shukla had joined the CPI in 1936. He was put to work as secretary of the local Mill Kamgar Union. His wife was also a comrade. "We didn't oppose the Comintern line at first. We just felt that the new line in India was a national deviation and mistaken." 112 In early 1938 Shukla expressed his differences with CPI leaders. He got the usual treatment: he was denounced as a "Trotskyite." The Shuklas withdrew from the CPI and joined a circle of dissident Communists and radicals in Ahmedabad who gathered to discuss politics. In 1939 Shukla produced a manifesto, Samyavad ane Hind [Communism and India], for discussion. 1131t denounced the CPI for its Popular Front policy and criticized the Congress Socialists for providing a left cover for bourgeois nationalism. But it was tentative in its Trotskyism. "The Fourth International seems to be a Marxist organization, but not much is known about it." 114 Shukla developed student groups in Ahmedabad, Bhavnagar, and a few other towns in what is now Gujarat. After the war started, Shukla formed the Bolshevik Mazdoor [Workers] Party oflndia (BMP) on an

III

Letter from Onkarnath Shastri to author, 15 November 1977.

112

Interview with Chandravadan Shukla, 7 June 1974.

113

Chandravadan Shukla, Samyavad ane hind (Communism and India). Ahmadabad: Majur Sahitya Prachar Sabha, 1939. The only known copy was in possession of late C.V. Shukla. Samyavad ane hind, p. 34.

114

81

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

explicitly Trotskyist basis. liS The Ahmedabad group published Inkilab [Revolution], while the Bhavnagar committee produced Tanakha [The Spark]. Both were little broadsheets that appeared irregularly, as finances were available. The first issue of Tanakha printed Trotsky's "Open Letter to the Workers of India" in Gujarati. The BMP called for a general strike to oppose the war:· "Not one paisa [penny], not one man for the imperialist war!" 116 In 1940 Shukla moved from Ahmedabad to Bombay, the epicenter of the Indian labor movement. In Bombay he was able to expand his political connections. He soon encountered another pioneer, a white South African who had come to India in 1936 and had since become well-known on the left as a flaming Trotskyist. Trotskyism in Bombay

Murray Gow Purdy had gotten politicized while still a young man in Johannesburg in the late 1920s. 117 He met Frank Glass, a former leader of the Communist Party of South Africa who solidarized with the Left Opposition. 118 Glass was in touch with the American Trotskyist group,

115

This group included Shukla, his wife, Ratilal Shah, and Natwar Bhavasar in Ahmedabad and Rajendra Trivedi, Balwand Goswami, Anand Rawal, and Pranu Bhatt in Bhavnagar.

116

"What is to be done?" Inkilab, no. 8, October 1941; "The Imperialist War and Its Consequences Sharpen the Old and New Contradictions in India," Tanakha. no. 1, [nd]; "Overthrow Imperialism," Inquilab. no. 9, March 1942; and "May Day Manifesto," Inquilab. no. 10, May 1942.

117

Letter from Murray Gow Purdy to J.P. Cannon and Max Shachtman, dated "beginning of December, 1938." Houghton Library, Harvard University. BMS Russ 13.1 (15281); and Letter from Frank Glass to Ernest Harsch, 17 April 1978. Hoover: Joseph Hansen Papers, box 93.

118

C. Frank Glass (1901-1988) was born in Birmingham and emigrated with his family to South Africa when he was 10. He was a founding member of the South African Communist Party in 1921. He broke from the CPSA in 1928 and supported the Russian Opposition led by Trotsky. In 1930 he relocated to Shanghai, where he worked as a journalist and helped to establish the Communist League, the Chinese section of the International Left Opposition. He used the pseudonyms Li Fu-Jen, Ralph Graham, and John Liang. Glass reported for the American Trotskyist

82

.. '"":.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

then called the Communist League, and sold its ~ewspaper, The Militant, in the little left-wing bookshop he ran. Glass··recruited Purdy and a few others, including RaffLee [Raphael Levy],)lvery talented, if somewhat bohemian, organizer and writer. In 1931 Glass moved to China, where he worked as a journalist and helped·the Chinese Left Opposition group. In 1934 Purdy and Lee formed the Bolshevik~Leninist League in Johannesburg. 119 Purdy, a white man of American ancestry, identified with the black masses in a personal way. He admired the Bantus as "a brave, honest, and sincere people who will, if they ever get started, sweep out their enemies with a mighty blow. What they need is a programme and leaders." 120 He revitalized the Native Laundry Workers Union and led a strike which landed him in jail. The strike exacerbated frictions between Purdy and Lee. The two got intoaftst fight at a party meeting, and as a result Purdy was expelled on Jurie22, 1935. 121 Like Glass, Purdy decided to pursue politics elsewhere;.· On September 5, 1935 Purdy left for Abyssinia (Ethiopia), on the eve of the Italian invasion. He was interested i~helping the Indian minority there, who suffered discrimination, nOt"linlike what Gandhi had protested during his years in South Africa. 122Pllr~y was fascinated ... :"

.

newspaper, The Militant, during the 1937 Japanese inva;sion of China. He was forced to leave the country in 1941 as Japanese troops approached Shanghai, and he moved to New York, where he joined the SWP and worked on the Militant's editorial staff for the remainder of World War n. He was a member of the SWP's national committee from 1944 to 1963. 119

lan Hunter, "Raff Lee and the Pioneer Trotskyists of Johannesburg: A Footnote to the History of British Trotskyism," Revolutionary History, v. 4. no. 4 (1993), p. 62.

120

Murray Gow Purdy, The South African Indian Problem-A Revolutionary Solution (Bombay, 1943), p. 21. Hoover, LSH, box 52.

12\

Both Purdy and Lee were tough characters. Raff Lee h!id a police record for petty burglary. John Saperstein, another early Trotskyist, served time for gun-running on behalf of the Communist Party. lan Hunter, "Raff Lee and the Pioneer Trotskyists of Johannesburg," p. 62. Baruch Hirson, the historian of South African Trotskyism, notes that "Purdy's role was not very savoury." Letter from Baruch Hirson to author, 21 September 1997. Letter from Baruch Hirson to author, 23 April 1992.

\22

83

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

by Gandhi, calling him "the greatest politician the eastern world has ever produced." 123 Purdy sent a letter to William Gallacher, the Communist MP, demanding that British foreign secretary Anthony Eden intervene on behalf of the Indians in Addis Ababa. The British Ambassador told Purdy to leave the country. In early 1936 Purdy sailed to Bombay "to create, or Jom, a Trotskyist movement." 124 When he arrived, he discovered that no such movement existed. But there was a pro-Trotsky trend within the Congress Socialist Party. Minoo Masani, the general secretary in Bombay, openly defended Trotsky and printed pro-Trotsky articles in the journal Congress Socialist. 125 R.B. Lotvala, a wealthy businessman who patronized the left, saw to it that The New International was sold in Bombay. 126 Ratilal Mehta, a Congressman associated with Vande Mataram, published a biography of Trotsky. 127

123 124 125

126

127

84

Letter from Purdy to Max Shachtman and James P. Cannon, 1938. Letter from Purdy to Max Shachtman and James P. Cannon, 1938. Kama1 Biswas,. "Dictatorship of the Proletariat and U.S.S.R.," Congress Socialist. 5 June 1937. "Kama1 Biswas" might have been a pseudonym. The British Communist Party sent a rebuttal. "The U.S.S.R. and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Congress Socialist, 17 July 1937. Krishna Menon, the head of the India League in London and a recent convert to Stalinism, fretted about the "streak of Trotskyist deviation" in the CSP which he felt was "too pronounced to be ignored." Quoted in Partha Sarathi Gupta, "British Labour and the Indian Left, 1919-1939," p. 117; and TJ.S. George, Krishna Menon: A Biography (London, 1964), p. 92. The Congress Socialist published an article, "Popular Front: No Way to October," by "a Ceylon Marxist." The author was Vernon Gunasekera. In the early 'twenties Lotvala patronized the handful of Communist sympathizers in Bombay, financed a new English weekly, Socialist, and established a wellstocked Socialist library. He went to England and worked with the British Communist Party. After his return to India he studied the literature of both the Left and the Right Opposition and published some of the documents in his journal, the Advocate. A rich Parsi businessman, Lotvala owned several newspapers, including the weekly Chitra, which carried pro-Trotsky articles. Lotvala later became a devout Gandhian. Indulal K. Yajnik, Life ofRanchoddas Bhavan Lotvala (Bombay, 1952), p. 51. Yajnik was Lotvala's personal secretary. Ratilal Mehta latet·became a sympathizer of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India. The party used hi's'·office in Bombay as a "cover" to receive mail from abroad. Hoover: SWPPapers, box 38. .

The Trotskyist Movement ill India and Ceylon

Purdy cast off his Western clothes, donned khadi and a Gandhi cap, and joined the Congress. 128 He evidently disagreed with Trotsky on the nature of Congress. Purdy regarded the Congress as "a narrow and capitalistically dominated type of united front," rather than a capitalist party properly speaking. 129 Nevertheless, in practice his approach seems to have been the same. "We shall struggle against the [capitalist] leadership, but will not fool the masses about the probablility of capturing the machine." He emphasized the need to build an independent Trotskyist party outside the Congress. Purdy saw his first task as the development of a Trotskyist program for India. Over the next three years he wrote a 150-page treatise on Indian society and history, which he subsequently boiled down to a pamphlet: the Bolshevik-Leninist-Trotskyist Draft Provisional Programme. 130 Purdy based his work on the program of the International Left Opposition, adopted in 1933. 131 He apparently didn't 128

129

130

131

Purdy was always a man who lived his beliefs. He regarded European clothing to be a sign of the "official white-man caste. snobbish and offensive to a degree." Murray Gow Purdy, The South Afi-ican Indian Problem-A Revolutionary Solution. p. 3. He ate from the food stalls in the streets and ended up getting sick for eighteen months. "The Bolshevik-Leninists demand the right to operate as Congressmen and women, and shall put forward our own Congress programme despite expulsions or other pressure from the capitalist Right-Wing controllers who desire to exploit the masses politically without opposition. We shal1 not be brow-beaten nor hood-winked into abandoning our claim to speak as Congressmen, as active workers in the united front ofthe nation now mobilized behind Congress." Yarrumji Eedrupji, BolshevikLenillist-Trotskyist Draft Provisional Programme. pp. 33-34. In the preface Purdy emphasized that his pamphlet was a "draft provisional program to be presented to the International, and it is put forward for discussion and improvement by the leaders of the working class itself." Yarrumji Eedrupji [Murray Purdy], Bolshevik-Leninist- Trotskyist Draft Provisional Programme (Bombay, n.d.). "Yarrumji Eedrupji" is obviously "MUl'ray Purdy" spelled backward, with the Hindi honorific suffix, "ji" (as in "Gandhiji"). Author's copy, original in possession of the late Sitaram B. Kolpe. Leon Trotsky, "The International, Its Tasks and Methods," December 1932. The "eleven points" were adopted by the first conference (called a "pre-conference") of the International Left Opposition, held in Paris, 4-8 February 1933. Most of these points were incorporated into subsequent documents adopted by Trotsky's movement, including the culminating "Transitional Program," adopted at the founding conference of the Fourth International in 1938.

85

The Trotskyist Movemenrin India and Ceylon

have the "Transitional Program," which the Fourth International had just adopted in 1938. Purdy applied Trotsky's thesis of Permanent Revolution in a very novel way. He saw the Harijans ("Untouchables") as the key to socialist revohition. The vast majority of Harijans were landless laborers who toiled:)n the fields, worked in the factories, and performed the work that caste Hindus considered "impure" and "polluting," such as cleaning latrlnes,sweeping, and tanning hides. In short, they had nothing to loose except their chains. Purdy w'as convinced that the Harijans in theirffiany millions would rally to an urban-based Soviet regime: "the heteditary proletarians forming the untouchable Harijan class shall be th~ispinal cord of the proletarian government, of which the industrial prqletariat must be the head." 132 Purdy concluded that "in India the workers dictatorship will in every sense of the word be the Untouchable Dfctatorship of the Working Class." 133 As many sociologists have since shown, caste is highly complex and nuanced and does not neatly correspond to class. But at that time the scientific study ·~f caste had barely begun. Purdy, to his credit, was one of the first Marxists to really delve into the caste issue and make it the pivot of his political program. 134 Purdy wanted his party to be known as the fighters for the most downtrodden. "Unlike the Stalinist Communist Party;? he wrote, "we openly state our dependence upon and integral unity with the Harijan propertyless proletarian class. Our work must be: among our Harijan brethren, and we must oppose the treacherous Gandhian propaganda among them." 135 And to show his \32

Yarrumji Eedrupji, Bolshevik-Leninist-1i"Otskyist Draft Provisional Programme, p. 31. Emphasis in original.

133

M.o. Purdy, Constituent Assembly: Is It Possible in India? And its Alternative [Surat, 19461; pp. 18-19. Hull: BrynmorJones Library.

134

IlS

86

In 1936 Dr. Arnbedkar, the Untouchable crusader, criticized the intelligentsia ~or failing to seriously study the caste system and the left for failing to fight it. Bhimrao Ramji Ambeq.~ar; Annihilation of Caste with a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi; and Castes in Indiii,·.Their Mechanism. Genesis. and Development (Jullunder, 1968). Yarrumji Eed·n:ipj!,Bolshevik-Leninist-Trotskyist Draft Provisional Programme. p.31.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

own solidarity, he Indianized his name to "Purdy-Singh," emulating the Harijans who "Sanskritized" their names as a gesture of selfaffirmation. 136 Purdy didn't bite his tongue inside Congress. He not only criticized the Gandhian doctrine of ahimsa [non-violence], but he glorified the use of violence in the revolution to come. "The first necessity for obtaining the freedom of the masses in the Indian Empire is the violent and bloody extirpation of the imperial power and the whole of its state services and apparatus." 137 He called Trotskyism the "violent and bloody revolutionary programme" 138 The first three demands of his program were "Violent expulsion of British imperialism, Violent expropriation ofzamindar's land by peasants, and Violent expropriation of capitalist means of production." All this was needlessly provocative, much like the gratuitous rhetoric of the Stalinists in their ultra-left days. 139 The American Trotskyists were appalled; they wrote back to Purdy with criticisms of what they regarded as his "left sectarian" formulations. 140 After that, Purdy toned down the rhetoric considerably.

136

Hetukar Jha, "Lower-Caste Peasants and Upper-Caste Zamindars in Bihar (19211925): An Analysis of Sanskritization and Contradiction between the Two Groups," The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 14, no. 4 (October-December 1977), p. 549. Starting in the 1920s, low caste peasants would adopt high caste names, like Singh or Rai, as a gesture of protest.

137

"Provisional draft programme of the Bolshevik-Leninists-Trotskyists of the Indian Empire," I page typescript, n.d. Attached to his letter to Max Shachtman and James P. Cannon, 1938. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

138

Yarrumji Eedrupji, Bolshevik-Leninist-Trotskyist Draft Provisional Programme, p.44.

139

Philip Spratt, for example, once declared, "we shall have to indulge in brutal, dictatorial methods" and not disguise "the brutal, bloodthirsty side of our proposals." Quoted in Shashi Joshi, Struggle/or Hegemony in India. 1920-47: The Colonial SUite, the Left and the National Movement. Vol. I: 1920-34 (New Delhi, 1992), p. 115.

140

Minutes of the "Pan American and All Pacific Bureau," 16 August 1939. Harvard: Trotsky Collection, bMS Russ 13.1. File 16410.

87

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

In 1938 Purdy set up "The Friends ofTrotsky Society" in Bombay in order to translate, print, and distribute "the historical and theoretical works of Leon Trotsky throughout India." 141 His first publication was the pamphlet, Lenin s Last Testament. That probably hit like a bombshell. At that point most Communists had no idea that Lenin, shortly before his death, proposed a joint struggle with Trotsky to remove Stalin from his post as party secretary. 142 In 1939 Purdy formed the "Workers Group (Fourth Internationalist)," consisting of himself and a handful of young followers, including Mallik Arjun Rao, Murlidhar Parija, and Sitaram Kolpe. At that point the Congress was debating what position to take in the coming war. Purdy called for the defeat of all "imperialist powers" and for the unconditional defense of the USSR. That resonated within Congress. The Congress Socialist published his position paper on Trotskyist war policy. 143

141

142

143

88

"Friends of Trotsky Society," printed flyer, n.d. Hoover: LSH, box 53. Purdy appealed to the American Trotskyists and his former comrades in South Africa for assistance. Letter from R. Lennard [Leon Sapire] and J. Murdoch to J.P. Cannon, 15 September 1938. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 44. In December, 1922, Lenin, confined to a sickbed after two strokes, dictated a confidential memorandum to the Politburo in which he candidly sized up each of the top leaders. Lenin characterized Trotsky as "perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C." He noted that Stalin "has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution." It didn't take long for Lenin to decide. In a postscript added one month later Lenin called for removing Stalin as General Secretary. In March, 1923 Lenin wrote to Trotsky proposing ajoint struggle against Stalin. That proposal to Trotsky has been confirmed by the historians, R. V. V. Zhuravlev and A.N. Nenarokov, in Pravda, 12 August 1988. See Pierre Broue, "Trotsky: A Biographer's Problems," in Terry Brotherstone and Paul Dukes (eds.), The Trotsky Reappraisal (Edinburgh, 1992), p. 20. Lenin also confided to his wife, Krupskyaya, that he intended to "crush Stalin." But less than a week later he was incapacitated by a massive stroke. In the Political Bureau Stalin and his aJlies voted to suppress Lenin's testament; Trotsky wanted to publish the Testament within the party. Krupskaya leaked the document to the west for publication. The Triumvirate <;Ienied that the testament was authentic. In 1927 Stalin had to admit, in the authoritative Comintern journal, International Press Correspondence (17 November 1927), that it was "perfectly true" Lenin had, in fact, caJled for "replacing Stalin." Later Stalin claimed Lenin's Testament was a fabrication. M.G Purdy, "Is War Inevitable?" Congress Socialist, 4 June 1939, p. 3.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

At the 1939 Tripuri session of Congress Purdy met Leslie Goonewardene, a delegate from the LSSP, who invited him to visit Ceylon. 144 He went. The apostle of the Untouchable Revolution was shocked to see that some LSSP leaders, like Leslie Goonewardene, Reggie Senanayake, and P.H. William Silva, were actually quite wealthy. After his return to Bombay, Purdy published a pamphlet, Millionaire Trotskyists of Ceyion, which denounced the LSSP as a "capitalist party." Purdy recruited militants, one by one, to his Workers Group. Some of his devoted cadres included Murlidhar Parija and Mallikarjun Rao, who later became well-known trade unionists. Lacking money for a printed journal, they made due with a cyclostyled bulletin, The Spark. 145 In addition, as mentioned above, Purdy met a fellow Trotskyist, Chandravadan Shukla, who had moved to Bombay in 1940. In early 1941 the two joined forces and named their combined group the Revolutionary Workers League. 146 Trotskyism in Bengal

In Bengal the Trotskyist movement can be traced back to Ajit Roy, whom I have already mentioned in connection with C.L.R. James and the Marxist Group in London. The British government called him "a pioneer of the Trotskyist movement in India." 147 The son of high-caste Bengali gentry, Ajit Kumar Mukherji Roy went to England in 1931 to study law. Like so many in his cohort, he got radicalized, joined the League Against Imperialism and eventually the CPGB. 148

144 145

146

147

148

Leslie Goonewardene, Letter to the author, 30 April 1975. Spark 1941. Hoover: LSH, box 54. Interviews with CV Shukla (Bombay), 13 June 1974; and Sitaram B Kolpe (Bombay), 19 June 1974. According to Kolpe, the discussions involved Chandravadan Shukla, his wife Shanta, MG Purdy, SB Kolpe, and AH Tilakar. National Archives ofIndia, New Delhi: Home (Pol) File No. 717147-PolI (1). "The Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain," p. I. In this period he wrote a pamphlet, In Defense of the Colonial Revolution, which was later reprinted by the Revolutionary Communist Party, British Section of the Fourth International.

89

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Roy had a friend, Bal Krishna Gupta, who was studying economics at London University. "He had one of the brightest political minds J have ever come across in my life," recalls Roy. 149 Gupta met C.L.R. James and, like so many others, was dazzled. "He explained that the Stalinist brand of communism was not communism at all. He then wanted to know if I had read anything by Trotsky. I said 'no.' He asked me if I would care to read Trotsky, so I said, 'Why not. Give me the books.'" Gupta gave him Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. That book changed his life. "I remember that I took that book and I started reading it the next day. The whole day I read it. I didn't go out, and I didn't go out the day after, except to have my lunch, and I finished that book in two days. I believe there was a chapter at the very end, headed 'the theory of Socialism in One Country.' I read it and by the time 1 finished it I said to myself that the Communists are a bunch of liars, that the Stalinists were not communists at all, but a bunch of murderers and traitors to Communism." Gupta sent Roy to C.L.R. James. "I had rarely come across a finer political polemicist than C.L.R. James. His attacks on Stalinism were absolutely devastating." Working out of their shared flat on Boundary Road, the two produced the journal, Fight. Roy wrote several articles on political developments in India. ISO As one of his contemporaries recalled, Roy was "an excellent speaker and popular among workers" at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. 151

149

ISO

ISI

90

Ajit Roy, "Reminiscences of early days in India and Britain," unpublished transcript of an interview recorded in December, 1975. Roy tape-recorded his recollections at the request of his friend, the British Trotskyist historian, Sam Bornstein. This interview is cited in Sam Bornstein and AI Richardson, Against the Stream: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain. 1924-1938 (London, 1986), pp. 262-63. The 10-page transcript is in the Socialist Platform Archives (Richardson Collection), London. Singh, "The Indian Elections," Fight. vol. 1, no. 6 (May 1937), pp. 11-12 and B.C. Agarwal, "Congress and the Indian Masses," Fight. vol. 1, no. 11 (November 1937), pp. 11, 15. Bill Hunter, Lifelong Apprenticeship: The Life and Times of A Revolutionary (London, 1997),p. 99.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

In 1937 Roy returned to Calcutta and contacted a former schoolmate, Kamalesh Bannerji, who Wa~ active in student politics. Bannerji, an Anglo-Indian, was a gifted ~riter who contributed to a Bengali cultural monthly, Purvasha [The East], edited by the poet Sanjay Bhattacharya and patronized by Humanyun Kabir, a Congress Socialist activist who later became Union Education Minister. 152 Kamalesh Bannerji also wrote for Natum 'Patra [New Journal], one of the plethora of "little journals" which sprouted in Calcutta. Bannerji had a magnetic personality. He'd sit for hours in the Cafe de Monico and discuss politics with young student activists. One of his recruits was Indra Sen, a student at Calcutta University. "We had no sympathy for the CPI," says Indra Sen, "bu!wewanted to know why so many students did." 153 Another recruit was Dulal Bose, a student at Vidyasagar College in Calcutta who lat~r earned diplomas in both French and Russian literature. Bannerji had a connection with abig Calcutta paper, the Hindusthan Standard. His plan was for Ajit Roy to return to England, work as the London correspondent for the newspaper, save some money, and bring over members of the Calcutta group one-by-one for training. Roy returned, but the job fell through. Nevertheless, a London-Calcutta connection had been established, and that was a big step forward in itself. The Calcutta group became the de facto Indian arm of the British group. 154 In 1939 the Calcutta group made corit~ct with Onkamath Shastri, the leader of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of the United Provinces and

152

IS)

154

Letter from the Indian historian Gautam Chattopadhyaya (Calcutta), 21 February 1978. He believes Purvasha might have also been patronized by Saumyendranath Tagore, the well-to-do critical Communist. Interview with Indra Sen, 26 April 1974. "On the Necessity for an Independent Bolshevik-Leninist Organization in Britain," Submitted by the Revolutionary Socialist League, July 24, 1938, in National Bulletin, prepared for the National Conference of the Bolshevik Leninist Organisations in ,Britain, p. 4. University of Chicago Library.

91

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Bihar, who was on the run from the police. Shastri was impressed with the sophistication of the Calcutta group. "When I first met Kamalesh," recalls Shastri, "I became enamoured of his English expressions!" 155 The two began to collaborate. In March 1940 Philip Gunawardena learned about the Calcutta group while attending the annual gathering of the Indian National Congress session, held in Ramgarh. He went to Calcutta and contacted Kamalesh Bannerji. Through the Calcutta group the LSSP got in touch with Onkamath Shastri. An important Calcutta-Colombo link was thus established. When the CLR lames group in the UK adopted the name Revolutionary Socialist League, the Calcutta group did likewise. Bal Krishna Gupta, Ajit Roy's friend, returned to Calcutta after his studies, became a stockbroker, and slipped money to the Trotskyists. The Calcutta group put out its first leaflet in the name of the RSL in about August, 1940. 156 The Calcutta RSL was becoming the embryo of an Indian Trotskyist group. Repression in Ceylon

After the Stalinists were expelled, the LSSP mounted an aggressive campaign opposing the. "imperialist war." 157 Meanwhile, LSSP organizers were making trouble on the labor front. Upcountry, plantation workers went on strike on one estate after another. LSSP organizers, like the young lawyer Edmund Samarakkody, were able to put themselves at the head of some of these strikes. The British planters demanded the suppression of the LSSP. In 1940 Philip Gunawardena, N.M. Perera, Colvin de Silva, and Edmund Samarakkody were arrested. The party press was seized. LSSP

ISS

Letter from Onkamath Shastri to author, undated, received June 1974.

IS6

Interview with Indra .Sen (Calcutta), I February 1974.

IS)

LSSP leaflets reprinted October 1942.

92

in

Labor Action [New York], 23 March 1942 and 19

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

meetings were banned. The LSSP knew in advance that the government was going to strike. The Central Committee "ruled that Leslie Goonewardene should go underground while the others should court arrest." 158 That decision was a big mistake. The four party leaders were imprisoned in Kandy. More LSSP members were rounded up. According to plan, LesIie Goonewardene dropped out of sight. He moved from one hideout to the next, venturing outside only at night in disguise. Only two comrades knew his whereabouts at any time. The F.1. Bureau in New York informed the British section that the LSSP "has been driven entirely underground and it has been impossible for us to reestabIish effective contact." 159 In November 1940, Governor Caldecott reported to the Secretary of State that the LSSP would soon be completely smashed. The British authorities and Ceylonese plantocracy perhaps toasted the demise of the pesky LSSP. But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated.

158

E.P. De Silva, A Short Biography of Dr. N.M. Perera. p. 7. Colvin de Silva gave a similar explanation to an American Trotskyist visitor to India in 1944: "some of our comrades went on with their work openly, waiting for the government to come and get them so as to make a legal test and demonstration before the masses of our position." Lewis Scott, "Red Passage to India," p. 14:

159

Letter from J.E.B. Stuart [Sam Gordon] to the Btitish Section, F.I., 11 November 1940. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 34.

93

CHAPTER THREE

The Formatioll of an IndoCeylonese Party "Titanic and terrible event$ are approaching with implacable force." With those ominous wordS Trotsky began his "Open Letter" to the Congress Socialists in 1939. I He predicted that the second world war would be even more cataclysmic than the first. But he also pointed out that war might again be the mother of revolution, bringing to India and other colonies "not a redoubled slavery but, on the contrary, complete liberty." But for that to happen, "a revolutionary party, basing itself on the vanguard of the prolehiriat, is necessary. Such a party does not yet exist in India. The Fourthlnternational offers this party its program, its experience, its collaboratipn." Less than two months later the war began. The Cey Ion government clobbered the LSSP. But India was seething with mass unrest. "There could be little doubt," noted Hector Abhayavardhana, "that should the British be thrown out of India, independence would come to Ceylon almost as a logical consequence. The thesis, therefore, emerged in the LSSP that the revolution In:Ceylon could only develop successfully as part of the Indian revoh.,ltioti and, since there was as yet no dependable revolutionary party in India, it was the historic task of the LSSP to assist in forming such a party within a minimum period of time. The best means of doing so, it decided, was by building a common organization for both cotl:p~ries." 2

Leon Trotsky, "Open Letter to the Workers ofIndia," New International, September 1939, pp. 263-66. Reprinted as "India Faced with Imperialist War" (25 July 1939), in Writillgs o/Leoll Trotsky 1939-40, pp. 28-34. 2

94

Hector Abhayavardhana, "Categories of Left Thinking in Ceylon" (1962), reprinted in Rajan Phi lips (ed.), Sri Lanka: Global Challellges alld Natiollal Crises (Colombo, 2001), p. 362.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

As we have seen, the LSSP leaders had already made contact with the Indian Trotskyist groups in Bombay, Calcutta, and the United Provinces. The LSSP began to dispatch organizers to India, one at a time, to help these fledgling groups. Leslie Goonewardene, the acting party leader in the underground organization, was the driving and directing force behind the India work. 3 The LSSP decided to secure a beachhead of its own in Madras Province. The LSSP had members who could speak Tamil, and Madura was just across the Palk Straights from the northern tip of Ceylon. First Steps

In May, 1940 the LSSP sent V. Balasingham, who had been a philosophy student at Ceylon University, to Madura. Two more young party members, B. M. K. Ramaswamy and his elder brother, Shanmuganathan, joined him the following year. They developed contacts with local Congress radicals, notably T.o. Krishnamurthy, Sholavandan Karuppa Pillai, and Kodimangalam Ponniah Ambalam. They recruited a group at the American College in Madura, which included K. Appanraj, who was active in the CPI-dominated Students' Federation. The LSSP was able to send literature into India covertly through these students. That soon drew the attention of the police. According to one report, Balasingham was "smuggling Trotskyist literature from Ceylon into the Tanjore district." 4 On July 23, 1941 the police arrested Balasingham along with three of his contacts. The Chief Secretary of the Madras government informed the Home Department that the Trotskyist nucleus in Madras Province had bee!1 broken up. 5 The police arrested three more

l

Hector Abhayavardhana, introduction to Pulsara Liyanage, Vivi: A Biography of Vivienne Goonewardene (Colombo, n.d.), p. xv.

4

"Communist Survey No. 3 of 1944," 15 October 1944, p. 5. IOL: LlPJ/12/431.

S

IOL: LIP J/5/204. Pol. 156/1942.

95

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Trotskyists in Madras. After these raids the intelligence bureau reported that "an underground organization of a potentially dangerous character was completely broken up." 6 Meanwhile, the LSSP sent another young member, Bernard Soysa, to Calcutta to work with the RSL (Kamalesh Bannerji group). Bernard had been an English teacher at St. Thomas Collyge in Matara before devoting himself to party work full time. Soysa couldn't speak Bengali, but his comrades knew English, and so he was able to work as an internal party organizer. He helped the little Calcutta group become a veritable propaganda machine. In the course of the next year alone the Calcutta group distributed over 100,000 leaflets in Bengali, Hindi, and English. The police were watching the group closely. In April, 1941 the Intelligence Bureau reported that Bernard Soysa was probably "the chief organizer of the Indian group in Bengal and Assam." 7 Doric de Souza was also involved in these forays. With Leslie Goonewardene forced to stay out of sight, Doric was the man who got things done. He went to Bombay with Bernard Soysa to meet Murray Gow Purdy. Purdy introduced the Ceylonese emissaries to his associate, Chandravadan Shukla. As Bernard recalls, "Shukla had a manifesto in typescript which was the rationale of his dissidence from the CPI." g Shukla, who was very bookish in his Marxism, must have admired the political sophistication of the Ceylonese who were similarly inclined. Pre-Conference in Ceylon

Encouraged by these contacts, the LSSP leaders planned to hold a secret meeting in December, 1940, to which the Indian groups would be invited to send their representatives. This was intended to be a "preconference" that would lay the basis for future joint work. The leaders

6

"Communist Survey No. 3 of 1944," p. 5.

7

"Communist Survey No. 3 of 1944," 15 October 1944, p. 5. IOL: L/PJ/12/431.

8

Letter from Leslie Goonewardene to author, 30 April 1975.

96

The Trotskyist Movement ill India and Ceylon

of the LSSP underground-particularly Robert Gunawardena, Doric de Souza, and Reggie Senanayake---made the preparations. The venue for the rendezvous was chosen carefully: a "safe" house not too far from the Kandy jail. That location was not accidental. The party leaders in jail had done their work well. They had recruited their jailor, a man named Solomon, to their cause. He was willing to let them leave their cells and attend this meeting, if they promised to return before daybreak. And thus in December, 1940, at the appointed hour, the LSSP honchos walked out of the jail under the cover of darkness and were whisked off to the meeting. Security had to be tight. Only nine of the leading Trotskyists participated in this all-night meeting-Philip Gunawardena, N.M. Perera, Colvin de Silva, Doric de Souza, Robert Gunawardena, Reggie Senanayake, Kamalesh Bannerji, Bernard Soysa, and Leslie Goonewardene. 9 The group resolved to form a single subcontinental Trotskyist party, representing India, Burma, and Ceylon. That was certainly a bold, and perhaps questionable proposition. How could a handful of persecuted Trotskyists possibly build such a far-flung party? And even if they could, why build a single party for three such diverse countries? Burma had little in common with Ceylon save Buddhism (and even that was different). Indeed, there was a huge divide even between North and South India. Perhaps the Trotskyists were so smitten with optimism that they did not consider such matters seriously. The meeting also decided to start "colonizing" India, i.e., sending comrades to live and work with the Indian Trotskyists on the mainland. Bernard Soysa was selected to be the first to relocate. Thus began what would soon become a migration of Ceylonese Trotskyists to the mainland.

If there were minutes taken at this meeting, they haven't survived. I am indebted to Leslie Goonewardene for this account of the meeting. According to his memory, Edmund Samarakkody, the junior of the four LSSP prisoners in Kandy, did not attend. Letter from Leslie Goonewardene to author, 30 April 1975.

97

The Trotskyist Movement in IlIdia and Ceylof/

Merger in Bengal and United Provinces

After this pre-conference, Kamalesh Bannerji and Onkarnath Shastri agreed to merge their groups. The combined group took the name Bolshevik Leninist Party-the name Shastri already used for his group. As planned, Bernard Soysa relocated to Calcutta. 10 He evidently won the rspect of the Bengal comrades. In May, 1941 the Deputy InspectorGeneral of the Intelligence Branch of the CID in Calcutta reported that "a Singalese" was "the leading member" of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party. 11 The Bolshevik Leninist Party had a team of effective student activists, including Karuna Kant Roy, Purnangshu K. Roy, and Hiranand Mishra. In 1941 Karuna Roy became something of a local hero when he intervened to help an Indian girl who was being molested by four police sergeants. He was roughed up, dragged off to the lockup, and thrown in a cell. The Calcutta group sent members on recruiting tours throughout Bengal. Kamalesh Bannerji went farther afield, to Delhi and Lahore, contacting like-minded leftists. The police noted the spread of Trotskyist propaganda, particularly the "well-composed leaflets on paper of much better quality than is usual for these purposes." 12 The police evidently had an informer who was pretty close to the party. The Deputy Inspector-General knew, for example, exactly how much money the Ceylonese had donated to the Calcutta group. 13 On May 18, 1941 the police raided several houses of party members in Bengal. The intelligence bureau reported that "a few copies of objectionable literature were seized." 14 Indra Sen, one of the

10

See "Ceylon Fourth Internationalists Illegalised," Socialist Appeal. vol. 4, no. 8, May 1942.

11

[OL: LlPJ/12/401. File Pol.(S) 190111941.

12

IOL: LlPJ/12/401. File Pol.(S) 190111941.

13

In July, 1941 the Deputy Inspector-General reported that one of the LSSP leaders "who is evading detention" visited Calcutta in May, 1941 and "gave Rs. 400 to the local Trotskyites." IOL: LlPJ/12/401. File Pol.(S) 2514/1941.

14

IOL: LlPJ/12/401. File Pol.(S) 2514/1941.

98

The n"otskyist Movement in In.~ia and Ceylon

organizers, was placed under house arrest. IS With the police breathing down his neck Bemard Soysa went to Bombay. Decision to Launch the BLP.

In March, 1941 the Trotskyists took the next step towards unification. A clandestine conference was to be held in Ceylon. The LSSP secured a "safe house" on the Hanguranketa Road in Kandy,l1ot. far from the jail. Bernard Soysa arranged for Onkarnath Shastri, Kamalesh Bannerji, and Indra Sen to come to Ceylon. At riiidnight on the appointed day the LSSP prisoners again walked outof the Kandy jail and were driven off to the meeting. The security was water tight. At this conference the delegates reached agreement on all questions and reaffirmed the earlier decision to form an all-India party. 16 The participants resolved to draft a program and constitution for the party and to circulate the drafts to the constitubnt"groups in India and Ceylon for discussion. The job of drafting apparently was assigned to Leslie Goonewardene and Doric de Souza,two·of the most theoretically developed members of the LSSP. 17 The 'formal merger would take place at a conference in Calcutta one month later. 18 M.G.

15

16

Letter from Indra Sent to A.K. [Ajit Roy], n.d. [circa 1945]. Hull: Haston, DJHI 15G/14b. Letter from Leslie Goonewardene to author, 30 Apri11975. A British government report from 1947 mentions that "12 Indian delegates of no political standing" attended this conference. National Archives oflndia: Home (Pol) File No. 7/7/47Poll (I). "Trotskyist Partie~ in India," p. 2. That seems to be misinforn1ation. The same report mentions that one of the Indians was "Soma Ramamithan of Tanjore." His name appears no where else, and none of the veterans from that period recall anyone of such a name.

17

Since no minutes of this meeting survive, we don't know for sure who was assigned to draft the program. In conversations with the author, HeCtor Abhayavardhana recollects that Leslie Goonewardene and Doric de Souza were probably the main authors, though others certainly contributed in the process of amplifying and revising the drafts. . ...

18

C.P.S. [Chandravadan Shukla], L.S.G [Leslie Goonewardene}; E.B.S. [Bernard Soysa}, Letter to the Secretary, Bureau of the Fourth Internati~hal, 29 June 1942.

99

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Purdy would be invited to this conference, if he agreed to accept the majority line. The conference ended before dawn so the prisoners could return to their cells. Shortly after this conference, the LSSP held its own meeting in Matale. Leslie Goonewiudene presided; 42 delegates attended. Unlike the Kandy conference the month before, the jailed leaders did not attend; given the larger group, there were more risks that the police would get wind of the gathering and pounce. That meeting formally transformed the LSSP into a cadre party with a new program based on the Transitional Program of the Fourth International. 19 The LSSP conference also endorsed the decision to colonize India and merge the LSSP into a larger all-India party. 20 Meanwhile, in India the police raided the homes of more Calcutta party members. Kamalesh Bannerji, Bernard Soysa, and Doric de Souza were arrested and interrogated. Concerned about security, the Trotskyists called off the conference in Calcutta that was to have formally merged the Indian and Ceylonese groups. Differences on War Policy

In December, 1941 Hitler launched his surprise attack against Russia. Stalin had no choice at that point except to cast his lot with the Allies. The Comintern did another flip-flop. The "imperialist war" was now a "People's War." The Communist parties had to give all-out support to the Allies.

19

20

Sections of this program were reprinted as "The Road to Freedom for Ceylon," in Fourth International (April, 1942), pp. 117-18. The only opposition came from a very junior comrade, the late Regi Siriwardena [party name "Hamid"]. As Regi recalls in his memoirs, "I was imprudent and brash enough to criticize the Indian plan as 'adventurist', urging that the party should concentrate on strengthening its local base. For this parochial view I was, verbally, slapped down by N.M., who in the course of his reply said, 'We can't all be as learned as Comrade Hamid': this from a double-doctor to an undergrad, was irony indeed." Regi Siriwardena, Working Underground: The LSSP in Wartime (Colombo, 1999), p. 55.

100

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Fourth International, on the other hand, refused to change course. "The murderous Fascist attack on the Workers' State," declared the Indian Trotskyists in a leaflet, "has exploded the Stalinist myththe theory that Socialism can vegetate side by side with capitalism, and under the stress of this war the masses of the Soviet Union will realise that the overthrow of the Stalinist incubus will be indispensable for the successful defense of the Soviet Union. With the resurgence of the Revolutionary wave and the regeneration of the Soviet state, the Stalinist bureaucracy, a misfit in an epoch of Revolution, will be hurled to its rightful place-the dustbin of history." 21 Murray Gow Purdy, however, came to a different conclusion. He thought that the only practical way to defend the USSR was to support the Allied war effort. In an internal discussion document he stated, "in a military sense every blow struck against Hitler is in effect a blow struck for the Soviet Union." 22 At the same time Purdy called for "irreconcilable revolutionary defeatism on the political front." He was trying to have it both ways. If you support British bombers in the skies over Germany, how can you oppose the British tanks in India? The other Trotskyists regarded this as a principled difference. Chandravadan Shukla parted ways with Purdy. 23 His newspaper, Inkilab, stated, "Only by overthrowing the imperialist robbers in our country and winning independence can we effectively help Russia. And if we want revolution, we can't help the government. It is true that the USSR must defend itself. But that doesn't mean we must aid the imperialist powers." 24 In February, 1942 Purdy retreated a bit for the sake of unity: "we withdraw the slogan of 'military aid to Russia on all fronts,' and

21

"25th Anniversary of the October Revolution," BLPI leaflet, n.d. [1942]. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

22

Seven [Murray Gow Purdy], "A New Viewpoint on this War," Spark [July 1941], p. 4. Hoover: LSH, box 54.

23

Interviews with C.Y. Shukla, 27 December 1973 and 13 June 1974.

24

"Overthrow Imperialism," Inkilab, no. 9 (March 1942).

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replace it with 'Only revolution can help us help the Soviet Union." 2S However, he left the door half open. He suggested, as a "compromise," that Trotskyists"help any effort made to collect money or materials to be sent to the U.S.S.R., irrespective of whatever agency is responsible for that support being sent." Kamalesh Bannerji, the leader of the Bengal group; stated that unification with Purdy was impossible as long as he held what was in effect a pro-war position. "Colonization" of India

In 1941 Leslie Goonewardene, who had been hiding all alone in a house at Thimbirigasyaya, left for Bombay, where Bernard Soysa had moved after the raids in Calcutta. His wife, Vivienne, followed in December with their 14-month-old child and an elderly ayah [domestic servant]. 26 Leslie and Vivienne became "Mr. and Mrs. Pinto from Goa." They rented a house in the industrial suburb of Matunga. It was not easy to melt into Indian society. They didn't know the local languages and were always looking over their shoulder to see if they were being watched by the police. S.C.C. Anthony PilIai, a Tamil party member, went to Madura to re-start the work that had been smashed by the police raids the year before. K. Appanraj, the student at the American College, found shelter for him near the Harvey Mills. 27 Once the Madura group was functioning again, PilIai moved north to Madras and assumed the name, "Lakshmi Narayan Rao." K. Appanraj followed. They developed a student group at Pachaiyappa's College.

2S

"Our War Line Today," 3-page typescript, 25 February 1942. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

26

Pulsara Liyanage, Vivi: A Biography of Vivienne Goonewardene (Colombo, n.d.), pp. 37-38.

27

K. Appanraj, Anja Nenjan: Thoyizh Sangha Medai S.C.c. Antoni Pillai Vazhkai Varalaru. p. 33.

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The Formation Committee

After a delay of many months, the unity meeting which had to be postponed was convened secretly in Calcutta in November, 1941. Present were the three resident Ceylonese organizers (Leslie Goonewardene, Bernard Soysa, and S.C.C. Anthony Pillai), the Calcutta leader Kamalesh Bannerji (using the party name "Chatterjee"), and the new recruit from Bombay, Chandravadan Shukla ("Ramesh Munshi"). 28 Purdy was not invited, given his position on the war. They discussed the party program which had been drafted and set up an interim committee, called, the "Formation Committee of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma." This working committee included Leslie Goonewardene, Kamalesh Bannerji, and Onkarnath Shastri. 29 The Committee decided to meet again in December, 1941 with the aim of adopting the revised program and making preparations to launch the all-India party a month after that. The reference to Burma led Trotskyists in New York and London to assume that a Burmese group already existed and to report the same in their publications. That was not the case. The name of the party reflected grandiose aspirations, rather than reality. We know that during his years in London Philip Gunawardena had worked with the Burmese communists who would later form the Communist Party in Burma. However, I have not been able to find documentary evidence showing subsequent contacts between the LSSP and any Burmese groups. In any case, even if such contacts existed, they would have been severed when the Japanese occupied Burma.

28

C.P.S. [Chandravadan Shukla], L.S.a. [Leslie Goonewardene], E.B.S. [Bernard Soysa], Letter to the Secretary, Bureau of the Fourth International, 29 June 1942. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

29

National Archives ofIndia: Home (Pol) File No. 717147-Poll (I). This report states that Soma Ramanathan of Tanjore was also elected to the Committee. This name appears nowhere else, to my knowledge.

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Jailbreak in Ceylon

In February, 1942 the Japanese took Singapore and drove the British forces from Burma the following month. Japanese subs and cruisers prowled the Bay of Bengal. On April 5, Japanese planes bombed Colombo harbor, sinking the British heavy cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall. The LSSP decided that the time had come to remove their leaders from jail, lest they risk falling into the hands of the Japanese. Two days later the LSSP spirited the four party leaders and their warden away from the jail to a "safe house" in Nawala. The escape brought down renewed repression. The government arrested a dozen second-tier LSSP activists. The cops combed the island looking for the fugitives. Holed up, with no opportunity to do anything, Philip Gunawardena was anxious to get to the scene of the action in India. The Party is Launched

In May, 1942 the members of the Formation Committee (Goonewardene, Bannerji, and Shastri) met with the two Bombay organizers (Bernard Soya and Chandravadan Shukla) to formally launch the all-India party. The draft program was adopted. Shukla proposed that the new party be called Bolshevik Mazoor Party, the name of his group. The others decided to use the name Bolshevik Leninist Party of India. The meeting established a Provisional Committee to replace the Formation Committee. The Provisional Committee consisted of three comrades from Bombay (Shukla, Goonewardene, and Bernard Soysa), two from Calcutta (Kamalesh Bannerji and Indra Sen), and one from the United Provinces (Onkarnath Shastri). Bernard Soysa was elected Secretary. The day-to-day leadership would be provided by a Bureau based in Bombay, consisting of the resident committee members plus any committee members who might be visiting Bombay. As the committee name shows, the Trotskyist leaders regarded the unification as rather tentative. They anticipated holding a regular

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delegated conference, based on all party members, to ratify these decisions and elect a Central Committee as soon as circumstances permitted. In the interim, the constituent groups were given considerable autonomy in matters not directly related to the party program. Thus, Shukla could continue to function in the name of the BMP, while the Ceylon group could continue to use the familiar name LSSP. 30 In June the Bureau of the BLPI wrote to the Secretariat of the Fourth International in New York with a formal request for affiliation. It's not exactly clear what happened, but the BLPI received no response. The BLPI repeated this request on more than one occasion. The comrades were pleased when they later received publications from New York which referred to the BLPI as "the Indian section of the Fourth International." Excluded from the merger, M.G. Purdy fonned his own party, called the Mazdoor [Workers] Trotskyist Party ofIndia. In May, 1942 Purdy issued his party's program and began to publish Kranti [Revolution] in English. 31 By August the Indian police were already keeping tabs on the Mazdoor Trotskyists. 32 Predictably, Purdy denounced the BLPI as "petit-bourgeois" and "fundamentally similar and organisationally connected to the capitalistic Sama Samaj Party of Ceylon." 33 The MTP stated that workers, and only workers, were allowed to join their party. 34 30

Interview with Chandravadan Shukla, 12 June 1974. Inkilab (voI. 2, no. 11, July 1942) referred to the "Bolshevik Mazdoor (Leninist) Party ofIndia." Another issue oflnkilab (20 November 1942) used the name, "Gujarat Branch of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party of India." Inkilab advertised Bolshevik Leninist as the theoretical organ of the BMP.

31

Mazdoor Trotskyist Party of India. Draft Programme. Issued by the Provisional Committee of the Mazdoor Trotskyist party of India, Calcutta. IS May 1942. Hull: Brynmor Jones Library.

32

Home (Po 1) File No. 717147-Poll (I). "Trotskyist Parties in India," p. 1.

33

The Mazdoor Trotskyist Party of India. Draft Programme, appendix.

34

The MTP membership application form stated, "Any persons who function as peasants, deriving their living from the exploitation of land, or whom, having lost their land, still hope to recover it, or possess any ideology towards independent exploitation of the means of production, or any other person who employs !!!!y wage labourer in any business, workshop or elsewhere, shall be disqualified from membership of the party." "Mazdoor Trotskyist Party. India. Application for Membership," cyclostyled form, I page. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Program of the BLP.

In its final form the party program was a lengthy document, consisting of three sections: a summary of the British conquest ofIndia, a Marxist analysis of the various classes and political groupings in India, and the action program, based largely on the "transitional" demands listed in the Transitional Program adopted by the Fourth International in 1938. Given the sheer size and complexity of the program, it is impossible to do it justice in a summary. I have reprinted the program in its entirety in Appendix B. Here I will limit myself to just a few observations. As noted in the first chapter, Trotsky had generalized his theory of Permanent Revolution in 1928-29, based on the conclusions he drew from events in China, plus the lessons of the Russian Revolutions in 1917. In other words, on the basis of historical analogies he postulated that his theory was applicable to India as well. But he also stressed that the theory would have to be adapted to the specifics of each country. Trotsky himself was not an expert on the colonial question and during the entire 1930s he wrote only a few short articles on India. So the Ceylonese and Indian Trotskyists were breaking new theoretical ground with their program. In 1905 Trotsky derived the hypothesis of Permanent Revolution from a historic analysis of the "peculiarities" of Russian society. The BLPI program tries to do the same for India. The first section is an insightful analysis of how Britain transformed the social foundation of India. It should be noted that the program goes back to the seminal writings ofMarx from the 1850s. 35 As emphasized in the first chapter, Marx did not regard pre-colonial India as feudal; the thesis of "Indian

35

The Ceylonese and Indian Trotskyists evidently relied upon the influential book, India Today (1940), by the British Stalinist theoretician, R. Palme Dutt, for this material. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Dutt was the first to publish the key Marx writings on India in his journal Labour Monthly in 1925. He used those writings in his first book on India: R. Palme Dutt, Modern India (London, 1926). In that book Dutt characterized the Indian bourgeoisie as a "counter-revolutionary force." (p. 17). In India Today, written at the height of the Popular Front, Dutt corrected his previous deviation and emphasized that the national bourgeoisie had a progressive wing.

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feudalism" was in fact concocted by the Stalinists in order to rationalize their line in China during 1925-27. The BLPI program shows how the "remnants of feudalism" in India were for the most part created and sustained by British colonialism: the parvenu zamindars, the Native Princes with short pedigrees, and so forth. The nascent Indian bourgeoisie was not a class apart from these "feudal" landlords; it was organically connected to the whole system that impoverished the vast majority of peasants. The program maintained that the peasantry would be the driving force propelling India to revolution. But their struggle would not, and could not, be limited just to "anti-feudal" goals, like land redistribution, an end to forced labor, and so forth. Indeed, the virtual class war that flared in the countryside during the Non-Cooperation movement (192022), the Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-32), and the period of Congress Ministries (1937-39) brought the poor peasants into direct confrontation with capitalist interests. In all cases the bourgeois nationalists recognized the threat to their interests. If the masses of peasants were to achieve even their immediate demands, they would need to seek allies elsewhere. And for the BLPI that ally could' only be the urban working class. In order to satisfy the land hunger of the peasants, the revolutionary regime would have to encroach upon the property rights of the zamindars and taluqdars, who would surely retaliate and find their own capitalist allies. Sooner rather than later the regime would have to expropriate the landlords, and that would certainly ignite outright class war in the countryside. Likewise, in order to relieve the peasants of their debt burdens, the regime would have to attack the bunyas and usurers, who were merely the front men for the capitalists. The BLPI program concluded that there would be no basis for a stable intermediary regime, what the Stalinists called a "revolutionary democratic dictatorship." And that leads directly to the central thesis of Permanent Revolution: the belated "democratic revolution" in India could only be carried to completion through a socialist government of the working class, supported by the poor peasants and urban middle ,classes.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Geylon

The BLPI did not factor caste into its analysis. That was a real shortcoming. Murray Gow Purdy had hit upon a very important aspect of Indian reality wh.en he formulated his thesis of the "Harijan Revolution." More deft dialecticians could have developed this insight properly. Another shortcoming in the program was the communal question. By 1941-42, when this program was drafted and discussed, the communal issue loomed large in India. 36 The relationship between the Congress and Muslim League had been strained during the period of the Congress Ministries. The Muslim League started taking the Pakistan slogan seriously in 1940. The BLPI program pretty much ignored this burning issue. So did the rest of the left, for that matter. The program characterized Congress as "the class party of the Indian bourgeoisie." That set the BLPI apart from virtually the entire left. Both the Communist Party and the Socialists called Congress a multi-class platform; Murray Gow Purdy took that position too. The BLPI program pointed out that the bourgeoisie paid the piper and called the tune. The Socialists and Communists would never be able to "capture Congress." Even Subhas Bose couldn't do that; after he was elected Congress President in 1939, Gandhi toppled Bose without raising his saintly voice.

36

The communaL. question had plagued the Indian nationalist movement from the start. In the beginning the Indian National Congress reached out to the Muslims. But the Muslim elite were indifferent, if not hostile. Their reasons were easy to understand. Olltnumbered four-to-one by the Hindus, the Muslims didn't share the dream of representative government. Sir Sayyid Ahmad pointed out that democratic elections "would be like a game of dice, in which one man had four dice and the ~ther only one." Quqted in Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Proudest Day: India's Long Roadio Independence (New York, 1997), p. 77. He denied that Congress represented the Muslim "nation" within India. Quoted in Aziz Ahmad, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857-1964 (London, 1967), pp. 32-33. The Muslim League was formed in 1905 as a loyalist party seeking to get the best deal possible for the Muslims. The Muslim League supported the British in WWI. The defeat of Ottoman Turkey introduced strains. The Khilafat Muslims made common cause with Gandhi in the Non-Cooperation movement. The communal rift widened again after Gandhi terminated Non-Cooperation.

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Given that Congress was a "capitalist party;" the BLPI refused to join. The program, however, did recognize the need to send comrades into the Congress to do "fraction work (of course, in all cases under strict party discipline)," in order to win over the "revolutionary and semi-revolutionary elements." In addition, the program stated that the BLPI would "discern the progressive acts of the Congress and support them, but critically and independently, without confounding its organisation, programme or banner with the Congress for a moment. 'March separately, strike together'-must be th~ watchword." The party organizers sent drafts of this program to their American and British co-thinkers, who reprinted it with glowing endorsements. 37 The British group called the BLPI draft program "a document of which the whole Fourth International may well be proud and testifies to the political maturity of the leadership of the Indian party." 38 Reinforcements from Ceylon

In the summer of 1942 Gandhi was getting impatient with the stalemate. Sensing an impending showdown, Philip and his comrades decided to get to India as quickly as possible. In July Philip and Colvin were the first to go. The others followed in groups. Apparently, the party pulled off this operation without the police even suspecting what was happening. Only later did the authorities realize that the Ceylonese Trotskyists had flown the coop "to take part in the 'Quit India' movement then brewing, the success of whiCh they thought would ultimately lead to the independence ofCeylon." 39

37

Reprinted with preface, dated September 1942, i.n The Revolution in India. [Edinburgh] T. Tait Memorial Publication, 1942. Sections reprinted: Fourth International, March 1942, pp. 82-87 and April 1942,pp. 122-25; October 1942, pp. 309-14; "Thesis of Indian Fourth Internationalists, 1941," in Workers International News [London], vol. 5, nos. 3/4, n.d., pp. 24-36 and The World Revolution and the Tasks of the British Working Cla.ss. London: Workers' International League, 1945.

38

Workers International News, vol. 5, no. 4 (October-November 1943), p. 1.

39

"Communist Survey No. 3 of 1944,~' 15 October 1944, p. 5. IOL: LlPJ/12/431.

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The main contingent went to Bombay, the center of the new party. Philip roomed in a Buddhist hostel and assumed the names "Rup Singh" and "Almeida." His brother, Robert, became "Vaidya" and "Prakash." N.M. Perera was "A. Deshmukh." Colvin de Silva used the name "C. R. Govindan." Govindan was the name ofa Tamil plantation worker who had been shot in cold blood on the Mool-Oya Estate in 1940. Colvin de Silva represented his widow in court. In those days the LSSP was proud to be known as a "pro-Tamil" party. The Bombay Provincial unit (comprising Bombay city and Ahmedabad) was the largest branch of the BLP!. Chandravadan Shukla had groups in Ahmedabad and Bhavnagar, including about 20 textile and press workers. With the influx of the Ceylonese, the Bombay Provincial unit numbered aound 40 members in late 1942. Shukla owned a rudimentary printing press which he used to print his Gujarati newspaper, Inkilab, and a political journal, Bolshevik Leninist. With the formation of the BLPI the Bolshevik Leninist became the principal party publication. The first issue that appeared in the name of the BLPI carried a statement on the war by Leslie Goonewardene. 40 The Ceylonese financed,the new party in Bombay. When the leaders escaped the island, they had tied gold coins in their sarongs. After their arrival in Bombayihe Gunawardena brothers arranged to have land holdings in Ceylon sold and the proceeds were sent to Madras. Robert Gunawardena"would make the 2-day train trips from Bombay to Madras to collect the funds. N.M. Perera also supported a number of comrades in Bombay. As the story goes, while walking the streets of Bombay he encountered an Indian he had known during his student days at the London School of Economics. As luck would have it, he didn't remember Perera:s name. So Perera replied, "Vishwanath." This man was involved in nbating a new bank. He offered his old university chum a job. And so one of the most famous Trotskyists of Ceylon helped to start the People's Bank.

40

K Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], "The War and Revolutionary Policy," Bolshevik Leninist, August 1942, reprinted in Permanent Revolution, vo\. 1, no. 1 (January 1943). Author's copy, original in possession ofthe late V. Karalasingham.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Ceylonese police sent detectives up to Bombay to try to spot the fugitives. The Ceylonese had to keep a very low profile. That was difficult. Bombay was alive with political excitement. The Congress Working Committee had called for a mass meeting in Bombay to ratify the "Quit India" resolution that Gandhi had presented in July, 1942. The CPI was on the defensive over its support to the British war effort. Philip Gunawardena had valuable contacts in Congress, Socialist, and Communist circles, many going back to his days in London. Making these contacts was a risky proposition, given the police dragnet. The Ceylonese fugitives found themselves drawn more and more out into the open. Before long, the Bombay party had recruited a handful of young, enthusiastic activists, including Ramesh Karkal and Raghuvir Kodial. The United Provinces Unit claimed some 30 members, mainly in Kanpur and Benares, with a smattering of supporters in Bihar. The Kanpur group consisted largely of textile workers, while the Benares group was students and the Bihar contacts were mainly peasants. One of the young recruits was Raj Narayan Arya, who was active in. the Congress student goup at Allahabad University. In Bengal the BLPI was concentrated in Calcutta and numbered about 30 members, mainly students and professionals. The Calcutta group controlled a union in the Lipton's tea factory. More than any other unit, the Bengal branch had roots and a reputation. The party had a modest periphery and was well known on the Calcutta left. As the BLPI leadership reported to the Fourth International, a "practical united front exists with the Revolutionary Socialist Party (which is the most important group within the Forward Bloc, and whose leaders consist of ex-terrorists). The RSP is an ideologically confused, petty bourgeois party that claims to be Marxist, and is opposing the imperialist war. One important member of the party has already come over to us, and there is the prospect of more coming over." 41 In South India the BLPI now had party groups in both Madura and Madras. More LSSP members, including Lionel Cooray, AlIan

41

C.P.S., L.S.G, E.8.S., Letter to the Secretary, ISFI, June 29, 1942.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Mendis. and M. T. Solomon (the renegade jail warden), moved to Madras. The idea of an lndo-Ceylonese party, in which the Tamils formed the strat~gic link between the island and the mainland, was beginning to become a bit more real. 42 In Ceylon the LSSP was a shadow of its former self. Several dozen party members. including Jack Kotelewala, who had been the Secretary, were behind bars, and more than a dozen party members had already left for India. The government had shut down the Samasamajist and the union newspaper, Kamkaruwa [Worker]. The party had to produce its literature on a portable press which was moved from one safe house to another to avoid detection. Doric de Souza and Esmond Wickremasinghe remained behind in Ceylon to lead the clandestine party. Looking back on those heady days, some LSSP veterans view the exodus to India and formation of the BLPI as a futile exercise in "revolutionary romanticism." 43 In 1942 the handful ofTrotskyists who formed the BLPI truly believed that "tomorrow is ours." One can debate, with the benefit of hindsight, whether or not their mission was hopeless. Whatever their illusions, those determined Trotskyists succeeded, in the face of daunting odds, and with considerable personal courage and sacrifice, to at least unfurl the banner of the Fourth International. No doubt Trotsky, ifhe had lived to see that day, would have been proud.

42

43

K. Appanraj, Anja Nenjan: Thoyizh Sangha Medai S.c.c. Antoni Pillai Vazhkai Varalaru (Chennai, 1995), p. 34.

In 1947 Philip Gunawardena, looking back on the formation of the BLPI, called the founders "revolutionary romantics" who lacked the political maturity needed for such an undertaking. D.P.R. GUllawardena, "Bolshevik-Leninists Should Enter Immediately the Socialist Party ofllldia (CSP)," Internal Bulletin [LSSP], vo!. 1, no. 2 (March 1947), p. 2. In his memoirs Regi Siriwardena opines that the majority of the LSSP "suffered from the same illusion that led Trotsky to form the Fourth International: that the possession of a supposedly correct programme would make people rally round the party." Regi Siriwardena, Working Underground, p. 65. Hector Abhayavardhana, on the other hand, has called the Ceylonese odyssey to India "perhaps one of the few signiiicant episodes in the modem political history of Sri Lanka." Hector Abhayavardhalla, "Selina Perera-the Forgotten Socialist Militant," Pravada [Colombo], vo!. 4, nos. 10-11 (1997), p. 19.

112

CHAPTER FOUR

The "Quit India" Revolt In 1942 the Japanese inflicted a string of humiliating defeats on the British, starting with the capture of Singapore. The British retreated out of Burma in disarray and abandoned Chittagong. 1 After temporizing so long, Gandhi decided to strike at last. He proposed that Congress give the British an ultimatum-either "quit India" immediately or face mass satyagraha. The sly fox hoped to play the Americans against the British. 2 In July, 1942 the Congress Working Committee endorsed Gandhi's proposal and summoned the All-India Congress Committee to ratify that decision. The Stalinists played a devious game. P.C. Joshi vowed never to support the British against "our great patriotic organization." But behind the scenes he was offering to support the war effort in any

The American military produced a secret report, "The Campaign in Burma," which stated "From the start the British forces had executed one withdrawal after another before the advance of the Japanese ... the main body of the British made little or no efforts to stand and give battle ... the piecemeal defense was a piece of stupidity which resulted in tens of thousands of casualties to the troops, the complete destruction of every town and city in Burma, and the loss to both the Chinese and the British of a vast amount of irreplacable installations and equipment." Quoted in M.S. Venkataramani and B.K. Shrivastava, Quit India: The American Response to the 1942 Struggle (New Delhi, 1979), pp. 178-79. Field Marshal William Slim, who was then the Commander of the Fifteenth Indian Corps in Calcutta, described the disarray of the British military and their plans "to destroy, if necessary, the many installations in Calcutta that would have been invaluable to an invader." Quoted in M.S. Venkataramani and B.K. Shrivastava, Quit India, p. 178. After meeting with Gandhi in June, 1942, Jawaharlal Nehru sent a secret report to the US President and Secretary of State, in which he reassured them that "Gandhi does not intend starting any big movement unless he is forced to do so by British policy." Quoted in M.S. Venkataramani and B.K. Shrivastava, Quit India, p. 170. In his interviews with American newsmen around the same time, Gandhi stated that "America can insist on the implementing of the Indian demand as a condition of her financing Britain." Quoted in Harijan, 14 June 1942.

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way. 3 He promised that the CPI would only make "constructive criticism" ofthe government. 4 "It is indeed certain," wrote the Director of Intelligence, "that a successful mass movement, such as Gandhi appears to contemplate, would present an almost irresistible lure to the communists who can ill afford to break completely with the Congress." 5 He was wrong. On the afternoon of August 7 the Congress Working Committee convened in Bombay. A huge throng packed the Gowalia Tank Maidan to hear the speeches. The historic "Quit India" resolution called for "a mass struggle on non-violent lines on the widest possible scale" to force "the immediate ending of British rule in India." Under the glare of the spotlights the CPI members in the Congress Working Committee opposed that resolution. Out in the crowd members of the BLPI distributed a leaflet calling for support to any anti-imperialist struggle that Congress launched, while warning that Gandhi might compromise. The leaflet advocated "a mass general political strike against British imperialism," backed up by rural no-tax and no-rent campaigns "on the widest possible scale, leading to the seizure of land by the peasants through Peasant' Committees." 6 The Congress newspaper commended the Trotskyists for being "all out for immediate independence." 7

On May 12, 1942 P.C. Joshi met a senior Intelligence Bureau officer, Ghulam Ahmed, to discuss his plans, which he had set forth a month earlier in a ten-page confidential memorandum, dated 23 April 1942. The Stalinists used to claim that such documents were anti-Communist fabrications. Unfortunately for the Stalinists, the secret government files are no longer secret. In his book, A History of Indian Freedom Struggle (1986) E.M.S. Namboodiripad, the CPI(M) leader, had to admit that the CPI did in fact "establish contact with the government." IOL: LlPJ/12/431. File poLeS) 1737/1942. IOL: LlPJ/12/431. File poLeS) 1737/1942. "Revolution: The Only Way to Smash Imperialism," printed leaflet. Hoover: LSH, box 102. Excerpts reproduced in Fourth International. July 1943, p. 221. The Chief Secretary ofthe Bengal government made a point of mentioning in his report to the Home Office that the Congress leader, Haripada Sarkar, had this BLPI leaflet in his possession when he was arrested in Calcutta. IOL: LlPJ/12/402. File poLeS) 938/D/97-109. "The Real Fifth Column in India," Harijan. 9 August 1942, p. 271.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The following evening Gandhi electrified the crowd with the battle cry, Karenge ya Marenge! ["Do or Die!"]. But he gave no clear directions. That suggests that Gandhi didn't really intend to launch a mass struggle, or not at that point anyway. He had made it clear all along that he wanted to negotiate a settlement. Just a few days earlier he stressed that the passing of the Quit India resolution would not be the signal for the launching of a mass movement. 8 He stated that he would send a letter to the Viceroy and await a reply. "After my last night's speech," he said to his private secretary on the morning of August 9, "they will never arrest me." 9 The Mahatma was wrong. Shortly after daybreak Gandhi and the entire Congress high command were on their way to jail. "Mob Violence"

As news of the arrests spread in Bombay, agitated crowds gathered in the streets. The police were pelted with stones and bottles. Trams and buses were forced to halt. Government buildings were set ablaze. The city authorities called out the army. By evening gunfire rattled through the streets. The British had jailed the very men who could have restrained the mobs. The Quit India revolt had begun. The Congress Socialist leaders met secretly in Bombay and decided to go underground to lead the revolt. With the Congress high command removed, the Socialists had the reins of leadership in their hands at long last. But they deliberately decided to dissolve their own party and carry out the struggle simply in the name of "the underground Congress." That was not some kind of ruse. Most of the Socialist leaders embraced Gandhi's vision ofa mass non-violent revolution. 10 The Hindu, 8 August 1942. Dinanath Gopal Tendulkar, Mahatma, vo!. 6 (Bombay, 1953), p. 216; and Rajendra Prasad, Autobiography (Bombay, 1957), p. 538. 10

The Socialists set up an underground radio transmitter in a Bombay hideout and every evening broadcast news of the movement. Ram Manohar Lohia, regarded as the brains behind these broadcasts, spoke of the mass movement as a new kind of revolution. Syamalendu Sengupta and Gautam Chatterjee (eds.), Secret Congress Broadcasts and Storming Railway Tracks During Quit India Movement (New Delhi, 1988), p. 73.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

In contrast the BLPI issued a call to action that stressed the necessity for revolutionary leadership. 11 "We not merely support unconditionally the movement towards National Independence even under the leadership of the Congress, but we bear the whole brunt of the struggle and, in the fullness of time, wrest the leadership from the Congress High Command which is bound to prove unequal to the historic task before us, for it has been already weighed in the balance and found wanting and as such, in future is not likely to fare better." The Trotskyists plastered walls with revolutionary posters. 12 The BLPI appealed to the troops. "Do not be a party to a blood bath of Indian masses," one leaflet exhorted. "Revolt against the dehumanising slave-code of military discipline." 13 Another leaflet explained that only revolution could save the USSR and defeat fascism. 14 In his memoirs Robert Gunawardena recalled his dangerous missions to distribute these leaflets. Had he been caught, he could have been shot. The CPI, on the other hand, ran around trying to restore the peace and get the workers back to work. The CPI prepared secret reports that documented how Communists were able to prevent hartals and sabotage in Kanpur, Bombay, Jamshedpur, Calicut, Lahore, and Madras. 15 The Director of Intelligence reported that "the most satisfactory feature in their recent utterances has been an unequivocal condemnation of Gandhi's new movement." 16 The CPI was duly 11

12

"March Separately, Strike Together," leaflet signed by the BLPI, one page, n.d. Hoover: LSH, box 52. IOL: LlPJ/12/484. File Pol.(S) 228211942.

13

"The Real Nature of the Anti-Fascist Peoples' War," printed leaflet signed BLPI, n.d. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

14

"What is to be Done? Revolution - The Only Way of Defeating Fascism," printed ,leaflet signed BLPI, n.d. [1942]. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

15

These reports were delivered to Sir Reginald Maxwell and forwarded to Additional Secretary ~ir Richard Tottenham. These reports became part ofthe National Archives of India after independence. Who knows what else was documented in the thousands of other files that the British bureaucracy burned just before they quit India.

16

IOL: LIPJ/12/43 1. File Pol.(S) 1737/1942,

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

rewarded. When all meetings were banned in Bombay, the CPI was allowed to hold pro-war rallies. 17 Rebellions in the Countryside

Within days the disturbances spread across India. The storm center was Bihar and the United Provinces, the Congress heartland. A magistrate's report on the situation in Begusarai (Bihar) was typical: "The news of the arrest of the all-India leaders caused wide agitation, especially among the Congressites, and the student's section ... young volunteers were deputed to villages to organise volunteers ... From the afternoon the rural mob began to take the upper hand and the student section began to loose prominence ... Then the situation was no longer in the hands of the Congress." 18 Acting pretty much spontaneously, villagers uprooted train tracks and cut telegraph and phone lines. In Madhuban a mob used elephants to break down the walls of the police station. In Chandi thousands of peasants, brandishing spears and knives, forced the police to flee. In Monghyr the District Magistrate reported that the police "would have been torn to pieces" if they returned. 19 Even without a purposeful leadership, the peasants pressed their own demands and in several places formed local "Gandhi Raj" governments. Viceroy Linlithgow cabled London, "I am engaged here in meeting by far the most serious rebellion since that of 1857. . . Mob violence remains rampant over large tracts of the countryside." 20 The BLP. in Action

After the initial explosion, the BLPI group in Bombay focused its efforts on making contact with other underground leftists. It's not clear 17 18

19 20

People's War, 23 August 1942. Vinita Damodaran, Broken Promises: Popular Protest, Indian Nationalism and the Congress Party in Bihar 1935-1946 (Delhi, 1992), pp. 224-25. Vinita Damodaran, Broken Promises, pp. 243. Arun Bhuyan, The Quit India Movement (New Delhi, 1975), p. 94.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

to what extent the BLPI was able to contact the underground Congress militants. 21 The BLPI informed the Secretary of the Fourth International in New York that "the existence and line ofthe party became widely known in political circles." 22 The Director of the Intelligence Bureau believed that the Trotskyists were influencing the Congress. "Distinct traces of Fourth International influences," he wrote, "have been discernable in many recent illegal Congress bulletins and pamphlets." 23 The BLPI recruited student activists in Bombay, like Vinayak Purohit, a firebrand who had been arrested for attacking a policeman and subsequently joined an underground Marxist study class. The Trotskyists also recruited a number of young Royists, such as S.P. Udyawar, who were opposed to their party's collaboration with the government. It had been revealed that M.N. Roy was being paid 13,000 rupees a month for his pro-war services. 24 "These former Royists," writes Hector Abhayavardhana, "were the real sinews of the BLPI in Bombay." 25 The Bombay Trotskyists organized an active workers group in the General Motors factory, a hotbed during the Quit India revolt. The

21

22

23 24

2S

Philip Gunawardena, the Ceylonese leader who was in Bombay at that point, personally knew a number of prominent Congress activists from his old days in New York and London. One of his old associates was N.B. Parulekar, the prominent Bombay Advocate who led a group of students to ransack the Bombay High Court. Philip knew Parulekar in New York, where he was associated with the New York Chapter of the Hindustan Association of America, an offshoot of the Hindustan Ghadr Association. IOL: L/PJ/12/33. K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardena), Letter to the Secretary, International Secretariat, 4th International, 25 July 1944. Typed, 2 pages. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38. IOL: L/PJ/12/484. File Pol.(S) 228211942. The Labour member of the Governor General's Executive Council disclosed the details in the Central Assembly in April, 1944. Dipti Kumar Roy, Trade Union Movement in India: Role of M.N. Roy (Calcutta, 1990), pp. 90-9\. It was also rumored that the CPI was getting government money, too. We now know from declassified government files that the CPI was spendingfive times its income just to publish Peoples' War. LlPJ/12/431. File Pol.(S) 1737/1942. Hector Abhayavardhana, "Selina Perera - The Forgotten Socialist Militant," p. 20. Also interview with V. Karalasingham, 22 May 1974.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

union leader, H.R. Pardiwala, a staunch Congress Socialist, had been arrested on August 19, 1942. The Trotskyists started a cyclostyled factory bulletin in Hindi and English. The Director of the Intelligence Bureau took special note of these activities in one of the most critical war plants. 26 The police stepped up their efforts to find the underground Trotskyists. In Calcutta the BLPI joined a "United Socialist People's Front," which included the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the Forward Bloc, and the Congress Socialists. 27 According to government reports, the front carried out sabotage. As one BLPI "member recalled, "We opposed wanton destruction of trams and government property as tactically premature and adventurist." 28 The Calcutta group distributed tens of thousands of agitational leaflets. The police cracked down. Kamalesh Bannerji was arrested and locked up for the duration of the war. His right-hand man, Indra Sen, was interred in his home far from Calcutta. In the United Provinces and Bihar the BLPI groups issued leaflets and led demonstrations in Mirzapur, Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad, Benares, and Azamgara. In September, 1942 the police, acting on a tip from the Communist Party, arrested Onkarnath Shastri, the senior BLPI leader in those parts. 29 In Jamalpur Sitanshu Das, a student militant who had come around the BLPI earlier in Calcutta, issued leaflets on his own. "In Jamalpur near Monghyr," states one contemporary government report, "some very objectionable leaflets purporting to emanate from the Bolshevik Leninist party, otherwise known as the Fourth International, were found." 30 Several of these youthful

26

"Communist Survey No. 3 of 1944," 15 October 1944, p. 5. IOL: LIPJ/12/431. File Pol.(S) 2002/1944.

27

IOL: L/PJ/12/402. File Pol.(S) 938/D/134-143.

28

Interview with Hiranand Mishra, 7 February 1974.

29

Letter from Raj N arayan Arya to author, 31 March 1997.

30

Government of Bihar, Freedom Movement Files-1943-File No. 79, reproduced in Partha Sarathi Gupta (ed.), Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India. 1943-44. Part 3 (Delhi, 1997), p. 2336.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Trotskyists were eventually arrested and imprisoned in the Patna camp jail. 31 In South India the BLPI cadres led student demonstrations in both Madura and Madras. They then went underground along with their Congress sympathizers, notably T. G. Krishnamurthy and his group, who were very sympathetic to the Fourth International and helped to win over other radical Congressmen throughout the province. One conservative Congressman complained about objectionable leaflets in Madura issued by "the so-called Fourth International." 32 Guerrilla Resistance

When the unrest died down in the cities, the Congress radicals shifted their activities to the countryside. The Socialists formed armed bands in V.P. and Bihar, called Azad Dastas, to harass the British, disrupt the war effort, and incite rural revolts. Jayaprakash Narayan, the Socialist leader who had just escaped from jail, set up a guerrilla training camp in Nepal. The Azad Dastas carried out dacoities (robberies) to finance their activities, a practice that the early Indian terrorists had also used. The Stalinists attacked the BLPI, and everyone else who supported the Quit India revolt, as "Fifth Columnists." 33 People s War called Trotskyists "criminals and gangsters who help the Fascists." 34 P.C. Joshi demanded that CPI members treat Trotskyists as "traitors" who had to be "driven out of political life and exterminated." 35 In response

JI

"Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," 20 September 1944. The BLPI sent copies of this report to the American and British sections of the Fourth International. The British RCP reprinted the document in an internal bulletin, News Commentary. vol. 1,4 August 1945. Hull: Haston, DJH/15G/14b.

J2

JJ

Report dated 15 September 1942, reprinted in P.N. Chopra (ed.), Quit India Movement: British Secret Documents (New Delhi, 1986), p. 162. IOL: LIPJ/12/431. File Pol.(S) 236511943.

J4

Peoples War, 7 March 1943,4 June 1943, and 12 September 1943.

JS

IOL: LlPJ112/485. File Pol.(S) 135311943; and IOL: LlPJ/12/485. File Pol.(S) 1353/1943.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

the underground BLPI organization blasted the CPI as "pimps and procurers for British Imperialism" and "confusionist disruptors, government hirelings, and police agents." 36 In the Bolshevik Leninist Philip Gunawardena blasted the CPI. He stated that while Trotskyists do not advocate sabotage as a political program, they solidarize with the masses in revolt. "The BLP of India supports unreservedly the struggle against British Imperialism, including all acts of sabotage in which the masses participate." 37 He declared that the BLPI, if it had the resources, would seek to "give a leadership to these scattered peasant revolts by actually participating in them." Many Indians despised the CPI because it took orders from Russia, rather than being true to Mother India. 38 The charge of treason continues to haunt the CPI. The Trotskyists criticized the CPI for the opposite reason-that it was betraying Soviet internationalism: "Unlike the minions of the Kremlin boss, the 10shis and Mukherjees of India, who have degenerated to the position of imperialist agents, we stand for independent working class aid to the Soviet Union and will not for 36

"Stalinist Traitors Unmasked," printed double-sided leaflet, n.d. [August 1942]. Hoover: LSH, box 52. Also Fourth International, July 1943, p. 22l.

37

Rup Singh [Philip Gunawardena], Bolshevik Leninist, February 1943. Hoover: LSH, box 52. Some BLPI leaders thought Philip was too categorical in endorsing sabotage. Doric de Souza, for example, noted that sabotage "bears the c1assimpress of the petit-bourgeois, and offers (of itself) no challenge to the property relations of the established order." He also questioned whether the BLPI would "actually participate" in peasant revolts. "In the absence of proletarian struggle on a revolutionary scale in the cities of India, no party can bring 'working class leadership' artificially to the village struggle: in the process such a party would only de-class itself as the CP of China became a peasant party from 1926-29 onwards." S. Livera [Doric de Souza], "Working Class Leadership of the Peasantry," Permanent Revolution, January-March 1944, pp. 6,7,9. Author's copy. It seems that the American Trotskyists also were wary of Philip's generalizations. The editors of Fourth International reprinted Philip's article, minus the offending passage quoted above (with no explanation). Rup Singh, "The August 1942 Struggle," Fourth International, October 1944, pp. 309-14.

38

IOL: LlPJIl2/43l. File Pol.(S) 2333/1942. One recipient of this report in the India Office wrote across the top: "Poor things! They will soon be in as false a position in India as the British government is!"

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a moment renounce our struggle against British Imperialism ... The ultimate defense of the Soviet Union will be determined on the correlation of forces in the international arena. This calls for an uncompromising struggle against the imperialist bourgeoisie and an intensification of the class struggle leading to Socialist Revolution in the belligerent countries." 39 At the same time the BLPI criticized the Socialists for their lack of revolutionary program: "their methods did not differ in quality from the Gandhians. They only substituted violent action for non-violence. That was all. They provided no program whereby the masses could be led along the path of struggle." 40 Summing up, the BLPI concluded that the Socialists, for all their heroism, offered "only an aggressive nationalism." 41 Given the lack of leadership, the revolt "never really went beyond the proportions of a violent political demonstration, and when it met the full blast of organised state repression, it collapsed." 42 Purdy, the Trotskyist Dacoit

The Quit India revolt was a dream come true for Murray Gow Purdy, the apostle of violent revolution who had his own group separate from the BLPI. On the eve of the revolt the Purdyites issued a leaflet that pledged their support for any anti-imperialist struggle and called for the formation of strike committees to prepare for a "workers satyagraha general strike."43 The next day, when the violence started, the Purdyites went underground and quickly produced the first issue of a newspaper, 39

"Twenty Fifth Anniversary of the October Revolution," n.d., signed by the BLPI. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

40

H.A. Vardhan [Hector Abhayavardhana], The August Struggle and· its Significance (Bombay, 1947), p. 5. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

41

"The Indian Struggle," Permanent Revolution, April-June 1943, p. 56. Hoover: LSH, box 53. Gafur Khan, "Lessons of the First Phase of the Anti-Imperialist Struggle," Permanent Revolution, January 1943, p. 7. Author's copy, original in possession of the late V. Karalasingham.

42

43

"Support for Revolutionary Satyagraha: Mazdoor Trotskyist Party Programme," 8 August 1942. Hull: Brynmor Jones Library.

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Kranti [Revolution]. 44 The Purdy group called for the immediate formation of "Revolutionary Satyagraha Freedom Committees," which were to gather together "every class from capitalist to sweeper," united around the sole demand for India's freedom. 45

The Purdy group tried to foment labor strikes. In Hyderabad Mallikarjun Rao participated in a militant strike in the Nizam State Railway. The Purdy group exhorted the strikers to commit sabotage. "Damage the engines, tear up the rails, and at any cost prevent any railway from working for a single day ... even if costs blood and life." 46 In the United Provinces one of his recruits, Ambika Singh, a notorious revolutionary nationalist, formed a guerrilla group that operated in the area around Jaunpur and Sultanpur. Armed with homemade pistols, they robbed postal stations to finance their activities. 47 The police reported that "a gang of Congress terrorists under Ambika Singh has instituted a minor reign of terror." 48 Several of his men were killed or captured in clashes with the police. 49 Ambika himself was arrested in 1943, sentenced to death, and later pardoned. 50 Purdy was no armchair radical. He, too, carried out "revolutionary expropriations." One heist in Bombay was quite sensational. 51 On the night of April 23, 1944 Purdy and an accomplice, Edward Dennis Gee,

44 45

46

47

Kranti, vo!. 1, no. 1 (August 1942), p. 1. Hull: Brynmor Jones Library.

"Revolutionary Satyagraha Freedom Committee," n.d. [1942]. Hull: Brynmor Jones Library. Also "Mazdur Tra. Parti Krantikari Satyagrahala madat karate," 2sided leaflet, n.d. Hull: Haston, DJH/15G/14a. "From the Mazdoor Trotskyist Party of India. To our Comrades on Strike on the Nizam State Railway," n.d. Hull: Brynmor Jones Library. IOL: LIPJ/5/271. File Po!. 251111943.

48

Report dated 20 October 1942, reprinted in P.N. Chopra (ed.), Quit India Movement: British Secret Documents (New Delhi: Interprint, 1986), p. 239. MTP leaflets are cited pp. 176-77.

49

IOL: LIPJ/51271. File Po!. 3212/1943.

50

Arun Chandra Bhuyan, The Quit India Movement (New Delhi, 1975), p. 131.

51

Times o/India, 19 February 1946.

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a deserter, got dressed up as police officers, went to the home of a wealthy diamond dealer, knocked on the door, and presented him with a warrant that charged him with having business dealings with the enemy. The poor man protested his innocence. Purdy and Gee demanded to see proof in the form of his business papers. And so the victim took the duo to his shop in Mumbadevi, opened the safe, and reached in to retrieve the papers. Gee knocked him unconscious, and they fled with over Rs. 200,000 in gold and currency. 52 Five months later the police nabbed Purdy and Gee and subsequently found their safe deposit boxes containing "currency notes, gold sovereigns, and American coinage to the value of about Rs. 90,000, some chloroform, gelignite, detonators and a diagram of a home-made grenade." 53 Purdy was charged with "dacoity" and "possession of high explosives." The government saw this as a "startling reminder of the danger which representatives of the Fourth International may present to security." 54 Standing trial at Bombay High Court, Purdy was defiant. When the judge ordered his chains removed in the courtroom, Purdy retorted, "What does it matter if I am in chains when all of India is in chains!" The common jury found the two "not quilty." The judge called for a retrial. In January, 1946 a special jury found Purdy and Gee guilty of impersonating a public servant, using a forged document, robbery, and causing hurt. Purdy was sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment and Gee to five years of the same. 55 On the trip back to the jail Purdy asked his guards if he could use the toilet in a wayside restaurant. Allowed to go unguarded, he slipped through the window and escaped. He and one of his comrades, Mahendranath Singh, hid in a hut at Malad, 15 miles outside of Bombay. A week later the police found them. Purdy was imprisoned in the Arthur 52

Times of India, 6 March 1946.

53

IOL: LlPJ/12/431. File Pol.(S) 200211944.

54

IOL: LlPJ/12/431. File Pol.(S) 2002/1944.

55

Free Press [Bombay], 18 February 1946.

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Road Jail. As fate would have it, his right hand man, Mallikarjun Rao, was there. In April Purdy and Rao, along with two other inmates, attempted to escape. 56 Purdy jumped the prison wall and hid in a garbage truck. Arrested again, he was taken to the Yeravda Central Prison in poona. The Purdyites formed a defense committee, endorsed by prominent labor leaders. 57 The BLPI also demanded Purdy's release. 58 But the government regarded Purdy as a menace. So did the Congress. purdy was one of the last political prisoners to be released in 1947 and the new government promptly booted him out of the country. 59

56

"Two Years Jail for Purdy," Times of India, 1 March 1946.

57

The President of the Purdy Defense Committee was Abid Ali Jafferbhoy, a leading Congressman and President of the B.E.S.T. (Bombay Electric Supply and Tramways Company) union. Jafferbhoy later became Deputy Labor Minister after Independence. Other Committee members included: Ashok Mehta, the prominent Congress Socialist; Pratap Singh, the editor of Daily Hindustan; and P.v. Gadgil, editor of Lokmanya.

58

"Stop This Discrimination - Release Purdy Immediately!" Spark, no. 9 (mid-July 1946), p. 5.

59

Purdy was deported from India in December 1947. In London, Purdy contacted the Revolutionary Communist Party, the British section of the FI. Purdy was critical of their "easy-going smug complacency." He felt they were soft on Stalinism and afraid to use violence against the fascist fringe groups. "In other words, as it seems to me, the very basis of Trotskyism and the Fourth International is being gradually abandoned." The Socialist [Bombay], 23 May 1948. Purdy issued an "Open Letter" to the RCP and the FI. "Petty-Bourgeois Betrayal ofTrotskyism: To the Secretariat of Fourth International," Socialist, 1 August 1948, p. 5; also "Open Letter to the Secretariat and Masses Fourth International," 3 May 1948. Hull: Haston, DJHI ISG/S. He was very critical of the FI leadership, and in particular the American SWP, which "committed several blunders, to say the least" and "failed to give a correct leadership." Socialist, 6 June 1948. His main complaint was that the FI had supported the LSSP, "essentially a middle class party." Disillusioned, Purdy withdrew from active politics. No one seems to know what happened to him. According to one account, he returned to South Africa and got rich. Letters from Baruch Hirson to author, 23 April 1992 and 21 September 1997. He states that this information comes from Fanny Klenerman (the first wife of Frank Glass) in an interview she gave late in life. He notes that her memory was very poor at this point. "Fanny says that Purdy returned to South Africa and made a lot of money. Fanny could be venomous in her comments, and given her dislike of Purdy this must be treated with caution."

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"Extremely Objectionable" Propaganda

The Fourth International championed the Quit India revolt. "The Indian Revolution is on the order of the day," declared the British Trotskyists. "We must understand that every blow struck by the Indian workers against British Imperialism is a blow against our own exploiters." 60 The French Trotskyists, working deep underground, hailed the struggle in India in La Verite, their newspaper. 61 The International Executive Committee, based in New York , issued a ringing manifesto. 62 "As Russia was the weakest link in the imperialist chain in 1917, so India is today /" The manifesto emphasized that "National liberation can only be won through the agrarian revolution" and raised the slogans, "Abolition oflandlordism" and "Liquidation of agricultural indebtedness." Since Congress has always protected the zamindars, "only the industrial proletariat can lead the peasantry in the revolution." The manifesto raised the call for a Constituent Assembly in India. That had been lacking in the BLPI propaganda. "Only the successful revolution of the workers', peasants' and soldiers' committees against the British Raj and its native allies can guarantee the establishment of a Constitutent Assembly." In other words, this democratic stage will be realized only through the unfolding socialist revolution in India, which will culminate in a "Workers' and Peasants' Government." The British government regarded this manifesto as "extremely objectionable." 63 The India Office warned the Home Office that "even if only a limited number of copies get out of the country, they can do a

60

61

"End Indian Slavery," Militant [Socialist Left of the Labour Party], n.s. no. 9 (September 1942), p. 1; and Ajit Roy, "Some British 'Friends' of India," Fourth International, March 1943, p. 95. "Vive l'independence des Indes!," La Verite, no. 30 (10 April 1942); and "Les Indes en lutte pour leur liberte," La Verite, no. 37 (15 September 1942).

62

The manifesto was reprinted in May, 1943 by the Bengal Committee ofthe BLPI as the first pamphlet in its Fourth Internationalist Library series.

63

IOL: LlPJ/12/649.Files Pol.(S) 1984/1942 and Pol.(S) 1967/1942.

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great deal of damage." The government instructed the Indian postal authorities to confiscate the issues of Fourth International and the British Trotskyist newspaper, Socialist Appeal, which reprinted the manifesto. The government debated whether or not to ban Socialist Appeal outright. The Fourth International had become a thorn in their side. The Smash

The government, noting that the Trotskyists have received "a measure of prominence lately," stepped up their manhunt. 64 The Communist Party willingly offered its services. The CPI got wind of the fact that the BLPI was leading a Marxist study group in Bombay. The Communists planted a student, named Kulkarni, in the group. 65 The information he provided was passed to the police. The government now had the BLPI leaders in its sights, thanks to the Stalinists: At that point N.M. Perera shared a communal flat in Sir Harmakar Road with several comrades, including Robert Gunawardena and Lionel Cooray. Perera got suspicious that his employers were on to him. He quit his job and got another flat in a working-class area known as Girangaon. A party sympathizer arranged for him to interview for a job at a college in Ahmedabad. When he left Bombay, Phi lip Gunawardena and his wife, Kusuma Gunawardena, plus five comrades who had been sharing their place, moved to Perera's empty flat, thinking it was safer. They were wrong. Thanks to the CPI, the Bombay police had that new place under surveillance, too. Before dawn on July 15, 1943 a police party arrived and knocked on the door. Thinking it was the milkman, Kusuma got up an opened the door. The cops barged in, brandishing revolvers. The Trotskyists were ordered to lie on the floor while the police searched the place.

64

IOL: LlPJ/12/484. File Pol.(S) 228211942; and Home (Pol) File No. 717147-Poll (I). "Trotskyist Parties in India," p. 2. National Archives of India, New Delhi.

6S

The BLPI documents do not give his full name. It might have been Rajaram Gopal Kulkami, who was a Communist Party supporter and leader of the North Bombay Students' Union. But that is speculation on my part.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

They found a scrap of paper with information revealing N.M. Perera's whereabouts. He was nabbed later in Ahmedabad. They police arrested the Gunawardenas, Hector Abhayavardhana, and five young Indian comrades. 66 The police also knew where Leslie and Vivienne Goonewardene were living in Matunga. At that point Colvin de Silva and Selina Perera were roomates there as well. But Vivienne had already become suspicious when her ayah [nursemaid] mentioned that a man had been following her. Vivienne quickly packed up, and as soon as the others returned, they all fled. When the police party arrived, the flat was empty. They waited. Bemard Soysa arrived later and walked into the trap. The Stalinist spy came to the police station and identified the Trotskyist prisoners. The police inspector who interrogated Hector Abhayavardhana stated, "You represent the most dangerous contagion that has been brought into this country. Whether in jail or outside, we will not allow you to infect the educated youth. We shall see to it that you are effectively isolated." 67 The Trotskyists, including Kusuma and her infant son, were jailed at the Arthur Road Prison. In Madras the police arrested Lionel Cooray, Reggie Senanayake, and Solomon, the jail guard who had fled with the Samasamajists. 68 Robert Gunawardena remained at large, trying to regroup the handful of comrades who were left in Bombay and Madras. But a few months later he, too, was arrested, roughed up in the police station, and jailed, along with several more Indian comrades. The Director of the Intelligence Bureau reported that the BLPI had been "severely

66

The Indian BLPI members were Vinayak Purohit, Shanta Patel, Ramesh Karkal, Raghuvir Kodial, and P.G. Koppar.

67

Interview with Hector Abhayavardhana, 18 December 1997, and subsequent letter to author, 13 November 1997.

68

"Police Raid Trotskyist Centres in Bombay and Madras," Permanent Revolution (July-September 1943), p. 27, and "The Stalinist-Police Alliance-The Summit of Popular Frontism," Permanent Revolution (January-March 1944), p. 21. Author's copies, originals in possession of the late V. Karalasingham.

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weakened by a round-up in Madras, Bombay and Ahmedabad between July and September when nine Ceylonese Trotskyist absconders and eleven Indian accomplices were arrested." 69 Conditions in jail were horrible. "I was herded together with the most uncouth elements in India," recalled N.M. Perera. "There were lepers, T.B. patients, and V.D. victims. I could not eat or drink. I lost nearly thirty or fourty pounds." 70 Robert Gunawardena recalled, "Life in this jail was one of the worst ordeals that I have had to endure in life. Fourteen of us were packed in a cell that was only 18 feet by 15 feet wide. And the cell was crawling with bugs." 71 Philip Gunawardena evidently took it in stride; he fraternized with the pimps, taunted the guards, and remained feisty. 72 The Ceylonese were eventually sent back to Ceylon. Robert Gunawardena had his leg broken by a guard during his trip. He was kept chained to a hospital bed. Philip Gunawardena and N.M. Perera were sentenced to two years' imprisonment and incarcerated in Badulla. Philip Gunawardena made a fiery speech when he was brought before a magistrate for sentencing. "I escaped from prison in April 1942, for the purpose of helping the tiny group of Fourth Internationalists in India to build a party of the working class that can take advantage of the crises in Indian society that are breaking out in rapid succession. My colleagues and I timed our escape to be in India at one of the most important crises in her history. We are glad that we were able to play an infinitesimally small part, no doubt, in the movement that took place in India from August 1942 ... Time is with us. Imperialism is doomed. The future is the working class." 73

69

IOL: LlPJ/12/431. File Pol.(S) 2365/1943.

70

N.M. Perera interview with H.L.D. Mahindapala, Ceylon Observer, 7 July 1963. See also E.P. De Silva, A Short Biography of Dr NM Perera, p. 23.

71

Robert Gunawardena, "My Political Life," Daily Mirror, 18 December 1971.

72

Interview with Hector Abhayavardhana, Colombo, 18 December 1997.

73

Philip Gunawardena, speech in Magistrate's Court, Kandy, 8 February 1944. Reprinted in Militant [USA], 14 October 1944; Workers International News, vol. 5, no. 7 (December 1944), p. 15; and Socialist Appeal, December 1944, p. 3.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Optimism and False Expectations

In 1940, shortly before his assasination, Trotsky predicted that the war would beget revolutionary battles anew. The Fourth International regarded the Quit India revolt as the first skirmish. The BLPI, despite its small size and forced clandestinity, remained optimistic. The Trotskyists believed that History was sweeping Stalinism into its proverbial dustbin. The fact that Stalin dissolved the Comintern in 1943, as a gesture of appeasement to his allies, seemed to be another powerful confirmation. In 1943 Ajit Roy confidently predicted the death of the Communist Party of India: "The coming months will witness the complete disintegration and disappearance of Stalinism as a factor in Indian politics. With the decline of Stalinism and its fast approaching death, Marxism is once again coming to life in the young and growing cadres of the Fourth International in India. In the months to come, as the vanguard of the anti-imperialist masses of India turns away in disgust from the bankrupt policies of the bourgeois nationalists and their 'socialist' allies, they will find in the programme and principles of the Fourth International, the only guarantees for the ultimate freedom of India." 74 Trotsky had often spoke about the "right to revolutionary optimism." This, however, went far beyond optimism. In hindsight it is painfully clear that the Trotskyists had set themselves up for a big fall when events took a very different course.

74

Ajit Ray, ".India: The Role of the Congress Leaders," Workers International News. vol. 5, no. 12 (August 1943), p. 7.

130

CHAPTER FIVE

The Interlude As the Quit India movement ebbed, the tide of war turned. The British military, now under the command of Mountbatten, held the line on the India-Burma border. In 1944 Allied forces repulsed the Japanese in Assam and the Arakan, beginning the counter-offensive that eventually dislodged the enemy from Burma. The crisis that threatened the Raj had passed. The Congress was in disorderly retreat. Gandhi disowned the Quit India revolt, dropped the demand for Indian independence, and offered to support the war in return for Congress representation in a future "National Government." The British contemptuously rebuffed his overture. Life in most areas of India had returned to normal. The factories were humming, thanks to the CPI and the Royists. In Bengal the calm was the stillness of the graveyard. A famine, caused largely by the dislocations of the war, killed more than three million. The period from late 1943 to 1945 was an interlude. The BLPI finally got the opportunity to catch its breath, recoup after all the harsh blows, and focus on what was its most urgent task: consolidating, educating, and expanding the party. Bombay

After the crippling police smash in 1943, the Bombay BLPI group was reduced to just a handful of young comrades. The party units in Bengal and Ceylon sent reinforcements to Bombay. I But they had a hard time

Karuna Kant Roy, who had been arrested in V.P. during the Quit India disturbances, went to Bombay after he was released. He used the pseudonym "Ranadhir," or "Randy" for short. The reinforcements from Ceylon included Hector Abhayavardhana, Trevor Drieberg, Doric de Souza and his fiancee, Violet Goonewardene.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

getting established; there was a severe housing shortage. Hector Abhayavardhana couldn't find a room to let and eventually took refuge with sympathetic Congress Socialists in a remote village in Baroda. The BLPI group in Bombay limped along. Morale was low. In early 1945 the police pounced again. The two Ceylonese leaders in Bombay, Doric de Souza and V. Karalasingham, were arrested. 2 Doric did time in a Bombay jail and was deported back to Ceylon. And so once again, the BLPI had to start all over in Bombay. Calcutta

After the police raids in Bombay in July, 1943 the Ceylonese fugitives who had escaped made their way to Calcutta. Assuming South Indian names, they settled in the Entally suburbs. Compared to Bombay, the morale in the Calcutta branch was good. The party group in Calcutta had roots in the local political scene. There was plenty of work to be done. During the war years, when the government proscribed most political activity, the various left and nationalist parties used the student federations as legal covers. Hence, they were highly politicized. The BLPI recruited some talented young students, like Sitanshu Das, who later became a well-known journalist and author. "For a while," he recalls, "I was the group's public face, addressing public meetings and going to meet people in other parties. Indeed, during this period I lost support of my close student friends who were disappointed that I was moving close to the outlandish Trotskyist group." 3 In 1945 Sitanshu Das and other BLPI student leaders were able to pass a resolution opposing the CPI's "Peoples' War" line at a Bengal Students' Congress conference in Mymensingh. The Ceylonese transplants mentored these bright Bengali intellectuals. 4 Leslie Goonewardene wrote a primer on Marxism-

2

Bombay Free Press, 19 March 1945.

3

Letter from Sitanshu Das to the author, 24 October 2003.

4

Hector Abhayavardhana, "Selina Perera - The Forgotten Socialist Militant," p. 21.

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Trotskyism that became a party textbook. 5 The distinguished Bengali poet, Humayun Kabir, contributed the preface. 6 Colvin de Silva worked with fanatical energy, studying, writing, and leading classes. But life in Calcutta had its frustrations. "I detected in Colvin," recalls Sitanshu Das, "a measure of exasperation with the inability to interact with his peer group in Indian society. Their underground condition made that impossible. The BLPers they interacted with in India didn't have in Indian society the effectiveness the LSSP leaders enjoyed in Ceylon." 7 The Calcutta group stepped up its efforts to penetrate the working class. The jute workers in the industrial belt were notoriously difficult to organize. 8 After more than fifteen years of dogged work the CPI had unionized less than a sixth of the jute workers. In May, 1944 the BLPI started a monthly paper in Hindi, the language of many of the migrant laborers. But the party was handicapped by the lack of a full-time organizer. In addition, the group spread itself too thin, expending too much energy "in extensive work instead of concentrating on one or two factories as circumstances demanded." 9 The Calcutta group had several very talented writers, such as Purnangshu K. Roy, a brilliant intellectual who later became a physicist. He went by the nickname, "Nitai Babu." 10 Another gifted propagandist was Hiranand Mishra, nicknamed "Hiru." During 1943-

V.S. Parthasarathi [Leslie Goonewardene), Marxist Study Course (Calcutta, 1945). Hull: Brynmor Jones Library. This pamphlet became a standard text for Trotskyist education in India and Ceylon. Humayun Kabir (1906-1969) graduated from Oxford University in 1931. During the war he became President of the Railways Association. After Independence he became Education Minister. Letter from Sitanshu Das to the author, 24 October 2003. Ranajit Das Gupta, Labour and Working Class in Eastern India: Studies in Colonial History (Calcutta, 1994), pp. 56-137 and 209-249. "Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," p. 10. 10

"Nitai" is the shortened name of Prabhu Nityananda, the foremost associate of the sixteenth century Vaishnava saint, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. In those days "Nitai" was a much favored name for a male baby in Bengali Hindu homes.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

44 the Bengal unit published a series of pamphlets. 11 The BLPI also published a quarterly journal, Permanent Revolution, that was so literate that British Intelligence called the Calcutta Trotskyists "academic votaries ofTrotskyism." The BLPI recognized the need for a popular newspaper that would be intelligible to the students who had just become radicalized during the Quit India revolt. 12 But that paper, and other initiatives, couldn't be carried forward due to the lack of funds. The Trotskyists, who aimed at nothing less than world revolution, sometimes couldn't come up with enough money to print Permanent Revolution. 13 United Provinces and Bihar

The leader ofthe u.P. and Bihar branches, Onkarnath Shastri, had been arrested in 1942, and the handful of remaining cadres were jailed not long thereafter. 14 In late 1944 the Calcutta center sent a comrade to re-establish contact with the isolated students in Allahabad who had been left adrift. In September, 1945 Onkarnarth Shastri was released from jail. Returning to Kanpur, he was piqued that the party center in Calcutta had re-established contact first. According to one of his young recruits, Shastri "felt that his authority was threatened." 15 Shastri accused the

11

Manifesto o/the Fourth International on India; Leon Trotsky, Imperialist War and Revolutionary Perspectives; Leon Trotsky and Max Shachtman, Fourth International and the Soviet Union; K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], From the First to the Fourth International; Leon Trotsky, What is an Insurrection?; C.R. Govindan [Colvin R. de Silva], The Dissolution o/the Comintern; and C.R. Govindan [Colvin R. de Silva], First Round 0/ European Socialist Revolution. n.p. [1945].

12

"Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," p. 12.

13

"Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," p. 12.

14

Letter from Raj Narayan Arya to author, 31 March 1997. Apparently Vishwanath Singh, an MSc student at Agra who had been recruited to Trotskyism, met Sitanshu Das in jail.

15

Interview with Raj NarayanArya, 21 April 1974. Hector Abhayavardhana describes Shastri as a man with "pathological leadership fantasies" who "was not interested in building the party, except the party that was around him." Interview with Hector

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Calcutta group of trying to "win over" his recruits. 16 Attempts to bring Shastri back into the fold failed. 17 He tried to turn his recruits against the BLPI leadership. IS The students opted to stay with the BLPI. Shastri in effect split and functioned locally in Kanpur in the name ofthe BLPI and the Fourth Internationa1. 19 The BLPI leadership in Calcutta sent Hector Abhayavardhana to Allahabad to work with the students who were loyal to the BLPI. After several months, the Trotskyist youth relocated to Kanpur and reestablished a BLPI group, led by Dhiren Banerjea. The group developed supporters in the J.K. Jute Mills, the J.K. Iron and Steel Works, and the Lakshmi Ratan Cotton Mills. Raj Narayan Arya went to work in the Royal Ordnance Factory and became active in the union. 20 Madura

The BLPI group in Madura made its greatest progress on the labor front. The Trotskyists developed footholds in the Madura Mills and the

Abhayavardhana, 18 December 1997. Recalling these events decades later, Shastri admitted, "My own uncompromising nature, too, is responsible to a degree. Marx could make friends with Engels, an industrialist, but I could not with a Ceylonese." Letter from Onkarnath Shastri to the author, February 1978. 16

Letter from Onkarnath Shastri to author, June, 1974.

17

The BLPI secretary reported that Shastri "regarded the U.P as his preserve and would resent any contact by the centre with the unit there except through him. " The BLPI leaders rejected that demand, as it implied that the party was a federalist network of semi-autonomous local units, rather than a hierarchical, democraticcentralist party on the Leninist model. "C.C. Report Presented to Party Convention Beginning May 21, 1947," p. 15.

18

Letter from Raj Narayan Arya to author, 18 January 1978.

19

One of his leaflets stated, "We have nothing to do with the Lanka Samasamajists or a brand of Calcutta 'Bolshevik Leninists'." "The task before the A.LC.C. LeftBoycott of the supporters of the Constituent Assembly a Supreme Test," Bolshevik Leninist Party ofIndia, Section of the Fourth International. n.d.; also "The Indian Parties at a Glance," printed RWPI handbill [1948?]. Author's copies, originals in possession of the late Onkarnath Shastri.

20

New Spark, 11 October 1947 and 22 November 1947.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Harvey Mills, the largest British-owned textile mills east of Suez. The Tamil mill workers, despite their "primordial loyalties of caste and religion," were receptive to a militant alternative to the CPI. 21 When the BLPI called a meeting, several thousand attended "to hear what the Trotskyists were saying." 22 By 1944 the Madura unit had recruited a dozen mill workers. The Madura branch also sent organizers, such as B.M.K. Ramaswamy and his older brother, Shanmuganathan, to other towns and villages in Madras province. Ramaswamy conducted study classes and recruited Trotskyists in towns as far away as Bodinayakkanur. Some of the early recruits included V. Balasubramaniam. The government was watching. In 1945 the police raided the dwellings of a group of party sympathizers in Tinnevelly (Tirunelveli) and found BLPI literature. That led to raids in Madura, where the police arrested several party members and seized the party's printing press and cyclostyle machine. "Two leading comrades of the unit," reported the BLPI secretary to the Fourth International, "got away into the surrounding villages in the nick of time, ultimately to arrive, semistarved and seriously ill, at Madras, where they are now convalescing." 23 Madras

The Madras group likewise made headway on the labor front. In late 1942 the Trotskyists went into the MSM railway workshops located in Perambur, on the outskirts of Madras. 24 The workshops had a long

21

Eamon Murphy, Unions in Conflict: A Comparative Study of Four South Indian Textile Centres, 1918-1939 (New Delhi, 1981), p. 4.

22

D.G [Douglas Garbutt], "Report on the Fourth International Movement in India," p. 12. This report might have been submitted to the annual conference ofthe British RCP in 1946. Hull: Haston, DJH/15B/68.

23

Letter from C.R. Govindan [Colvin de Silva] to Secretary, I.S., 16 April 1945. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

24

Interview with S Amamath (Bombay), 14 June 1974.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

history of militancy. 2S During the Quit India upsurge the Perambur workers occupied the workshops to protest the arrest of the union president. Based on their work on the shop floor, the Trotskyists secured the support of about ten of the 40 members of the union executive committee. In 1945 the Trotskyists played a role in leading a militant strike of over 7,000 workers. 26 In 1943 the BLPI sent K. Appanraj into the Buckingham & Camatic Mills, one of the oldest, largest, and technologically advanced factories in India. Formed in the nineteenth century by John Binny, the B&C Mills, popularly called "Binnys," had been the cradle of the Indian trade union movement. 27 The BLPI's organizers developed a following on the shop floor and recruited mill hands to the party. As a result the Madras branch grew to 15 members, mainly laborers.

2S

In 1905, when the Extremist leader Tilak was sentenced, the Perambur railway workers were the first to protest by staging a peaceful dharna for a few days. The famous Theosophists, Dr Annie Besant and GS. Arundale, who pioneered the Home Rule Movement, spread the message of nationalism among the Perambur workers. In 1919 the reformers launched the Madras and Southern Maratta Railway Employees' Union (known as M&SM). During the Civil Disobedience movement in 1932 the Perambur workers occupied the workshops, staged processions and public meetings, and went on strike for 77 days to protest the arrest of Gandhi and Vallabhai Pate!.

26

The strike led to violent confrontations with the police, who opened fire on the "rioting" strikers. IOL: LIPJ/5/208. File Po!. 12081/1945.

27

E.D. Murphy, "The Madras Labour Union, 1918-1922," Economic and Social History Review (July-September 1977). In 1918 a Theosophist social-reformer, B.P. Wadia, organized the mill workers into the Madras Labour. Binnys broke his first strike. Another nationalist, T. V. Kalyanasundara Mudaliar, revived the union and for 15 years battled Binnys to win recognition and the 8-hour day. Thiru V. Kalyanasundara Mudaliar (1883-1953), popularly known as "Thiru Vi. Ka.," was a well-known Tamil scholar, writer, poet, and trade-union pioneer. He co-founded the Madras Labour Union with B. P. Wadia and started the Tamil weekly Navasakthi in 1920. He was elected president of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee in 1926. He wrote nearly 50 books on a variety of subjects and followed the teachings of Saint Sri Vallalar Ramalinga Swamigal. He retired from tradeunion and political activity in 1947.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

On the student front the party recruited G Selvaraj, a prominent activist in the local Congress Committee. In 1945 he was elected delegate to the All India Students Congress as an open Trotskyist. The BLPI helped to form three textile unions under Congress cover, one of which they controlled. 28 The BLPI, however, noted the "anomaly and danger" of organizing labor unions affiliated to the "bourgeois" Congress. They managed to keep the one union they controlled effectively independent. At this point the Congress was starting rival unions in opposition to the CPI. The BLPI resolved "to stand firmly against the policy of starting rival unions as a method of driving out the Stalinists. They will refuse to work in such rival unions." 29 That principled stand contrasts sharply with the practice of the Stalinists, who had no compunction about working with the police to drive out the Trotskyists and get them arrested. The Madras group suffered a severe blow in 1945. The party leader,. S.C.C. Anthony Pillai, was living in the Kilpauk section of Madras, an area inhabited by strict vegetarian Brahmins. Two of the young comrades, B.M.K. Ramaswamy and Bodi M. Muthiah ("Manickam"), went to another section of town for non-vegetarian meals. On one such outing someone who had known Muthiah in Madura recognized him and tipped off the police. The police followed them back to Kilpauk and nabbed Anthony Pillai, AlIan Mendis, Solomon, and other party members. 30 Pillai and Mendis were charged with possessing seditious literature and were sentenced to two years' rigorous imprisonment at the Alipuram prison. Solomon was deported to Ceylon, where he was sentenced to six months' rigorous imprisonment.

28

"Notes from Tamilnad," Internal Bulletin, no. 2 (September, 1945), pp. 17-18.

29

"Notes from Tamilnad," p. 18.

30

Ceylon Daily News, 12 April 1945.

l38

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The 1944 Party Conference

In 1944 the BLPI convened its first delegated party conference in Madras. 31 Prior to the conference the leadership drafted documents for discussion. 32 The local party groups elected a total of seven delegates. 33 In addition nine comrades, including Central Committee members, were invited to participate in the conference. 34 The gathering had to be organized with utmost secrecy, given the police manhunt for the wanted Ceylonese Trotskyists. S.C.C. Anthony PilIai was a master at this. The main political resolution reviewed the impact of the war, the growth of the Muslim League, the rapprochement of the Indian bourgeoisie with British interests, and the consequent shift in Congress politics. 35 The resolution predicted that a new round of mass struggle was not likely "in the period immediately ahead." 36 But the BLPI saw a silver lining in this dark cloud. "Congress itself will, on settlement and taking office once more, discredit itself progressively before both the masses and before the more radical sections of its own

31

The conference met September 20-25, 1944. "The All-India Conference of the BLPI," Permanent Revolution, vo\. 2, no. 3 (October-December 1944), pp. 11-12. Hoover: LSH, box 53. Reprinted: "India," Fourth International, April 1945, p. 126.

32

K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardena], Letter to the Secretary, International Secretariat, 4th International, 25 July 1944. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

II

The delegates were Amar [Vinayak Purohit] from Bombay; Gupta [Indra Sen] and Carlo Roy [V. Karalasingham] from Calcutta; Menon [S.C.C. Anthony Pillai] from Madras.; "Somu [Sundarh Rajan]" from Madura; "Ganesha" and "Jayasinghe" from Ceylon. "Minutes of the First Representative Conference of the BLPI," 25 September 1944.

34

The invitees were Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], Nazeem [Sitanshu Das], Livera [Doric de Souza], S.P. [Selina Perera], Manickam [Bodi M. Muthiah], Ranadhir [Karuna Kant Roy], Surendra [Hector Abhayavardhana], Desai [?], and Govindan [Colvin de Silva].

35

"The Present Political Situation in India," theses passed by the Political Committee, 4 August 1944. Typed with handwritten edits, 17 pages. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38. Reprinted in Permanent Revolution, vo\. 2, nos. 2-3 (April-December 1944), pp. 13-28. Hoover: LSH, box 53. Also Fourth International (October 1944), pp. 301-07; and Quatrieme Internationale (July-August 1945), pp. 25-27.

36

"The Present Political Situation in India," p. 14.

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membership." 37 The BLPI believed that the right turn of the Congress leaders would force the wavering Congress Leftists to "break with the bourgeoisie." As noted in Chapter 3, the BLPI program acknowledged the necessity for the party to send members into the Congress to do "fraction work." Up to that point, the BLPI didn't have the opportunity to do so. The organizational resolution directed the party to "penetrate the student organizations" and "do fraction work in the political organizations to which they are attached," specifically "the Congress Socialist Party, or where no CSP exists, the Congress." 38 The resolution emphasized that "party building" remained the central task of the BLPI. Vinayak Purohit, a delegate from Bombay, submitted a minority organizational resolution. 39 He held that since the BLPI was still in an "infantile condition," the party should not adopt organizational fonus that were appropriate for a consolidated party. He called for the election of an Editorial Board, rather than a Central Committee, which would exercise "control over the literary and theoretical output of the different sections," while local units would be allowed "for the time being to have a lot of freedom in practical matters." 40 This minority was defeated. 41 The conference elected its first Central Committee, consisting of Leslie Goonewardene, Colvin de Silva, Doric de Souza, S.c.c. Anthony Pillai, and Indra Sen. Debate On the War in the Far East

When the Sino-Japanese war began in the 'thirties, the Fourth International sided with China, on the basis that semi-colonial China

37

"The Present Political Situation in India," p. 23.

38

"Organizational Tasks of the Party in the Present Period," p. 6. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

39

Amar [Vinayak Purohit], "Proposed Draft for the Bombay Group Resolution," n.d. [1944]. Typed, 1 page.

40

"Minutes of the First Representative Conference of the BLPI," p. 14.

41

"Minutes of the First Representative Conference of the BLPI," pp. 4-5.

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was resisting Japanese imperialist aggression. When WWII started, the Trotskyists continued to support China against Japan. In their view Chiang Kai-shek and his Communist allies were waging ajust war. The BLPI endorsed that position. 42 However, once the US entered the war, some Trotskyists, including the Chinese section of the Fourth International, questioned that position. 43 They argued that the Chinese war for national liberation had become, objectively, another front in the "inter-imperialist" world war. As proof, they pointed to the fact that the Allied powers were providing Chiang Kai-shek and Mao with critical war supplies, flown in from military bases in northern India. The Fourth International rejected that position and reaffirmed its support to China in the war. In the US the Workers Party (Max Shachtman group), which had split from the SWP in 1940, argued that "with the spread of the world war to the East, the just struggle for national independence of China has been decisively integrated into and subordinated to the reactionary inter-imperialist war and that it can no longer be supported by the revolutionary Marxists." 44 That triggered back-and-forth polemics with the SWP. 4S The BLPI took a keen interest in this debate. Phi lip Gunawardena defended the official Fourth International position, while v. Karalasingham sided with Shachtman. 46

42

43

44

45

46

K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], "The War and Revolutionary Policy," Bolshevik Leninist (August 1942), reprinted in Permanent Revolution, vol. I, no. 1 (January 1943), p. 38; "American Intervention in China," ibid, pp. 24-26. Author's copy, original in possession of the late V. Karalasingham. Gregor Benton, China s Urban Revolutionaries: Explorations in the History of Chinese Trotskyism, 1921-1952 (Atlantic Highlands [NJ], 1996), p. 39. Max Shachtman, "China in the World War," The New International (June 1942), p.162. The SWP wheeled out its big guns, John G. Wright and Felix Morrow, to rebut Shachtman. See Fourth International, April 1942 and August 1942. Shachtman blasted back in The New International, September 1942, October 1942, and March 1943. V.S. Roy [V. Karalasingham], "China in the World War: A Review," Permanent Revolution, vol. 1, no. 2 (April-June 1943), p. 46. Hoover: LSH, box 53.

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The issue was debated at the party convention in 1944. Karalasingham, Colvin de Silva, and Indra Sen argued for the minority line, while Anthony Pillai and Leslie Goonewardene defended the official Fourth International position. 47 After much debate the minority line was adopted. 48 Needless to say, that decision was not well received in London and New York. The British Trotskyist Fred Buoby, who was serving in the military in India, reported that a "petty bourgeois pro-Shachtman faction" had captured the BLPI. 49 That was an overstatement. Some of the intellectuals in the BLPI certainly respected Shachtman as a theorist. But the BLPI leadership flatly rejected his position on the USSR, which was his fundamental difference with the Fourth International. Debate Over the Muslim League

In 1940 the Muslim League called for the formation of independent states in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India, where "the Muslims are numerically in a majority." This was the first stab at a Pakistan. But this limited proposal had problems. The Muslims were not uniformly in the majority in the Northwest provinces or in Bengal. Parts of the Punjab had Hindu and Sikh majorities. In Bengal Burdwan district and Assam were majority Hindu. 47

C. R. Govindan [Colvin de Silva], D. Gupta [Indra Sen], and S. Roy [V. Karalasingham], "China in the World War," 23 June 1944, typed, 2 pages. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38; Menon [S.C.C. Anthony Pillai], "Resolution on the Kuomintang-led War in China," n.d., typed, 2 pages. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

48

"China in the World War," Permanent Revolution. vo!. 2, nos. 2-3 (April-December 1944), pp. 31-33. Hoover: LSH, box 53. The resolution, passed by a II-to-4 majority, stated that "by reasons of the interlocking ofthe Sino-Japanese War with the Second Imperialist World War, the subordination of Chungking'S struggle to the reactionary war of the Anglo-American imperialists, and the conversion of the Chung-king regime into the channel of Anglo-American economic penetration and'.' political control, the Chungking-led war against Japan has been denuded of its progressive content and cannot therefore be supported by proletarian revolutionaries."

49

Letter from Fred Bunby to Jim [James P. Cannon], 3 February 1945. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38. Also reprinted as "India: Letter from a Comrade," Internal Bulletin [RCP], new series no. 2, 17 March 1945, p. 6.

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No matter how unrealistic Pakistan seemed, the slogan captured the imagination of Muslims from all walks of life. "The Muslim League has given you a goal," declared Jinnah in a typical speech, "which in my judgement is going to lead you to the promised land where we shall establish our Pakistan." 50 Jinnah left the details and timeframe vague. "If all parties agree to the Muslim demand for Pakistan or partition and Muslim right to self determination, details to be settled after the war, then we are prepared to come to any reasonable adustment with regard to the present." 51 The CPI had always denounced the Muslim League as a "feudalist" party. But that changed when the CPI turned pro-war. The Muslim League was the only other mass party that supported the war. In 1942 Dr. Gangadhar Adhikari, a senior Communist leader, wrote that it was "wrong and unrealistic" to dismiss the Muslim League as reactionary. 52 He asked Congress to "boldly concede the sectional demands of the Muslim League." Many Communists were stunned with this flip-flop. 53 The Bolsheviks had defined a nation as "a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." 54 Applying this definition to India, 50 51

52

53

54

Quoted in Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah ofPakistan, p. 194. Quoted in Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah ofPakistan, p. 202. Quoted in Gene D. Overstreet and Marshall Windmiller, Communism in India (Berkeley, 1959), p. 201. The chief theoretician of the British Communist Party, R. Palme Dutt, thought Adhikari was nuts. In his journal, Labour Monthly, Dutt dismissed the "Pakistan" solution as "impractical." D.N. Pritt, "India," Labour Monthly, April 1942, p. 107; and Ben Bradley, "India Threatened," Labour Monthly, May 1942, p. 146. But the" British Communists were never ones to challenge Moscow Wisdom. Dutt and Ben'" Bradley subsequently endorsed the Adhikari Thesis. Ben Bradley, introduction to G. Adhikari, Pakistan and Indian National Unity (London. [1942]). Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National Question (1913). Lenin directed Stalin to write this book under his editorial direction. Subsequently Stalin became recognized as the Bolshevik authority on the national question, at least until 1922, when Lenin denounced Stalin and called for his removal as General Secretary on the basis of his domineering, crass, and bureaucratic suppression of the Bolshevik comrades in Georgia.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Adhikari identified a plethora of "nationalities," including the Pathans, Western Punjabis, Sikhs, Sindhis, Hindustanis, Rajasthanis, Gujeratis, Bengalis, Assamese, Biharies, Oriyas, Andhras, Tamils, Karnatikis, Maharashtrians, and Keralas. He concluded that each had the right to exist as an autonomous state or federation, or to secede, if it so wished. 55 Initially, the CPI envisioned the formation of several Muslim states or autonomous regions in a Balkanized India. 56 But each succeeding policy statement inched closer to all-out endorsement of "Pakistan." By 1943 Sajjad Zaheer, a member of the CPI central committee, sounded not much different than Jinnah: "Congressmen generally fail to 'see the anti-imperialist, liberationist, role of the Muslim League, fail to see that the demand for Muslim self-determination or Pakistan is a just, progressive and national demand, and is the positive expression of the very freedom and democracy for which Congressmen have striven and undergone so much suffering all these years." 57 Needless to say, most Hindus in Congress would rather eat beef than accept Pakistan. In practice the CPI helped to build the Muslim League. The CPI instructed its student members at Aligarh Muslim University to join the All India Muslim Students Federation. 58 In Kerala E.M.S. Namboodripad

55

S6

57

58

In September, 1942 the CPI central committee passed a resolution stating: "Every section of the Indian people which has a contiguous territory as its homeland, common historical tradition, common language, culture, psychological make-up, and common economic life would be recognized as a distinct nationality with the right to exist as an autonomous state within the free Indian Union or federation and will have the right to secede from it ifit may so desire." Reprinted in N.K. Krishnan (ed.), National Unity for the Defence of the Motherland (Bombay, 1943), pp. 2425. The "Adhikari Thesis" is reprinted in Amar Farooqui (ed.), Remembering Dr. Gangadhar Adhikari: Selectionsfram Writings. Part 11. (New Delhi, 2000). The September, 1942 CPI resolution recognized the right of self-determination for "the Muslims wherever they are in an overwhelming majority in a contiguous territory which is their homeland." Reprinted in N.K. Krishnan (ed.), National Unity for the Defence of the Motherland. p. 25. Sajjad Zaheer, A Case for Congress-League Unity (Bombay, 1944), p. i. Zaheer said the demand for Pakistan was the "logical expression of the development of political consciousness among the Muslim peoples of India." Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of a Divided Nation: India s Muslims Since Independence (Boulder, 1997), p. 113.

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and A.K. Gopalan led processions of Muslims, shouting "Pakistan Zindabad." The CPI distributed League literature, including inflammatory sectarian tracts, like Muslim Sufferings under the Congress Rule and It Shall Never Happen Again. Faced with these developments, the BLPI had to confront the communal question. Colvin de Silva authored a position paper that was put before the conference in 1944. 59 "The Indian nation consists of various nationalities (e.g., Bengalis, Punjabis, Andhras, Tamilians, Canaras, etc.) who are bound together by common language, culture, historical tradition, etc." But, unlike Adhikari, he rejected the idea that the Muslims, a dispersed religious minority, could be regarded as a nation. "There is no basis, whether of common historical tradition, language, culture or race, or in respect of geographical or economic factors, for the arising of a distinct Muslim nationality." Indra Sen and Anthony Pillai submitted a separate report citing empirical evidence of growing separatist tendencies in numerous regions, especially the Muslim majority areas in Bengal and the Northwest Frontier Province. 60 "The phenomenal rise of the ML [Muslim League] into a mass party is an index to the development of separatist tendencies." The report concluded that the BLPI should "without any reservation declare to the peoples in these zones that we are ready to support with all our might the right to national selfdetermination. " After a lengthly debate the conference delegates adopted the Colvin de Silva document, tabling the Sen-Pillai report for further discussion within the party. 61 The debate continued in the Calcutta

59

"The Pakistan Slogan," Permanent Revolution, vol. 2, nos. 2-3 (April-December 1944), pp. 28-29. Hoover: LSH, box 53. Reprinted: "Resolution on Pakistan," New International, December 1946, pp. 300-01.

60

D. Dutt [Indra Sen] and K. Menon [S.C.C. Anthony Pillai], "Report on Separatist Tendencies in India," Permanent Revolution, vol. 2, nos. 2-3 (April-December 1944), pp. 34-38. Hoover: LSH, box 53.

61

"Minutes of the First Representative Conference of the BLPI," pp. 11-14.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

branch. Several comrades supported the Sen-Pillai position as a way to "rob this reactionary zamindar-industrialist bloc [the Muslim League] of its only demagogic slogan." 62 P.K. Roy, on the other hand, insisted that "the Muslims of India cannot be classified as a nation since the only thing that is common to them is the Muslim religion." 63 However, not all Trotskyists agreed. In the US the Shachtman group (Workers Party) said that the BLPI failed to deal with the reality behind the Pakistan demand. "Thus, we must clearly state that the Moslem people shall have the right to form independent states, including enclaves within Hindu territory, if they so wish and so decide for themselves ... we cannot deny the right of the Moslem masses to attempt such a separatist experience, if they so wish. Above all, the Indian Trotskyists must openly proclaim the right of-the Moslem people to vote on such a proposal." 64 Help From Abroad

During the war the American and British Trotskyists tried to help their Indian and Ceylonese comrades. The mail was no longer reliable. The American Trotskyists began a secret courier operation. Even after the war, the operation was kept secret. 65 But thanks to the documents

62

Sitanshu Das, "The Pakistan Slogan and the Right of Self-Determination," Internal Bulletin, no. 2 (September 1945), pp. 8-9. Hull: Haston, DJH/15G/14b.

63

"The Pakistan Slogan and the Right of Self-Determination," p. 10.

64

Henry Judd [Stanley Plastrick], "Behind the Hindu-Moslem Strife: National or Religious Question?" The New International (December 1946), p. 300.

6S

Jean van Heijenoort, the Fourth International's secretary stationed in New York who used the name, "R. Clapper," remained tight-lipped about these covert operations long after the war had ended. His biographer writes, "Only after insistent questioning did he finally explain that the Socialist Workers Party had a network of seamen, rank-and-file members of the SWP who had joined the merchant marine instead of waiting to be drafted into the army or navy. These men sailed all over the world and acted as couriers. They were able to deliver and receive letters, newspapers, journals and other documents as well as messages which gave news about what was happening in the areas they reached." Anita Burdman Feferman, Politics, Logic, and Love: The Life ofJean van Heijenoort (Wellesley, 1993), p. 189.

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deposited in the Hoover Archives, we now know what the SWP did and how they did it. 66 The SWP had a party fraction in the merchant marines. The Trotskyists would volunteer for the supply convoys headed to Asia. They had to smuggle their bundles of Trotskyist literature on board. "I brought all the literature that was to be delivered aboard ship," reported one courier, "and hid it in a space behind the flour bin. Two days before our arrival in Calcutta, I took the books out and sewed them up in flour sacks which I intended to tie on to my body-one in front and one in back." 67 Getting the literature ashore undetected was dicey. The sailors had to pass through checkpoints on the docks. "The Militants can be securely fastened under your trousers between the ankle and knee, and the pamphlets put in your shorts, if you should come to this dock. Books that are too bulky have t~ be cut in half." 68 Once ashore, the couriers had to find their contacts. The seamen had to memorize their names and addresses before they even boarded their ships. 69 Most of the contacts lived in "native" neighborhoods that were off limits to military personnel and sailors. The couriers had to navigate a maze of unfamiliar, narrow alleys after dark without attracting unwanted attention. One sailor gave a vivid report of his cloak-and-dagger escapade. 70 After landing at the King George Docks in Calcutta, he set out late at night to find his contact, a Dr. Himangshu Roy, the brother of BLPI

66

Report to the SWP, n.d. [circa July 1942]; Report to SWP, typed, no name and n.d. [April 1944]; ["Comrade Hafer"], untitIed report, n.d. [December 1944]; Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

67

Report to SWP, typed, no name and n.d. [Apri11944].

68

["Comrade Hafer"], untitled report, n.d. [December 1944], p. 2.

69

In the Hoover archives there is a 2-page, typed list of names and addresses for open party sympathizers in India and Ceylon with links to the underground Trotskyists. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

70

Report to SWP, typed, no name and n.d. [April 1944].

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leader, P.K. (Nitai) Roy. "After asking several taxi drivers for the address 1 was seeking, 1 found one who said he knew where the place I wanted was. Nevertheless, after driving around for a considerable length of time he confessed that he could not find the address 1 wanted. We then stopped at a nearby Cafe to ask directions and an obliging young man not only volunteered the information but also insisted on getting into the cab to direct me." The helpful man turned out to be a cop. Fortunately, the doctor had already gone to bed. "I then took the police officer home and then taking still another cab, I circled back and made contact with comrade Nitai. I explained the incident of the police officer guide to Nitai, and he told me we had a very narrow escape, as the police had been investigating their place several times recently." The SWP used these reports to write articles on the situation in India. But they had to be very circumspect. One article reported that "a young American sailor" had "spent a month visiting the principal cities and ports in India." That probably referred to the mission of J. Wallis [Gardner Wells], who visited India and made contact with the Trotskyists in Bombay. Another article quoted an anonymous comrade (probably Michael Glickman) who had just returned from India. 71 "Are you from the Fourth, comrade?"

The most detailed report comes from an American Trotskyist sailor, Lew Scott. 72 The report he submitted to his party bears physical evidence of the security measures taken. The names of people and places were carefully cut out of the paper. Written above each of these holes is the missing information. This suggests that Scott wrote the report in India or on the journey home, cut out incriminating information, and restored the information from memory when he arrived home. 71

72

Militant, 3 May 1941 and 7 March 1942.

"Red Passage to India," typed, 28-pages. The report bears no name, but written across the top is "Report to Bureau F.I. by L. Scott." A subsequent letter to the SWP from the BLPI makes reference to the visit of "Lew Scott." I haven't been able to determine if that was a real or assumed name. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Scott had put ashore in Madras in July, 1944. He thought he could ask around and find his comrades. But he couldn't; they wer~ deep underground. After chasing several false leads, he was sent to an outdoor rally sponsored by the MSM Railway Union. 73 Scott mingled in the crowd. He came across a young man who seemed very interested in him. The youth said he was a Gandhian and supported the war. "Then he proposed that he has some friends who might like to hear my point of view." The youth pretended to be a Gandhian in order to test this stranger. "He came back with another fellow who came up, gave me his hand, and said: 'Are you from the Fourth, comrade?' " Scott hadjust met Bodi M. Muthiah, the BLPI's field organizer in Madras who used the pseudonym, "Manickam." "The greatest thing in the world had happened to Manickam-he had met a foreign Trotskyist! In repeated handshakes we shared our joy. Myself, an intellectual from America, and Manickam who had risen from the depths of backward South India, the son of a poor peasant, we were brothers." Scott was profoundly impressed with Manickam. "He had abjured marriage and farming for the sake of the revolution. Manickam slept in the street more often than not, and missed more meals than he got." 74 Manickam informed Scott that the BLPI had given out leaflets at the union festival that very day. "But comrade," Scott asked, "how do you give out leaflets? You are illegal." Manickam replied, "We tie them here," raising the tails of his long shirt and pointing to his waist. "We go into the crowd, let them fall to the ground, nobody knows who dropped the leaflets but everyone takes one and they distribute themselves. " Manickam asked Scott to meet him the next day. He was still testing this stranger. They went to a cafe and talked. Manickam told Scott he would arrange another rendezvous later that day with a higher-

73

The M&SM Railway Employees Union Silver Jubilee was celebrated from 21 July to 24 July 1944. IOL: LlPJ/5/207. File Po!. 746911944.

74

L. Scott, "Red Passage to India," typescript, [1944]. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

ranking party leader. As Scott discovered later, Manickam went off to contact Leslie Goonewardene. But he didn't have enough money to take a bus or rickshaw. "He ran five miles one way and then five miles back and showed up breathless at one o'clock sharp." He led Scott to the local BLPI hideout, a spacious house in Venus Colony in Teynampet, where Anthony Pillai and his wife Caroline, Leslie and Viviene Goonewardene, Colvin de Silva, Selina Perera, Indra Sen, and Appan Raj were all staying. Later that day Manickam took Scott to a meet some of the party's sympathizers from the Perambur railway workshops. They met in a hut in the slums. None of the Tamil workers could speak English. Manickam translated. Scott saw what it meant to be a Trotskyist in India. Here, in a hovel, lit only by flickering candles, the BLPI was teaching Marxism to illiterate workers who had just come off a 12-hour shift. British Trotskyists in Uniform

The British Trotskyists used their members who were serving in the armed forces in India as a conduit to the BLPI and the LSSP. Several were stationed in Calcutta and they were able to make contact with the BLPI group there. The BLPI regarded all members of foreign sections as automatic members of the Indian section for the duration of their stay. These servicemen had the opportunity to observe the work of the party close-up and participate in internal meetings. Douglas Garbutt arrived in India in 1943. He was stationed at the RAF base in Tambaram, about 10 miles southwest of Madras. Garbutt eventually made contact with the Calcutta group through a friendly leftwing bookseller. He met P.K. Roy in March, 1945. "After that," he reported, "I would meet them about once a fortnight." 75 Garbutt was a godsend. On several occasions he made the three-day journey down to Colombo, collected money from Colvin de Silva's family, and brought

75

Quoted in Sam Bomstein and Al Richardson, War and the International: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain 1937-1949 (London 1986), p. 86.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

it back up to Calcutta. Garbutt urged the Fourth International headquarters to send literature to the Indian comrades. 76 Garbutt was struck by the sheer size and diversity of India. "India is larger than Western Europe. It should not be surprising that conditions vary so much-rather that they correspond to the degree that they do." 77 Garbutt emphasized that the BLPI should work within the "bourgeois" Congress in some areas. "At Trivandrum, in the native states, an influential group inside the Congress has accepted our programme and is in contact with the Party. The group has a wide working class base but needs further ideological development before entering the party. Due to the continued repression here, the Congress presents the only field of work at the moment." Fred Bunby was attached to the 136 Repair and Salvage Unit of the RAF. Bunby made contact with several BLPI branches. 78 Bunby sent his reports and documents back to the British party by the "Green envelopes" and "privilege air letters" used by British forces in India. 79 He participated actively in the BLPI, writing documents under the party name, "M. Usman." Another British Trotskyist who assisted the BLPI in this period was Tommy Reilly.80 He served in the First Battalion Caledonians

16

Douglas Garbutt to E.R. Frank [Bert Cochran], 29 April 1946. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

11

D.G [Douglas Garbutt], "Report on the Fourth International Movement in India."

1B

Fred Bunby to Jim (lames P. Cannon], 3 February 1945. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

19

"Notes on Communications Between Egypt, Palestine, India, and England, United States of America," from "Eric" to the C.C. of the RCP, 5 March 1945. Hull: Haston, Dlli/15F/8.

BD

Frank T. Reilly, known as "Tommy," was originally from Glasgow, where he had joined the Independent Labour Party. In 1938 he moved to London and joined the Workers International League, one of the Trotskyist groups then functioning in Britain. At the onset of WWII, anticipating government repression, he shifted to Ireland with Jock Haston, Gerry Healy, and others to set up a clandestine party center with printing press. He was part of the First Wing B.B.R.C. in India in 1945.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

(Scottish Rifles), part of the South East Asia Command. Like Bunby, he helped to obtain badly needed literature for the BLPI. 81 Work Among Indians in Britain

The Revolutionary Communist Party, the British Section of the Fourth International formed in 1944, fought on the home front for India's freedom. Two of the eight members of the party's Political Bureau were Indians, namely Ajit Roy and V. Sastry. Roy had been responsible for cultivating the original Bengal group before the war. He was a powerful orator, wrote for the Socialist Appeal, and did trade-union work in the Amalgamated Engineering Union. His wife, Annie, a Jewish refugee from Europe, was also a member of the RCP. V. Sastry was one of the party's best organizers. Originally from South India, he came to the UK in 1936 to train as ,a journalist, got involved with the India League, and joined the Communist Party. He worked at the B.S.A. Works in Birmingham. Sastry became the leader of the Indian Workers Association, formed in Coventry in 1941. British Intelligence regarded him as "probably the most dangerous Indian in the Midlands."82 The India Office warned the Home Office that Sastry was "rapidly developing into a political menace." 83 He was named one of six Indians in Britain to be arrested in the event of a German invasion. Roy and Sastry recruited more Indians to the party, including A.V. Angadi, a journalist who had become a Trotskyist in the late 'thirties. 84 The RCP made inroads into the Indian political milieu formerly dominated by the Communist Party. The RCP developed close relations

81

Letter to SWP, 12 April 1945. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.b

82

IOL: LlPJIl2/645. Files Pol.(S) 78711942 and Pol.(S) 59211942. Also IOL: LlPJI 121485. File Pol.(S) 51411943. IOL: LlPJ/12/649. File Pol.(S) 11111943. IOL: LI PJ/12/64S. Files Pol.(S) 69411942 and Pol.(S) 98711942.

83

Report 28 March 1944. IOL: LIPJ/12/64S.

84

The government amassed a thick file on Angadi. IOL: LlPJ/12/518.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

with Surat Ali, who was a leading light of "Swaraj House." 85 In August, 1944 the Rep set up an "Indian Information Bureau" to publish Trotskyist literature relating to India. 86 Tenacious Optimism

Despite all the obstacles, the BLPI remained optimistic. "Even if not again during the war, then assuredly after the war, India, and with it the whole world, will witness an upsurge of the masses the like of which the world has not yet seen. For that upsurge we must prepare patiently from now on." 87 That upsurge would come sooner than the BLPI imagined.

85

IOL: LlPJIl2/485. Pol.(S) 7643/1943.

86

"The Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain," Home (Pol) File No. 717147-Poll (1), National Archives ofIndia, New Delhi.

87

"Gandhi on the Road to Betrayal" (20 July 1944), reprinted in Fourth International (October 1944), p. 308; and also "The Present Political Situation and Our Tasks," Permanent Revolution, July-September 1943, pp. 18-21. Author's copy, original in possession of the late V. Karalasingham.

153

CHAPTER SIX

Rifts in the Party The Trotskyists attributed the failure of the Quit India revolt to the lack of a "revolutionary leadership." But how could their tiny group, new to the scene and forced to operate underground, possibly provide that leadership? The Communist Party and the Royists, with the help of the government, had the labor movement in their grip. How could the Trotskyists "short-circuit the official leadership of the working class organizations and get through to the worker masses?" 1 A struggle developed within the BLPI over this strategic question. One side took the position that the BLPI would miss the bus again if it crept along, recruiting one member at a time. They proposed a bold tactical turn, in which the BLPI would broker a regroupment of revolutionaries into a new mass party. The other side argued that the BLPI needed to stay the course, preserving its independence and Trotskyist program, no matter what. In the history of the left there are examples aplenty of how a small group facing enormous odds gets consumed in factionalism. That is exactly what happened to the BLPI. This struggle, fought in the depths of the underground, has never been adequately explained. It was confusing, murky, and messy. In this chapter I reconstruct what happened during those fateful years 1942-43 , based on memoirs of participants, interviews, and contemporary party documents. 2

Gafur Khan, "Lessons of the First Phase of the Anti-Imperialist Struggle," p. 7. In 1944 the BLPI leadership prepared a detailed internal report on the faction fight for the first party conference. "Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," 20 September 1944. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38. This report was also reprinted by the Revolutionary Communist Party, the British section of the Fourth' International, in an internal bulletin, News Commentary. vo!. I, 4 August 1945. Hull: Haston, DJH/15G/14b. In his memoirs, Working Underground, Regi Siriwardena, who was a young recruit in 1942, lifted the veil even more.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Roots of the Conflict

In 1939-40 the Ceylonese Trotskyists initiated a series of wrenching changes in the LSSP. They expelled the Stalinists, solidarized with the Fourth International, and commenced to "convert the party from a loose body of individuals into a fighting organization." 3 So far, so good. But a few months later the government attacked. The LSSP was driven underground before the process of organizational transformation was complete. That was the root of the problem. The LSSP could no longer afford to be a loose, porous, mass organization. With the police breathing down its neck, the party leadership, or rather those who were still at large, had to create an underground apparatus, consisting of dedicated and tested comrades. The membership list was "pruned." A new leadership collective formed, including Doric de Souza, Robert Gunawardena, Leslie Goonewardene, and youth activists, like Esmond Wickremasinghe. As more comrades were arrested, the holes in the party apparatus had to be filled. That's when the incipient differences emerged. Robert Gunawardena felt that Doric was biased towards the middle-class students. "Doric argued that whenever vacancies occured in the Central Committee they should be filled with intellectuals from the university." 4 Robert wanted to rely more on loyal party workers, most of whom didn't have college degrees or in-depth knowledge of Marxist theory. That kind of disagreement doesn't normally lead to a faction fight. Indeed, there were deeper differences. Doric de Souza was gung-ho to "Bolshevize" the LSSP. He was critical of the pre-war LSSP, which he characterized as a "Menshevik" party. Doric wanted to make a clean break with the past and build a Leninist party based on "professional revolutionaries." That kind of talk appealed to the idealistic young recruits from the campus. One LSSP veteran, Amaradasa Fernando, recalls those "heady days"

Leslie Goonewardene, A Short History o/the Lanka Sama Samaja Party. p. 15. Robert Gunawardena, "My Political Life," Daily Mirror, 4 December 1971.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

when "young romantic revolutionaries" like himself went to secret LSSP study groups to hear Doric lecture on the Russian Revolution. 5 Doric was their guru. The changes in the party organization produced a backlash. Some trade unionists felt slighted and alienated. 6 Who was this Doric de Souza, a snooty professor, to exclude worker comrades? Doric made matters worse by conducting a whispering campaign against N.M. Perera as a "social democrat" who didn't belong in a revolutionary party. 7 Whether or not that was justified, the workers were angry that Doric, who had never led a strike in his life, dared to criticize their popular leader, who was serving time behind bars for his dedication to their cause. Philip Gunawardena, who was still in jail at that point, sided with brother Robert. He accused Doric of steering the party away from the workers. 8 Philip didn't think Doric understood how a Leninist party had to be built, step by step, with the organizational forms evolving as the party matured. In his view Doric and his circle were mechanically

Amaradasa Fernando, "Elmer de Haan: A Prophet without Honour," Daily News [Colombo], 28 June 2004. For similar recollections, see Reggie Perera, "Journey in Politics," Ceylon Observer, 9 September 1962; and Hector Abhayavardhana, "Categories of Left Thinking in Ceylon," pp. 361-62. This group of LSSP trade unionists included w.J. Perera, George Perera, and GP. Perera. Since there were so many Pereras in the LSSP, they had nicknames. WJ. Perera was popularly known as "Hospital" Perera, since he worked in a hospital. GP. Perera was known as "Elephant" Perera, since he worked in the factory that produced Elephant brand of cigarettes. George Perera was called "Chumbi." He rose to become a member of the LSSP central committee and vice president of the Ceylon Federation of Labour. D.G William was nicknamed "Galle Face" William, because he worked as a waiter at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo. In 1964 he became general secretary ofthe Ceylon Federation of Labor. In 1941 Doric wrote a letter to another party comrade, Sam Silva, in which he called N.M. Perera a social democrat who didn't belong in a revolutionary party. Apparently this letter was handed over to the leaders in the Kandy jail. One can imagine the reaction. Perera was not only one of the LSSP's most popular leaders, he was also a close friend and loyal follower of Phi lip Gunawardena. "Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," 20 September 1944.

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imposing recipes taken from Lenin's writings on the party question. He called thempotheguras [literally, those who teach by the book]. Philip had more experience in these matters than anyone else in the party. During his idealistic Communist days in England, Phi lip had envisioned forming a Leninist party in Ceylon with "an iron discipline and a crystal-clear ideology." 9 But after he returned home, he realized that the preconditions didn't exist. He spent several years doing the spadework, much like Plekhanov had done in Czarist Russia. Given the immaturity of the left movement in Ceylon, the LSSP had to start life as a radical populist party, based on a network of local branches, youth leagues, Suriya Mal organizations, and other groupings. With Philip at the helm the LSSP sharpened its program and tightened its organization over the next few years. 10 But even so, when the repression hit in 1940, the LSSP was still a loose party with a fuzzy program. 11 Philip intervened and imposed his will. He nominated three working-class comrades for the party's committee-Mike [Gunadasa], David [Milton Perera], and Richard [Richard Green]. 12 "When the LSSP was in dire straights," stated Robert, "it was men like David and Gunadasa who stood by the party." Doric de Souza evidently bowed to

In 1931 Philip Gunawardena, using the pseudonym "Gamaralla," wrote to Dr. S.A. Wickremasinghe in Ceylon stating that "he hopes to form Marxist Study groups there, by correspondence, before his return, taking over personal control in due course." IOL: LlPJ/12/409, folio 23. A few months later, in a follow-up letter to Wickremasinghe, dated 3 October 1931, he suggested that the Youth Leagues could be transformed into a revolutionary organization "with an iron discipline and a crystal clear ideology." IOL: LlPJ/12/409, folio 28. In November, 1931 he drafted a document on the need for a Communist Party in Ceylon. IOL: LlPJ/12/409, folio 30. 10

Hector Abhayavardhana, "Marxism and Some Features of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party," reprinted in Raj an Philips (ed.), Sri Lanka: Global Challenges and National Crises, pp. 375-76.

11

Hector Abhayavardhana, "The War: Its Importance in Colvin's Development as a Marxist Leader," Lanka Guardian, 15 June 1982, p. 13.

12

Arjuna, Pilip Gunavardhana caritaya (Moratuwa, 1969), p. 86; and "Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLP!."

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Philip. 13 An American Trotskyist sailor who put ashore in Colombo in July, 1942, reported: "The Ceylon section, in spite of the severe repression, is functioning smoothly and efficiently." 14 But appearances can be deceiving. Cross-Currents Under the Surface

At that point there were several dynamics at play. When Philip was arrested in 1940, the LSSP leadership collective changed. Philip was no longer the dominant party leader. His lieutenants, N.M. Perera and Colvin de Silva, were likewise removed. Doric de Souza became the rising star. But Philip was not about to relinquish his throne. The initial skirmish thus had a generational aspect, the Old Guard versus the Young Turks. Second, there was an ideological change. Before the war the LSSP avoided doctrinaire politics. But after the Stalinists were expelled the LSSP had to make up for lost time. The party intellectuals embraced Trotskyism with a passion. Doric was fanatical. He could debate the fine points of Marxist doctrine with other educated comrades. The intellectuals could devour the latest Trotskyist journal received from London or New York. But the LSSP trade unionists couldn't read or understand English at that level. The ideological development of the party, healthy in itself, thus opened a rift.

13

According to Hector Abhayavardhana, "Phi lip Gunawardena was not only an impetuous personality, but he also was never a respecter of persons. It was never his way to be conciliatory in getting over problems; he preferred to take them headlong and impose his will on them. It was not easy for people of equal stature to keep his goodwill without submitting to him." Hector Abhayavardhana, "Marxism and Some Features of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party," p. 384.

14

Typed 5-page report, n.d. and not signed. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38. The LSSP secretary, Lorenz Perera, gave the courier a report to take back to the Fourth International bureau in New York. It, too, made no mention of any internal conflict in the party. Letter to Secretary, Bureau ofthe Fourth International, signed "L.M.P." [Lorenz Perera], 19 July 1942. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 44.

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Third, there were cultural and class tensions. Doric was Goan in background. He was the epitome of the brainy, cosmopolitan, Marxist intellectual. He also had the reputation for being arrogant and demanding. The party workers were more comfortable with an intellectual like N.M. Perera, who for all his learning had an easy-going manner, than with Doric, an Anglicized intellectual who could barely speak Sinhalese. The Enigma

Caged in his cell, Philip Gunawardena had more on his mind than just organizational questions. Something had happened in the party. It involved his wife, Kusuma. Someone had done something that offended and infuriated Philip. 15 Rightly or wrongly, Philip blamed Doric de Souza, who was responsible for looking after Kusuma while he was in jail. Whatever happened, it deeply wounded Philip. When he was spirited out of jail on April 7, 1942, he was gunning for Doric. That was when all hell broke loose in the LSSP. At the next party meeting Philip dropped a bombshell-he accused Doric of being a police spy. 16 The comrades were stunned. Doric knew

15

16

In his memoirs Regi Siriwardena, who knows what really happened, states that Philip suffered "a deep emotional disturbance that he was unable to control." Regi Siriwardena, Working Underground. p. 54. Hector Abhayavardhana speculates that Philip suspected, rightly or wrongly, that "Doric waS'. conspiring against him." Interview with Hector Abhayavardhana and Osmond Jayaratne, 18 December 1997. See also Hector Abhayavardhana, "Marxism and Some Features ofthe Lanka Sama Samaja Party," p. 384; and, his introduction to Pulsara Liyanage, Vivi: A Biography of Vi vien ne Goonewardene (Colombo, n.d.), p. 43. Regi Siriwardena, Working Underground. p. 53. Regi Siriwardena recalls that the meeting took place at "a large house that had probably been built for a Muslim family." After the jailbreak the four leaders had hid together in a house in Nawala which had been provided by Allan Mendis. After a while, Philip shifted to "The Fortress," a huge mansion in Kollupitiya which belonged to a Muslim. Robert Gunawardena, "My Political Life," Mirror, 4 December 1971. Kusuma, Philip's wife, joined him shortly later at this house in Kollupitiya. Lakmali Gunawardena, Kusuma: A Life in Left Politics (Colombo, 2004), p. 14.

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all along where Leslie Goonewardene had been hiding. He knew where the party press was concealed. He had driven one of the getaway cars in the jailbreak. If he were a Judas, why were the police unable to find Leslie or the press? Why did they allow the jailbreak to occur? The accusation seemed prepost~rous. IfPhilip had a personal grudge, why did he resort to such a serious accusation? That is the enigma. The late Regi Siriwardena speculates that Philip could not reveal what, or who, had offended him and sought revenge through a surrogate. 17 Unfortunately, we don't have any documents from this critical period. The party archives, including the letters that party leaders wrote to each other from their hideouts, were destroyed not long after. 18 Factional Warfare

In July, 1942, most of the LSSP leaders left for India. The exodus posed anew the question of who should fill the vacancies in the Ceylon party committee. "When Doric once again brought up the matter of filling the vacancies with university graduates," recalls Robert Gunawardena, "I lost my temper and nearly committed violence. But those around me held me and prevented me." The feuding generated too much heat and not enough light. With the senior leaders gone, matters went from bad to worse in Ceylon. A few months later a signific'ant section of the party rebelled against the "petty bourgeois intellectuals." It was not a matter of a few dissidents here and there. The opposition included a number of founding party members, such as Susan de Silva, as well as most of

17

18

Interview with Regi Siriwardena, 20 December 1997. Also Regi Siriwardena, Working Underground, p. 54. Patrick Perera, the party's archivist, stored these letters along with important Central Committee resolutions at his sister's house. When he was arrested, she destroyed the documents before the police arrived to search the house. Hector Abhayavardhana, "Daisy Ferdinandusz Rajakarunanayake - A devoted mother and silent lady of the left," The Island, 30 July 2000.

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the trade unionists. They felt that Doric and his circle had hijacked the party and were taking it in the wrong direction. Some rank-and-file workers raised the slogan, "A Workers' Leadership for a Workers' Party." This group was strong. They all lived in the same working-class section of Colombo, which the locals dubbed "Trotskypura," or Trotsky Town. When this news reached Bombay, the Ceylonese leaders fonned a "Workers Opposition faction" in solidarity with their followers in Ceylon. 19 Philip Gunawardena, N.M. Perera, and Colvin de Silva were the leading lights. 20 The Platform of the Workers Opposition denounced the "petty bourgeois intellectuals" in Ceylon who had turned the LSSP into "a narrow conspiratorial sect entirely cut off from the masses." 21 Colvin de Silva declared that "the party cannot be restored to health, unity and effectiveness unless this faction is smashed." 22 In response the Ceylon group around Doric de Souza fonned the Bolshevik Leninist Faction. They charged that their critics were hindering the Bolshevization of the party. 23 They objected to its demand that "workers should be given preference" in elections to the party's committees. They accused the Workers Opposition of rallying "non-Bolshevik elements discarded by the party in its development since 1939-40." The "Bolshevik" faction included Doric, William

19

20

21

22 23

The "Workers Opposition" faction was formed in October, 1942. The platform of the faction was signed by nine expatriate Ceylonese leaders, including Philip Gunawardena, N.M. Perera, and Colvin de Silva. Other supporters of the Workers Opposition in Bombay included Hector Abhayavardhana and Lionel Cooray. Leslie and Vivienne Goonewardene seem to have kept neutral. Quoted in "Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," 20 September 1944. "Platform of the Workers Opposition," August 1942. Document dated 22 September 1942 and signed by 13 members of the Ceylon Regional Committee, quoted in "Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," 20 September 1944.

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Silva, Edmund Samarakkody, V. Karalasingham, and many of the recent youth recruits, like Lorenz Perera, Dick Attygalle, R.S. Baghavan, and Regi Siriwardena. The BLPI Political Bureau, which was resident in Bombay, tried to mediate. In a formal sense the Bureau had authority over the Ceylon committee, since the LSSP had become a subordinate part of the BLPI in 1942. At that point the Bureau consisted of Leslie Goonewardene, Bemard Soysa, and C.y. Shukla. The two Ceylonese members tried to maintain neutrality. The Bureau instructed the Ceylon committee to make every effort to include more rank-and-file workers, while rejecting the slogan, "Workers' leadership for a workers' party." The Ceylon committee called a meeting to consider the Bureau's instructions. At midnight on September 7, 1942 the comrades convened at a "safe house" in Colombo. Suddenly, three men put out the lights and attacked. They were Philip's men-Mike, Dave, and Richard. 24 The Bolshevik Leninist Faction demanded that the perpetrators be suspended. Trotsky had always denounced the use of violence within the left and labor movement, except in cases of self-qefense. The Gunawardena brothers didn't agree. In their view violence against comrades was sometimes not only justified but even necessary "to restore them to Marxist health." 25 The BLPI Bureau suspended the three and instructed the Ceylon comrades to convene a party conference. 26 An interim committee,

24

25

26

"Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," p. 4. The Ceylon labor movement had a very rough and tough underside from the start. There was a tradition of admiration for pugnacious leaders. The early organizers of the Colombo labor movement, men like John Kotelawala (1865-1908), used their fists freely against rowdies, drunkards, criminals, and arrogant white "sahibs." His toughness made him a popular hero in the slums. Even Anagarika Dharmapala, the Buddhist reformer, used to exhort the Sinhalese to emulate "our fearless John Kotelawala" and "thrash the white man." Quoted in Visakha Kumari Jayawardena, The Rise o/the Labor Movement in Ceylon (Colombo, 1972), p. 126. Report to the Fourth International, n.d. [1944] and not signed Hoover: SWP Papers, box 44.

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headed by Esmond Wickremasinghe, was formed. Something was fishy with the delegate election: the Workers Opposition got only one out of the sixteen delegates. They cried foul play. 27 At the conference the "Bolsheviks" routed Philip's supporters. 28 WJ. ("Hospital") Perera, the trade union leader, refused to recognize the conference decisions. The LSSP was de facto split. The Party Question in India

As we saw in Chapter 3, the LSSP decided at its secret conference in 1941 to actively help the Indian groups to unify. All the Ceylonese leaders, whether in jailor outside, were in agreement. But differences surfaced over questions of tactics and timing. Doric de Souza was keen to launch the party as soon as possible. Philip thought he was rushing the process. "It was our opinion," he explained, "that the formation of a party on so insecure and a mean base as then existed was a grave mistake in that the formation of a revolutionary party was not a single artificial act but a bold natural process." 29 He criticized these comrades for failing to grasp how a party had to be built. Philip drew a distinction between a platform and a party: "whereas a platform places before the masses a particular strategy to be followed

27

Susan de Silva, The Wrecking of the LSSp, p. 19.

28

Doric de Souza had prepared factional resolutions. One condemned the Workers Opposition as a reactionary tendency. Another called for purging "all backward, inactive and unreliable elements" and adopting strict Bolshevik organizational principles. The delegates condemned the slogan, "Workers' Leadership for a Workers Party." "Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," 20 September 1944. "To Comrades Raju, Rao, and Randhir," n.d. [1943]. The signatories are: Joseph [probably Philip Gunawardena], Oliver [N.M. Perera], Maurice, Regpee [probably Reggie Perera], Jackie [perhaps Jack Kotalawala], Cuthbert, Prakash [Robert Gunawardena], Amar [Vinayak Purohit], Surendra [Hector Abhayavardhana]. Hull: Haston, DJHI15GI14b. One of the Bombay comrades, Vinayak Purohit ("Amar"), came to Ceylon, visited the LSSP prisoners in jail, and gave them his impressions of the state of affairs in the BLPI. This letter to the comrades in Bombay was the result of those discussions.

29

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in the solution of the problems, a party is essentially the concrete manifestation of the ability to transfer that strategy from the realm of theory to that of practice." 30 In other words, don't proclaim yourselves to be a party if you can't really be one. Philip proposed the publication of a regular Trotskyist journal in India to influence "such individuals and groups as were already moving towards a Fourth Internationalist position." 31 There were contacts in Lucknow, Delhi, Lahore, and Jamshedpur who had expressed a willingness to work with the Trotskyists. In his opinion the Indian groups hadn't yet even reached their "Iskra stage." 32 Doric de Souza went up to Bombay and dutifully reported these views. The Bombay comrades bowed to the judgement of the senior leaders in Ceylon. They postponed the date for launching the BLPI until later in 1942 and began to publish a journal, The Bolshevik-Leninist. 33 Role Reversal

The situation in India changed dramatically over the next six months. The Cripps Mission came and went. The Congress Left was clamoring for action. There were sporadic outbursts oflabor militancy. Following these events from afar, Phi lip Gunawardena sensed that a great struggle was in the offing. If so, there would not be as much time for propagandistic preparation as he had hoped just a few months earlier. And so he supported the formation of the BLPI in May, 1942. 30

"To Comrades Raju, Rao, and Randhir."

31

"Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," p. 1.

32

The Russian Social Democrats started to publish their first paper, Iskra, in December, 1900. In his 1923 lectures on the history of the Bolshevik Party, Grigorii Zinoviev described its importance: "This was not just any newspaper: it was a published organ which succeeded in becoming the master of a whole generation of minds, fulfilling a great literary and political task and simultaneously accomplishing huge organizational political work in consolidating the party." Grigorii Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party - a Popular Outline (London, 1973), p. 73.

II

C.P.S., L.S.G., E.B.S., Letter to the Secretary, Bureau of the Fourth International, 29 June 1942.

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When Gandhi posed the Quit India ultimatum two months later, Philip concluded that, ready or not, the BLPI would have to enter the fray under its own banner. "The Indian bourgeoisie will start a civil disobedience movement. When this movement develops and is transformed into a mass movement, the working class will wrest its leadership from the bourgeoisie. Under the unstained red banner of the Fourth International, the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India will show the way to the working class." 34 After writing those lines, he and his comrades set out for India. Once in Bombay the Ceylonese joined the local party group, which was still using its pre-merger name, Bolshevik Mazdoor Party (BMP). That in itself was symptomatic. C.V. Shukla, the local leader, ran the group like it was still an independent party, his party. He wanted the BLPI to be named BMP, rather than vice versa. He insisted on maintaining exclusive control over his printing press, which he kept hidden, and his group in Ahmedabad, which was independently publishing its own newspaper, Inkilab [Revolution]. The Ceylonese transplants were appalled at this state of affairs. They pressed Shukla to relinquish the press and integrate his groups and newspapers. Shukla resisted. He wouldn't reveal where the press was hidden. 35 Philip Gunawardena called Shukla a "narrow-minded provincial." But Shukla had the Ceylonese over a barrel. On their own, they couldn't do much in Bombay. They were foreigners, wanted by the police, unfamiliar with the political scene, and unable to speak the local languages. And so the Ceylonese leaders didn't force a showdown. When the Quit India revolt erupted, the Bombay group suddenly had new openings and new opportunities to pursue. Shukla wanted the BLPI to intervene like a mass party, even though the Bombay branch

34

35

Philip Gunawardena, "The Coming Indian Revolution"(l7 August 1942), quoted in Meryl Fernando, "An Account of the LSSP, 1939-1960," in Al Richardson (ed.) Blows Against the Empire. pp. 72-73. Letter to Secretary, International Secretariat, Fourth International, from K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], 25 July 1944. Hoover: SWP Papers.

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had only a couple dozen members. 36 He formed little "labor committees," consisting of young recruits with no trade-union experience, to carry out "mass work" in the textile mills. The Ceylonese, who actually had experience in mass work, recommended abolishing these ineffective committees and creating a smaller branch executive to direct all party work. 37 That was rejected. Never one to suffer fools, Philip Gunawardena was running out of patience. "At a time when the problem before us was to find a base in Bombay, we were writing memoranda and holding discussions as to the form of organisation best suitable for the existing twenty-odd members. The fact that we constituted a party without being able to discharge its most important functions faced us with insoluble problems." 38 Philip blamed Shukla "for the failure of the Party to achieve any significant link-up with the workers in Bombay." 39 The clashes "developed into a bitter internal struggle." 40 Shukla attacked the Workers Opposition as an "anti-Bolshevik tendency" that was trying to impose "the leadership of old leaders of Ceylon over the budding all-India organisation." 41 He called Philip an ego maniac who was "always accustomed to be obeyed by hero worshippers, yes-boys, 36

37

38 39

40 41

Hector Abhayavardhana, who was a participant in these events in Bombay, says Shukla had "leadership fantasies." Hector Abhayavardhana, "Marxism and Some Features of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party," p. 384. A later party report noted that "what little gains were made in the mill area could not be stabilised due to (I) the extreme paucity of cadres available for work in this field, (2) the immaturity and inexperience of these elements themselves, and (3) the mistake made of frittering away effort on a wide field instead of concentrating on intensive work in one or two mills." "Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," p. 7. "To Comrades Raju, Rao, Randhir," p. 2. Letter from Leslie Goonewardene to the author, dated 30 April 1975. "Report of the Provisional Central Committee of the BLPI," p. 8. Letter to Bureau of the Fourth International, 7 August 1944, signed by Shukla and 7 other members of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38. Also Rafiq [Chandra Vadan Shukla], "Proletarian Leadership of the Indian Revolution," Bolshevik Leninist. vo!. 2, no. 2 (November 1943), p. 11. Hoover: LSH, box 52. This article was reprinted as a pamphlet with the same title. Hull: Brynmor lones Library.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

and paid party workers." 42 He said the Ceylonese used their personal money to control the party. Shukla, who refused to hand over his printing press, had the gall to accuse the Ceylonese of having "a separate cyclostyle press and stock of paper, without the party being aware of it, under its own control." 43 Shukla provoked Philip one time too many. Shukla had been sent to a union convention. He procrastinated writing his report. At an editorial board meeting, when asked again for the report, Shukla replied that it was now so out of date it would be useless. Philip lost his temper. He rose, grabbed Shukla by his shoulders, and shook him. According to Hector Abhayavardhana, who was living with Phi lip and Kusuma at that point, Philip came home from the meeting sorry for what he had done. 44 He apologized to the central committee later. Shukla, however, withdrew from the party and "began to build an independent group of this own." 45 He boycotted the next meeting of the Provisional Central Committee in June, 1943. He instead sent a document charging that the Ceylonese were trying to dominate the Indian party and reiterated his claim that the name of the party was BMP. The BLPI committee rejected his document and instructed all units of the party, including the Ceylon Regional Committee, use the name BLPI. When the police smashed the party a month later, Shukla managed to avoid arrest (leading some of his former comrades to question his bona fides). He continued to publish the Bolshevik Leninist, in the name of the BMP and the Fourth International, as if nothing had happened. 46 The BLPI denounced the BMP for "theft of the party 42

43

44 45 46

"Causes and the Significance of the Split in the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party ofIndia, Section Fourth International," undated 5-page typescript, copy in the Haston Archives, Hull University. Though unsigned, this is almost certainly by Shukla. Letter to the Bureau, Fourth International, signed by Chandravadan Shukla and seven other members of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party, dated 7 August 1944. Interview with Hector Abhayavardhana, Colombo, December 17-18,1997. Letter from Leslie Goonewardene to the author, dated 30 April 1975. See for example "Sampurn swatantrya ke /iye" [For complete independence], BMP leaflet, dated January 26,1944.

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press." 47 Recalling these events many years later, Shukla admits that the rupture was motivated mainly by personal clashes and secondary issues. 48 "The period of illegality," he said, "prevented full democracy within the underground party. That increased the frictions within the BLPI over organizational issues." The BMP was almost a carbon copy of the BLPL Shukla claimed his group was the true representative of the Fourth International in India. 49 The BMP churned out a lot ofliterature for such a small group: two journals, the Bolshevik Leninist and Jagat Kranti [World Revolution], and a mass newspaper, Age Kadam [Forward March]. Shukla had recruited some energetic young members. 50 Shukla let his fantasies of "mass leadership" flourish. He predicted that the revolution in India would commence within two years. 51 "We are sure that the BM PI will grow to its full stature as a political Marxist party of the Indian proletariat within two years."52 Despite these over-optimistic

47

48

49

50

51

. 52

"To Our Readers," Permanent Revolution, July-September 1943, p. 25. The BLPI reported to the Fourth International that Shukla split "due principally to his disinclination to submit himself and the Ahmedabad organization (with which he was the sole link) to the organizational discipline of the party." Letter to Secretary, International Secretariat, Fourth International, from K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], dated July 25,1944. SWP Papers, Hoover Archives. Interview with C.V. Shukla, 27 December 1973. Letter from Bolshevik Mazdoor Party to Secretary, I.S., 7 August 1944; Letter from Chandravadan Shukla to International Secretariat, El., 26 June 1945. In late 1943 the Chief Secretary of the Bombay government informed New Delhi that the BMP was distributing leaflets at students meetings. IOL: LlPJ/51164. File Pol. 2673/1944. According to the government, one of Shukla's leaflets urged students to prepare "for the revolution which, in its opinion, will probably occur next summer in view of the conditions prevailing.in· India at present." Report by H. Y.R. lengar, Home Department (Special) to Conran-Smith, Secretary to Government of India, Home Department,2 December 1943, p. 3. IOL: LlPJ/51164. In May 1945 the BMP central committee passed a resolution calling upon Indian labor "to prepare itself for the leadership of the Indian revolution, under the banner of its revolutionary party, the BMPI, section Fourth International." "Resolution on Indian Political Situation and Our Tasks," Bolshevik Leninist. vol. 4, no. 6 (May-July 1945), p. 20 . Letter to the Bureau, Fourth International, 7 August 1944.

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projections, Shukla managed to recruit some talented members in Bombay. 53 In 1944 he churned out leaflets in English, Hindi, Marathi, and Gujarati by the tens of thousands. 54 Looking back on this experience a year later, Philip Gunawardena admitted that he had gone against his own advice and tried to function like a party in Bombay: "we strained our resources to the utmost and, lacking the inner organisation to maintain our cadres, exposed them to the full blast of police repression." 55 The BLPI had tried to expand quickly by recruiting "politically virgin students." That meant that the BLPI had to concentrate "on the elemental political education of raw and very youthful students. The slowness of the process defeated our very aim of constructing the party as speedily as possible." If the BLPI persisted in this course, "it would at this rate take more than a decade or two to build a strong enough party." Proposal for Bold Regroupment

Cooling their heels in jail in Bombay Philip Gunawardena and N.M. Perera had the opportunity to ponder what to do next. They discussed with fellow left inmates, like Mukundlal Sircar, the General Secretary of the All-India Forward Bloc and former Secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress. As a result, Philip and Perera authored a long document, "The India Struggle - The Next Phase."56

53

54

55 56

Leading BMPI members in Bombay at this time were Shanta Patel, Tulsi Boda, Vasant Joshi, Tulsi Panchal, Nagjibhai Tapiawala, and Hansa Mehta. "Bolshevik Mazdoor Party Addresses the Revolutionary Youths and Students," 20 March 1944; "For Complete Independence," 26 January 1944; and "Prepare for the Coming Revolution," 9 August 1944. Hoover: LSH, box 52. "To Comrades Raju, Rao, Randhir." "The Indian Struggle, The Next Phase," typescript, 20 pages, n.d., signed "D.P.R. Gunawardena, N.M. Perera. Lanka Sama Samaja Party. Section of the Fourth International." Hull: Haston, DJH 15G/14b. Mukundlal Sirear, the General Secretary of the All-India Forward Bloc, smuggled the document out of the jail. Sirear was an important link between the Bombay Forward Block group and the main party based in Bengal.

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Philip and Perera started from the premise that the revolutionary groups were too small to make an impact on their own. Therefore, the "genuine revolutionaries" in those parties should join together to fonn a "united revolutionary front" functioning on an all-India basis. 57 The document names four candidates for this merger in addition to the BLPI: the Congress Socialist Party, the Forward Block, the Revolutionary Communist Party led by Saumyendranath Tagore, and the Bengal group led by Philip's old friend from London days, Niharendu Datta Mazumdar. 58 The "central executive representing the merging units" would work out "the details of the programme." However, they did insist that the minimum precondition would have to be rejection of Gandhian non-violence and support for "not merely a national revolution but a social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat." In this new party the Trotskyists would fight for leadership. "As the only genuinely revolutionary organisation based on class struggle and aimed at the dictatorship of the proletariat, we are convinced that the future is with us." The "Bolshevik" faction around Doric de Souza vigorously opposed this strategy. In their mind the first duty of the BLPI was to preserve its independence, as the only expression of the revolutionary vanguard in India. The "Bolsheviks" cited the letter that Trotsky had sent to Selina Perera in 1939, after she had tried to enter Mexico to visit him. Trotsky stated that Indian Fourth Internationalists, while supporting any anti-imperialist measures the Congress and "their petty bourgeois agencies" might take, "must not confound our organization, our program, our banner with theirs for a moment." 59 57

58

59

"The Indian Struggle, The Next Phase," pp. 19-20. Dutt Mazumdar was the leader of the Bengal Labour Party, formed in 1932. In 1936 Mazmdar made a bloc with the Communists, who were in disarray and could not function legally. That uneasy alliance broke down after the Communists adopted the "People's War" line. The Labour Party split, with one section taking a pro-war line and continuing to function as the Bolshevik Party. Mazumdar continued to hold an anti-war position. He was arrested in December, 1942. Leon Trotsky, "Letter on India" (24 November 1939), in Writings of Leon Trotsky 1939-40 (New York, 1973), pp. 108-09. The BLPI published this letter under the title, "British Imperialism-India's Main Enemy," in Permanent Revolution, vo!. 1, no. 3 (July-September 1943), pp. 26-27.

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Philip Gunawardena regarded their objections as pedantic. He called Doric and his faction "book worms" who, "having read a couple books written by Trotsky, embraced Trotskyism like the holy bible and attempted to implement them to the letter." 60 Phi lip was never one to cite Marxist "scripture" to clinch an argument. 61 But he could have quoted Trotsky in support of his proposal. In the 'thirties Trotsky advocated the controversial "entry tactic." 62 In the USA, for example, the Trotskyists entered the Socialist Party. Some Trotskyists were adamantly opposed to "liquidating the vanguard party." Trotsky called their opposition "sectarianism." This proposal was not considered by the BLPI as a whole until the first party conference in 1944. At that point all the Workers Opposition leaders were back in jail. The "Bolsheviks" thus had no problem defeating the proposal. "This proposal, we believe, if carried out, can only result in the dissolution of the only party (however small it may be) existing in India today with a clear-cut revolutionary programme, and the creation in its place at the best of a broad centrist party." 63

60

Arjuna, Pilip Gunavardhana caritaya. p. 86.

61

Hector Abhayavardhana described Phi lip as "not the kind of person who had reduced his politics to a number of propositions or rules and then set about applying these devices to the unfolding problems that he faced. I can't imagine him writing out his theses and packing them with long and innumerable quotations from leading theoreticians." Letter from Hector Abhayavardhana to the author, 10 May 1999. In the mid-1930s the victory of the Nazis in Germany shook up the European left. In several countries left-wing oppositions developed within the Socialist parties or broke away entirely. Trotsky recognized a window of opportunity. In 1936 he proposed that the French Trotskyists enter the Socialist party (SFIO) as a disciplined tendency, recruit to their tendency, and eventually exit stronger than before. Some Trotskyists argued that it would be a betrayal to liquidate the "vanguard party" into a social-democratic organization. How could the Trotskyists oppose the Popular Front on principle and then join a party that supported that very Popular Front? Trotsky called such thinking "sectarianism." "PC Resolution on 'The Indian Struggle - Next Phase' ," passed by the PC on 26 June 1944. Hull: Haston, DJH/lSG/14b. In his history of the LSSP Professor Ranjith Amarasinghe incorrectly dates this document to July, 1944.

62

63

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Time Out

In 1944 Leslie Goonewardene, the BLPI secretary, informed the Fourth International that the factional struggle had been "resolved." 64 That was an overstatement, to say the least. The struggle had come to a halt only because of the police raids. Though the leaders of the Workers Opposition were all in jail, their followers in Ceylon, particularly the "Trotskypura" group, continued to work independently, in the name of the LSSP. The unity was illusory. None of the disputed issues had been resolved. Philip Gunawardena continued to regard Doric de Souza as a police spy. He refused to renounce the use of violence against comrades. And he and his co-thinkers still favored a regroupment perspective. "We submit that it would be far more profitable for us to liquidate the BLPI in Bombay, to call ourselves the Indian League of Trotskyists (or some such thing) and to go into the CSP and Forward Block in groups doing all the agitation we can for the formation of the Party of the Indian Revolution." 65 On the other side the "Bolsheviks" had no clue how to get the BLPI to critical mass. In their view the formal independence of the party was sacrosanct. The BLPI would just have to soldier on, recruiting members one by one. The BLPI leaders had faith in Trotsky's prediction that the war would beget revolution. And when that happened, the masses would flock to their party. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, the factionalism resumed with a vengeance after the war. All of the unresolved issues surfaced again.

64

Letter to the Secretary, International Secretariat, Fourth International, from K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], 25 July 1944. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

65

"To Comrades Raju, Rao, Randhir."

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Ballots, Barricades, and Bloodshed When the war ended, Britain faced a thorny political situation in India. The Congress leftists were clamoring for a resumption of mass struggle. The British troops were war weary and in no mood to remain in India to put down unrest. Viceroy Wavell invited Congress and the Muslim League to a summit conference at Simla. His goal was to bring both parties into an expanded Executive Council. But the Congress and League deadlocked. Jinnah insisted that all Muslim members of the council would have to be Muslim Leaguers. The conference collapsed. Shortly thereafter, the Labour Party won the general elections and formed a government. The new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, was a Fabian Socialist who favored Indian freedom. The Secretary of State, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, admired Gandhi. Sir Stafford Cripps suggested that a constituent assembly be created in India. On August 21, 1945 Wavell announced that elections would be held during "the cold weather." The BLPI attacked the Wavell proposal as a ruse. The Trotskyists flatly denied that the Labour government would give independence to India. In fact, the Labour Party called only for Dominion status within the Commonwealth, "if possible." Rita Hinden, the party's colonial expert, evoked the old theory of "socialist trusteeship," calling for "a closer relationship between nations based on mutual help, confidence, and respect." I The Trotskyists wanted Congress to "return to the road of struggle." But Nehru cast his lot with Gandhi. The BLPI directed biting propaganda at the Congress Socialists, pointing out their contradiction. The Socialists wanted struggle, but refused to break with the "bourgeois" Congress. But these barbs, fired from afar, carried little

Rita Hinden, The Labour Party and the Colonies (London, 1946), p. 9.

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sting. If the Trotskyists had been working in the Congress Socialist Party, as Philip Gunawardena had urged all along, they might have been able to influence a chunk of the Congress left. Both the Congress and the Muslim League mounted massive election campaigns. The League thundered about Pakistan. The Congressmen wrapped themselves in the glory of the Quit India struggle. The CPI preached "Congress-League unity" ad nauseum. The Stalinists supported both Congress and Muslim League candidates, fielding Communist candidates only in select labor constituencies. And even then, the CPI campaign was barely pink. The Stalinists promised that, if elected, the party "shall not touch the small zamindar or the rich peasant." 2 BLPI Election Strategy

In late September, 1945 the BLPI Central Committee met to formulate a line on the elections. The Trotskyists debated their options. Should they abstain? Support Congress? Call for critical support to the CPI? Colvin de Silva and Leslie Goonewardene hit the nail on the head: "The question is, therefore, what is the way the masses can show through their vote their endorsement of the August Struggle and the path of struggle without falling into the position of support for Congress." 3 Their proposal was to judge each candidate by a single criterion: did he endorse the Quit India struggle or not. If so, then the BLPI could support that candidate. Given the differences, the Central Committee decided to throw the question out to the membership for internal debate. 4 A majority of the Calcutta Unit favored the idea of supporting Congress candidates who

2

P.C. Joshi, For the Final Bid for Power (Bombay, 1945), p. 118. Quoted in D.G. [Douglas Garbutt], "Report on the Fourth International Movement in India." emphasis in original.

4

"C.C. Report Presented to Party Convention Beginning May 1, 1947," Internal Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 1 [May 1947], p. 12. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

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at least paid lip service to the Quit India movement. But they put more teeth into their proposal. They added two additional criteria, namely opposition to the Gandhian Constructive Programme and to Congress trade unions. In the United Provinces the small BLPI group called for outright support to Congress. The Central Committee re-convened and after two days of debate adopted the "conditional support" position. The party prepared an election manifesto, appropriately titled Vote for August - Vote for Struggle. 5 The whole thrust was a call for renewed struggle against British imperialism. "We, Fourth Internationalists, say clearly to the masses: the elections open no road to freedom from national subjection and economic exploitation; they open the road only to a re-arranged imperialist-bourgeois-feudalist alliance that can signify only imperialist domination reinforced." The manifesto attacked the "Pakistan" slogan as a "pipe dream of the Muslim feudalists," a "imperialist manouevre," and a "deceitful slogan." The manifesto also attacked "the Congress policy of refusing the rights of independence and secession to Indian nationalities. We stand for the fullest right of self-determination for all nationalities, but we point out that the very opportunity for the exercise of these rights can arise only outside the imperialist structure." [emphasis in original] In terms of the vote, the manifesto called for a vote to "individual Congressmen who give full political support to the August mass struggle." The manifesto was quick to emphasize that this should not be construed as political support for the "bourgeois" Congress. "We vote not for Congress but for struggle." That was an inherently selfcontradictory line. A vote is a vote. There was no way that a voter could register any other sentiments.

The CC resolution, "The Tasks of the Party in the Coming Elections," formed the basis for the party's election manifesto, Vote for August. Vote for Struggle [December, 1945]. The pamphlet was translated into Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Hindi.

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In any case the BLPI manifesto concluded that the elections really weren't all that important anyway. "Let the imperialists and the bourgeoisie patch up their new agreements: they cannot halt the masses on the march. For the day, let us prepare! For the day, let us plan! In elections, through elections, and, more, independent ofelections /" That day came sooner than anyone expected. Mass Demonstrations in Calcutta

In August, 1945 the government announced that imprisoned leaders of the Indian National Army (lNA) would be brought to trial. The Japanese had created the INA in 1942, after the fall of Singapore. The Indian prisoners of war were offered a choice: dig latrines or switch sides and fight the British. In 1943 the Japanese turned over this ragtag force to Subhas Chandra Bose, who had fled India at the start of the war. Unfortunately for Subhas, his patrons were losing. In 1944 the British routed the Japanese at Imphal and captured about 11,000 INA soldiers. Subhas escaped from Rangoon, and died after his plane crashed en route to China. The British eventually released all but 2,500 INA soldiers deemed to be "war criminals." In Bengal, where Bose was revered like a demi-god, the student federation controlled by his party called for a protest demonstration. The BLPI endorsed the protest and demanded the immediate release of the prisoners. 6 The BLPI group in Calcutta was ably led by Kamalesh Bannerji, who had been released from jail after the war. The BLPI had a number of activists working on the student front, including P.K. Roy, his fiery sister, Suprova Roy, Satyen Koley, Sitanshu Das, Haradhan Chatterji, Kamala Banerji, and Dhiresh Sanyal. 7 The

The Inside Story of the Calcutta Demonstrations (Calcutta, 1945), p. 12. Copy in author's possession. Reprinted as "Les fusillades policieres de Calcutta," Quatrieme Internationale (August-s"eptember 1946), pp. 57-60.

Satyen Koley was a student at Presidency College. He became co-editor of the BLPI's Bengali-Ianguage newspaper, Inquilab. along with Dulal Bose. Koley later became the vice president of the Paschim Banga Patrika and Press Workers Union. New Spark. 14 August 1948.

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BLPI also had an organized following in the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the main force behind the Bengal Provincial Students' Federation, which endorsed the demonstration. 8 On November 21 the government watched anxiously as tens of thousands of protestors poured into Wellington Square. The mood was militant. The CPI requested to speak and was denied. 9 During the war the Stalinists had villified Subhas Bose as a traitor, a rat, a puppet of Joseph Goebbels and Tojo. 10 Some speakers ripped into the CPI for its treachery during the war. The crowd then marched towards Government House. The police blocked their path at Dharamtala Street. The students squatted in the street. After three hours some students tried to break through the police lines. Mounted police charged and cracked heads. The police opened fire, killing two and wounding 33. After several more hours of tense standoff a local Congress leader arrived with the message that Sarat Bose, the leader of the Bengal Congress and brother of Subhas, did not approve of their protest. The Trotskyist students, led by Haradhan Chatterji, rose and "shouted out that they never believed in the leader-cult. The students always fought for a certain programme and never for the leaders. Whether the masses were right or wrong, they said, the leaders must be with the masses to guide them." 11 The students remained in the street until daybreak. The next day nearly 100,000 people gathered at Wellington Square. Sarat Bose appealed to the demonstrators to disperse. Instead, the crowd surged toward Dalhousie, undeterred by police attacks along its flank, advancing in an adrenalin rush. The students began to halt the Letter from C.R. Govindan [Colvin de Silva] to Secretary, International Secretariat, 18 July 1945. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38. Gautam Chattopadhyay, "Bengal Students in Revolt Against the Raj, 1945-46," in Amit Kumar Gupta (ed.), Myth and Reality: The Struggle for Freedom in India, 1945-47 (New Delhi, 1987), p. 154. 10

Peoples' War portrayed Bose as a cur held up by Joseph Goebbels (13 September 1942), a mask for the Japanese (8 August 1942), a donkey carrying Tojo (19 July 1942), and a midget being led by Japanese imperialists (26 September 1943).

11

The Inside Story of the Calcutta Demonstrations, p. 3.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

buses and trams. 12 As the violence escalated, the CPI, which controlled the transport workers union, pulled the trams off the streets. The CPI, however, was reacting to events, not leading the protests. The CPI organzed a labor rally in Muhammad Ali Park, deliberately keeping the workers separate from the students in Wellington Square. The CPI called for an "enquiry" into the police violence, and left it at that. 13 The protests continued into the third day. The BLPI led two big processions to Sraddhananda Park for a mass rally. The Trotskyist youth, in the thick of the action, argued against senseless heroics or adventurism. "The Trotskyist students who were seen addessing streetcorner meetings explained why interference with the military at the given stage should be avoided." 14 Troops opened fire at least 14 times, killing another 33 and wounding 200 more. A hundred and fifty police and military vehicles were torched; 70 British and 37 American soldiers were injured. The Congress feared that the disorders were getting out of control. Nehru told Sarat Bose to "get all these irresponsible demonstrations ended, so that a normal atmosphere of peace may be created as soon as possible." 15 The Congress President, Maulana Azad, appealed to the students in Calcutta to desist from any more demonstrations. The Congress student federation withdrew. The movement had reached a critical juncture. Communist "Peace Brigades"

The Stalinists joined with the Congress and Muslim League to defuse the situation. The Central Intelligence Officer in Calcutta reported that 12

IJ

14 15

As the governor of Bengal subsequently described the events in a confidential memorandum to Viceroy Wavell, "Interference with transport was at first mainly by persuasion, though backed, of course, by threat of force. As the day proceeded, interference became steadily more violent in character." IOL: LlPJ/5/152. File Po!. 615111946. Hindustan Times, 23 November 1945. The Inside Story o/the Calcutta Demonstrations, pp. 7-8. Hindusthan Standard, 26 November 1945.

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"there was a definite move on the part of both the CPI and the Congress to take active steps to stop further disorders." 16 The governor of Bengal reported, "Congress and some Communist propaganda cars toured the affected areas dissuading the students from further participation." 17 These "peace brigades" worked. The crowds dispersed, not to reappear the next day. 18 In other words, contrary to later Stalinist selfglorification as the "revolutionary" leadership, the CP! helped the police and military to restore law and order. The more militant students were livid. The Chief Secretary to the government of Bengal reported to New Delhi that "the student leaders of the party [CPI] have lost their following and influence over the students in the various educational institutions in Calcutta." 19 The protests caused the government to retreat a little. A communique announced that only those INA prisoners accused of murder and brutality would be brought to trial. Moreover, the sentences passed on the first trio were remitted. But the sentencing of the next defendant, a Muslim, in February, 1946 provoked protests anew. The Muslim students' organization in Bengal called for a mass protest. The Trotskyists had influence in the Muslim student movement; a member of the BLPI, V.A. Zuberi, was Secretary of the All Bengal Muslim Students League. Round Two

On February 11, 1946 the joint Hindu-Muslim students rally took place in Calcutta. The Trotskyist activist, Haradhan Chatterji, was one of the speakers. 20 When police fired on the students, rioting broke out.

16

11 18

19 20

Sucheta Mahajan, "British Policy, Nationalist Strategy and Popular National Upsurge, 1945-46," in Amit Kumar Gupta (ed.), Myth and Reality: The Struggle for Freedom in India, 1945-47, p. 98, footnote 281. IOL: LlPJ/5/152. File Pol. 615111946. Keka Dutta Ray, Political Upsurges in Post-War India, 1945-46 (New Delhi, 1992), p. 7. IOL: LlPJ/5/152. File Pol. 6150/1946. Interview with P.K. Roy and Dulal Bose, 2 February 1974.

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Barricades were erected. The city's transport workers went on strike that night. The following day jute workers responded with a hartal. By noon half a million people flooded central Calcutta, chanting "Down with British Imperialism!" and "Hindus, Muslims, unite!" The Indian police and soldiers began to waver and were replaced by battlehardened British troops. The British military took over the city. Teenagers lobbed Molotov cocktails at the troops, who responded with automatic weapons. A confidential military report vividly described the situation: "Riots are very serious. Railway lines have been tom up at Naihati and Chalegar . . . Kankinara Station and Tollygunj Tram Depot set on fire. All English shops had their windows smashed, military lorries burnt. Bodies still lying around Chowringhee area. North Calcutta is isolated." 21 Many rank-and-file Communists jumped into the thick of the action. But the party leaders vacillated. The CPI admitted that it "failed to assess the situation on the last two days and trailed behind the events." 22 The real problem was the party line. How could the CPI lead these protests when the Congress and League were united against them? The government noted that the CPI refrained from calling a general strike for that very reason. 23 The CPI held its labor demonstrations in the suburbs, far from the militant students and street fighting. The BLPI challenged the Communist student federation to "completely and finally break with Congress and its leadership." 24 In a 21

22

23

24

Quoted in Gautam Chattopadhyaya, ''The Almost Revolution: India in February, 1946," Indian Left Review (April 1974), p. 37. Gautam Chattopadhyay, "Bengal Students in Revolt Against the Raj, 1945-46," in Amit Kumar Gupta (ed.), Myth and Reality: The Struggle/or Freedom in India, 1945-47, p. 167. "The Communists played an important, though not the principal part in organizing the ensuing disturbances and only the opposition of the leaders of the main political parties prevented them from bringing about a general strike." IOL: LIPJ/12/432. Pol.(S) 118/1947. The Chief Secretary of the Bengal government reported to New Delhi, "It is not clear yet who were instigating the mobs and what part the Communists played in the disturbances." IOL: LIPJ15/153. File Pol. 768511946. Spark, no. 2 (Early March 1946), p. 6.

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leaflet the BLPI called upon the radical students to "link themselves with the proletarian class struggle and break with the bourgeois Congress." 25 But the CPI leaders didn't sit on the fence very long. Once again the CPI joined with the Congress and Muslim League to try to calm the crowds. But the militants had experienced one Stalinist betrayal and didn't want another. Crowds attacked the CPI "peace vans." 26 The British put down the uprising after 72 hours. Over 200 were jailed, and 84 were killed. The Naval Mutiny

Less than a week later the British government faced a new threat in Bombay. Indian ratings (enlisted men) in the Royal Indian Navy mutinied. Trouble had been brewing in the RIN for some time. The ratings resented the bad food, low pay, and racist abuse from their commanding officers. The INA trials had an effect, too. As one rating recalled, "For the first time, many of us started feeling: What have we been fighting for-the preservation of empire? Shouldn't our own country be free?" 27 The ratings decided to mutiny to get the attention of Congress. "If all of us refuse to eat breakfast, that will be mutiny; and once the mutiny happens, we'll take over the navy. Once we take over the navy, those national leaders who have gone underground to fight the British will come and lead us." 28 Some approached the CPI in Bombay. However, the CPI leaders refused to support their plan and told the ratings "to stay with the rest." 29 The ratings got a better reception from Aruna Asaf Ali, the Congress Socialist Party leader. The fact is the ratings were on their own from the start. 25

Spark, no. 3 (Late March 1946), p. 6.

26

Keka Dutta Ray, Political Upsurges in Post-War India, 1945-46, p. 14. B.C. Dutt, Mutiny of the Innocents, quoted in Zareer Masani, Indian Tales of the Raj (Berke\ey, 1987), p. 123. Quoted in Zareer Masani,Indian Tales of the Raj, p. 125. Subrata Banerjee, "R.I.N. Mutiny," in Ravi Dayal (ed.), We Fought Together for Freedom: Chaptersfram the Indian National Movement (New Delhi, 1995), p. 224.

27

28 29

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The revolt started on Monday, February 18, 1946 at the RIN shore signal school, HMIS Talwar. After confronting their officers the ringleaders seized the communications room and broadcast their revolt to every ship and shore base. A little after midnight ratings at HMIS Hernia joined the mutiny. The revolt spread quickly to 22 ships in Bombay harbour and the Castle Barracks and Fort Barracks shore bases. Many petty officers, and a few ranking officers, joined the rebels. The next morning mutineers seized military vehicles in the dockyards and drove around Bombay shouting slogans in support of the INA prisoners. The Central Strike Committee issued a leaflet which ended with the call, "Long live the solidarity of workers, soldiers, students and peasants. Long live the Revolution!" 30 The ratings were in a celebratory mood. The government held back while the ratings held a peaceful mass rally and led an orderly march in Bombay. BLP. - First to Strike

The BLPI was the first party in Bombay to call for a general strike in support of the mutiny. "As news of the Naval Mutiny spread through Bombay," remembers Indra Sen, "the BLPI got its followers together and decided to call a general strike. Our night workers in the textile mills-Prabhakar More and Lakshman Jadhav-Ied the third-shift workers out of the mills. By early morning we had issued a leaflet. We painted the word, 'Hartal!', on the sidewalks." 31 Douglas Garbutt, a British Trotskyist in uniform who was working with the BLPI in Bombay at that point, corroborated that account. He wrote to his comrades in London, "I can tell you that our friends played a leading role in Bombay-the general strike can be directly traced to them, as the first workers to come out were ours and were carrying a

30

Quoted in Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking ofBritish India (New York, 1998), p. 593.

31

Interview with Indra Sen, 1 February 1974.

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flag with our device on it!" 32 The "device" refers to the emblem of the Fourth International-the hammer and sickle with the numeral four. While the Trotskyists might have been the first to hit the streets, the general strike in Bombay was essentially spontaneous. The ratings had appealed to the people of Bombay for support. The textile workers responded, shutting down 70 of Bombay's 74 cotton mills. On the morning of the hartal the CPI leadership took out a procession of 30,000 trade-unionists. The Stalinists chanted, "Congress, League, and Communists, unite!" 33 The CPI emphasized that the hartal should give "peaceful expression to the protest against military atrocities." 34 The BLPI sent members down to the dock area to make contact with the mutineers. But the British had massed troops around the shore stations, cutting the rebels off from the city. Ramesh Karkal, the BLPI organizer in Bombay, recalled, "we were beset on all sides by triggerhappy British tomies." 35 At Castle Barracks the ratings broke into the armoury, seized three machine guns and 150 rifles, and blazed away at British troops for eight hours. Indian gunners on two ships joined the battle. The revolt spread to 30,000 sailors on 20 shore bases and 78 ships. Vice-Admiral Godfrey threatened to sink every rebellious ship, if the ratings didn't surrender quickly. The British were worried that the rebellion would spread. Military intelligence warned that not a single naval or air force unit was trustworthy. 36 Indian soldiers refused to fire on the mutineers. Men in the Royal Indian Air Force camps and Royal

34

Letter from Douglas Garbutt to Frank [E.R. Frank], 29 April 1946. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38. The SWP solidarized with the uprising: Robert Birchman, "Revolutionary Developments in India," Fourth International (May 1946), pp. 158-59; and Indra Sen, "India Correspondence, Fourth International (October 1946), pp. 310-12. G Adhikari (ed.), Strike: The Story o/the Strike in the Indian Navy (New Delhi, 1946). Keka Dutta Ray, Political Upsurges in Post-War India, 1945-46, p. 28.

3S

Socialist Appeal [New Delhi], vol. 2, no. 17, late September 1953.

36

Cited in Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking o/British India, p. 598.

32

33

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Indian Army Service Corps solidarized with the ratings. Ground crews mutinied in Madras, Karachi, Poona, Allahabad, and Delhi. Nearly 2,000 men in the Royal Indian Army Signal Corps mutinied near Jabalpur. There were mini-revolts by Indian gunners in Madras, signallers at Allahabad, and clerical staff at army headquarters in Delhi. The government had the full support of the Congress and the Muslim League. On Friday, February 22 the head of the Bombay Muslim League and the secretary of the Bombay Provincial Congress Committee called the governor to express "their anxiety to allay the disturbances, and offering the help of volunteers to assist the police." 37 Gandhi declared that "a combination between Hindus and Muslims and others for the purpose of violent action was unholy." 38 As the gunfire boomed over Bombay, throngs vented their anger at symbols of British authority, like banks, post offices, and shops. The Chief Secretary reported that it was the Congress Socialists, not the Communists, who were whipping up the "large unruly element." 39 Workers dug up the streets and built barricades. The mill districts looked like a battle zone. "At a number of places," reported the Bombay governor, John Colville, "the mob offered determined resistance, erecting road blocks and covering them from nearby buildings; anyone who tried to clear the road block was stoned." 40 Jawaharlal Nehru's sister could never forget the sights and sounds of the battle. "For three days and three nights the shooting and rioting went on as the city rose in sympathy with the sailors." 41 In Karachi the mutineers who seized the HMIS Hindustan fired on British troops with its four-inch gun and Oerliken canon. A crowd of

37

IOL: LlPJ/51167. File Pol. 730411946. Reprinted in N. Mansergh (ed.), Constitutional Relations Between Britain and India: The Transfer of Power, 1942-7 (London, 1971-83), Vol. 6, pp. 1081-82.

38

Sum it Sarkar, Modern India (New Delhi, 1983), p. 425.

39

IOL: LlPJ/5/167. File Pol. 7392/1946.

40

IOL: LlPJ/5/167. File Pol. 7304/1946.

41

Krishna Nehru Hutheesingh, We Nehrus (New York, 1967), p. 179-80.

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over 4,000 civilians defied a ban on demonstrations and clashed with the police. The CPI got cold feet; "many Communist leaders, heeding the alarm raised by the authorities, had backed out of the situation." 42 The next day the Hindustan dueled with shore batteries for two hours, leaving six sailors dead and 25 wounded. A huge crowd gathered at the Id Gah maidan to support the mutineers. Faced with this situation "many Communist leaders decided against holding the meeting at Id Gah but the crowd refused dispersal and instead attacked the police." 43 The CPI leaders flinched and then retreated. 44 The Myth of "Honorable" Communist Leadership

In 1974 the Marxist historian, Gautam Chattopadhyaya, published an influential retrospective analysis of the INA demonstrations and the RIN mutiny. 45 He had been a Communist student leader in Calcutta during that period. He aptly called the crisis of February, 1946 "the almost revolution." But he also whitewashed the role of the CPI. He claimed that, despite "initial hesitations and confusions," the CPI was "the only major political party that behaved honorably" and tried to give revolutionary leadership in opposition to "the pernicious influence of the compromising leadership of the Congress and the Muslim League." The facts belie that claim. The CPI worked hand in glove with the Congress and League to restore law and order. In Bombay the CPI, 42

43

44

45

Anirudh Deshpande, "Sailors and the Crowd: Popular Protest in Karachi, 1946," The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vo!. 26, no. I (January-March 1989), p. 12. Anirudh Deshpande, "Sailors and the Crowd: Popular Protest in Karachi, 1946," p. 12. Anirudh Deshpande, "Sailors and the Crowd: Popular Protest in Karachi, 1946,"p.13. Gautam Chattopadhyaya, "The Almost Revolution: India in February, 1946," Indian Left Review (April 1974), p. 45. This article initiated what has become a tendency in Indian historiography to "rehabilitate" and prettify the CPI as much as possible. See for example Sumit Sarkar, "Popular Movements and National Leadership, 1945-47," Economic and Political Weekly, April 1982, pp. 677-89.

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Muslim League, and Congress "went around asking citizens to keep the peace." 46 In Karachi the CPI held a joint meeting with the Congress and Muslim League "to decide on measures to restore peace in the city." 47 The CPI formed "peace brigades" to disperse militant student demonstrations. 48 Chattopadhyaya neglected to cite what the CPI itself said at that time. The Communist newspaper, National Front, ran an editorial that demanded an end to "mob violence" and "mass hysteria." 49 "What is most essential is that the whole campaign based on the glorification of' August' and the INA heroes should now stop." Outgunned and cut off from the city, the ratings surrendered Saturday morning, February 23. The military arrested over 1,300 ratings and dismissed 1,000, contrary to Patel's promise of no victmization. Even after the ratings surrendered, there was sporadic resistance in the mill districts of Bombay. Tanks rumbled through the streets. Small groups fought guerrilla style. Mosquito bombers roared overhead. The British light carrier, Glasgow, guns at the ready, steamed into the harbour. Sympathy strikes continued in Calcutta, Madras, Madura, and Trichinopoly. The CPI issued an appeal on Monday, February 25 for all workers to return to work the next day. 50 The CPI dissociated itselffrom a strike held that very day to protest the repression. The CPI did, however, stage a joint rally in Calcutta with Sardar Patel-the man most responsible for duping the sailors into surrender. 51

46

Sucheta Mahajan, "British Policy, Nationalist Strategy and Popular National Upsurge, 1945-46," p. 82.

47

"Mutiny in the RIN and concerned disturbances," report compiled by K.R. Eates, DSP, Sindh CID, National Archives ofIndia: Home-Political 5114/46, cited in Anirudh Deshpande, "Sailors and the Crowd: Popular Protest in Karachi, 1946,"p.13. Janata, 10 March 1946.

48 49

National Front, 3 March 1946. The editorial was headlined, "Mob Violence and After."

50

Times of India, 25 February 1946.

51

Keka Dutta Ray, Political Upsurges in Post-War India, 1945-46, p. 31.

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"Down with the Cabinet Mission!"

The day after the Bombay mutiny broke out Prime Minister AttIee announced to the House of Commons that His Majesty's Government would send a cabinet mission to India. The delegation arrived on March 24, 1946, and after touring India for three months invited the Congress and Muslim League to another summit conference at.Simla. By this time the Muslim League's position on Pakistan had hardened into an all-or-nothing ultimatum. 52 The Congress and the League again locked horns over the issue of communal representation. Wavell announced that the conference had failed. The Cabinet Mission announced its own plan. As a short-term' solution an "Interim Government," based on the Indian parties, would be formed to carry out day-to-day administration. In the long run India would remain a single union. But the provinces would be grouped into three zones, so that the Muslim League would be guaranteed a majority in the drafting of Constitutions for the Northwest and Northeast provinces. The Muslim League accepted the plan. The Congress pressured Wavell to back down on the parity formula for forming an Interim Government. Crying betrayal, the Muslim League withdrew its support and refused to participate in a Constituent Assembly. The BLPI denounced the plan as "divide and rule" par excellence. 53 "We say boldly that, although no real 'transfer of power' is coming out of this Cabinet Mission and its negotiations, a settlement certainly is coming... A settlement is coming between our imperialist rulers, their bourgeois competitor-partners, and their feudalist and communalist henchmen." 54 The BLPI raised the slogans, "Down with the Cabinet Mission! Down with the collaborationist parties! Down

52

Jinnah had got the League to pledge to fight for Pakistan. H.S. Suhrawardy, the Muslim League boss in Bengal, vowed, "Let me honestly declare that every Muslim of Bengal is ready and prepared to lay down his life." Quoted in Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan (New York, 1984), p. 260.

53

Spark, no. 5 (Late April 1946), p. 1.

54

Spark, no. 4 (Early April 1946), p. 1.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

with imperialism's fake Constituent Assembly! On with the struggle for India's independence!" 55 The BLPI condemned the proposed Constituent Assembly as "hopelessly unreal" and "a device to cloak the real imperialist designs and intentions of our rulers." 56 But the Trotskyists did not counterpose a demand for a genuine constituent assembly. Meeting in June, 1946 the BLPI central committee decided that "( 1) there was nothing in the program to prevent our advancing the slogan of Constituent Assembly in suitable circumstances and (2) the development of events thus far in relation to the Cabinet Mission negotiations do not necessitate this slogan being advanced." 57 The rationale was that "the Congress itself was not claiming the so-called Constituent Assembly to be a real Constituent Assembly." After the Muslim League rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan, Nehru changed his mind. The Congress entered the "Interim Government" in Delhi in December, 1946. At that point the BLPI central committee "felt it necessary to put forward the slogan of a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly elected on universal franchise and outside the orbit of British Imperialism, as a propaganda slogan in order to expose the fake character of the 'Constituent Assembly' that was in session." 58 The BLPI emphasized that "it is essential first to drive the British armed forces out of India and to smash its rotten and corrupt administrative and police machinery." 59 Great Calcutta Killing

In August, 1946 events took another unexpected turn. Jinnah decided that violence was the only language the British understood. He called

55

Free Press Journal, 22 June 1946.

56

Spark, no. 8 (Late June 1946), p. 5.

57

"C.C. Report Presented to Party Convention Beginning May 21, 1947," p. 12.

58

"c.c. Report Presented to Party Convention," p. 12.

59

New Spark, 26 Apri11947.

188

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

on Muslims to resort to "direct action" on August 16. Muslim politicians whipped up passions. The mayor of Calcutta made inflammatory sectarian appeals: "By fighting you will go to heaven in this holy war." 60 Congress leaders called on Hindus to break the Muslim hartal. As Direct Action Day drew near, both Muslims and Hindus bought weapons on the black market. At dawn on August 16 the killing began; "Moslem mobs howling in a quasi-religious fervor came bursting from their slums, waving clubs, iron bars, shovels, any instrument capable of smashing in a human skull ... They savagely beat to a pulp any Hindu in their path and left the bodies in the city's open gutters." 61 The rampaging mobs torched Hindu bazaars, often burning the trapped Hindus alive. It didn't take long for the Hindu mobs to retaliate in kind. "People were stabbed, shot, and chopped," recalled Vivienne Goonewardene, the BLPI leader w~o was witness to the pogroms. "Death screams and shouts of triumph were heard on all sides; the whole area was covered with a black smoke and the stench of gunpowder was heavy in the nostrils. The violence lasted for three days. Public dirt-bins were overflowing with severed limbs. Toilets could not be flushed for the sewers were blocked with human carcasses. Vultures could be seen carrying aloft a hand here, an arm there." 62 The Ceylonese comrades had never experienced anything like this. There had been anti-Muslim riots in Ceylon in 1915. But they were nothing like the killing in Calcutta. Hector Abhayavadhana could never forget the carnage. "This was a direct experience of mass politics, but of the most degrading kind." 63 By the time the slaughter subsided four days later, over 6,000 men, women, and children had been massacred and another 20,000 were wounded. 60 61

62

63

Quoted in LeonardA. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj (New York, 1990), p. 566. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight (New York, 1975), p. 35. Pulsara Liyanage, Vivi: A Biography of Vivienne Goonewardena (Colombo, 1998), pp. 42-43. Hector Abhayavardhana, "Selina Perera - The Forgotten Socialist Militant," p. 21.

189

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The BLPI acknowledged the setback. "The communal eruption has covered the entire body politic ofIndia with its ulcers. Through the pus that pours from them is drained away the life blood of the masses and with it, the fertility of the forces of progress." 64 The riots stopped the labor movement in its tracks. Many workers were afraid to go to work. A number of jute mills closed. The BLPI Central Committee reported that "no kind of work was possible" during and after the riots. 65 Whistling Past the Graveyard?

In hindsight the Great Calcutta Killing was a watershed. The British government recognized the change. The Viceroy feared that India was slipping into anarchy. He was so alarmed that he prepared secret plans for an emergency evacuation ofIndia. Some members ofthe BLPI argued that the party needed to rethink its line on the Muslim League and the question of communalism. That prompted an important debate within the BLPI. A group of Calcutta comrades, including Kamalesh Bannerji, argued that the Muslim League no longer was just a "feudalist" prop to the government. Jinnah in fact had become the spoiler. His demand for Pakistan was no longer a pipe dream. The events in Calcutta proved that Muslims were willing to kill and die for a separate homeland. Bannerji argued that the Muslim League, though still a reactionary party, could play an oppositional role "under certain circumstances." Bannerji and his co-thinkers urged the party to stop branding the Muslim League as feudalist and hopelessly reactionary, since that would only drive the Muslim masses deeper into communalism. 66 64

New Spark, 25 October 1947, p. 2.

65

"C.C. Report Presented to Party Convention Beginning May 21,1947," p. 11.

66

Mahmoud, Roby, Bibhuti, Sinha, Gopal, and Chitra, "Feudalism and its Role in India," resolution discussed in the Calcutta Unit of the BLPI, 8 September 1946, pp. 6-9. Hull: Haston, DJH/15GI14b. H. Mishra and Z.H. Khan, "Correcting Comrade Colvin's Mistakes," Internal Bulletin. vo\. 2, no. 2 (10 August 1947), p. 10. Hoover: LSH, box 52. P.K. Roy, "Marxism versus Pedantic Schematism," Internal Bulletin. vo\. 2, no. 2 (10 August 1947), p. 6; Raj Narayan, "Who is Wrong? Colvin or Mishra?," Internal Bulletin. vo\. 3, no. 1 (1 March 1948), pp. 21-23. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

190

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Colvin de Silva and Leslie Goonewardene, the two most senior Ceylonese leaders in the BLPI, defended the existing line ofthe party. 67 In their opinion the Muslim League remained a feudalist party. They rejected the idea that the party had to change either its line or the tenor of its propaganda. Philip Gunawardena had been right: they were dogmatic book-worms who couldn't see what was happening right before their very eyes. The Muslims didn't fit their scholastic Marxist definition of a nation. But Pakistan had just been born in the bloody alleys of Calcutta. Despite the spread of commun!ll violence, the BLPI tried to look on the bright side. "The Fourth International movement in India can face the future with real hope and confidence. For, unlike in China, Germany and Spain, the Stalinists have not yet had the opportunity of leading the working class to any major defeat. The Indian working class, young and vigorous, has suffered no serious disaster to demoralise it and sap its faith in itself and its future." 68 That was wishful thinking. The BLPI would need a better compass if it was going to survive the storms looming on the horizon.

67

Colvin R. de Silva, "The Muslim League, Its Class Role, and the Riots," Internal Bulletin (23 April 1947), pp. 1-7. Hoover: LSH, box 52. Also K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], "Character of Direct Action by the League," resolution discussed in the Calcutta Unit of the BLPI, 8 September 1946, pp. 1-6. Hull: Haston, DJH/ 15G/14b.

68

K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], The Rise and Fall of the Comintern: From the First to the Fourth International (Bombay, 1947), p. 122.

191

CHAPTER EIGHT

A Race Against Time As the fateful year 1947 began, India seemed to be heading in different directions all at once. There were communal riots as weIl as militant strikes. The British wanted to puII their hands out of the boiling cauldron. The Labour government sacked WaveIl and appointed Lord Mountbatten to be Viceroy. He was given the mandate to solve the mess in India. Yet the Congress and Muslim League remained deadlocked. The days of the Raj were numbered. But no one knew how many were left. The BLPI remained optimistic. Yet the gap between ends and means was enormous. The BLPI only had a couple hundred members. Most of the Ceylonese cadres who had been living in India returned home. I The national office in Bombay couldn't even afford to buy a typewriter. In 1946 the government forced the BLPI to shut down its newspaper, Spark, after only five months. The Trotskyists were muzzled for the next crucial nine months. The BLPI resumed a newspaper, New Spark, only in April, 1947, just four months l>efore Independence. De~pite

these obstacles, the BLPI made progress. In Bengal and South India the BLPI organized unions and led militant strikes. In Madras the BLPI captured the leadership of the largest and oldest union in India. The Madras branch led one of the longest and largest strikes in the immediate postwar period. Catapulted into positions of mass leadership, the BLPI found itself fighting not only powerful employers, but also the new Congress governments. The BLPI had to shoulder the responsibilities of mass leadership before it had even stabilized as a propaganda group.

Colvin de Silva, Leslie and Vivienne Goonewardene, and V. Karalasingham went back to Colombo, leaving Selina Perera, Hector Abhayavardhana and B.M.K. Ramaswamy in India. S.C.C. Anthony Pillai and his wife, Caroline, initially went back to Ceylon but later returned and settled in Madras.

192

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The Setback in Ceylon

On June 24, 1945 the Ceylon government finally released the LSSP members from jail at Badulla. The LSSP staged a huge show of support for the party that the government once had pronounced dead. The motorcade which brought the party members back to Colombo passed crowd after crowd of waving villagers who had been mobilized for the event. In Colombo thousands turned out to wildly cheer the two most popular leaders, Philip Gunawardena and N.M. Perera. Behind the scenes, however, the picture was not so rosy. An American Trotskyist sailor who put ashore in Colombo a week after the prisoners were released reported that the comrades were divided along the old factional lines. "From what I can gather each group is going over the other's documents and past actions with a microscope looking for flaws." 2 The situation was tense. Philip Gunawardena hadn't forgiven Doric de Souza. He and his followers gave the local BLPI group the cold shoulder. In a formal sense the Regional Committee (RC) was the official section of the BLPI in Ceylon. But Philip and his supporters had little regard for such formality. In their view the RC was simply a rump group, dominated by Doric and his faction. 3 That was essentially true. Moreover, there was an important group ofLSSP trade unionists, led by W.J. ("Hospital") Perera, who had been functioning independently in the name of the LSSP since 1943. These workers had been loyal to Philip all along. Hospital Perera led strikes during the war and captured the government workers unions in

"Personal Report On B.L.P.I.," unsigned, 12 July 1945. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38. Others also reported that both sides nursed their old grudges and suspicions. See "Report by a Ceylon Comrade," Internal Bulletin, no. 2 (September 1945), pp. 14-15. Hull: Haston, DJH/15G114b. Philip Gunawardena had the position, since 1943, that the BLPI was pretty much a "fiction." He stated that the BLPI "existed merely on paper and at the moment the supplies were cut off from Ceylon the whole thing would fizzle out." Cited by Kamalesh Bannerji, in "Extracts from CC Representative's Report to Secretary, CC ofBLPI," Internal Bulletin (10 April 1947), p. 6. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

193

The Trotskyist Movement in India and eeylon

Colombo. 4 He was openly hostile to the RC. During the strike wave in Colombo in 1945, he issued leaftlets warning the workers not to trust the "Parlour Bolsheviks" who had usurped the mantle of the LSSP. 5 Philip offered to meet the RC halfway. He proposed that the RC be re-constituted according to a 5-5-1 formula: the five incumbents, five new members selected by Philip's group, plus a "neutral" eleventh member. This interim committ~e would convene a party conference, at which the delegates would elect a new leadership. The RC accepted this proposal. The two sides met on July 12, 1945. I have not been able to find minutes or any other documentation from this meeting. But apparently the two sides couldn't agree on a "neutral" member. It is unclear Why. Whatever the reason, the Trotskyist movement in Ceylon would pay dearly for that failure. After the aborted unity, Philip and N.M. Perera went their own way, as if the RC didn't exist. They played the media, toured the island, and visited LSSP members and sympathizers who had fallen away during the war. They held their meetings in the name of the LSSP. They resumed the familiar old Samasamajist. Outflanked, the doctrinaire Trotskyists in the RC saw all this as an attempt to turn the clock back, to revive the old "Menshevik LSSP" of the prewar years. When strikes flared in Colombo in late 1945, Phi lip and N.M. Perera were making headlines once again. Phi lip formed an alliance with A. Gunasekera, the head of the Ceylon Federation of Labour (CFL). Gunasekera was a follower of M.N. Roy in India. He had supported the war and become a trade-union boss. While the purists in the BLPI saw this as gross opportunism, Philip pulled off a spectacular coup. Philip was adept at the bear hug tactic. He took over the CFL.

4

Leslie Goonewardene, A Short History a/the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, pp. 22-23.

5

"The Ceylon Unit in the Recent Colombo Strike Wave," Internal Bulletin, no. 2 (September 1945), p. 13. Hull: Haston, DJHI1SG/14b.

194

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The LSSP portrayed the BLPI group as "Parlour Bolsheviks" who delighted in irrelevant hair-splitting debates. 6 During the strike wave in Colombo, "Hospital" Perera urged workers to chase away "intellectuals who drive around in cars distributing leaflets." 7 The BLPI, on the other hand, denounced the LSSP as a "petty-bourgeois grouping" that refused to accept party discipline. 8 None of this namecalling made any sense to the public. In fact, the two groups were pretty much carbon copies of each other. On October 8, 1945 the Central Committee of the BLPI expelled Philip and N.M. Perera for setting up a rival organization. 9 The situation went from bad to worse. Philip Gunawardena resorted to Stalinist methods of slander and thuggery. In a public speech he stated that Doric de Souza was a police spy. The Communist party pointed to this feuding as proof that Trotskyists were agents of the enemy. Re-Unification

At the end of 1945 the LSSP proposed unity to the Ceylon unit of the BLPI. The Ceylon unit duly referred the matter to its parent, the Central Committee of the BLPI in India. The BLPI Central Committee didn't accept the unity offer until June 1, 1946. It is unclear why there was such a long delay. In any case the BLPI leadership imposed one condition: Philip had to either repudiate his charge against Doric and make a "suitable apology" or submit the matter to a party "court of

Philip Gunawardena mocked the BLPI as a party of lawyers who loved to make formalistic arguments. Many ofthe BLPI leaders in Ceylon had in fact been trained as lawyers: Colvin de Silva, Leslie Goonewardene, Edmund Samarakkody, Cholomondeley Goonewardene, William Silva, and Jack Kotelewala. "The Ceylon Unit in the Recent Colombo Strike Wave," Internal Bulletin, no. 2 (September 1945), p. 14. Hull: Haston, DJH/15G/14b. Fight, 13 November 1945, p. 4.

"The Split-away from the Lanka Samasamaja Party, Ceylon Unit ofthe BolshevikLeninist Party of India, Section of the Fourth International," Resolution of the Central Committee of the BLPI, 8 October 1945, reprinted in Fight, 13 November 1945, p. 2.

195

The Trotskyist Movement in India. and Ceylon

inquiry" and abide by its decision. 10 The LSSP accepted the proposal four months later, and Philip opted for a court of enquiry. The two Trotskyist groups merged their leaderships in September, 1946. The unification was formalized at a Unity Conference in November. The unified group took the name LSSP and kept the Samasamajist as the party newspaper. There were disputes, however, over certain members being admitted to the party. The BLPI side complained that the LSSP had admitted "petty bourgeois radicals" and other "non-Bolshevik" ilk into its ranks. The BLPI leadership in India sent Kamalesh Bannerji, the most senior Indian Trotskyist, to investigate and to conduct the Court of Inquiry. Kamalesh Bannerji vetted the membership list and nixed 28 members, all from the LSSP side. The LSSP leaders cried foul. Kamalesh Bannerji thus was compromised even before he convened the Court ofInquiry. He was a "court of one." That, too, was a mistake. In the Leninist tradition a Control Commission normally would have several membe"rs. In any case Philip participated fully in the proceedings. A young recruit, R.S. Bhagawan, functioned as the secretary. Philip could only produce circumstantial evidence to back his accusation. He rested his case on the fact that during the war Doric used the brother of a police officer, Wijesooniya, as a courier to carry a letter to the comrades in India. 11 Bannerji stated that "there is not an iota of evidence" to support Philip's accusation against Doric de Souza. 12 Furious, Philip denounced the proceedings, refused to abide by the decision, and stated his intention to appeal to the Fourth International. 13

10

"Extract from C.C. Resolution of 1-6-46," Special Internal Bulletin, BLPI, n.d. [1947], p. 1.

11

"An Analysis of the Judgement," in Internal Bulletin [LSSP], vol. 1, no. 2 (March 1947), p. 10. Reprinted in Samasamajist, 1 June 1947. Although the document is not signed, there's no doubt that it was Philip's.

12

Special Internal Bulletin, BLPI, n.d. [1947], p. 1. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 45.

13

"An Analysis of the Judgement," p. 10.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The verdict precipitated a new crisis in the Ceylon party. On December 31 the BLPI gave Philip two weeks to comply, i.e. to make a public apology for his accusation against Doric de Souza. The Ceylon group split down the middle. On January 7 the LSSP voted to neither accept nor reject the ultimatum until a party conference could be convened. Robert Gunawardena, the acting secretary, curtly informed the BLPI that, while welcoming its "guidance and general direction," the Ceylon unit would not carry out orders "which are in conflict with the general advantages of the revolutionary working class movement." 14 That was outright defiance. De-Unification

At the next party meeting N.M. Perera declared that Philip was still a member. Colvin de Silva and his supporters walked out. On February 10 the BLPI Central Committee voted to expel Philip. Bannerji was sent back to Ceylon to enforce the decision. At the meeting, on February 19, the motion to remove Philip was narrowly defeated. Bannerji declared the Ceylon party committee dissolved and walked out with his six supporters. 15 The BLPI denounced the LSSP as a "split-away." 16 While admitting that the LSSP had not yet "clearly deviated in political line," the BLPI predicted that the LSSP would deepen its "organizational Menshevism" and regress into "a party resembling the LSSP at its formation in 1935." 17 The LSSP, on the other hand, mocked the BLPI

14

15

16

17

Letter from R. Gunawardena to Acting Secretary, CC BLPI, 14 January 1947, Internal Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 2 (March 1947), p. 5. Kamalesh Bannerji, "Statement of Comrade Kamalesh Banerjee, CC Representative in Ceylon, to All Members of the LSSP, Ceylon Unit of BLPI," Internal Bulletin [BLPI], n.s. (10 April 1947), pp. 1-6. Hoover: LSH, box 52. "To All Members of the LSSP, Ceylon Unit of the BLPI," 24 February 1947, Internal Bulletin (10 April 1947), pp. 1-6; and "Convention on Ceylon Split," New Spark, 7 June 1947, p. 8. "The Marxist Movement in Ceylon: Appendix to Program of Bolshevik Leninist Party ofIndia," reprinted in New International, February 1947, p. 50.

197

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

as a party of lawyers and "Bohemian intellectuals" who were playing at revolutionary politics. The LSSP demanded that the "selfconstituted, bureaucratic, and sectarian" Central Committee of the BLPI be dissolved immediately. 18 The two groups contested the 1947 elections to the new parliament as separate parties. During the campaign the United National Party railed against Indian immigration. Both the BLPI and LSSP vigorously defended the citizenship rights of the Tamil plantation workers. The BLPI demanded no restrictons whatsoever on Indian immigration, while the LSSP advocated full citizenship rights for all who had been domiciled on the island for five years. The communal issue probably hurt the BLPI more than the LSSP, since the BLPI flaunted its connection with India. 19 Bombay

In 1945 the government flattened the Bombay branch of the BLPI for the third time. The BLPI had to rebuild almost from scratch. The party groups in Calcutta, Madras, and Colombo sent comrades to Bombay. Indra Sen, a member of the central committee, moved from Calcutta. R.H. Vanniasingham, .a member of the Ceylon unit, became the secretary. The BLPI also appealed to the British section of the Fourth International to send reinforcements. 20 The British party gave up V.S.S. Sastry, one of their most effective organizers. 21 Ajit Roy, another member of the central committee, followed later. 18

"Letter of Secretaries of Conference of Split Group to Secretary, CC of BLPI," signed by Rowland Jayasekara, M.T. Solomon, and Malalasekara, 1 March 1947, and "Reply of Bureau," signed K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], 1 April 1947, reprinted in Internal Bulletin [BLPI], n.s. (l0 April 1947), p. 7-8. .

19

George Jan Lerski, "The Twilight of Ceylonese Trotskyism," Pacific Affairs. vo\. 43, no. 3 (Fall 1970), p. 386.

20

21

Letter from Indra Sen toA.K. [Ajit Roy], n.d. [ca. 1944-45]. The British government regarded Sastry as one of the most effective and dangerous revolutionary organizers in England. IOL: LlPJIl2/645. Files Po\.(S) 787/1942 and Po\.(S) 592/1942. Also IOL: LlPJ/12/485. File Po\.(S) 514/1943. IOL: LlPJ/121 649. File Po\.(S) 111/1943. IOL: LlPJ/12/645. Files Po\.(S) 694/1942 and Po\.(S) 98711942.

198

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Geylon

Even with these reinforcements, the Bombay branch limped along. The BLPI didn't have the financial resources to support full-time party workers. 22 Moreover, the reinforcements were all "outsiders," lacking roots in the city and unable to speak the local languages. One foreign Trotskyist visitor observed, "A small group of assorted Madrasis, Bengalis, and Ceylonese trying to build a unit in Bombay is comparable to a situation in which a group of Austrians, Frenchmen, and Poles attempt the task of building a Trotskyist party in, for example, Britain." 23 The Bombay group needed more "locals." And it got them by "raiding" its Trotskyist rival, the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party (BMP), led by Chandravadan Shukla. After he split away from the BLPI in 1943, Shukla recruited some talented youth. The BLPI made a concerted effort to win over these recruits; V. Sastry was very effective in developing a pro-BLPI faction in the BMP, consisting of Anant Mandekar, Tulsi Boda, and Shanta Patel. Shukla responded with a rather disingenuous unity proposal. 24 The International Secretariat of the FI, however, insisted that Shukla repudiate his split in 1943 as a precondition for unity. 2S That he would not do. Faced with a revolt in his ranks, he convened a conference and

22

Sastry worked as a journalist and headed a news agency in Bombay. Vanniasingham was a Chartered Accountant. He had difficulty getting work in Bombay and eventually left.

23

"Report by JF on the Activities of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India During 1947," 18 December 1947. Hull: Haston, DJH/15G/14b. Shukla called for a conference to form a single Fourth Internationalist party in India. Manifesto of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party of India (Bombay [1946]), p. 10. Hull: Brynmor Jones Library. Letter from R. Clapper [Bert Cochran], International Secretariat, F.l., to Bolshevik Mazdoor Party, 25 November 1944. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38. Bert Cochran had taken over the position of IS Secretary from Jean van Heijenoort. Since his split in 1943 Shukla had developed several positions that were at odds with the BLPI, notably his "critical support" to the Congress in the 1945-46 elections and his support for self-determination for India's Muslims. See Bolshevik Leninist, April, 1946. Hull: Brynmor Jones Library.

24

2S

199

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

expelled the pro-BLPI majority. 26 As a result the BLPI gained a dozen or so capable cadres and gutted the larger rival. 27 Anant Mandekar, the dynamic Bombay organizer of the BMP, helped put the BLPI on the political map in Bombay. In March, 1947 he played a prominent role in leading a two-day strike of 7,000 workers at the Kaiser-i-Hind Mills Spinning and Weaving Company, where he worked as a clerk. He was elected president of the Mill Committee. 28 When the management transferred him out of the mill, 6,000 laborers started what the government called a "major strike." 29 On April 21, 1947 Mandekar was arrested and jailed for six months, a setback to the union and the BLPI. 30 Tulsi Boda turned out to be another real asset. An energetic organizer, he developed a base in the India Woolen Mills and the Usha Woolen Mills. He fonned the Bombay Woolen Mill Kamgar Union. 31 Boda also organized a strike on the docks, for which he was arrested and jailed for six months. Shanta Patel, another former BMP leader, produced a Marathilanguage newspaper, Purogami Kamgar [Radical Worker], which helped the BLPI to recruit rank-and-file workers, like Lakshman Jadhav and Prabhakar More, who were members of the Girni Kamgar Union, the CPI stronghold. Jadhav was the model communist worker, working all day in the mill and then doing party work until late into the night. 32 26

27

28 29

The BMP conference met at Palitana (Gujarat) in January, 1947. "For the Information of All Units," bulletin issued by the Bureau, Central Committee ofthe BLPI, 12 March 1947. The Bhauvnagar unit of the BMP took a "neutral" position between Shukla and the BLPI, and the Nagpur branch disintegrated. IOL: LlPJ/5/168. File Po!. 6555/1947. IOL: LlPJ/5/168. File Po!. 7885/1947. Also New Spark, 26 April 1947, 10 May 1947,24 May 1947,7 June 1947,5 July 1947, and 16 August 1947.

30

New Spark, 8 November 1947 and New Spark, 6 December 1947.; and "Report by JF on the Activities ofthe Bolshevik Leninist Party ofIndia During 1947."

31

New Spark, 8 November 1947.

32

Ramesh Karkal, the Bombay organizer, recalled how Jadhar's mother worried: "How many of us had noticed how, with a dimly burning kerosene lamp beside her, she lay awake in her little room till her son's return from party work in the late hours of the night. .. she served the cold dinner to her son. Only then would she herself sit to still her own hunger." Socialist Appeal [New Delhi], vo!. 2, no. 17, late September 1953.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Bengal

In contrast to Bombay the Calcutta BLPI group was solidly "indigenous." The Ceylonese comrades who had decamped in Calcutta during the war had either returned home or moved to Bombay. The notable exception was Selina Perera. Kamalesh Bannerji, released from jail in 1945, returned to the helm once again. He tapped the talents of cadres like P.K. Roy, Dulal Bose, and Hiranand Mishra. According to a visiting British Trotskyist, "the Calcutta comrades have attained an extremely high level of seriousnesss, enthusiasm, political ability, and organisational compactness." 33 While the Bombay group was getting on its feet again, the Calcutta branch functioned as the propaganda center' of the party. It published several of Trotsky's books, including Permanent Revolution and Stalinism and Bolshevism, through Gupta Rahman & Gupta in Calcutta. The Calcutta group also published Bengali translations of Permanent Revolution, Open Letter to the Workers of India, Stalinism and Bolshevism, and the introduction to Harold Isaac's Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. The Trotskyists published a twice-monthly local newspaper, Inquilab [Revolution]. The Calcutta branch had several very capable organizers. One was Z.H. Khan. He started organizing the firefighters in 1945. Before he could form a union, the police provoked a strike in May, 1946. The Calcutta branch suddenly had to lead a mass labor action. At one point, after the police attacked the firefighters in their barracks, the Trotskyists led a disciplined procession of two thousand strikers through the city. Young recruits, like Jagadish Jha and Umar Abid Zuberi, who later became mass leaders, got their first experience during this strike. After eleven days the strikers won a "substantial victory." 34 The BLPI formed the Damkal Mazdur Union.

II

"Report by JF on the Activities of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India During 1947."

l4

D.G. [Douglas. Garbuttl, "Report on the Fourth International Movement in India," p. 9; and Spark. no, 6 (Early May, 1946), p. 6.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Another rising star was Haradhan Chatterji, who worked at Messrs. Cox & Kings Ltd. He was a gifted agitator. In 1946 he organized the white-collar clerks and led a 80-day strike, the first fully successful strike in the history of the Federation of Mercantile Employees Unions. 35 Chatterji and Biman Sur Roy were elected vice president and secretary, respectively, of the Cox & Kings Employees Union. When the company threatened mass layoffs in 1947, Chatterji demanded that the company show its records to the union ("open the books!"). 36 When the company fired 118 workers, the union went on strike. The police used tear gas to attack the 500 strikers and their supporters on the picket lines. 37 The Stalinists refused to come to the aid of this strike. 38 The strike lasted four months, defeated in the end by a lock-out and dismissals. The Bengal unit extended its reach into the industrial" suburbs of Calcutta. Dulal Bose and Amal Bagchi built fractions in the jute and paper mill unions in Titaghur and Kankimara. 39 With the Stalinists discredited the Trotskyists captured the powerful Titaghur Paper Mills Employees Union. In March, 1947 the Trotskyists led 8,000 workers in a strike that lasted for 72 days. 40 The Bengal government called this one of the two "most important" strikes in Bengal during that period. 41 Amal Bagchi became general secretary of the Bengal Paper Mill Mazdoor Union. Once, in 1947, when the party organized an open-air meeting in Titagarh, over 4,000 workers attended. 42 Later the BLPI

35

36

37 38

39 40

41 42

New Spark, 13 September 1947. The Chief Secretary of the Bengal government, H.S.E. Stevens, made note of this strike in his periodic secret report to the Home Department in New Delhi. IOL: LlPJ/5/153. File Pol. 12444/1946. New Spark, 27 September 1947. In early March the government reported that the Mercantile Employees Union was threatening to strike. IOL: LIPJ/5/154. File Pol. 7136/1947. New Spark, 20 December 1947 and 6 March 1948. New Spark, 14 February 1948. New Spark, 16 August 1947. New Spark, 26 April 1947. IOL: LlPJ/5/154. File Pol. 7531/1947. New Spark, 22 November 1947.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

organized the Titaghur Jute Workers Union, in opposition to the Congress Party union. 43 The BLPI sent Haradhan Chatterji and Z.H. Khan to work in the industrial belt along the Bengal-Bihar border. In 1947 they organized the workers at the Burn & Co. pottery works. Khan was elected the union president. The Trotskyists also developed a base in the Bengal Paper Mill Company Ltd in Raniganj. 44 Amal Bagchi led the Bengal Paper Mill Mazdoor Union. Through the Paper Mill Workers Federation the BLPI gained control over the mills at Hajinagar. Khan and Dulal Bose carried out a 60-day strike of paper workers which ended in "complete victory." 45 Khan was elected president of the Paper Mill Workers' Union and became widely known as a trade union leader. Haradhan Chatterji formed a number of unions in the Bengal and Bihar minefields. With two full-timers in Raniganj the BLPI recruited workers and developed a large periphery. In August, 1947 Chatterji mobilized a mass campaign in Raniganj on the occasion of the fifth anniversay of the Quit India movement. A few months later the BLPI took out a procession of 2,000 workers behind banners of the Fourth International. 46 The BLPI organized workers in three oil mills in Raniganj. 47 The party recruited young militants, like Sailen Banerji in Purulia, who became a life-long Trotskyist. Discussions with Quasi-Trotskyists

In Bengal there were several organizations that claimed to oppose the CPI from the left. The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), led by the maverick Marxist, Saumyendranath Tagore, was widely regarded

43

New Spark, 4 September 1948.

44

New Spark, 13 September 1947 and 27 September 1947.

45

Quatri~me Internationale (September-October 1947), pp. 70-71.

46

New Spark, 22 November 1947.

47

New Spark, 1 May 1948.

203

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

as "Trotskyite." 48 While Tagore admired Trotsky, he was too independent to accept Trotskyism as a doctrine or the Fourth International as a higher leadership. While in jail in 1944 he formulated his own quirky version of Permanent Revolution. 49 But there was a Trotskyist tendency within his party. 50 And there was a history of collaboration on the student front. 51 The BLPI approached Tagore after he was released from jail in 1946. There were two big differences. First, Tagore believed that the revolution was imminent and therefore the revolutionaries had to form

S.N. Tagore was a bourgeois Bohemian turned communist. He had joined the Communist movement in 1926 and the following year at his own expense went to Moscow, where he witnessed the defeat of the Oppositions. After his return to Calcutta, he formed the "Ganabani Group" in 1935. In 1938 his group became the Communist League, which criticized the turn to the Popular front and attacked "foul and pestilential Stalinism." S.N. Tagore, United Front or Betrayal (Calcutta, 1938), p. 16. However, he did not break decisively with the Comintern until the turn to the Peoples' War line. In 1943 he re-named his group the Revolutionary Conununist Party (RCP). Arrested during the Quit India upsurge, he landed in jail with the BLPI leader, Kamalesh Bannerj. Perhaps as a result of their discussions, Tagore moved close to the BLPI on the nature of Congress and the character of the Indian revolution. S.N. Tagore, Revolution and Quit India (Calcutta, 1946), pp. 11-12. 49 Tagore claimed that "Lenin was just as much a champion of the permanent revolution as Trotsky was and with a much more sure grasp of the revolutionary reality." S.N. Tagore, Permanent Revolution (Calcutta, 1944), pp. 43-44. In response Leslie Goonewardene showed how Lenin and Trotsky had critical differences on the question ofthe Russian revolution prior to 1917. K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], "Saumyendra Nath Tagore and Permanent Revolution," Permanent Revolution, vo\. 3, no. 1 (January-March 1945), pp. 1-17. The TagoreTilak exchange was a war of quotations. Neither attempted to show how their theory fit India's reality. so Sudarshan Chatterji was the leader of this pro-Trotsky tendency. During the war he had spent time in jail with Murray Gow Purdy. After his release he continued discussions with BLPI members. Interview with Sudarshan Chatterji, 3 February 1974.

48

SI

Letter from C.R. Govindan [Colvin de Silva] to Secretary, International Secretariat, 18 July 1945. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

204

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Soviets [Panchayets] immediately. 52 The BLPI thought he was indulging adventurist fantasies. 53 Second, the RCP took a fuzzy line on the USSR, reflecting the different views within the party. Some agreed with the Trotskyist position (the USSR as a "degenerated workers state"), while others paraphrased the "new class" theories propounded by Max Shachtman in the US and M.R. Masani in India. 54 The BLPI and Tagore dueled on the question in their newspapers. 55 The unity negotiations ended in an impasse. 56 Subsequently, a section of the RCP, led by the former terrorist, Pannalal Das Gupta, launched an ill-starred "insurrection." His comrades attacked police stations, the Jessop & Co. engineering works, and Calcutta's Dum Dum airport, and attempted to rouse a peasant uprising in Basirhat. 57 The putsch was crushed. In the aftermath the RCP split. One section went over to the CPI, while Tagore eventually took a Shachtmanite ("Third Camp") position. 58 52

Saumyendranath Tagore, "Political Fatalism," Toilers Front, 26 May 1947; and S. Tagore, "Panchayet and Revolution," Toilers Front, 14 April 1947.

53

"Opportunism on the Question of Revolution and Soviets," Spark, no. 2 (Early March 1946); K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene], "Saumyendranath Tagore and Soviets," New Spark, 10 May 1947; Sudarshan Chatterji, "Revolutionary Situation and Panchayets: A Reply to Tilak," Toilers Front, 16 June 1947.

54

For the pro-Trotskyist line, see Sudarshan Chatterji, "U.S.S.R. and Ourselves," Toilers' Front, 22 September 1947; S.M. Jaffar, An Outline of Leftism in India (1944) describes the USSR as (a) ruled by a "parasitic caste," (b) "dominated by a class of bureaucrats and parasites," and (c) "gripped in the clutches of Bonapartism. "

55

"Marxism on the USSR-What We Attack and What We Defend," Spark, no. 4 (Early April, 1946).

56

"Record of Unity Discussions Between Delegations of the RCPI and BLPI - JuneJuly 1948," Internal Bulletin, vo!. 3 (August 1948), pp. 5-7; and "Report of Committee on RCP Negotiations," Internal Bulletin, vo!. 3 (August 1948), pp. 1-2. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

57

Communist Violence in India. Issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, 1949. .

58

"Stalinist expansionism is as great a menace as the imperialist expansionism of the U.S.A. and Great Britain." Saumyendranath Tagore, Revolutionary CommunismThe World and India (1951); also Stalin, Truman, Hands Off Korea (1951).

205

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Madura

In South India the BLPI faced a situation that was almost the opposite of Bombay. In Madura and Madras the Ceylonese transplants who could speak Tamil were not such "outsiders." Despite the police raids during the war, the Trotskyists managed to build an effective underground organization. The BLPI groups in Madura and Madras developed cells in key factories. The Congress Socialists had no significant base whatsoever in Madras province. And so when CPI lost its favored position after the war, the Trotskyists had a clear shot at leadership. In Madura the BLPI branch was led by K. Appanraj. The Trotskyists developed a workers' group in the Harvey Mills. 59 One of the Ceylon Tamils, B.M.K. Ramaswamy, organized workers in the Meenakshi Mills and the Mahalakshmi Mills. In 1946, when the BLPI called a meeting, several thousand textile workers showed up "to hear what the Trotskyists were saying." 60 The BLPI led several strikes, one lasting 45 days. The Trotskyists recruited workers directly from the shop floor. The BLPI branch in Madura quickly became recognized as a rival to the CPI. In March, 1947 the party announced a public rally in the name of the Fourth International. The featured speaker was Ajit Roy, who was on national tour after his return from the UK. The CPI called a counter-rally for the same time, only 100 yards away. The BLPI rally started with 5,000 but swelled to 15,000. The CPI sent thugs to break up the meeting. The BLPI was prepared to defend their rally. According the BLPI's newspaper, "the Stalinist hooligans were easily driven off." 61 The Madura party also developed a group in Tuticorin. A party member, Elayaperumal, was secretary of the Tuticorin Mill Workers

59

A. & F. Harvey Ltd. were the managing agents for the Madura Mills Company. The mills were popularly called "Harveys."

60

D[ouglas] G[arbutt], "Report on the Fourth International Movement in India."

61

New Spark, 20 December 1947.

206

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Union. The BLPI group in the union played a leading role in a strike. The BLPI formed several other unions in Tuticorin in 1946-47. The Madura party got a peasant base in Sholavandan. Their Congress sympathizer, T.G. Krishnamurthy, had organized a peasants union in Sholavandan which was agitating for a greater share in the harvest. Irritated, the Congress Ministry had Krishnamurthy and his comrades arrested. The BLPI sent organizers to Sholavandan to take over the agitation. The government eventually had to back down. The BLPI recruited peasants from Sholavandan to act as defence guards for its union meetings in Madura. "In the dark night, when I addressed the meetings" remembers K. Appanraj, "the swords that were brought by peasants would glitter under the lamps of the mill gate. "62

62

Letter from K. Appanraj toauthor, 16 February 2006.

207

CHAPTER NINE

The Breakthrough The BLPI had its greatest success in Madras. In 1946 S:C.C. Anthony Pillai, the Ceylonese Tamil, was elected president of the Madras Labour Union (MLU), the oldest union in India, with nearly 14,000 workers. That was an enormous coup. But on top of that he was elected president of the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway Workers Union. Pillai led two huge strikes at the Buckingham and Carnactic Mills, one of the largest factories in British India. Even the CPI had to admit that the Trotskyists "stole" the initiative. I How did that happen? During the war the CPI tried to capture the MLU. 2 The BLPI cadres working in the mills opposed the no-strike policy of the CPI. The struggle became so violent that the government banned meetings in the mills after dark. 3 The CPI eventually retreated. In 1946 the Trotskyists proposed that Anthony Pillai succeed T.V. Kalyanasundara Mudaliar (popularly known as "Tiru Vi. Ka.") as MLU president. Pillai had just been released from two years in prison for his political activities in Madras. The MLU executive committee respected Pillai and his comrades. 4 On June 6, 1946 he was elected president. In that capacity he could name his own union officials. Pillai faced his first challenge the very next day. A fight broke out between some workers and company security guards at the B&C Mills. On June 8 the workers called a strike on the spot to force the company

4

The CPI boss, S.A. Dange, admitted that "Trotskyites and other elements stole the leadership as in the case of the Madras Binny strike." S.A. Dange, On the Trade Union Movement: Reports to a Convention o/Communist Party Members working in the Trade Union Movement (Calcutta, 1952). New York: Tamiment Library, New York University. IOL: LlPJ/5/207. Files Pal. 4879/1944, Pal. 4995/1944, and Pal. 6093/1944. IOL: LlPJ/5/207. File Pal. 7899/1944. E.A. Ramaswamy, Worker Consciousness and Trade Union Response (Delhi, 1988), p. 117.

208

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

to remove the guards. 5 The law required unions to serve notice of strikes in advance. But there was an even bigger problem. The clash had a communal overtone; the guards were Punjabi Muslims and the workers were Tamil Hindus. The dispute threatened to .turn against the Tamil Muslim workers in the mills. Pillai backed the workers, defying the government rules. 6 The MLU called its first official strike since 1926. Most of the clerical staff joined the strike. Mill workers by the thousands flocked to union meetings. The BLPI branch threw all its resources, such as they were, into supporting the strike. The party had a strong fraction working in the MLU. G Balaram was an important strike leader and functioned as Pillai's right-hand man. On the outside the open party group was led by G Palani Velayutham, the Madras organizer. The mill management called in the police to break up union demonstrations. When that failed, the company closed the companyrun food distribution center, which had been created during the war to dispense rationed commodities. Workers could only use their ration cards inside the mills. Pillai protested to the Madras prime minister. The government relented and allowed the workers to use their ration cards at any distribution center in the city. The BLPI organized solidarity meetings, including a women's rally in support of the strike. A British Trotskyist in uniform, who was visiting Madras at the time, commented, "Our comrades led the demonstrations from the Mill on all these occasions. On the woman's demo the greatest difficulty was experienced in holding the women back when they were stopped by the police. When lathi attacks were attempted, the women routed the police twice." 7 The strike lasted 48 days. The union won its key demands: the transfer of the security guards and an end to company control over the employee's welfare association. "Under Anthony Pillai and a vigorous 5

Madras Mail, 11 June 1946.

6

Spark, no. 9 (Mid-July 1946). D.G [Douglas Garbutt], "Report on the Trotskyist Movement in India," p. 11.

209

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

union executive," writes a labor historian, "the membership of the union reached new heights and the union became much more militant and assertive. The union's committees within the mills became more effective, whilst area committees were set up to recruit for the union in the Hindu, Muslim and Untouchable areas." 8 As a result of the strike, mill workers joined the union in the thousands. Pillai seized the opportunity to make the union leadership more representative. Prior to the strike the MLU executive consisted of 11 representatives from the Buckingham Mill, 11 from the Carnatic Mill,' and 11 outsiders. Pillai proposed expanding the committee to one executive committee member for every hundred rank-and-file workers. That would greatly increase the influence of the rank-and-file militants. Pillai carried the day. The MLU executive was expanded from 33 to 148. The MLU strike helped the Trotskyists to strengthen their position in the Madras and Southern Mahratta (MSM) Railway Workers Union. During the war the BLPI had built a base in the MSM workshops in Perambur, not far from the B&C Mills. With some 8,000 workers, that was the largest single branch of the union. The Perambur workers nominated two Trotskyists, T.O Krishnamurty and Mahadev Rao, for the positions of president and secretary. At the national level the Stalinists, in alliance with independent union bosses, maintained bureaucratic control. In 1946 the dissidents challenged the leadership at the union's annual conference. 9 The workers raised the call for Anthony Pillai to run for president of the Perambur union branch. 10 In a hotly contested election Anthony Pillai was elected president. The Stress of Success

The Madras branch was mainly working-class in composition. It had only a few educated, middle-class cadres, such as G. Selvaraj at Presidency College and Madhava Rao at Stanley Medical College, 8

9

10

Eamon Murphy, Unions in Conflict: A Comparative Study of Four South Indian Textile Centres, 1918-1939 (New Delhi, 1981), p. 167. Spark, no. 2 (Early March 1946). Spark, no. 2 (Early March 1946).

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

who could conduct study classes, write leaflets, contact sympathizers, and carry out open party work. Given that situation, Pillai wanted to shield the party as much as possible. "In Madras," he explained, "a weak party organisation was almost overnight faced with a broad tradeunion base. To preserve even the few cadres the party had, it was necessary for the Madras Unit to emerge gradually." 11 The BLPI needed a respite to consolidate its gains, recruit more youth, train the cadres, open a party office, and launch a Tamillanguage newspaper. That was not in the cards. In early 1947 the situation in the B&C Mills heated up again. In February the MLU presented 21 demands, including increases in wages and bonus payments. The Madras Congress government sent the dispute to compulsory arbitration. Pillai refused to recognize Court of Enquiry and served notice to strike. The MLU started collecting strike funds, organized a network of neighborhood committees, and recruited 1,000 volunteers to form a workers defense guard. The young Trotskyist, S. Amarnath, became captain of the guard. 12 Anticipating that Pillai would be arrested once the strike began, the union formed a secret organizing committee, which included Caroline Anthony Pillai and Manickam [Bodi M. Muthiah]. Strike!

The government feared that the Trotskyists had "plans to foment a general strike throughout the province." 13 Before dawn on March 10 the police arrested Pillai and whisked him off to Vellore Jail. The Madras Congress Ministry used the old Maintenance of Public Order Act to jail a number of other union officials and militants. As the news spread, workers flocked to the MLU's headquarters. 14 Tiru V. Ka., the

11

"Report of First Party Convention Held May 21-24,1947," p. 1.

12

Interview with S. Amamath, 14 June 1974.

13

IOL: LlPJ/5/21O. Po!. 7296/1947.

14

K. Appanraj, Anja Nenjan: Thoyizh Sangha Medai S.C.C. Antoni Pillai Vazhkai Varalaru [The Fearless One: Biography of the Intellectual Labour Leader, S.C.C. Anthony Pillai] (Chennai, 1995), p. 52.

211

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

acting president, tried to pacify the crowd and called for a mass meeting that evening. At that meeting Caroline Anthony PilIai delivered a rousing speech. The meeting adopted a resolution that backed the union's demands and called for the immediate release of the MLU leaders. The next day the MLU called the strike. Not a single worker entered the B&C Mills. The Trotskyists were the backbone of the strike committees. The active militants included G. Balaram, C.K. Narayanana, Krishnaiah, Venugopal, Parthasarathy, and R.N. Selvaraj. 15 The Trotskyists issued a strike bulletin every day. 16 The government moved Pillai from Vellore to Rajahmundry Jail, far away in Andhra, where he was placed in solitary confinement. 17 Two days after the strike began the union led a procession of strikers through the streets of Madras to the residence of the Minister for Industries and Labour. 18 The Premier of Madras'demanded that the strike be called off. In response the uni'on called a mass rally for March 28. Strikers, their families, and supporters from all walks of life in Madras-a huge throng of 40,000-converged on the rally. Caroline Anthony Pillai declared from the podium that no negotiations would be held until Anthony Pillai and other union leaders were released. 19 The strike committee called for a one-day hartal in Madras in support of the str~ke. On March 31 more than 100,000 observed hartal. 20 The entire Perambur railway workshop downed tools. The trams didn't run, and only a few buses were on the road. 21 The municipal workers, staff from 15

K. Appanraj, Anja Nenjan: Thoyizh Sangha Medai S.C.C. Antoni Pillai Vazhkai Varalaru, p. 64.

16

New Spark, 5 July 1947.

17

IOL: LlPJ/5/21O. Po!. 7296/1947.

18

IOL: LlPJ/5/21O. Po!. 7728/1947.

19

Manickam [Bodi M. Muthiah], "100,000 Madras Workers Protest Trotskyist Union Leader's Arrest," 2-page typed document, n.d. [April 1947], p. 2. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

20

Quatrieme Internationale (May-June 1947), pp. 75-76.

21

IOL: LIPJ/5121O. File Po!. 7684/1947.

212

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

the Civil Supplies department, leather workers, and cigar factory workers also joined. The government staged a show of armed force. "Armed police at every ten yards in the streets. Gurkha troops armed to the teeth, at every street corner. Motor-cycles fitted with machine-guns rushing through streets emptied of traffic by a virtually complete transport strike." 22 According to a·local newspaper, "Beside stationing mobile Units at all main police stations, patrol parties were sent on foot and lorries to almost every important road. Armed pickets were posted at all strategic points and in front of banks, courts, electric sub-stations, pumping stations and similar places." 23 The CPI supported the strike. 24 But the Stalinists treated it as a labor dispute only. The BLPI , on the other. hand, stressed that the strike "is tending to make complete the political exposure of Congress, the political party of the Indian bourgeoisie who are at this very moment engaged in a political horse-deal with British Imperialism-behind the backs and over the heads of the masses." 25 The strike had become a slow, grinding test of endurance. One government report lamented that ~'the workers seem to be in no mood for a compromise, although the strike has already lasted about six weeks." 26 The strike committee held one rally after another to keep up spirits and demand the release ofPillai. The BLPI militants in the MSM led a procession of 7,000 workers from the Perambur workshops through Madras. The police used batons and tear gas to disperse "rioting" crowds in the mill districts. 27 On April 9 police attacked women and children who were demonstrating at the Congress Prime Minister's house. 22

Manickam, "100,000 Madras Workers Protest Trotskyist Union Leader's Arrest," p.2.

23

The Hindu, quoted in New Spark. 26 April 1947.

24

IOL: LlPJIl2/432. File Pol. 52211947.

25

Manickam [Bodi M. Muthiah], "100,000 Madras Workers Protest Trotskyist Union Leader's Arrest," p. 2.

26

IOL: LlPJ/5/210. File Pol. 783111947.

27

E. Murphy, Unions in Conflict, p. 167.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

On April 14 an estimated 50,000 people attended an outdoor rally in support of the union. The BLPI leader, Colvin de Slva, who had come up from Ceylon to help, addressed the crowd. The Congress Ministry banned all gatherings. On April 16 the police arrested several Trotskyist leaders, including Bodi M. Muthiah and Colvin de Silva, who was deported to Ceylon for being a "close associate" of Anthony Pillai. 28 In protest workers started wearing posters around their necks courting arrest as close associates of Pillai. 29 The union led 3,000 strikers in a march on April 20 in defiance of the ban on gatherings. 30 The police attacked with lathis and injured 200. The strikers broke up into groups, comandeered buses and trams, and went around the city shouting slogans in support of the strike. The police arrested 65 more union militants. The strike leaders resorted to ingenious tactics. Two days later, according to another government situation report, "about 500 workers infiltrated into the premises of the Central Station and marched out in a procession shouting slogans. A traffic jam resulted in front of the Station and the processionists were dispersed by a mild lathi charge." 31 The strike, now in its third month, had escalated into a national crisis. Archibald Nye, the governor of Madras, wrote to Viceroy Mountbatten that "our cloth position is serious, almost desperate." 32 The Prime Minister called upon the strikers to resume work immediately. The government allowed the acting union president, Tiru.V. Ka, to visit Anthony Pillai in jail "to explore the possibility of a settlement." But the meeting was "quite disappointing." 33 The union insisted that its key demands had to be met before the strike would be ended.

28 29

New Spark, 26 April 1947. K. Appanraj, Anja Nenjan: Thoyizh Sangha Medai Varalaru. p. 52.

30

New Spark, 10 May 1947.

31

IOL: LlPJ/5/21O. File Po!. 8057/1947.

32

IOL: LIPJ/5/210. File Po!. 8396/1947.

J3

IOL: LlPJ/5/210. File Po!. 8057/1947.

214

s.e.e.

Antoni Pillai Vazhkai

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

International Solidarity

The BLPI appealed to its comrades abroad to mobilize support for the strike. The American SWP cabled protests to Nehru and the Madras Congress Premier. The Militant publicized the strike. 34 Other sections of the FI also sent letters of protest to the Madras government. 35 These protests seemed to have had an effect. On May 11 the police fetched Pillai from jail, escourted him to Danushkodi, put him on the boat to Ceylon, and at mid-point served a formal order of externment, prohibiting his return to India. In Colombo Pillai got a doctor to give him a medical certificate stating that he had a heart condition. Armed with this ruse, he boarded a flight to Bombay, ostensibly to see a doctor. In fact, he was headed to the BLPI national conference, which was about to convene on May 21. In those days there were no direct flights from Colombo to Bombay; you had to go to Madras first. Arriving in the Madras airport, Pillai was recognized and detained for questioning. He produced his medical certificate. The detectives, not quite sure what to do, decided to let Pillai proceed to Bombay. But his flight had already departed. The authorities radioed the plane and had it circle back to Madras to take away the troublesome Trotskyist. At the party conference in Bombay the BLPI debated what to do about the strike in Madras, now in its third month. The ranks were exhausted. The executive committee was divided; one. of the vice presidents, a Congressman, called for an end to the strike. The MLU executive committee agreed to accept arbitration, if the externment order on Pillai were lifted. Given the unfavorable situation, the BLPI decided that Pillai should return to Madras without delay and seek a negotiated end to the strike. Travelling in disguise, in third-class train coaches, Pillai made the long train journey to Madras. Arriving at Villivakkam at dawn on May

34

Militant,3 May 1947. The SWP also issued a press release signed by a number of prominent literary figures, including the novelist, James T. Farre!'

35

New Spark, 10 May 1947.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

31, he went to the first house he found that was flying the red union flag. He sent word to his wife and Tiro Vi. Ka. to call a mass meeting that evening at Ayanpuram, on the outskirts of Madras. N0 one else knew that he had returned. That evening, after the meeting got underway, Pillai came riding up on a bicycle. He mounted the stage. The crowd went wild. It took more than a half hour to restore quiet. Pillai began to speak, saying he was going to negotiate with the Minister of Labour. "Before Comrade Anthony Pillai could finish his speech," wrote one young Trotskyist eyewitness, "the Deputy Commissioner of Police with a posse of over 200 constables and inspectors swooped down on the meeting and arrested Comrade Anthony Pillai. A free fight ensued. The police lathicharged and later opened fire. The workers hurled stones, the only available weapons. Thirty constables were injured and several workers were arrested on charges of rioting and unlawful assembly." 36 Pillai was hauled off to Vellore jail again. After a legal tussle, he was released on bail but immediately re-arrested. under the Public Safety Ordinance. Other union militants were also jailed. Workers demonstrated in several parts of the city. 37 On June 9 the· government illegalized the MLU, seized its funds, locked its headquarters, and arrested 49 "men of the Fourth International." 38 Night after night a virtual army-l0,000 Malabar Special Police-terrorized the mill districts. In one night raid more than a th9usand strikers were arrested. The government announced that the B&C Mills would reopen on June 12. But on that day only six out of the 14,000 workers showed up. 39 The next day only two reported for work. The governor of Madras, in a confidential memorandum to Mountbatten, complained

36

V. Karalasingham, "Indian Bourgeoisie Bares Its Teeth: Repressive Measures Against Trotskyist Controlled Union," 2-page report sent to SWP [USA], n.d. [June 1947], p. I. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

37

IOL: LlPJ/SI210. File Pol. 8713/1947.

38

Quoted in New Spark. 19 July 1947.

39

National Standard, 13 June 1947.

216

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

that "the strength of the unions in Madras is very great and the workmen implicitly obey the instructions of the leaders quite irrespective of the merits of the case." 40 The MLU ended the strike on June 19, 1947, after more than 100 days. Even then nearly three thousand workers stayed away in protest. Two small home-made bombs exploded in the spinning department of the mills on opening day. 41 The government illegalized the Volunteer Corps as a "communist organization" and arrested 13 volunteers. But the MLU wasn't broken. The union went to court and forced the employers to build 200 houses for workers and reinstate the 52 workers who had been dismissed during the Quit India movement. Most of the jailed union militants were released two months later when India became independent. Pillai was sentenced to one year in prison. A prominent lawyer, Muthaiah Mudhaliar, appealed and won. The BLPI emerged from the battle with tremendous prestige. Pillai was a hero. The BLPI called several public meetings in Madras in its own name. These rallies attracted thousands. 42 The BLPI launched a Tamil-language newspaper, Poratam [Spark]. In 1948 Pillai campaigned for the Madras Municipal Council as a Trotskyist. He got more than 5,000 of the 7,000 votes cast. 43 He had become a trade union leader with national stature. In 1947 he was elected to the General Council of the All-India Trade Union Congress. The MLU strike was a landmark labor struggle. "Though the union eventually had to surrender," writes one historian, "the workers of all communities remained loyal to their leaders. The defeat and attempts by the Congress government to suppress the union only strengthened the unity. Eventually Binnys accepted the inevitable and granted the union full recognition." 44 Tha.t epic struggle in 1947 was the high water mark of the Trotskyist movement in India. 40 41

42 43

44

IOL: LlPJ/S/210. File Po!. 871411947. IOL: LlPJ/S/210. File Po!. 899011947.

New Spark, 6 December 1947. Socialist Appeal, November 1948. E. Murphy, Unions in Conflict. p. 168.

217

CHAPTER TEN

Independence Like most of the Indian left, the BLPI believed that the British would never voluntarily relinquish power in India. Trotsky himself was certain: "Only a victorious revolution can liberate India." I The theory of Permanent Revolution held that only the "proletariat in power" could carry out the tasks of the bourgeois revolution, including independence. And since there was no revolution in sight, the British would surely remain the ruling power for the foreseeable future. With this perspective, the BLPI could only view the political drama unfolding in India as a huge charade deliberately orchestrated to fool the masses. The BLPI ridiculed the Interim Government as a farce played out to hide "the real imperialist designs and intentions of our rulers." 2 The BLPI dismissed the Constituent Assembly as "hopelessly unreal." 3 Just a few months later Prime Minister Attlee delivered his famous speech in the House of Commons declaring that Britain would leave India no later than June 1948. He sacked Wavell and gave Lord Mountbatten the mandate to transfer power to responsible Indian

Leon Trotsky, "The Betrayers ofIndia," in Writings ofLeon Trotsky 1938-39 (New York, 1974), p. 199. Trotsky counterposed the need for revolution to the reformist perspective of the Stalinist Popular Front. "India can only be liberated by the joint and open revolutionary struggle of the workers, peasants, and the English proletariat." Leon Trotsky, "Ignorance is not a Revolutionary Instrument," in Writings of Leon Trotsky 1938-39, pp. 185-86. New Spark, 26 April 1947. Spark, no. 8 (Late June 1946), p. 5. The BLPI was not the only Trotskyist party in the world to misread the unpredictable reality of those times. The American Socialist Workers Party went one better. Trotsky had predicted that the war would lead to the collapse of the Stalin regime. Since Stalin was stilI in the Kremlin, the American Trotskyists insisted-as late as November 1945-that "the war is not over." Militant, 17 November 1945.

218

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

parties and insure the unity of the Indian Union. Mountbatten soon discovered that he had less time than anyone thought. The communal violence was spreading rapidly and had infected the police, army, and civil service. He formulated "Plan Balkan," which evolved into "Plan . Partition." Faced with these unexpected events, the BLPI summoned a party conference for May, 1947. The leadership prepared political and organizational resolutions for pre-conference discussion. The hot issues were the Constituent Assembly demand, the question of Muslim selfdetermination, and the meaning of the impending transfer of power. Debate Over Constituent Assembly

In 1938 Jawaharlal Nehru had got the British Labour leaders to promise that when Labour came to power, they would summon a Constituent Assembly, freely elected on the basis of universal adult franchise, to frame a constitution for a free India, subject only to an Indo-British treaty safeguarding British interests for a transitional period. 4 But that is not what the Cabinet Mission proposed. Their Constituent Assembly would neither be elected on the basis of universal adult suffrage nor would it have sovereign power. Nehru denounced their proposal as a fraud. The BLPI agreed with Nehru. The party had been lukewarm to the Consituent Assembly slogan from the start. In its 1942 program the BLPI characterized the slogan as "illusive and deceptive." The party would only give "critical support to the slogan, not as one capable of objective fulfilment even for a successful revolution, but as a rallying cry in the specific stage of the struggle." Meeting in June, 1946 the BLPI Central Committee decided not to even demand a "genuine" Constituent Assembly as an answer to the fraud. 5

4

5

Partha Sarathi Gupta, Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, 1914-1964 (London, 1975), pp. 257-59. The rationale was that "the Congress itself was not claiming the so-called Constituent Assembly to be a real Constituent Assembly." "C.C. Report Presented to Party Convention Beginning May 21, 1947," p. 12.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

That position represented a deviation from what Trotsky had written on this question. In 1930 he criticized the Comintern for failing to demand a Constitutent Assembly for India. He regarded the Constituent Assembly as "the natural and inevitable generalized expression of the- democratic tasks of the revolution." 6 The Transitional Program, which Trotsky wrote for the Fourth International, made the Constituent Assembly a key demand for the colonial countries. 7 When the Muslim League decided to boycott the Constituent Assembly, Nehru changed his mind. The Congress participated in the opening session, where the delegates solemnly proclaimed their resolve "to proclaim India as an indepepdent and sovereign republic" and then went home. Unlike the CPI, which hailed the Constituent Assembly, the BLPI denounced it as a "fake," a "combination of the degenerate princely order and Indian capitalism sitting under the aegis of their very masters." 8 However, since a lot of people saw the Constituent Assembly as a big step forward, the BLPI could no longer ignore the issue. "As against this fake constituent assembly we demand the convening of a revolutionary constituent assembly elected on universal adult franchise with a secret ballot. To convene such a constituent assembly it is essential first to drive the British armed forces out of India and to smash its rotten and corrupt administrative and police machinery." 9 At the same time the BLPI emphasized that renewed mass struggles "may bypass the convening of a proper constituent assembly." 10 The BLPI had the Russian experience in mind. In October, 1917 the Bolsheviks led the Soviets to disperse the Constituent Assembly at gunpoint.

6

Leon Trotsky, "The Revolution In India, Its Tasks and Dangers," p. 250.

7

Leon Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (New York, 1970), p. 31.

8

New Spark, 26 Apri11947.

9

New Spark, 26 April 1947. New Spark, 26 April 1947.

10

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The BLPI leadership, having pooh-poohed the idea of a Constituent Assembly, now bent the stick in the opposite direction. In their draft resolution, circulated prior to the conference, the leadership advanced this demand as the centerpiece of the party's program for the coming period. That provoked opposition. Some of the leading members in the Calcutta branch thought the new slogan was misguided. In their view the Constituent Assembly "has been absolutely unreal to the Indian people, 90% of whom are shoved aside, the representation of the rest being indirect at that." 11 Therefore, the BLPI should just "expose it in the way we had been doing in the past." At the BLPI conference, which met in Bombay in May, there was a prolonged debate over the question. Some delegates, including the Calcutta critics, flatly rejected the Constituent Assembly demand on principle. In their view the fight for a Constituent Assembly "cuts across" the main objective of the party-the socialist revolution leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat. 12 In the floor debate Hector Abhayavardhana called this position "ultra-left." He cogently pointed out that Trotsky, at various times in the 1930s, called ~or. a Constituent Assembly in Italy, a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly for Spain, a Republic for Belgium, and a Black Republic for South Africa. 13 Others took a diametrically opposed position, namely, that the Revolutionary Constituent Assembly should be "the main transitional

11

This group included P.K. Roy and Hiranand Mishra. Roby, Chester, and Bibhuty, "A Criticism of the Draft Resolution as Submitted by the CC," Internal Bulletin (I April 1947), pp.6~7. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

12

The main proponents of this position were P.K. Roy, Hiranand Mishra, and Doric de Souza. "Report of the First Party Convention Held May 21-24, 1947," Internal Bulletin, vo!. 2, no. 1 [May 1947], p. 5; Arun Bose, "Programme and Reality," Internal Bulletin, vo!. 2, no. 3 (25 September 1947), pp 13-16; P.K. Roy, "Opportunism on the Question of the Constituent Assembly," Internal Bulletin, vo!. 2, no. 3 (25 September 1947), pp. 17-21. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

13

H.A. Vardhan [Hector Abhayavardhana], "Convention Discussion on the Constituent Assembly: A Summing Up," Internal Bulletin, vo!. 2, no. 3 (September 25, 1947), p. 4-12. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

slogan today." 14 In their opinion the fight for a genuine Constituent Assembly could show the masses that a revolution was necessary even to realize this classic democratic demand (hence the "transitional"). IS A third group, which included the incumbent leadership, took the middle ground. They argued that the Constituent Assembly slogan could be raised when "the situation demands the putting forward of this slogan." 16 However, the proponents of this view didn't give specific criteria for when the slogan would become appropriate. That smacked of a circular argument. In a close vote the delegates decided to make the Constituent Assembly the main slogan of the party. "The slogan of Constituent Assembly should be the central slogan of the Transitional Programme, i.e. the slogan around which all other transitional slogans hinge; and in the present period the propagation of this slogan will have to be in the form of the Revolutionary Constitutent Assembly, thet:eby counterposing it to the fake CA." 17 This was a vote against the incumbent leadership. Leslie Goonewardene resigned as General Secretary. Hector Abhayavardhana took his place. The conference elected a new Political Bureau

14

Hector Abhayavardhana, V.S.S. Sastry, Anthony PiIlai, V. Karalasingham, and Raj Narayan Arya advocated this position. H.A. Vardhan [Hector Abhayavardhana), "Convention Discussion on the Constituent Assembly: A Summing Up," Internal Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 3 (September 25, 1947), p. 4-12. Hoover: LSH, box 52. See also Raj Narain, "The Slogan of R.C.A. Why Should We Retain It?," Internal Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 1 (1 March 1948), pp. 1-3. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

IS

The idea that democratic demands could become "transitional" had stirred controversy elsewhere in the Fourth International. In the American Socialist Workers Party a minority around Felix Morrow argued that properly chosen democratic demands were in fact "transitional." Hector Abhayavardhana was aware of this dispute within the American party. Hector Abhayavardhana, "Statement on Points of Controversy Inside the Fourth International," Internal Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 3 (25 September 1947), p. 2. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

16

The sponsors of that proposal included Leslie Goonewardene, Colvin de Silva, and Indra Sen. "Report of the First Party Convention Held May 21-24, 1947," p. 5.

17

"Report of the First Party Convention Held May 21-24, 1947," p. 6.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

consisting of three representatives who had advocated the change in line on the Constitutent Asser,n.bly (Abhayavardhana, Sastry, and Anthony Pillai). The Bengal minority demanded that a new convention be summoned to reconsider the whole issue. 18 In its propaganda the BLPI called upon the Congress to live up to its previous position: "Dissolve this comic circus that you want to palm off as a Constituent Assembly. Summon a real Constituent Assembly, freely elected, under no duress from the British forces in India, on a universal adult franchise. Let the exploited masses of India send their representatives to such a Constituent Assembly." 19 Confident that Congress would never do this, the BLPI predicted that the masses would see that "the Indian Capitalists and their party, the Indian National Congress, are the tools and allies of World Capitalism." That was expecting too much. Pakistan Revisited

In the months leading up to the BLPI conference the communal situation in India got worse and worse. Hindu-Muslim riots convulsed Bombay, Calcutta, and Benares. In the NWFP and the Punjab the pogroms left 3,500 dead in less than a month. One senior British official said the devastated villages looked like the European towns that had been hit by "fire bomb raids during the war." 20 In eastern Bengal Muslim gangs pillaged property and massacred Hindus. Thousands of Hindus fled to Bihar and V.P. In retaliation Hindu mobs slaughtered more than 7,000 Muslims in Bihar alone. The BLPI leadership didn't seem to fathom what was happening in the country. The draft political resolution for the party conference didn't even mention the communal rioting. Some of the comrades in Calcutta sharply criticized the leadership for their "lack of any attitide 18

"Resolution of the Calcutta District Committee Unanimously Adopted on 29-9-47," Internal Bulletin, vo\. 3, no. 1 (1 March 1948), pp. 3-5. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

19

New Spark, 10 May 1947.

20

Alan CampbelI-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten (London, 1952), p. 79.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

towards the communal riots that have been ravaging the countryside (for the authors the communal riots as well as the Muslim League do not exist at all!)." 21 At the conference the delegates adopted a resolution that finally faced reality. "In the teeth of Congress opposition the Muslim League, with hesitating support from the British, is today on the threshold of securing the establishment of Pakistan in one form or another... This slogan has undoubtedly harnessed behind it the aspirations of the Muslims for separate state existence in Northern India." 22 The BLPI characterized Pakistan as a "bitter pill." Up to that point the majority of the BLPI denied that the Muslims in India, taken as a whole, constituted a nation, according to the classic Bolshevik definition. That was true. Like the Jews in Europe before the war, the Muslims in India were a religious minority dispersed within larger nations and nationalities. But, just as the Holocaust set the stage for mass Jewish emmigration to Palestine, laying the basis for a Jewish nation, so too the communal killing, dislocation, and population transfers created the objective basis for the consolidation of Muslim nations on the subcontinent. Unlike the CPI, which cheered the Mountbatten Plan, the BLPI refused to support Pakistan in any form. The BLPI pointed out that Pakistan will require "the transfer of populations" and carving up "the living bodies of the crystallising nationalities in India." In order to create an eastern Pakistan the Bengali nation would have to be divided. If Assam were grafted on, then the Hindu minority would be trapped within the new state. That was a recipe for reversing the terms of oppression. Whichever way Calcutta went, half the people would be losers. Hence the BLPI concluded that "the religio-communal partition of India is an unrelievedly regressive act." 23 21

Roby, Chester, and Bibhuty, "A Criticism of the Draft Resolution as Submitted by the CC," p. 6.

22

"Political Resolution," adopted at the second conference of the BLPI, reprinted in New Spark. 21 June 1947. New Spark. 24 May 1947.

23

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Independence: Real or Fake?

At the BLPI conference the Trotskyists wrestled with the question of what the impending settlement would mean. There was a big spread of opinion and a lot of confusion. On one side were those who flatly denied that India would become independent in any sense. P.K. Roy, a delegate from Calcutta, characterized the Mountbatten plan as a big fraud, just another attempt to preserve the Raj through political reforms. He denied that there would be any "transfer of power." He argued that Britain intended to "work a political alliance within the existing framework of direct rule." Others took the position that Britain would switch from "direct rule" to "indirect rule." But there were differences over what "indirect rule" signified. Hector Abhayavardhana argued that, despite the transfer of power, India "will remain a colony." 24 Doric de Souza speculated that India would become a "semi-colony" of Britain, akin to the "nominally independent" nations in Latin America dominated by the US. 25 \

A third group thought that the transfer of power would be more or less real. Leslie Goonewardene ventured that Britain might have to "grant sovereignty to her colonies" in order to "salvage her empire." Indra Sen spoke of a "transfer of a certain quantum of power." Anthony Pillai opined that there would be "some degree of political independence." Colvin de Silva took an agnostic position. He st~ted that the "crux of the question" would be the terms set forth in the (uture Indo-British treaty, the details of which had not been disclosed. 24

"Report of First Party Convention Held May 21-24, 1947," pp. 3-4.

25

During the war the BLPI had speculated that the US might try to turn India and China into semi-colonies. "The present perspective of American Imperialism in regard to India and China is to secure the domination of American finance capital not through direct political rule, but rather through the strength of its economic and financial stranglehold, utilizing the bourgeoisies of these countries as its agents for the administration of the country ... In other words this is nominal independence on the model of the South American semi-colonies." "American Imperialist Aims in India," The Bolshevik Leninist. vo!. 2, no. 1 (February 1943), p. 1.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

At the end of the debate the delegates adopted the "indirect rule" position. According to the conference resolution, the transfer of power will "not mean either India's freedom or the end of British Imperialism." 26 On the contrary, "the domination of Britain will be preserved in India, and can only be ended by revolutionary action." • Doric de Souza explained the BLPI's position in an article written for the American journal, Fourth International. He emphasized that "in no case does the loosening of political ties mean the liquidation of British Imperialism, or the freedom of the colonies." 27 At bottom the BLPI position was that India could not "really" be independent as long as she was economically subordinate to Britain. The implication is that India could become economically independent. That logical conclusion, however, runs counter to the Marxist theory of imperialism. As long as imperialism remains dominant on a global scale, no nation can ever be "financially independent." Lenin had emphasized that finance capital dominates "even states enjoying the fullest political independence." 28 Trotsky likewise stated that even the USSR, which had a monopoly on foreign trade, could never escape completely the pressure of world imperialism. That is precisely why he objected to the Stalinist theory of "building socialism in one country." Freedom at Midnight

At midnight on August 15, 1947 Nehru mounted the ramparts of Delhi's Red Fort and eloquently proclaimed the freedom for which Indians had fought for so long. The popular mood was euphoric. The Socialists pledged their support to the new Nehru government. "Congress governments deserve the utmost sympathy in their task and

26

New Spark, 7 June 1947.

27

Doric de Souza, "The Crisis of British Imperialism," Fourth International, JulyAugust 1947, p. 204.

28

V.1. Lenin, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1916), in V.1. Lenin, Collected Works, vo\. 22, p. 259.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

the cooperation of all who deserve freedom above all." newspaper declared, "All support to Government." 30

29

The CPI

The Trotskyists swam against this stream. "The direct rule of British imperialism," declared New Spark, "is being replaced by indirect rule." 31 The settlement of August 15 was "a shameful sell-out of the interests of the Indian people." 32 The BLPI den9unced the Constitutent Assemblies sitting in New Delhi and Karachi as "Quisling Assemblies, convened by the British Imperialists and meeting under their patronage, and as unrepresentative of the people." The BLPI pointed out that British capital still dominated the key sectors of the economy, British warships were still docked in the harbours, and Lord Mountbatten himself was Governor General of the Dominion ofIndia. The BLPI opposed the partition of India: "while we stand fully for the rights of secession of any nationality in India, we emphasise that such rights can be exercised only when Imperialism is overthrown. The free will of the masses in regard to Partition has not been expressed, and cannot be until British Imperialism is overthrown. The vicious attempt to carve up the living bodies of nationalities like the Punjabis and the Bengalis is the most reactionary feature of the contemplated Partition." The BLPI called for the "revolutionary re-unification" of India. "For a single Revolutionary Constituent Assembly for India and Pakistan, elected by the people on the basis of universal, secret and direct suffrage." 33 The BLPI didn't give an ounce of support to the Nehru government. "Henceforth the struggle against imperialism has to proceed directly and from the very outset against the native

29

Janata, 23 February 1947.

30

People's Age, 15 August 1947.

31

New Spark, 16 August 1947.

32

New Spark, 3 January 1948.

33

New Spark, 25 October 1947; reprinted Quatrieme Internationale (November. December 1947), pp. 39-40.

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The 1i'otskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

bourgeoisie, who have become the gendarmes of imperialist interests in India." 34 [emphasis in original] The BLPI stressed that the Congress governments had broken strikes, fired upon workers, detained more people without trial and used the old repressive laws (such as Section 144) more frequently than the British government.

The BLPI organized demonstrations against the "fake independence." In the coalfields of Raniganj, for example, the BLPI mobilized thousands of mine workers in a procession behind a large banner of the Fourth International. The Trotskyists led chants, "Down with the Fake Independence," "Down with the Congress-LeagueImperialist Alliance," "For a Workers State." According to the report in the party paper, "The huge demonstration marched along the main streets of the town and roused a great enthusiasm amongst the poor sections of the population." 35 Two months later the BLPI organized a national tour featuring Ajit Roy, a powerful platform speaker, who had recently returned to India from England. Roy blasted the "fake independence" deal, the partition of India, the repressive policies of the Nehru government, and the "betrayal" of the Communists and Socialists in supporting the "capitalist government." In Madras thousands attended two BLPI rallies to hear Ajit Roy, as well as the Trotskyist trade-union leaders from the Perambur Railway Workshops and the B&C Mills. 36 In these rallies the BLPI criticized the Nehru government for failing to release political prisoners, restore democratic rights, reorganize the provinces along linguistic lines, and abolish the Princely States. The BLPI declared that "the Congress in power needs, just as badly as the British imperialists, to maintain undisturbed the existing administrative setup." 37 The BLPI raised the demand for Revolutionary

34

New Spark, 16 August 1947.

35

New Spark, 30 August 1947.

36

New Spark, 4 September 1948.

37

New Spark, 1 May 1948.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Cey/on

Constituent Assemblies in the Princely States. 38 The Nehru government absorbed all but 25 of the more than 600 States through a cooperative, administrative, purely top-down manner that left the social structures untouched. The Independence Issue in Ceylon

Like their comrades on the mainland, both the LSSP and the BLPI characterized the transfer of power as "fake independence" [eeniya nidahasa]. Both maintained that "direct rule" would be replaced by "indirect rule." But there were differences. The BLPI declared that Ceylon would continue to be a colony. "Ceylon is thus not free but continues to be in chains." 39 Philip Gunawardena, who was not so blinkered by theoretical formulae, thought that was ridiculous. He argued that Ceylon would get political independence but not economic independence. "Henceforth the Ceylonese bourgeoisie will rule in Ceylon, whilst British imperialism will continue to reign." 40 When the independence bill came before parliament, the LSSP abstained in protest, while the BLPI delegation voted against the bill. That led to a new round of polemics between the rivals. The LSSP took the sensible view that a Marxist party can not oppose independence, as limited as it was. The BLPI declared that the LSSP was moving "progressively in the direction of becoming a petty bourgeois party." 41 Nevertheless, both the LSSP and BLPI boycotted the official celebrations. Both mocked the "fake independence" and demanded an

38

New Spark, 29 May 1948.

39

Co Iv in R. de Silva, Independence: Real or Fake? (Colombo, 1948); reprinted Quatrieme Internationale (January-February 1948), p. 54. Samasamajist, 10 February 1948.

40 41

"Report of the First Party Convention Held May 21-24, 1947," p. 9; and New Spark, 7 June 1947. One British Trotskyist who visited Ceylon at this point characterized the LSSP as "a finished anti-Marxian tendency holding a programmatic position fundamentally hostile to and irreconcilably divergent from the entire political general line of the Fourth International." "Report by JF on the Activities of the Bolshevik Leninist Party ofIndia During 1947."

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

end to specific manifestations of colonialism, such as the British military base at Trincomalee and the British control over the plantation economy. "Fake" Versus "Formal" Independence

In March, 1948, Colvin de Silva delivered the keynote speech to the Bengal Students Congress, where the BLPI had considerable influence. He probably startled quite a few in the audience when he said: "The expulsion of British Imperialism from India has not yet been accomplished. Its definitive overthrow has yet to be achieved.. .India has climbed up the ladder of colonial status: it has not leaped from it to the ladder of national independence." 42 He continued to allude to "secret treaties" between the British and Indian governments that established the colonial status of India. Other BLPI leaders had growing doubts about this line. Indra Sen, the editor of New Spark; thought that the BLPI was denying reality in order to defend doctrine. He published articles in the party newspaper that implied that India was really independent. That provoked criticism from those who thought India was still a colony or semi-colony. 43 The whole question had to be re-opened at the next party conference, held in Calcutta in 1948. At the conference Leslie Goonewardene went straight to the heart of the matter: "the question to decide was whether political power has been transferred to the Indian bourgeoisie." 44 That was the essential meaning of national independence. Indra Sen seconded this idea: "the possession of political power by the bourgeoisie was equivalent to

42

43

44

Colvin R. de Silva, The Present Political Situation in India. Being the Inaugural Address delivered on 5-3-48 at the All Bengal Students' Congress Annual Conference at Uluberia (Calcutta, 1948), pp. 8-9. Y. Chester [Y. Karalasingham), "The Obscurantism of Eclectics," Internal Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 1 (1 March 1948), pp. 5-8. Hoover: LSH, box 52. "Summary of Minutes of the Calcutta Convention of the BLPI, 1948," Internal Bulletin, 31 August 1948, pp. 2-3. Hull: Haston, DJH/15G/14b.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

'political independence'." Both Goonewardene and Sen cited Lenin's writings to back their view. 4S Colvin de Silva stubbornly denied that independence had been achieved. He stated that in the "share out of political power," British imperialism was the "dominant partner." The majority voted to scrap the "fake independence" position. 46 The conference resolution characterized India as a "semi-colony enjoying political independence, but subject as before to the economic domination of British imperial interests, which renders independence formal." The Fourth International subsequently endorsed that position. 47 And thus the Trotskyists belatedly resolved what had been a glaring denial of reality.

45

46

47

Goonewardene saw an analogy in the case of Argentina, which Lenin regarded as having achieved "fonnal political independence" in the first decade ofthe twentieth century. Sen argued that a more apt parallel was Portugal, which Lenin characterized as having "political independence." Leslie Goonewardene, Indra Sen, Anthony Pillai, V. Karalasingham, Sethuraman, Henry Peiris, K.P. Silva, Rajnarayan Arya, Madhav Rao, and Tulsi Boda thought India had become essentially independent. Colvin de Silva, Dulal Bose, P.K. Roy, G. Selvaraj, and Ajit Roy stuck to the "fake independence" line. "Summary of Minutes of the Calcutta Convention of the BLPI, 1948," pp. 2-3. In 1950 the Eighth .Plenum of the Executive Committee acknowledged the "fonnal acquisition of independence" by India. Although "the economic weight of imperialism continues to be exerted," impeding further development and tying the native bourgeoisie "to the chariot of imperialism," the "new situation thus created ... should not be underestimated." "Resolution on the Developments of the Colonial Revolutions in Asia," Quatrieme Internationale, May-June 1950; also reprinted in International Information Bulletin, September 1950, p. 14.

231

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Demise and Regeneration The partition of the subcontinent in 1947 marked the end ofa long era. It was hard to keep faith in the dream of united class struggle when the reality was mass slaughter and forced population transfers. Even Gandhi fell victim. The BLPI had to do some serious rethinking of its strategic perspectives. The Nehru government, though beset by crises, had popular support. The BLPI remained a small party. Once again, the Trotskyists wrestled with the question: What is to be done? Philip Gunawardena urged the BLPI to join the Socialist Party without further delay: "it is time we gave up repeating to ourselves that all other parties and groups are discredited and that ours is the only party-it is still nothing more than a propagandist group except in Ceylon and perhaps in a portion of Madras Province ... This state of affairs can be remedied by the entry of Bolshevik-Leninists into the Socialist Party of India." I That had been his position since 1943. The Congress Socialists were growing. In Bombay the Socialists captured the Girni Kamgar Union, the CPI stronghold. The governor of Bombay informed the Home Office that "the Congress Socialists are a greater potential danger" than the Communists, who "do not want to provoke trouble at this stage." 2 At the same time the Socialist leaders continued to tail the Congress as it moved to the right. When Congress entered the Constituent Assembly, J.P. Narayan proclaimed that socialism could be won at the ballot box. 3 The Socialist Party was at a

2

D.P.R. Gunawardena, "Bolshevik-Leninists Should Enter Immediately the Socialist Party ofIndia (C.S.P.)," Internal Bulletin [LSSP), Vol. 1, no. 2 (March 1947), p. 2. The LSSP made the same appeal in its public press. See Evan Senanayake, "The Fundamental Task of the Bolshevik-Leninists ofIndia!" Samasamajist. 20 October 1948, pp. 3, 7. IOL: LlPJ/5/168. File Pol. 6360/1947 and File Pol. 7833/1947. Indra Sen, Jai Prakash and the Road to Socialism (Madras, 1947), p. 5. Hull: Brynmor Jones Library.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

crossroads. In Kerala some Socialist dissidents were reported to be in solidaity with the Trotskyist line. 4 The Entry Tactic Revisited

Though Philip was the godfather, the entry proposal had its own independent sponsors in the BLPI. The initial champion was V. Sastry in Bombay. 5 As mentioned earlier, Sastry had come from the UK in 1946. At that point the "entry tactic" was being hotly debated within the British section of the FI. A minority wanted to enter the Labour Party. In their view the radicalization of the British working class would be expressed within the Labour Party. Therefore, the Trotskyists had to go where the action was and sink deep roots. Hector Abhayavardhana agreed with Sastry. They recruited Sitanshu Das, a young student member in Bombay, to their viewpoint. Das authored an internal document which echoed many of the arguments raised by Phi lip Gunawardena. 6 He stated that the BLPI's growth wouldn't have been so "unsatisfactory" if the party had entered the Congress before or during the August movement. "Owing to the lack of experience of the leadership of the party, that opportunity was lost, irretrievably." He concluded that, given the small size of the BLPI, the only way to win over the radical youth in the Socialist Party was to enter that party en masse. Leslie Goonewardene, the General Secretary of the BLPI, was not convinced. As a disciplined Marxist thinker, he felt that the pro-entry group had not clearly formulated their proposal. In his writings on the entry tactic in the 'thirties, Trotsky emphasized the need for careful

One newspaper reported, "Some of the members who have resigned are considering the formation of a branch of the Fourth International in Kerala." Mathrubhumi, 9 July 1947. "it was V.S. Sastry who unhesitatingly pushed the need to enter the C.S.P." Letter from Hector Abhayavardhana to the author, 10 May 1999. Situ [Sitanshu Das], "Resolution for Entry into the Socialist Party," Internal Bulletin (5 May 1947), pp. 1-2. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

preparation. That was precise-ty the problem with Philip Gunawardena's various proposals' for regroupment and entryism. A master of the big bold move, he never spelled out how the BLPI should execute these risky manuevers. Leslie Goonewardene solicited input from the International. In a letter to the American SWP he asked for their documents on the question, particularly "the measures taken beforehand to ensure a coordinated functioning within the Socialist Party."? Prior to the party conference in 1947, the BLPI Bureau drafted an organizational resolution which mooted the entry tactic in conditional terms. The resolution noted that the Congress Socialist Party might take a left turn and support labor struggles, even against Congress opposition. "In such an event it would be the duty of the BLPI to seek entry into the Socialist Party and to work within it for such period of time as it would take to coalesce the revolutionary elements in the SP and to lead them out of the SP in order to form again the party of the 4th International in India." 8 That triggered debate. Fred Bunby, the British serviceman who remained in India, supported the entry tactic. 9 He acknowledged that entry into the Socialist Party would entail considerable risks and might even lead to the loss of direct recruitment of workers to the party line. However, that would be more than offset by the increased opportunities to recruit educated cadres. "Stated in a single sentence, the whole case for entry rests on the possibility it will afford for selecting and training intelligentsia cadres on an all-India scale." He proposed a phased approach. First a "strong and disciplined fraction" of BLPI members would join the Socialist Party and form a "powerful faction." Then, after six months the BLPI would decide the issue based on their experience. 7

Letter from K. Tilak [Leslie Goonewardene] to Secretary, SWP, 14 April 1947. Hoover: SWP Papers, box 38.

B

"Organisational Resolution," Internal Bulletin (I April 1947), p. 5. Hoover: LSH, box 52. M. Usman [Fred Bunby], "A Contribution on Entry," Internal Bulletin (5 May 1947), pp. 2-4. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

9

234

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

At the conference Hector Abhayavardhana proposed a cautious approach. He advocated that, as a first step, the BLPI should "send into the SP a fraction that would agitate for the admission of Trotskyists into the SP." 10 Leslie Goonewardene still wasn't convinced. He questioned the basic assumption, namely that the Socialist Party was really radicalizing and hence offered a fertile field for recruitment. Anthony Pillai stated that "from his experience with SP leaders in Madras, it was clear that this organisation would refuse to have in its fold inteIligent cadres let alone Bolsheviks." Called to a vote, the "entry tactic" was rejected 8-to-4. After the conference the BLPI pulled no punches with the Socialists. "We consider the S.P. to be a petty-bourgeois party, in programme, policy, social composition, and tradition. We do not believe that it is possible to convert such a party into a revolutionary proletarian party any more than it is possible to convert Congress itself into a 'Socialist Party'." 11 However, the Trotskyists granted that "the majority of post-August militants who have joined the S.P." have not reached that conclusion. And so the BLPI would try to open their eyes with a barrage of polemics. The BLPI leaders recognized that the Socialist militants needed to experience the betrayals "before they can realize the need for building anew the revolutionary party of the Indian proletariat. " The Entry Faction

Although the entry proposal had been defeated at the 1947 party conference, the advocates persisted. On September 7, 1947 the "Entry Group" met in Bombay. 12 The group included the General Secretary of the party (Hector Abhayavardhana) and another member of the central committee (V. Sastry). According to the minutes of this meeting,

10

"Report of the First Party Convention Held May 21-24, 1947,".p. 8.

11

New Spark, 5 July 1947.

12

The "Entry Group" consisted of Hector Abhayavardhana, V. Sastry, Sitanshu Das, Vinayak Purohit, Prabhakar More, and Ambalal.

235

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

various arguments were advanced in support of the entry tactic. But the common denominator was the belief that the Socialist Party would mushroom and radicalize, providing a fertile field of recruitment for the Trotskyists. The Entry Group circulated the minutes of this meeting within the BLPI as a discussion document. The pro-entry group was strongest in Bombay and Kanpur, precisely where the BLPI was weak compared to the Socialist Party. The anti-entryists were concentrated in Bengal and Madras, where the BLPI was stronger than the Socialists. Z.H. Khan, the Bengali trade unionist, called the entry faction "frightened" and "disillusioned."13 Karalasingham called them "grave diggers ofthe BLPI." 14 Fred Bunby, who had initially supported the entry idea, characterized the entrists as "defeatists" and "get rich quickers." 15 On the other hand Raj Narayan Arya, the Kanpur leader, argued that a small propaganda group like the BLPI could not grow into a mass party by direct recruitment. In Madras Anthony Pillai led the majority in opposing the entry tactic, while B. M. K. Ramaswamy and Bodi Muthiah were in favor. The most serious argument against the entry position, however, came from the two comrades who had been sent to work inside the Socialist Party in Bombay. They reported that there wasn't much sympathy for their politics. Moreover, the Socialist leaders did not tolerate criticism. "Under the circumstances," they concluded, "we, the members of the Party fraction inside the SP, cannot agree with the idea

13

14

15

Khan [Zahrul Hasan Khan], "An Open Letter to the 'Entrists' ," Internal Bulletin, vol. 3 no. 1 (1 March 1948), pp. 8-9. Hoover: LSH, box 52. V. Chester [V. Karalasingham], "The Grave-Diggers of the BLPI," Internal Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 1 (1 March 1948), pp. 13-19. Hoover: LSH, box 52. Bunby explained that he had supported the entry tactic, thinking that there would be an "extremely rapid" radicalization of the masses in India. However, that had not happened. Instead, there was a "profound political lull." Given the obvious popularity of the Nehru government, the BLPI had to bite the bullet and patiently build up its forces. M. Usman [Fred Bunby], "Why I Now Oppose Entry," Internal Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 1 (1 March 1948), pp. 11-12. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

236

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

of temporarily dissolving the Party and entering the SP wholesale." 16 Lakshman Jadav, another trade unionist who worked in a Socialist union, also opposed the entry proposal. A New Perspective

Indra Sen, an influential Marxist ideologue in the BLPI, thought the entry faction was advocating the right tactic for the wrong reasons. He thought the analogy with Europe in the 'thirties was wrong. He doubted that the Socialist Party was going to keep radicalizing. In his view the more likely variant was that the Socialists would evolve into a stable, reformist opposition, an Indian version of the British Labour Party. If that was the case, then different tactics and timeframes would be involved. Rather than raiding the Socialist Party, the Trotskyists would have to dig in for the long haul, much like what the minority of the British RCP proposed to do in the Labour Party. In reformulating the entry perspective Indra Sen pointed to several important developments in India. First, after being forced to quit the Congress, the Socialist leaders themselves spoke in terms of transforming the party into a mass, social-democratic alternative. Second, the Socialists were expanding their trade-union base, often by capturing unions from the CPI. Third, the Socialists were keen to contest elections and become the parliamentary opposition. The first such contest was the Bombay municipal elections in early 1948. 17 The Socialists did surprisingly well, trouncing the CPI and preventing Congress from getting a majority. The BLPI described the outcome as a "veritable landslide ofthe masses in the direction of the Socialist Party." 18 16

Appaswami [Po Bhaskaran] and Shapptram [S.R. Rao] , "Memorandum to the B.L.P.I. from the Members of the Party Fraction inside the Socialist Party on the Question of Entering the Socialist Party" [12 September 1947], Internal Bulletin. vol. 3, no. 1 (1 March 1948), pp. 9-10. Hoover: LSH, box 52. Also Interview with T.R. Rao and S.R. Rao, 13 June 1974.

17

The BLPI fielded one candidate, Anant Mandekar, the trade unionist. The Socialists won 26 seats. The CPI won only 5. The BLPI candidate lost to a Socialist by 3,136to-641 votes.

18

New Spark, 6 March 1948.

237

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Indra Sen eventually won over Leslie Goonewardene to his longtenn entry proposal. Goonewardene in turn won over Anthony Pillai, also a Central Committee member. Thus, the entry faction now had all three members of the Political Bureau (Abhayavardhana, Sastry, and Anthony Pillai) and a majority in the Central Committee (5 of the 7). 19 The Political Bureau called for a special conference of the party to resolve the issue. Fourth International Intervention

In late 1947 the BLPI sent Kamalesh Bannerji to Paris to represent the BLPI in the International Secretariat (IS) and the International Executive Committee (1EC) of the Fourth International. Bannerji opposed the entry proposal, or at least the way in which the discussion was proceeding in the BLPI. The IS agreed and decided to intervene. In July, 1948 Michel Pablo, the rising star of the International Secretariat in Paris, sent a letter to the BLPI Political Bureau on behalf of the IS in which he expressed concern that the BLPI was "seriously divided over this issue." 20 He cautioned that without careful preparation and unity an entry into the Socialist Party "can mean the disintegration and even the loss of the organization." The IS therefore recommended that the decision be postponed until the BLPI leadership conducts "a serious discussion" in the party "with the participation of the International." The IS did not reject the entry proposal per se. 21 In fact, Pablo recommended that a section of the BLPI, even the entire Bombay branch, enter the Socialist Party as an experiment.

19

20

21

At that point the pro-entry members of the Central Committee were Abhayavardhana, Sastry, Anthony Pillai, Leslie Goonewardene, and Indra Sen. The opponents were Hiranand Mishra and V. Karalasingham. Letter from Pilar [Michel Pablo] to BLPI, 20 July 1948. In the letter to the BLPI Pablo granted that the entry tactic r:tight be appropriate, given the "relative stability" in India, the "still relatively favorable economic conjuncture," and the "still important political prestige of Congress amongst the broad masses." He noted that "our party does not seem to be able to make serious progress."

238

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The BLPI Political Bureau circulated the IS letter to the party units, requesting their opinions. Meanwhile, the Political Bureau proceeded with making all the arrangements for the special party convention. When the IS didn't receive a reply to its letter, they sent a sternly worded letter, dated September 10, 1948, in which they pulled rank and ordered the BLPI not to enter the Socialist Party until such time as the IS approved. When the BLPI Political Bureau received this letter, the Special Convention was less than a month away. The BLPI leadership decided to proceed. The Special Convention

The Central Committee drafted a resolution in favor of entry to be presented to the Special Convention. 22 The resolution argued that the Socialist Party was in the process of becoming a mass Social Democratic Party, along the lines of the British Labour Party or the European Socialist Parties. Therefore the Trotskyists would have to enter with a longer-term perspective. The Special Convention met in Calcutta, October 15-17, 1948. There were nine delegates, representing the Madras, Calcutta, Bombay, and Kanpur branches of the party. Colvin de Silva attended as a fraternal representative from Ceylon. Introducing the entry resolution, V. Karalasingham put the case succinctly. "Since a mass Social Democratic Labour Party is in the process of formation for the first time in India it is our duty to participate in this movement." 23 Leslie Goonewardene pointed out that the Trotskyists would have to join the Socialist Party with the .perspective of burrowing in for the long haul. "Since it is a new mass Social Democratic Labour Party that is coming into being, our tactic will have to be different from entry tactics employed by FI sections previously. We would have to participate in this movement for building

22

23

"Resolution on Entry as Passed by the Special Convention," n.d., I page. Hoover: LSH, box 52. "Report of the CC of the BLPI on the Special Convention," n.d., p. 2. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

this new instrument which the masses desired for fighting Congress and the Capitalists." The two anti-entry delegates, P.K. Roy and Hiranand Mishra, opposed the resolution. But when it was put to the vote, they capitulated, declaring that "it is better that the Bengal Unit enter unitedly." Thus, the entry resolution was adopted unanimously. The convention also discussed what to say to the International Secretariat. The conference adopted the following resolution: "While being fully conscious of the right of the IS to intervene and even override the decisions of the sections of the International, this convention considers it would be a tragic set-back to the Party in India and to the FI movement as a whole, if the IS either through delay in replying or by reversal of the unanimous decision of this Convention, were to prevent the Indian Party from carrying out in an effective and timely manner the tactic of entry into the SP." 24 In other words the BLPI presented the IS with a/ait accompli. Merger with Socialist Party

After the conference the BLPI leaders met with their Socialist counterparts. The BLPI proposed a formal merger. But the Socialists were no fools. In the late 'thirties J.P. Narayan had welcomed the CPI into the Socialist fold. Once burned, twice shy. The Socialists insisted that the BLPI would first have to dissolve. After that, its members could apply for membership, as individuals. The Socialists warned that no factions or separate discussion bulletins would be tolerated. 25 Moreover, the former BLPI members were to sever all connections with the Fourth International. If these conditions were met, then the Socialist Party's General Council would ratify the deal.

24

"Resolution of Special Convention on I.S. Letter of 7th October 1948," typescript, 1 page. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

25

"Report of Committee on S.P. Negotiations (22 July 1948)," Internal Bulletin, vol. 3 (August 1948), pp. 2-4. Hoover: LSH, box 52.

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

The terms could not have been much worse. But the BLPI leadership agreed. When the terms were presented to the membership, the BLPI leaders promised that a guiding center would be established in Bombay. "When the leadership decided on entry," recalls Raj Narayan Arya, "it promised to maintain a nucleus to guide its members in the S.P. but the stress was on discreetness." 26 In September, 1948 the BLPI published the last issue of New Spark. In Bombay and U.P. the Trotskyists joined well-established Socialist Party branches. 27 In Madras the Trotskyists formed branches where none had existed before. As promised, the Socialists gave the Trotskyists key positions in the party. Ajit Roy was co-opted into the National Executive Committee. Indra Sen became joint editor of Janata, the Socialist newspaper. Hector Abhayavardhana became Joint Secretary of the Socialist Party in Madras. Anthony Pillai became a big gun in the Hind Mazdoor Sabha, the Socialist labor federation. 28 By all accounts the Trotskyists worked energetically to establish their credentials as loyal members of the Socialist Party. All the former BLPI leaders contributed regularly to Janata. Pillai ran for Madras Municipal Council on the SP ticket and won. In Bombay the Trotskyist trade unionists began training a new generation of rank-and-file labor leaders. After some months Janata praised the Trotskyists: "In the tradeunion field as well as in the political sphere, it [the Socialist Party] has secured the complete support of the Bolshevik Leninist Party and now that party has completely merged itself with the Socialist Party. This party had considerable organised strength in the labour field in Madras, which is now the united strength of the determined Socialist movement. This is indeed a remarkable achievement and the credit for it goes as much to these broad-minded and earnestly Socialist comrades as to the sincere desire of the party to extend its hand to every genuine Socialist

26

Letter from Raj NarayanArya to author, 20 October 1977.

27

Janata, 24 October 1948.

28

Quatrieme Internationale, October-November, 1948, p. 56.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

who accepts the discipline of democracy in the land." 29 The Socialists had got the better end of the bargain. A Handicapped Opposition

In 1948 the Socialist leaders opened a discussion on whether the party should remain a cadre organization or broaden into a mass party. 30 J.P. Narayan, the weary former revolutionary, wanted to open the floodgates. He had finally given up on revolution and embraced democracy as the only path to socialism. 31 Just as the BLPI had predicted, the Socialists wanted to transform the party into a outright Social Democratic organization in doctrine as well as structure. At the same time, however, the Socialist leaders proposed to make the party less democratic. In their view the mass party should not allow any "organized groups" or provide for any factional rights whatsoever. That is not what the Trotskyists had anticipated. If the membershp requirements were lowered, the party would be flooded with new members, causing the average political level to sink even more. And if political tendencies were banned, the Trotskyists would have no way to explain their politics and critique the leadership. At the 1949 conference of the party the Trotskyist delegates waged a floor fight on this issue. They argued for a cadre organization that ensured democratic rights for minority tendencies within the party. ~hey couched their criticism in soft, supportive terms. That didn't help. J.P. Narayan carried the day. The conference adopted a new constitution that prohibited organized groups within the party. After the conference the Socialist leaders went on a witchhunt, purging a number of left-wing critics in Bombay, where the Trotskyists had been building their own base of support. 32 When Indra Sen wrote

29

Janata, 22 May 1949.

3D

Janata, 21 November 1948.

31

Janata, 9 October 1949 and 16 October 1949.

32

Janata, 1 May 1950.

242

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

an article stating that a more militant policy was "the need of the hour," he was dismissed as Janata co-editor. 33 In Calcutta Selina Perera was disciplined for teaching new recruits that a revolution was consistent with the Socialist Party's original Policy Statement, which in fact did contain a reference to armed insurrection, a hangover from even earlier times. The Trotskyists inside the SP created front-groups to publish Trotskyist literature. In Calcutta the "Militant Club" reprinted some pamphlets by Trotsky. 34 In Bombay T.R. Rao formed "Modem India Publications" and published pamphlets by Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and former BLPI leaders.35 The Showdown over Korea

In 1950 the main political issue of the day was the Korean war. The Socialist Party took the position of the Socialist International, calling for a "Third Camp" between the two superpowers (the USA and the Soviet bloc) to oppose both Imperialism and Stalinism. In their view the key issue was the violation of South Korean independence. The Shachtman group in the US took the same line. The Fourth International, on the other hand, saw the conflict in terms of the global Cold War. In their view China and North Korea were "deformed workers states." Hence, in any conflict with "imperialism" and its surrogates, like the United Nations, the workers states had to be unconditionally defended, despite their Stalinist regimes. At the 1950 conference of the Socialist Party the Trotskyists formed a bloc with other dissidents on the issue. They put forward an amendment stating that global power politics, not Korean independence, was at issue and that the United Nations was fronting

33

Janata, 2 July 1950.

34

L. Trotsky, What is an Insurrection? (Militant Club/Bireswar Butta, 1948.)

35

Some of the pamphlets produced by Modem India Publications include: L. Trotsky, Stalinism and Bolshevism (1952), L. Trotsky, The October Revolution (1952), L. Trotsky, Marxism and Science, Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution, and Indra Sen, Communist Policy Today: A Marxist Analysis (1952).

243

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

for US military intervention. J.P. Narayan replied that only the UN could force North Korea "to undo what the latter had perpetrated." 36 To make matters worse, the Trotskyists were divided on this question. V. Karalasingham, once a fiery left-winger, embraced the Third Camp line. In a letter to Janata, the Socialist party paper, Karalasingham stated that "we lend no support to either camp in Korea." 37 That put the other Trotskyists in a bind. If they ignored this deviation, then how could they continue to criticize the Socialist leaders? But in order to disavow it they would have to identify with the Fourth Intemationalline, and that would surely lead to reprisals. Selina Perera tried to walk a tightrope. In a letter to Janata she stated that "the rejection of both sides is not the position of the Socialist Party." 38 Her critics pointed out, quite rightly, that she was trying to sweep a principled difference under the rug. 39 That made the Trotskyists look like disingenuous opportunists themselves. By 1950 it was clear that the entry wasn't working as planned. The leadership failed to lead. 40 The local groups lost contact with one another. Raj Narayan Arya, once an enthusiastic advocate of the entry tactic, summed up the situation well in a letter to the former BLPI leaders. "It is fatal to build SP and to create a rival; for even if we leave, the SP will have its apparatus built by us-for which noble purpose

36

Janata, 16 July 1950.

37

Janata, 9 July 1950.

38

Janata, 1 October 1950.

39

In a letter to Janata one critic quoted at length from the Shachtman group's polemic against the SWP on the issue of Korea. Janata, 8 October 1950. Another letter noted that Trotskyists were hypocritical, since there were differences on Korea even within the Fourth International. Janata, 29 October 1950. In response Perera confined herself to quoting from the LSSP's Samasamajist, which stated that "the Korean masses have rallied around the latter [the North Korean regime] to fight the invasion." Janata, 29 October 1950.

40

"When the leadership decided on entry, it promised to maintain a nucleus to guide its members in the SP. I think that nucleus did not function. For I, at Kanpur, lost all contact with the central leadership of the BLPI in Bombay." Letter from Raj NarayanArya to author, 20 October 1977.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

they have invited us-and then use that apparatus against us." called the entry a "fatal step."

41

He

Mission from Paris

In 1950 the International Secretariat (IS) of the Fourth International belatedly decided to do something about the shipwreck of the Indian section. Initially the IS had opposed the entry proposal. But the thinking was changing in Paris. Michel Pablo now saw "entryism" as the best way for Trotskyists to overcome their isolation. The IS was instructing various sections of the FI to liquidate into the Communist and Socialist parties. The IS asked Kamalesh Bannerji, the Indian representative in the IS, to return to India and revitalize the Trotskyists inside the Socialist Party. Bannerji was depressed by what he found. In Calcutta his mentor, Ajit Roy, had capitulated to the Socialists. 42 P.K. Roy and Hiranand Mishra were vegetating, complaining that "nothing could be done in the Socialist Party." Karalasingham had become a Shachtmanite. 43 Only Selina Perera, one of the few Ceylonese who chose to remain in India, was working hard to make the entry a success. In Bombay the BLPI group had begun to disintegrate. V. Sastry, the most ardent champion of the entry tactic, proved to be not very reliable. He had difficulty earning a living as a journalist and eventually returned to his native village in Andhra Pradesh, where he ran a Tutorial Institute. 44 He attended national SP conferences for a while

41

Quoted in letter from Raj Narayan Arya to author, 31 March 1997.

42

At the 1950 conference, when his comrades were fighting for minority rights, Ajit Roy declared, "Democratic Socialism should be the article offaith of the Party and nobody who did not believe in it should have room in the Party." Quoted in Janata, July 16, 1950.

43

Karalasingham subsequently abandoned this view and described the USSR as a "socialist economy." V. Karalasingham, "Soviet Industrial Growth 1917-1961," Young Socialist [Colombo], 3 (October-December 1961), pp. 165-68.

44

Letter from Hector Abhayavardhana to the author, dated 22 June 1998.

245

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

and then retired from politics. After he was sacked as Janata co-editor Indra Sen also had to leave Bombay in order to support himself. Ramesh Karkal and Tulsi Boda remained the Trotskyist stalwarts in Bombay. In Madras, where the Trotskyists could have made their biggest impact, Anthony Pillai had become just another ambitious trade union boss. He was busy building his trade-union fiefdoms. In addition to his base in the MLU he led the Madras Port Trust Employees Union. He didn't repudiate Trotskyism. He just ignored it. Some of his more earnest Trotskyist comrades in Madras felt betrayed and bitter. Indra Sen and Kamalesh Bannerji called for a meeting in New Delhi to plan how to salvage the situation. Leslie Goonewardene came up from Ceylon. Tulsi Boda came from Bombay. I have not seen any minutes from this meetng. But not much seems to have resulted. Kamalesh Bannerji contributed articles to the Socialist paper, Janata. 45 Using his pseudonym, "Ali," he also translated articles for the Pakistani journal, Spark, published by Abid Zuberi, a BLPI member who went to Pakistan and worked in the "Democratic Youth League" in Karachi. Bannerji was demoralized. After less than a year he returned to Paris, where he resumed work with the IS. But that led to more heartbreaks. At that point the IS was embroiled in factional intrigues. 46 The "orthodox Trotskyists," centered on the French section, were resisting Michel Pablo and his "revisionist" line. Bannerji got entangled. After the Fourth International split in 1953, he apparently

4S

Bannerji's articles appeared in Janata from April, 1950 to March, 1951.

46

In the IS Bannerji evidently supported the majority of the French section of the FI who opposed Pablo and his "revisionist" ideas. However, he flip-flopped and later helped Pablo defeat the French leadership. He fell out with Pablo and for a while worked for the expelled French group. In 1956 he and Margaret Buber-Neuman (1901-89) became a couple. She was the widow of Heinz Neuman, the famous German Communist leader whom Stalin executed in 1937. Stalin dispatched her to Siberia. After the Stalin-Hitler pact the Soviet government handed her over to the Nazis. She was one of the few to survive the Ravensbruck concentration camp. She was disillusioned, to say the least, and became an anti-Communist.

246

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

retired from active politics, sank deeper into a1choholism, squandered his talent, and died an early death. The Last Stand

In 1951 the Nehru government called for a general election, the first since Independence. The Socialist leaders had high hopes. The party fielded candidates all over the country. The Socialists claimed to stand for the ideals of the old Gandhian Congress, which they said placed the interests of workers and peasants before those of landlords and capitalists. lP. Narayan, the old Socialist warhorse, attacked Congress for betraying its commitment to the poor. The Socialists underestimated their opponents. Nehru was at the pinnacle of his popularity and prestige. He talked socialism. He promised to modernize India with Soviet-style Five Year Plans. The CPI had also made a big comeback. When the Cold War began, Stalin had no choice except to shift back to a more confrontational posture. The CPI switched from support to the Nehru government to opposition. The Stalinists carried out militant campaigns. In Hyderabad the Communists resorted to armed struggle. The victory of the Chinese Communists in 1949 gave the CPI added prestige. The Congress won a landslide victory,. securing 364 of the 489 seats in the Lok Sabha (lower house). The Socialists-only won 12 seats. On top of that the CPI made a dramatic comeback, winning 25 seats, making it the largest opposition group in the Lok Sabha. The Socialists were stunned. Some of the leaders concluded that Nehru had stolen their Socialist thunder. J.P Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia called for a new doctrine to replace the old Marxism. Like Vinoba Bhave, they put great emphasis on decentralization and small-machine industries. That promped heated opposition. At the Socialist convention in May, 1952, the Trotskyist delegates made their last stand in the Socialist Party. Sheila Perera attacked Ram Manohar Lohia for his anti-Communist line on the USSR. "The Russian Revolution released tremendous forces of production which gave a glorious and progressive economic foundation to the worker's

247

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Cey/on

state. It was later that on this glorious economic foundation a bureaucratic parasitic Stalinism foisted itself." 47 Prabhakar More, the Trotskyist from Bombay, attacked Lohia's fuzzy ideas about decentralized socialism based on smail manufacturing. "It is not that only decentralisation leads to democracy. What is of importance is whether the workers have a responsibility in the management and running of industries." 48 After the convention some of the Socialist leaders, including J.P. Narayan, began behind-the-scenes discussions with Acharya Kripalani, a veteran Congressman who had formed the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP), which espoused a return to the old ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. They proposed that the two parties merge. The left-wing Socialists were up in arms. Even Sampurnanand, the old Socialist stalwart, publically denounced the proposed merger as a :'betrayal of socialism."49 But the leadership went ahead anyway. The two parties merged to form Praja Socialist Party, with Kripalani as President and Ram Manohar Lohia as the General Secretary. The former BLPI leaders decided to defy the merger and keep the flag of the Socialist Party flying. On September 27, 1952 the dissidents held a conference of "loyal Socialists" in Bombay. The former BLPI leaders who participated included Tulsi Boda, Hector Abhayavardhana, Selina Perera, S.C.C. Anthony Pillai, Indra Sen, S. Am arnath , and Rajendra Trivedi. They called their rump organization the Socialist Party (loyalist). Hector Abhayavardhana became editor of their newspaper, Socialist Appeal, published in Madras. They issued a pamphlet condemning the merger. Up to that point the Trotskyists had masqueraded as loyal Socialists in order to avoid expulsion. That threat was gone now. But the Trotskyists pretty much continued to speak and function like left-

47

Socialist Party of India, Report of the Special Convention, held at Pachmarhi, Madhya Pradesh, 23rd to 27th May, 1952 (Bombay, 1952), p. 10.

48

Report of the Special Convention, p. 37.

49

Janata, 4 January 1953.

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The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

wing social democrats. They proudly claimed that they were the true Socialists. Alas, for some, the mask had become the face. Regeneration

Up to now I have focused on the BLPI. However, the rival groups-the Mazdoor Trotskyist Party (Purdy group) and the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party (Shukla group )-soldiered on. The Mazdoor Trotskyists, in particular, built a modest base in the labor movement in Bombay and Hyderabad. 50 The Shukla group had some active members, like Jagu Belani, and continued to issue Trotskyist literature in Bombay. Meanwhile, in Calcutta the former BLPI members who had opposed entry, notably P.K. Roy and Hiranand Mishra, left the Socialist Party in frustration and formed their own organization. In the United Provinces Raj Narayan Arya did the same. Eventually, these small groups teamed up to work towards a rebirth of the Trotskyist movement. More former members of the BLPI, especially in South India, climbed on to the bandwagon. By the mid1950s they had regrouped and recruited enough supporters to form a new all-India party that was bigger and in many ways better than the old BLPI. But that is another story.

so

In Bombay the MTP was active in the Electrical Service Workers Union, the Reshim Kamgar Union, the Transport Workers Union, the Textile Labour Union, lel Employees Union, the Vegetable Products Workers Union, and the Rubber Workers Union. In U.P. the MTP capitalized on the fame of Ambika Singh and organized the Gavai Mazdoor Sangh [village workers' associations]. The MTP led some militant peasant struggles in Jaunpur, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Rai BareIli, and Benares. In Hyderabad Mallik Arjun Rao became a leader in the railway workers union.

249

APPENDIX A

Biographical Notes Abhayavardhana, Hector (1919-present) Party pseudonyms: Suren Morarji, H.A. Vardhan, Surendra. Born Kandy, Ceylon, son of Hector Wilfred Abeywardena. Educated St. Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia; University College, Colombo; and Colombo Law College. Joined LSSP, 1940. Founding member BLPI. Relocated to India, 1942. Arrested 1943, deported to Ceylon, returned to India 1944. Worked in BLPI groups in Calcutta, U.P., Bihar, and Bombay, 1942-48. Attended BLPI conference, 1944. Editorial Board, New Spark, 1947-48. Delegate, BLPI conference, 1947. Central Committee, Political Bureau, and General Secretary BLPI, 1947-48. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Editor, Socialist Vanguard, 1951-52 and Socialist Appeal, 1951-53. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Joined SP (Lohia), 1956. Editor: Mankind, Maral, The Nation, and Socialist Nation. Chairman, Peoples' Bank, Sri Lanka, 1970-75. Author: The Saboteur Strategy of the Constructive Program (1945), The August Struggle and its Significance (1947), and Internationalism and Socialism in Asia (1956).

Aggarwala, Hans Raj (1906-1932) Party pseudonym: Chandu Ram. Born Amritsar, son of Lala Sundar Das. Went to UK, 1926. Joined League Against Imperialism and London Branch of Indian National Congress. Co-founder, Marxian League, 1929-30. Returned to India, 1932. Killed in automobile accident.

Amarnath, S. (?-1981) Joined BLPI in Madras while a student. Captain, B&C Mills Volunteer Corps, 1947-48. Jailed 1947-48. Worked in union of Non-Gazetted Officials of the Madras Government, 1948. Entered Socialist Party,

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1948. Moved to Bombay. Central Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party of India, 1960. Leading member, Socialist Workers Party and Communist League (1960s and 1970s). Angadi, Ayana Veerayaswami (1903-1993) Party pseudonyms: Raj Hansa, Ayana Devi, Taya Deva. Born Jakanur (District Bijapur, Karnataka). Educated Oxford. Worked with British Communist Party in early 'thirties. Joined Revolutionary Socialist League (C.L.R. James), 1939. Contributor, New Leader. Joined British Army, November, 1942; appointed Lecturer, Central Advisory Council for Adult Education in H.M. Forces. Left the movement after the war. Anthony PilIai, Caroline ("Caro") (1906 - present) Born Boralugoda (Kosgama, Avissawella of Hevagam Korale), Ceylon, daughter of Don Jacolis Rupasinghe Gunawardena, sister of Phi lip and Robert Gunawardena. Educated Museaus College, Colombo. Participated in Suriya Mal movement. Delegate, Indian National Congress, 1937. Married S.C.C. Anthony Pillai, 1939. Member, BLPI, Madras, 1943-48. Strike leader, Madras Labour Union, 1947. Entered SP, 1948. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Joined SP (Lohia), 1956. After death of Anthony Pillai in 2000, returned to Sri Lanka and resides in the Gunawardena ancestral home in Boralugoda. Anthony PilIai, Sebastian Cyril Constantine ("Tony") (1914-2000) Party pseudonym: S. Krishna Menon. Born Jaffna, Ceylon, son of S. Anthony Pillai. Educated St. Patrick's, Jaffna; Ceylon University College, Colombo; and London University. Joined India League and C.L.R. James group, London. Joined LSSP, 1938. Organizer, granary workers union, Colombo. Went to Madura, 1942. Leader, BLPI Madras, 1942-45. Delegate to BLPl conference, 1944. Central Committee, BLPI, 1944-48. Jailed at Alipuram, 194546. President, Madras Labour Union, 1946-75 and 1983. Leader, B&C Mills strike, 1947. General Council, All-India Trade Union Congress,

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1947. Executive Committee, Workers United Front, 1947. Attended BLPI conferences, 1947 and 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Elected to Madras City Corporation, 1948. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Joined SP (Lohia), 1956. General-Secretary, Madras Port Trust Employees' Union. General Secretary and Vice President, All-India Port and Dock Workers Federation. President, All India Transport Workers Union. Vice President, Hind Mazdoor Sabha, 1952 and 196074; President, Hind Mazdoor Sabha (Tamil Nadu Council), 1957-58. Member, Madras Assembly, 1952-57. Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha, 1957-62. Member Lok Sabha, 1962-67. Trustee, Chennai Port Trust. Appanraj, Karuppiab (1923-present) Born Madras Province, son of M. Karuppiah Servai. Attended American College, Madura, 1941-44. Opposed "People's War" line of CPI in the Students Congress, Madura. Had connections to important local Congressmen, like T.G. Krishnamurthy. Joined BLPI in Madura, 1942. Participated in Quit India movement, 1942-43, and went underground with Krishnamurthy, Sholavandan Karuppa Pillai, Kodimangalam Ponniah Ambalam, and other Congress radicals. Worked with textile workers, Coimbatore, 1945-6; mill workers, Tuticorin, 1946-7; and Mahalakshmi mill workers, Madura, 1947. Delegate to BLPI conference, 1947. Led a peasant union in Sholavandan. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Editor, Tamil edition of Socialist Appeal, 1951-53. Leader, Socialist Party (Loyalists), 1952-5. President, Tamil Nadu SP (Lohia). Editor, Manaitha Kuiam, 1956, General Secretary, South Madras District Congress Committee, 196874. President, Tamil Nadu National Trade Union Congress, 1974-76. General Secretary, Tamil N adu Congress, 1979-80; Propaganda Committee, Tamil Nadu Congress, 1984. Author: Anja nenjan: Thoyizh sangha medai s.c.c. Anthoni Pillai, vazhkai varalaru [The Fearless One: Biography of the Labour Leader, S.C.C. Anthony Pillai] (1995); Puratchi Pathai [Way to Revolution], translation ofK. Tilak, The Rise and Fall o/the Comintern.

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Arya, Raj Narayan (1926-present) Educated Allahabad University; active in local Students' Congress. Joined BLPl, 1944. Worked as chemist at the Royal Ordnance Factory, Kanpur. Delegate to BLPI conferences, 1947 and 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948~ Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952; elected member of its National Executive. Secretary, Textile Workers Union Suti Mill Mazdoor Sabha. Founder, Socialist Prakashan (publishing house), Kanpur. Central Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party ofIndia, 1960. Editor, Mazdoor Kisan Kranti [Kanpur], 1973. Joined Revolutionary Socialist Party, 1980. Author: Problems of Minorities (Urdu), Caste System Through History and Present Tasks: A Marxist View, and Brahmin and Brahminism: A Historical Survey (2001). Attygalle, Richard c.L. ("Dickie") (1919-1963) Party pseudonym: Rudra. Educated Ceylon University College. Joined LSSP, 1939. Active in BLPl, 1942-50. Member Editorial Board, Fight (Colombo). Senior English Teacher, Royal College, Colombo. Worked for UNESCO in Paris, 1951-61. Appointed to the National Education Commission (Ceylon). Visiting lecturer in English, Vidyalankara University. Bagchi, Amal Joined BLPl in Bengal. Leader, Bengal Paper Mill Mazdoor Union, Raniganj. Working Secretary, Paper Mills Employees Union, Titagarh and Kankimara. Secretary, Titagarh Jute Workers Union, 1948. Baghavan, R. Saravana ("Baggy") (1927-1987) Born Ceylon. Educated Trinity College, Kandy, and Royal College, Colombo. Joined LSSP, 1942. Member, BLPI, 1942-50. Translated Marxist writings for LSSP. Entered legal profession 1956 and worked as a solicitor. Author: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Marxism (1962). Founding member, LSSP (Revolutionary), 1964. Editorial Board, Young Socialist, 1966-67.

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Balasingham, V. (ca. 1919-1944)

Party pseudonym: Peter. Born Jaffna, Ceylon, elder brother of V. Karalasingham. Educated Ceylon University College. Joined LSSP. Sent to India, 1941. Organized a Trotskyist circle in Madura. Developed important connections with radical Congressmen. Arrested in Madras, July 1941. Struck by a military lorry while walking along the road in Colombo and killed, 1944. Balasubramaniam, V.

Born Bodinayakkanur (Theni District, Tamil Nadu). Joined BLPI during WWII. Author: October Puratzhi: Trotsky [October Revolution: Trotsky] (1991). Banerjea, Dhiren

Joined BLPI in Calcutta. Worked as a teacher. Active in All Bengal Teachers Association after independence. Settled in Dalmianagar, Bihar. Bannerji, Kamalesh Chandra (1910-1967)

Party pseudonyms: Chatterjee, Mahmoud, and Hakim Mirza. Pseudonym,s in International Secretariat of Fourth International: Bernard, Mahmoud, and Ali. Born in Bengal, son of a Bengali father and Irish mother. Schooled in Calcutta. Joined the Civil Disobedience campaign, 1930-32. Jailed for 6 months. Joined the Students' Radical PatiY. Recruited to Trotskyism by Ajit Roy, 1937-38. Founder, Revolutionary Socialist League of Bengal, 1940. Founding leader, BLPI. Jailed 1942-45. Sent to Paris, 1947, as BLPI representative to Fourth International. Worked in Paris as Foreign correspondent, Amrita Bazaar Patrika. Member, International Secretariat of Fourth International, 1947. Attended Second World Congress of the Fourth International, 1948. Visited Yugoslavia and interviewed Tito and other leaders of the Yugoslav CP, February, 1950. Sent back to India to help regroup the Trots.kyists in

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the Socialist Party, 1950-51. Sided with Michel Pablo in split in IS, 1953. Became estranged from the Fourth International leadership. Companion to Margarete Buber-Neumann (1901-89). Returned to India, 1967. Belani, Jagu Bhatt (1928-present) Born Princely State of Bhavnagar (Gujarat). Joined Bolshevik Mazdoor Party after WWII. Secretary, West Zone Committee, BMP. Worked in Bhavnagar (Gujarat). Chairman, Anti-Unemployment Committee, Ahmedabad, 1959. Lifelong political activist. Boda, Tulsi Dayalji (1923-2003) Born Princely State Kutch (Gujarat). Educated in Bombay. Participated in Quit India movement; jailed for 14 months. Joined Bolshevik Mazdoor Party, 1944. Joined BLPI, 1946. Organized Woolen Mill Kamgar Union at the Usha Mills, Bombay, 1947. Jailed, July 1947. Secretary, Bombay BLPI, 1947. Delegate, BLPI conference, 1948; elected to Central Committee. Delegate, Special Convention BLPI, October 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Secretary, All-India Federation of Textile Workers. Leader, Bombay Labour Union and LIC Employees Union. Joined SP (Lohia), 1956. Joined Samyukta Socialist Party, 1964. Leader, Kutch Satyagraha, 1968. Convenor, Samajwadi Abhiyan in Maharashtra and Gujarat. President, People's Union for Civil Liberties, Gujarat. Author: The Human Right-An Unending Struggle and Conflict (1997). Bose, Dulal (1918-2001) Born. in Calcutta. Educated Taltola High School and Vidyasagar College, Calcutta. Joined Revolutionary Socialist League, 1939. Founding member, BLPI, 1942. Worked at Mackenzie Lyall & Co., Calcutta, during the war. Editorial Board, Permanent Revolution. Secretary, Titagarh Paper Mills Employees' Union, Calcutta Match Workers' Union, and Calcutta Firefighters Union. Delegate, BLPI

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conference, 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948; withdrew 1949. Active Trotskyist in Calcutta, 1951-54. Editor, Inqui/ab (Calcutta weekly). Joined Socialist Labour League in India, 1991. Devoted the last decade of his life to translating the works of Leon Trotsky into Bengali. Buoby, Fred (1915-1996)

Party pseudonym: M. Usman. Born Birkenhead, England. Joined Workers International League in Liverpool. Enlisted in Royal Air Force. Stationed in India with the 136 Repair and Salvage Unit. Worked with BLPI, 1945-47. Returned to UK. Employed in the Post Office. Worked in the RCP and with Ted Grant group in the 'fities. Retired to Worthing. Chatterji, Haradhao (1922-1951)

Born Khardah (Barrackpore Sub-Division, District of North 24 Parganas, Bengal). Joined BLPI, 1943. Organized white-collar union at Cox & Kings Ltd., 1945. Strike leader, Cox & Kings, 1946 and 1947. Member, Union Executive Committee, 1947. Union oirganizer, Bum and Co. pottery works, Raniganj, 1947. General Secretary, Titaghur Paper Mills Employees Union. President, Plassey Sugar Workers Union. Attended BLPI conference, 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Member, Working Committee, West Bengal Hind Mazdoor Sabha. Cooray, Liooel D.

Born Moratuwa, Ceylon. Joined LSSP and went to Madras, 1942. Jailed, 1943-1945. Secretary, LSSP (Phi lip Gunawardena group), 1945-46. Co-editor, Samasamajist, 1945-50. Elected to Ceylon Parliament, 1947. Left LSSP for VLLSP, 1953. Became private secretary for P.H. William Silva when he became Minister in MEP government, 1956.

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Das, Sitanshu Mohan (1926-present) Party pseudonym: Nazeem. Bom Sylhet (Bengal), son of Surya Kumar Das. Joined the Bengal Students Congress while still a teenager. Educated Calcutta University. Member, Executive Committee, Bengal Students' Federation. Arrested, 1942, at age of 16. Worked for a short time among the Calcutta dock workers to assist a Congress trade unionist. Moved to Jamalpur (Bihar) to avoid jail in Calcutta and participated in Quit India protests. Jailed in Bihar, 1942-44. Joined BLPI and attended BLPI conference, 1944. Delegate, BLPI conference, 1947. Withdrew from Trotskyist politics, 1948. Studied Transport Economics at the London School of Economics. Member, BBC Programme Advisory Committee. Editorial board, Venture and Third World (Fabian Society journals). Editor: The Times of India, The Tribune Trust, Patriot, and Link. Professor of Journalism, Indian Institute of Mass Communication. Author: The Future for Indian Democracy (1970), Indian Nationalism: A Study in Evolution (1999), and Subhas: A Political Biography (2001). Drieberg, Trevor Born Ceylon, to an illustrious Burgher family. Educated University of Ceylon. Joined LSSP, 1939. Emigrated to Bombay, 1944,joined BLPI, and worked at Stronach & Co. Left BLPI, 1946. Later joined Congress. Author: Indira Gandhi: A Profile in Courage (1972), Towards Closer Indo-Soviet Cooperation (1974), Four Faces of Subversion (1975), Emergency in India (1975), Jammu and Kashmir: A Tourist Guide (1978), and Agriculture in India (1980). Durai Raj, P.V. (1915-?) Joined BLPI during WWII. Secretary, BLPI Madras Unit. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Contested Madras State Assembly as CPI(M) candidate in early 'seventies. Started Samadarma Illakiya Pannai in Madura to publish works by Trotsky in Tamil.

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Elayaperumal

Joined BLPI in Tuticorin during WWII. Leader of Tuticorin Mill Workers Union. After Independence, remained an indepenent Trotskyist trade union leader in Tuticorin. Garbutt, Douglas

Joined Workers International League. Affiliated with the "Trotskyist Opposition" faction. Enlisted in RAF and stationed in India, 1943-45. Worked with the BLPI in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. Left India in August 1946. Goonewardene, Cholomondoley (1917-present)

Born Kalutara, Ceylon, son of Muhandiram Arnold Goonewardene. Educated Holy Cross, Kalutara, and St. Thomas College, Mt. Lavinia. Joined LSSP, 1937. Member, Kalutara Urban Council, 1940-70. Member of Parliament, 1947-52 and 1956-77. Minister of Public Works, 1964-65. Deputy President, Sri Lanka Mahajana Party. Goonewardene, Leslie Simon (1909-1983)

Party pseudonyms: Tilak, V.S. Parthasarathi. Born Panadura, Ceylon, son of Dr. Andrew Simon Goonewardena. Educated St. John's College, Panadura, St. Thomas' College, and a public school in Wales. Earned B.Sc. in Economics, London School of Economics. Read law at Gray's Inn; admitted to the bar, 1933. Returned to Ceylon, 1933. Secretary,· LSSP, 1935-77. Delegate to Indian National Congress, Tripuri, 1939. Sent to Bombay, 1941. Member Provisional Committee, BLPI, 1942. National Secretary, BLPI, 1942-44; worked in BLPI groups in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, 1941-46. BLPI Central Committee, 1944-47. Attended BLPI conferences, 1947 and 1948. Editor, Bolshevik Leninist, 1942-43. Editorial Board, New Spark, 1947-48. Alternate member, International Executive Committee of FI, 1948. Member of Parliament, 1956-60. Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, SLFP coalition government,

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1970-75. Author: From the First to the Fourth International (1944), The Rise and Fall of the Comintern (1947), The Differences Between Trotskyism and Stalinism (1954), What We Stand For (1959), and Short History of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (1960). Goonewardene, Violet Vivienne ("Vivi") (1916-1996) Party pseudonym: Ashok Kumari Tilak. Born Colombo, Ceylon, daughter of Dr. Don Allenson Goonetilleke and Emily Angeline Gunawardena, sister of Philip and Robert Gunawardena. Educated Musaeus College, Colombo. Participated in Suriya Mal movement. Worked on Straight Left. Joined LSSP. Delegate to Indian National Congress, Tripuri, 1939. Married Leslie Goonewardena, 1939. Sent to India, 1941; worked in BLPI groups in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, 1941-46. Author: "Rosa LuxemburgThe Legend and the Truth" (Permanent Revolution, vol. 1, no 3, 1943). Returned to Ceylon, 1946. Municipal Councilor, Colombo, 1949-54 and 1960-69. Member of Parliament, 1956-60, 1964-65, 1970-77. Junior Minister, SLFP-LSSP coalition government, 1973. President, All Ceylon Local Government Workers Association. Gunasekera, Vernon (1908-1996) Born into a prominent family with links to the first Ceylonese Governor General, Sir Oliver Goonetilleka. Educated in UK. Secretary, WelIawatte Mills Union, 1932. General Secretary, LSSP, 1935-40. Editor, Young Socialist, monthly publication of Lanka Students Socialist League, 1936. Editor, Samasamaja, 1937-40. Contributed reports and articles to the Congress Socialist journal, starting 1936. Affiliated with LSSP (Philip Gunawardena group), 1945-48. LSSP candidate for Ceylon Parliament, 1947. Joined VLSSP (Philip Gunawardena group). Wrote a regular column for the Sunday Observer. Later abandoned Marxist politics. Practiced law in Kandy.

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Gunawardena, Kusumasiri (1912-1985)

Born Medaketiya (Tangalle), Ceylon, daughter of Don Davith Amarasinghe. Educated Musaeus College, Colombo. Participated in Suriya Mal movement. Joined LSSP. Married Philip Gunawardena, 1939. Attended Indian National Congress session, Ramgarh, 1940. Escaped to India, 1942. Arrested in Bombay, 1943. Deported to Ceylon, 1943. Member of Ceylon Parliament, 1948-60. Split from LSSP, 1950. Central Committee, Viplavakari LSSP, 1950-59. Delegate to Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference, London, 1957. Gunawardena, Don Philip Rupasinghe (1901-1972)

Party pseudonyms: Rup Singh, Almeida, Joseph. Born Boralugoda (Kosgama, Avissawella of Hevagam Korale), Ceylon, son of Don Jacolis· Rupasinghe Gunawardena. Educated Prince of Wales College, Moratuwa; Ananda College, Colombo; Ceylon University College; University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University. Participated in League Against Imperialism, India League, and Communist Party of Great Britain, 1928-32. Founding leader, LSSP, 1935. Ceylon State Council, 193540. Jailed, 1940-42; escaped and fled to Bombay, 1942. Member, Provisional Committee, BLPI, 1943. Arrested in Bombay, 1943. Extradicted to Ceylon and imprisoned, 1944-45. Re-formed LSSP, 1945. Formed All-Ceylon Harbour and Dock Workers Union, 1946. Elected to parliament, 1947~jai1ed during bus strike, 1947. Split from LSSP, 1950; leader Viplavakari LSSP, 1950-59. Formed electoral front with Communist Party, 1952. Minister of Agriculture, Food and Cooperatives, Mahajana Eksath Peramuna government, 1956-58. General Secretary, Central Council of Ceylon Trade Unions, 1957. Drafted Paddy Lands Act, introduced the Co-Operative Bank (Peoples' Bank), nationalized bus transport and the port, agitated for take-over of British air force base at Katunayake and Naval Base at Trincomalee. Leader, MEP, 1959-72. Minister of Industries and Fisheries, UNP "Middle Path" government, 1965-70.

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Gunawardena, Don Benjamin Rupasinghe ("Robert") (1904-1971) Party pseudonyms: Vaidya, Prakash. Born Boralugoda (Kosgama, Avissawella of Hevagam Korale), Ceylon, son of Don Jacolis Rupasinghe Gunawardena, younger brother of Phi lip Gunawardena. Educated Ananda College, Colombo. Activist in Colombo Youth League. Founding leader, LSSP, 1935. Delegate to Indian National Congress, Haripura, 1938. Escaped to India, 1942. Member, BLPI, Bombay and Madras. Arrested, 1943, deported to Ceylon and imprisoned. Acting Secretary, LSSP, 1946-47. Member of Parliament, 1947-65. Municipal Councillor, Colombo, until 1956. Expelled from LSSP, 1960, for advocating united front with Philip Gunawardena's MEP. Ambassador to the Peoples' Republic of China, 1966-70. Author: Mage desapalana atdakima [Story of My Political Life] (1971).

Gupta, Balkrishna (1910-1972) Born Forbesganj (Bihar), son of Shambhu Dayal Gupta. Educated C.A.Y. High School, Hissar, Scottish Churches, Presidency CoIIege, Calcutta; and University College, London. Recruited to Trotskyism by c.L.R. James. Returned to Calcutta at start of WWII; helped finance BLPI. Editor, Jan. Governor, Khoj Parishad, a socio-economic research institute. Member, Indian National Congress until 1948. Joined Socialist Party (Lohia). MP, Rajya Sabha 1968-72.

Harvani, Ansarul Haq (1916-1996) Born Rudauli (Barabanki District, UP), son of a petty landlord and civil servant, brother of the revolutionary poet, Ansarul Haq Majaz. Educated Aligarh Muslim University and Lucknow University. Participated in founding the All India Students Federation, 1937. All India Congress Committee, 1939. Attended Ramgarh session of Congress, 1940. Participated in Quit India struggle. Jailed at Alipur Jail in Calcutta and Lucknow Central Jail, 1942-45. President, AllIndia Youth League (youth wing of Forward Bloc), 1945, and General Secretary, U.P. Provincial Forward Bloc. Later joined Congress in U.P.

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Member, Lok Sabha, 1957-67; Estimates Committee, 1961-62. Chief Reporter, The National Herald (Lucknow), and special representative, Amrit Bazar Patrika (Calcutta). Author: Before Freedom and After: Personal Recollections of One of the Key Witnesses of Indian Events Over the Last Half a Century (New Delhi, 1989) and Gandhi to Gandhi: Private Faces of Public Figures (New Delhi, 1996). Jha, Jagadish (l923-?) Joined BLPI in Calcutta after WWII. Organizer, Damkal Mazdur Union (firefighters) and Cox & Kings Union, 1947. BLPI organizer in Raniganj, 1947-48. Worked in Paper Mill Workers' Union. Formed oil and colliery workers unions in Ranigunj. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Secretary, Bankura Distict (West Bengal) Socialist Party, 1952. Worked as independent trade-unionist in 'fifties. Organized village workers and farmers in Bankura from his base at Pathardoba in 'sixties; led militant strike in 1970 and was victimized by the United Front government of West Bengal. Karahisingham, Vaithianathan ("Kario") (1921-83) Party pseUdonyms: V.S. Roy, Sobhana Roy. Born Jaffna, Ceylon, younger brother of V. Balasingham. Educated Kalutara and Ananda College. Joined LSSP, 1937. Sent to India in early 1942. Founding member, BLPI, 1942. Editor, Permanent Revolution, 1943-45. Arrested in Bombay, March 1945. Secretary, BLPI Ceylon Unit, 1945. Editorial Board, New Spark, 1947-48. Delegate to BLPI conferences, 1944, 1947, 1948. Central Committee, BLPI, 1947-48. Returned to Ceylon, 1951. Delegate to Third World Congress of Fourth International, 1951. Studied law in UK, 1952-58; called to the English Bar, 1957. Became Advocate of the Supreme Court. Founding member, LSSP (Revolutionary), 1964. Editorial Board, State, in the 1970s. Rejoined LSSP. Director, Air Ceylon during SLFP coalition government, 1970-75. Author: The War in Korea (1950), Politics of Coalition (1964), Czechoslovakia, 1968 (1968), The Way Outfor the Tami! Speaking People (1963), and Enter History (1970).

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Karkal, Ramanath Pandurang ("Ramesh") (1926-2003)

Born Karkal (Karkala Taluk, Karnataka). Went to Bombay and joined the freedom movement at age 15; participated in the Quit India struggle. Jailed, 1942-45. Educated Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute in Bombay. Joined BLP!. Bombay Unit Secretary, BLPI, 1947. Published reprints of Trotsky's pamphlets. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Contributed to SP publications. Formed Modern India publications to reprint numerous works by Trotsky in the early 1950s. Supported the Trotskyist movement until his death. Khan, Zahrul Hasan

Joined BLPI in Calcutta. Formed Damka1 Mazdur Union (firefighters). Organizer, Titaghur Jute Factory Utlion, Titaghur, and Bum and Co. pottery workers union, Raniganj, 1947. Executive Committee, Workers United Front, 1947. President, Ranigunj Paper Mill Workers' Union, 1948. Vice President, Bengal Provincial Trade U n10n Congress. Attended BLPI conference, 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Elected to Hind Mazdoor Sabha. Became independent trade unionist after 1952 elections. Kodial, Raghuvir

Party pseudonym: Kabir. Joined BLPI in Bombay during the war. Worked at the All India General Insurance Company, Ltd. in Fort, Bombay. Koley, Satyen

Educated Presidency College, Calcutta. Joined BLP!. Active in All Bengal Students' Congress, the Bengal Student Federation, and Chhatra Sangram Parishad [Students' War Council], 1947. Arrested for protesting "Black Bill," 1947. Vice President, Paschim Banga Patrika and Press Workers Union, 1948. Editor, Ir..quilab, 1947-48.

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Koipe, Sitaram B. (1919-2002)

Party pseudonym: Kailash Chandra Founding member, Mazdoor Trotskyist Party, 1942. Jailed, 1942; escaped and absconded, 1943-44. Arrested in connection with a sabotage case, March 1944. General Secretary, MTP, 1947. General Secretary, Indian Vegetable Products Workers Union, 1948. Journalist and acting editor, Free Press Journal, 1948-1976. Co-editor, Socialist, 1948. Editor, New Perspectives and Clarity. Chairman, Bombay Union of Journalists; President, Maharashtra Union of Working Journalists; Secretary General, Indian Federation of Working Journalists (196471); President, IFWJ, 1971. Central Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party of India, 1960. Elected to IEC of Fourth International. Member, Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party. Author: The Kennedy Asassination. (1964), Bhopal, from Hiroshima to Eternity (1985), Ramnath Goenka, a Fraud on Indian Press, Politics, and People (1987), and Manu to Ambedkar (1994). Kotelawaia, J.C.T. ("Jack") (d. 1991)

Born Hindagoda (Badulla District, Uva), Ceylon, son of James Kotelawala, the brother of Sir Henry Kotelawala. Educated Trinity College, Kandy, and Law College, Colombo. Recruited to Youth League by Terence de Zylva. Participated Suriya Mal movement in Kandy. Founding member, LSSP, 1935. Joint Secretary and Member of Executive Committee, LSSP, 1935-40. General Secretary, LSSP, 1940-42. Vice President, All-Ceylon Estate Workers Union. Jailed in Kandy and Badulla, 1942-45. Member of Parliament, 1947-60. Organized bus workers of Uva. Left LSSP, 1969. Ambassador to USSR, 1965-70. Chairman, Ceylon Transport Board. Author: "Amataka Novana Satahan" [Memorable Events], in Samasamaja Jayanthi Kalapaya [Samasamaja Jubilee Issue] (1960). Mandekar, Anant Mahadeo

Party pseudonym: Ajit. Drawn into politics while a high school student during the Quit India movement. Arrested, 1943; released and arrested again, March 1944;

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jailed 1944-45. Joined Bolshevik Mazdoor Party. Arrested Bombay, 1945. Joined BLPI, 1946. Strike leader, New Kaiser-i-Hind Mills, Bombay, 1947. Contested 1948 Bombay Municipal Corporation elections as BLPI candidate. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Delegate to SP Convention, 1950. Joined Revolutionary Communist Party ofIndia in early 'fifties. Active in Ooni Mazdoor Union (woolen workers), Bombay, in the 'sixties. Mendis, J. AlIan Born Ceylon. Joined LSSP. Worked at Whittall & Co. in Colombo; active in Mercantile Employees Union. Member, BLPI, Madras, 194445. Arrested in Madras, sentenced to two years Rigorous Imprisonment, and deported to Ceylon, 1945. Active in LSSP until his death. Mishra, Hiranand Joined BLPI in Calcutta. Editor, Spark, 1946. Delegate, BLPI conferences, 1947 and 1948. Central Committee, BLPI, 1947-48. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Bengal Executive Committee, SP. Played leading role in Trotskyist groups in 'fifties. Central Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party of India, 1960. Author: Stalinism. What it Means (1956) and East European Crisis of Stalinism (1957). Mitra, Chitta (1929-76) Participated in Quit India movement while still a teeanger. Joined BLPI after WWII. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Arrested for activities with the Sanyukta Durbhiksha Pratirodh [United Famine Resistance Committee], 1953. Joined Samyukta Socialist Party. Joined Socialist Workers Party, 1968. Editor, Vishwa Biplab [World Revolution] and the fortnightly Socialist Karmi. Translated and published Trotsky's writings in Bengali. Author: A Notebook of Socialism (ca. 1967), Bartoman Communist lstahar (1970), translated as World Revolutionary Leon Trotsky (1971), and Kamyunist Antarashtriya ki Kahani [Story of the Communist International] (1970).

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More, Prabhakar (1934-present) Joined radical student movement in Bombay while still a teenager. Came in contact with BLPI in 1948. Trade unionist, Mumbai Girni Kamgar Union, Bombay; worked in India United Group of Mills. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Member, Bombay Municipal Corporation. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Became leader of Hind Mazdoor Kisan Panchayat. Interviewed by Meena Menon and Neera Adarkar for their book, One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices: The Millworkers ofGirangaon, An Oral History (2004). Mukherji, Basanta Dev Joined Calcutta Trotskyist circle 1937. Founding member BLPI, 1942. Worked in Varanasi, 1942-45. Attended BLPI conference, 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Leader, Communist League, in the 'fifties and 'sixties. Central Secretariat, Revolutionary Workers Party, 1958-60. Elected to IEC of Fourth International. Central Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party ofIndia, 1960. Muthiah, Bodi M. (1914-?) Party pseudonym: Manickam Born in small village mear Bodi (Theni District, Tamil Nadu), son of a poor peasant. Educated by Christian missionaries. Joined Congress and later the Communist Party. Jailed for a year. Joined BLPI, Madras, 1943. Organizer, MSM Railway workshops, Perambur, 1944-45. Arrested in Madras, 1945. Strike leader, Madras Labour Union, 1947; jailed under Congress Ministry. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Pal ani Velayutham, G. Born Salem (Salem District, Tamil Nadu). Worked as a teacher in Salem and became sympathetic to CPI. Moved to Madras, met S.C.C. Anthony Pillai, recruited to BLPI, and made General Secretary of Spencer Workers Union. Secretary, Madras BLPI, 1947. Delegate, Special Convention BLPI, 1948. Later returned to Salem for reasons of economic hardship and resumed teaching.

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Parija, Murlidhar Party pseudonym: V. Markandu (?). Joined Purdy group in Bombay before WWII. Founding member, Mazdoor Trotskyist Party, 1942. Arrested for dacoity during WWII. President, Bombay Committee of MTP, 1948. Trade unionist, Ravi Uday Litho Workers Union, Bombay State Electrical Employees Union, Engineering Workers Union, Bombay and Suburban Reshim Kamgar Union (silk workers), and Bombay Textile Labour Union. Founding member and Joint Secretary, Bombay State Committee, United Trades Union Congress. Co-editor, Socialist, 1948. Editor, The Militant, 1959-60; Marxist Outlook, 1966-70. General Secretary, Revolutionary Workers Party, 1958-60. Activist, Pragatshil Yuvak Mandal, Ahmedabad, 1959-60.

Peiris, Henry (?- 1959) Became active in left movement in Ceylon in 1920s under influence of A.E. Goonesinghe. Founding member LSSP, 1935. Editor, Samasamajaya, 1936-1940. Elected to parliament, 1947. Delegate to BLPI convention, 1948. Split from LSSP, '1953, and eventually joined the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. Worked for the Lake House newspapers. Deputy Editor, Dinamina.

Perera, K.V. Lorenz Born Kalubowila, Ceylon. Attended Ceylon University College. Secretary, -LSSP, 1940-42. Arrested late 1942; jailed at Bogambara, 1943-45. Member, BLPI (Ceylon Unit), 1945-50. Earned medical degree. Candidate, Ceylon parliamentary elections, 1947. Practised medicine in Wennappuwa.

Perera, Nanayakkarapathirage Martin (1905-1979) Party pseudonyms: A. Deshmukh and Oliver. Born Thotalanga, Ceylon, son of Nanayakkarapathirage Abraham Perera. Educated St. Joseph's College, Modera; St. Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia; Ananda College, C;olombo; Ceylon University College,

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and University of London. Joined India League. Founding leader, LSSP, 1935. Member of Ceylon State Council, 1936-40. Arrested 1940, incarcerated at Wellikade Jail and Bogambara Prison. Escaped to Bombay, July 1942. Arrested in Bombay, July 1943. Jailed 'at Badulla, 1943-45. Member of Parliament, 1947-78. President, Ceylon Federation of Labour. Colombo Municipal Council, 1950-56. Mayor of Colombo, 1954-56. Minister of Finance, SLFP coalition governments, 1964-65 and 1970-75. Author: Parliamentary Democracy (1931), The Case for Free Education (1944), External Economic Assistance (1964), The Economy of Ceylon: Trends and Prospects (1971), and Critical Analysis of the New Constitution of the Sri Lanka Government (1979).

Perera, Arthur Reginald ("Reggie") (1915-1977) Party pseudonym: Regpee (?). Born Karawanella (Ruwanwella Kegalle district), Ceylon. Educated St. John's College, Panadura. Owned and operated a plantation. Joined LSSP Youth League and participated in malaria relief work in KegalIa district. Founding member, LSSP, 1935. Delegate, Indian National Congress, 1937. Arrested, 1940, and jailed at Bogambara and BadulIa, 1942-45. Trade union leader, AII Ceylon Estate Workers Union. Member of Parliament, 1947-52. Split from LSSP and joined VLSSP, 1953. Member Senate and Upper House, 1959-72. Chief Government Whip, 1970-72. Founder, Sandella, an International Cultural Center. Author: Journey into Politics (1962) and Sadol Kandulu [Tears of the Outcasts], 1967. Ambassador to Egypt, 1971.

Perera, Margaret Selina ("Sheela") (1909-1986) Born BadulIa, Ceylon, daughter of prominent Peiris family. Educated Musaeus College, Colombo, and London University. Participated in Suriya Mal movement. Founding member, LSSP, 1935. Married N.M. Perera after 1936 elections. Returned to UK in 1938, worked with Trotskyists. Visited Socialist Workers Party in New York, 1939. Attempted to visit Trotsky in Mexico. Returned to Ceylon, 1940. Strike leader, Elephant cigarette company, 1942. Escaped to India,

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1942, worked in BLPI groups in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, 194248. Attended BLPI conference, 1944. Entered SP, 1948. Member, Bengal Executive Committee of SP. Founding leader, SP (Loyalists), 1952. Provisional Central Committee, Mazdoor Kisan Party, 1955. Central Secretariat, Revolutionary Workers Party, 1958-60. Joined Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Purdy, Murray Gow (aka Purdy-Singb) Party pseudonyms: Yarumji Eedrupji, Comrade No. 1. Born in South Africa, son of American immigrants. Recruited by Frank Glass, 1930. Founder, Bolshevik Leninist League of South Africa, 1934. Went to Bombay via Addis Abbaba (Ethiopia), 1936. Joined Indian National Congress. Founder, Friends ofTrotsky Society, 1938. Founding leader, Mazdoor Trotskyist Party, 1942. Jailed in Bombay, 1944-47. Expelled from India, December 1947, and went to London. Dropped out of Trotskyist movement, 1949, and perhaps returned to South Africa. Author: Bolshevik-Leninist-Trotskyist Draft Provisional Programme (1938), Lenin s Last Testament (1940), Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto (1942), Hindi mazdur tratskist part - Karyakram [Program of the Workers Trotskyist Party of India] (1943), Constituent Assembly: Is it Possible in India? And its Alternative. A Marxist-Trotskyist Analysis (n.d.), The South African Indian Problem-A Revolutionary Solution (1943).

Purobit, Vinayak (1927-present) Party pseudonyms: Amar, Pankaj. Born' Calcutta. Left school to participate in the Quit India revolt. Educated Bombay University. Joined BLPI, 1942. Arrested July 1943 and jailed for 7 months. Delegate to BLPI conference, 1944. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. General Secretary, Bombay Press Employees Union. Contributor, Socialist Vanguard, Socialist Appeal and Mankind, 1956-67. Executive Editor, Mankind, 1995-2000. Music critic, Times of India, 1956. Journalist, Nirvan. Visiting professor: Panjab University, Chandigarh, 1980-82; Chalmers Institute of Technology, Gothenberg, and Royal Institute of Technology,

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Stockholm, 1981; University of the Philippines, Manilla, 1984; and Film and Television Institute of India, 1976-86. Author: Steel Frame (1981), Chauraha (1990), Amina Ane Teno Jamano, Byalis (1990), Parodh Pahelano Andhakar, The Press and the People (1972), Arts of Transitional India: Twentieth Century (1986/88), Sociology ofArt and Politics (1987-89), Some Aspects of Sociology of Indian Films and Profile of the Hindi Hit Movie: 1951-1989 (1990). Rajan, Sundarh Party pseudonum: Somu Joined BLPI in Madura during WWII. Delegate from Madura to first\ party convention, 1944.Dropped out of BLPI after the war. Ramaswamy, B.M.K. (1914-1995) Born in Ceylon. Joined LSSP before the war. Sent to Madura along with his older brother, Shanmuganathan, 1941. Developed links with important radical Congressmen. Founding member ofBLPI, Madura, 1942. Went underground during Quit India revolt and worked with T.G. Krishnamurthy and other radical Congressmen. Formed unions in Harvey Cotton Mills and Mahalakshmi Mills, Madura. Arrested and jailed at Alipuram, 1945. Strike leader, Madras Labour Union, 1947. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Returned to Ceylon, 1953, taught Sinhalese, and wrote novels. Returned to India and settled in Kottivakkam, 1986. Formed Samadharma Ilakkiya Pannai [Socialist Publishing Society], Madura. Author: Tiratski vaazhkkai varalaaru: oru thiranaayvu (1989-90). Rao, M. Madhava Born Nellore (Andhra Pradesh). Educated Stanley Medical College, Madras. Joined BLPI while still a student. Leader, All India Student Federation in Madras. Took active role in B&C Mills strike, Madras, 1947. Editor, BLPI Tamil newspaper, Porattam [Struggle], 1948. Delegate to BLPI conference, 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Joint Secretary, Andhra Provincial SP. Wrote for Socialist Vanguard,

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1951-52. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Provisional Central Committee, Mazdoor Kisan Party, 1955. Author: Andhra Rashtrabivruddhiki em sheyyali (1953).

Rao, B. MallikArjun (c. 1920-1966) Born in Guntur District (Andhra Pradesh). Educated Sydenham College, Bombay. Assistant Secretary, Girni Kamgar Union. Journalist, Free Press Journal and Chronicle. Joined Workers Group led by M.G. Purdy, 1941. Founding member, Mazdoor Trotskyist Party, 1942. Returned to Hyderabad; during Quit India revolt led militant strikes in the Nizam State Railway, 1942-43. Jailed, 1944-46. Leader, squatters' movement in Bombay, 1945. President, MTP, 1947. Participated in the movement against the Nizam of Hyderabad in Sholapur, 1947-48. Secretary and Vice President, Central Railway Mazdoor Union (Secundarabad). Vice President, United Trade Union CongresS', 1949. Visited Peoples' Republic of China, 1952. Provisional Central Committee, Mazdoor Kisan Party, 1955. Elected to Secundarabad Municipal Corporation. Chairman, Joint Action Committee of Central Government employees in Andhra, 1959. Central Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party of India, 1960. Author: Indian Peasants Problem.

Rao, T.R. Joined BLPI in Bombay after the war. Joined Socialist Party, 1948. Started Modern India Publications and published numerous works by Trotsky and other Marxists in the 'fifties and 'sixties.

Roy, Ajit Kumar Mukherji Born Bengal. Went to Britain in 1931 to study law and qualify for the ICS. Joined Labour Party, then League Against Imperialism and CPGB. Co-founded the Marxist Group along with C.L.R. James, 1935. Returned to India, 1937-38. Return to UK and formed Revolutionary Socialist League with C.L.R. James. Editorial Board, Fight and later Workers' Fight. Founding leader, Workers International

The Trotskyist Movement in India alld Ceylol!

League. Trade unionist, Amalgamated Engineering Union at de Havilland Company's aircraft factory. Central Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain, 1944-47. Delegate to FI Congress, Brussels, 1946. Returned to India, 1947. Practiced law in Calcutta. Delegate, BLPI conferences, 1948. Central Committee, BLPI, 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. National Executive Committee, SP, 1948-50. Joined Praja Socialist Party, 1952. Withdrew from active politics shortly later. Worked as a lawyer in Calcutta thereafter. Roy, Karuna Kant (?-1991) Party pseudonym: Ranadhir. Born in Sylhet (Bengal). Educated Calcutta and Kashi Vidyapith, Benares. Joined the Civil Disobedience movement, 1930 while still a student and was beated by the police and jailed. Joined Bolshevik Leninist Party of United Provinces and Bihar, 1939. Editor, Awaz [The Voice], 1940. Founding member, BLPI, 1942. Arrested in Benares during Quit India revolt, 1942. Moved to Bombay, 1943. After Independence, became a trade unionist, West Bengal Khadi and Village Industries Commission, Calcutta. Roy, Purnangshu K. ("Nitai") Educated Calcutta. Joined BLPI, 1942. belegate, BLPI conferences, 1947 and 1948. Leader of "anti -entry" faction. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Withdrew from active politics after 1952 elections. Went to UK and became a physicist. Developed ankylosing spondilitis, a debilitating and painful form of rheumatoid arthritis, and died sometime in the mid 'eighties. Satchithanandam, Vallipuram (?-1977)

Born Ceylon, younger brother of Sittampalam Satchithanandam, a founding member of the LSSP. Educated London University. Joined London Marxist Group, 1936. Called to the bar, Lincoln's Inn, London. Returned to Ceylon and joined BLPI. Delegate, BLPI

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Conference, 1948. Commissioner, National Savings Movement until 1969. Samarakkody, Edmund (1914-1992) Born Siyane Korale, Ceylon, younger brother of Siripala Samarakkody, the future president of Ceylon National Congress, and nephew of D.S. Senanayake. Educated St. Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia, and Law College. Joined LSSP, 1936. Delegate to Indian National Congress, Haripura, 1938. Strike leader, Vavasseur Coconut Mill and the Colombo Commercial Company Fertiliser Works. Jailed, 1940. Escaped 1942. Jailed, 1942-45. Member, BLPI (Ceylon Unit), 1945-50. Contested parliamentary elections~ 1947. Member of Parliament, 1956-60. Founding member, LSSP (Revolutionary), 1964. Founder, Revolutionary Sama Samaja Party/Revolutionary Workers Party, 1968. Author: The Crisis ofLocal Government (1954), Workers' Councils, Janata Committees, and Socialist Transformation (1970), Vamanshika Peramuna? (1978), Whither United Socialist Alliance? (1988), and Eksat Samajavadi Peramuna .' koybata da? (1988). Sastry, Vellala Srikantaya Sesbagiri (1912-?) Party pseudonym: M. Naidu. Born Rajampet (Andhra Pradesh), son ofV.R. Srikantaya. Went to UK in 1936 to train as a journalist. Joined India League, 1936. Joined Communist Party of Great Britain in Birmingham. Secretary, Indian Workers Union (Association), 1943. Central Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain, 1944-46. Returned to India, 1946, and joined BLPI in Bombay. Editor, New Spark, 1947. Attended BLPI conference, 1947; elected to Central Committee and Political Bureau. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Returned to Cuddapah and ran a Tutorial Institute. Selvarajatnan, Govindaswami (1924-1995) Educated Presidency College, Madras. Student leader, All India Student Federation in Madras. Member, Madras Congress Committee.

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Joined BLPI during war. Delegate, All India Students' Congress, 1945. Delegate to BLPI conferences, 1947 and 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Moved to UK. Author: The Meaning o/the Simla Surrender (1945). Sen', Indra Datta (d. circa 1990) Party pseudonyms: D. Gupta, D. Dutt, Suresh. Born Faridpur District (Bengal). Educated Calcutta University. Joined Students' Radical Party in Calcutta in late 'thirties. Founding member, Revolutionary Socialist League of Bengal, 1940. Put under house arrest, 1941. Founding leader, BLPI, 1942. Delegate to BLPI conference 1944. Worked in BLPI groups in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, 1942-48. Central Committee, BLPI, 1944-48. Editor, New Spark, 1947. Executive Committee, Workers United Front, 1947. Attended BLPI conferences, 1947 and 1948. General Secretary, BLPI. Delegate to Special Convention of BLPI, October 1948. Entered Socialist Party, 1948. Joint editor, Janata, 1948-50. Member, SP Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee. Editorial Board, Socialist Appeal. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Joined SP (Lohia), 1956. Staff journalist, Hindusthan Standard. Author: The Road to Peace (1951) and Communist Policy Today (1952). Helped publish other Trotskyist publications in 'sixties and 'seventies. Went blind in his final years. Senanayake, Reginald S. Vincent ("Reggie") (1898-1946) Born Colombo, Ceylon. Married Daisy Maria Florence Mendis (190399), 1925. Participated with her in Youth League, 1934-35. Founding member LSSP, 1935. Treasurer, LSSP, 1935-39. Escaped to India, 1942. Member of BLPI, Bombay and Madras, 1942-43. Arrested in Madras, July 1943, and sent back to Ceylon. Sethuraman Educated Madras University. Joined Congress in Madras and worked as a clerk in the Labour Section of the Congress Committee. Joined BLPI. Became full-time worker for Madras Labour Union. Active in

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B&C Mills strike, 1947. Delegate, BLPJ conference, 1948. Later went to Dindigul (Dindigul District, Tamil Nadu) for employment and left politics. Shastri, Onkarnath Verma (1908-c.2000)

Party pseudonym: Sharma. Born Allahabad, the son of Lalta Prasad. Educated Kashi Vidyapith, Benares. Joined the Civil Disobedience movement and jailed in 1932. Became a Socialist. Leader, Kashi Vidyapith party. Member, Communist Party, 1935-36. Editor, Samaj, 1937-38. Formed Bolshevik-Leninist Party of the United Provinces and Bihar, 1939. Attended clandestine conference of Ceylonese and Indian Trotskyists in Ceylon, 1941. Founding leader, BLPI, 1942. Jailed, 1942-45. Broke with BLPI, 1945. Joined Bolshevik Mazdoor Party, 1946. General Secretary, Mazdoor Trotskyist Party, 1947. Formed Revolutionary Workers Party, 1948. Editor, Jivan. Joined Congress, 1953. Supported Indira Gandhi during the "Emergency" in the 'seventies. Shukla, Chandravadan Pranjivan (1910-2000)

Party pseudonyms: Rafiq, Ramesh Munshi, Sidney, Brelvi. Born in the Princely State of Lunawada (Gujarat). Educated Ahmedabad. Student leader, Ahmedabad Vidyarthi Mitramandal. Joined CPI, 1936. Secretary, Mill Kamgar Union, Ahmedabad. Quit CPI, 1938. Formed Bolshevik Mazdoor Party, 1940. Founding leader, BLPI, 1942. Editor, Bolshevik Leninist, 1942-46. Split from BLPI, 1943, and functioned as Bolshevik Mazdoor Party. Editor, Jagat Kranti. Joined SP (Loyalists), 1952. Provisional Central Committee, Mazdoor Kisan Party, 1955. Author: Ninth August Betrayed (1949) and Socialistic Pattern? (1955). Wrote for Socialist Appeal, 1953. Retired from left politics in 1954-55. Editor, Virat Jage. de Silva, Colvin Reginald (1907-1989)

Party pseudonyms: C.R. Govindan, Lily Roy, Dias (Diaz). Born Balapitiya, Ceylon. Educated St. John's College, Panadura, Royal College, Colombo, and King's College, University of London.

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Studied law at Lincoln's Inn. Secretary, Ceylon Students Association in London, 1926. Visited the USSR, 1931. President, Wellawatte Mills Union, 1932. Founding leader, LSSP, 1935. President of LSSP, 193539. Jailed 1940; escaped and went to Bombay, 1942. Worked in BLPI groups in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, 1942-45. Attended BLPI conference, 1944. Central Committee, BLPI, 1944-47; and General Secretary, BLPI. Delegate to BLPI conference, 1947; attended BLPI conferences, 1948. Member ofCeylon Parliament, 1947-52 and 195660. International Executive Committee, Fourth International, 1948. Minister of Constitutional Affairs, SLFP coalition government, 197075. Author: Ceylon Under the British Occupation, 1795-1833 (1942), Socialism Reaffirmed (1944), The Why and the Wherefore (1952), Hartal! (1953), Outline of the Permanent Revolution: A Study Course (1955), Their Politics - And Ours (1954), Lessons of the Local Government Elections (1955), The Failure of Communalist Politics (1958), Fifty Years of Public Life (1982), and Party and Revolution (1974). de Silva, Susan (Caldera)

Born Ceylon. Joined the Youth Leagues. Activist in Suriya Mal movement. Founding member, LSSP, 1935. Married LSSP member George Caldera. Attended the Indian National Congress session, Tripuri, 1939. During WWII worked in the underground with RW. Amaradasa Fernando. Became pro-Stalinist, 1948. Later withdrew from politics and lived on her family'S plantation. de Silva, P.H. William (1908-1988)

Party pseudonym: Karunatatna. Born Batapola (Ambalangoda), Ceylon, son of a wealthy professional and land-owning family. Educated St. John's College, Panadura, and University College, Oxford. Joined India League and the London Marxist group. Returned to Ceylon and joined LSSP. Jailed at Bogambara and Badulla, 1942-45. Member of Parliament, 1947 and 1953. Leader, All Ceylon Estate Workers Union. Split from LSSP, 1953. Member Central Committee, VLSSP, 1956. Founding leader,

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Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP). Minister of Industries and Fisheries, SLFP-MEP coalition government, 1956-59. Member of Parliament, 1960. Vice President, SLFP. High Commissioner to Canada, 1970. Siriwardena, Coddipiliarachchi Don Reginald ("Regi") (1922-2004) Party pseudonym: Hamid. Educated St. Thomas College, Mount Lavinia; Ananda College, Colombo; and Ceylon University College. Joined LSSP, 1939. Left party in 1946. Journalist, Ceylon Daily News until early 1960s. Senior English Teacher, Royal College, Colombo. Founder, English Department, Vidyalankara College, Kelaniya. Writer, poet, and playwright. Wrote screen plays for the award-winning film, Gamperaliya, and Golu Hadawata. Founded Civil Rights Movement after the 1971 JVP insurrection. Editor, Nethra. Author: The End of a Golden String (1989), Addressing the Other (1992), Poems and Selected Translations (1993), Octet: Collected Plays (1995), The Lost Lenore (1996), Among My Souvenirs (1997), Working Underground: The LSSP in Wartime (1999), The Pure Water of Poetry (1999), and The Protean Life of Language: Four Studies (2001). Soysa, Bernard (1914-1997) Born Colombo, Ceylon. Educated Ananda College and Ceylon University College, Colombo. Active in Suriya Mal campaign, 1933. Joined LSSP, 1937. Executive Committee, LSSP, 1937-40. Journalist, The Times. Founding member, BLPI, 1942. Arrested Bombay, 1943; deported and detained in Ceylon, 1943-44. Secretary, BLPI (Ceylon Unit). Published several pamphlets by Trotsky, 1949-50. Municipal Councilor, Colombo, 1949-56. Member of Parliament, 1956-60, 1970, and 1994. Chairman, Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, 1964-77. Finance Minister, 1970-77. General Secretary of LSSP, 1970-93. Cabinet Minister for Science, Technology and Human Resources Development in People's Alliance Government.

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de Souza, Anthony Theodoric Armand ("Doric") (1914-1987) Party pseudonyms: Morera (Moreira), S. Livera. Born Colombo, Ceylon, son of Armand de Souza, the editor of the nationalist newspaper, Ceylon Morning Leader, and founder ofCeylon National Congress. Educated St. Joseph's College, Colombo. Went to UK. Returned 1937, appointed lecturer in English, and joined LSSP. Attended BLPI conference 1944; elected to Central Committee. Leader, BLPI, Bombay, 1944-45. Arrested and jailed, 1945. Colombo Municipal Councilor, 1946-52. Delegate, BLPI conference, 1947. Senator, 1957-1969. Lecturer, University of Ceylon. Associate Professor, Kelaniya University, 1970-1982. Permanent Secretary to Ministry, SLFP coalition government, 1970-75. Author: China 19251950: Revolution, Counter-Revolution, Imperialist and Civil War (1950), The Agrarian Economy of India (unpublished). Udyawar, S.P. Joined Royist group in Bombay; worked on trade-union front. Opposed support to WWII. Recruited to BLPI, 1942-43. After war involved in BLPI's publishing efforts; published Rise and Fall of the Comintern by Leslie Goonewardene. Left BLPI in 1948. Wickremasinghe, Cyril Esmond Lucien (1920-1985) Party pseudonym: Buultjens. Educated Ceylon University College and Ceylon Law Collge, Hulftsdorp. Joined LSSP while a student. President, University Students' Union. Qualified as advocate, 1946. Quit LSSP, 1947. Married the daughter of Lake House baron Don Richard Wijewardene. Named Managing Director, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd., 1950. Chairman, International Press Foundation, 1966-68. Zuberi, Umar Abid Joined BLPI in Calcutta after WWII. Secretary, All Bengal Muslim Students League, 1946. Went to Pakistan after Partition. Started a Trotskyist journal, Spark, in Karachi, for the Democratic Youth

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League, which had been founded in Dhaka in August, 1947, to resist the imposition ofUrdu as the sole state language. de Zylva, Terrence N. (1887-1960)

Educated Wesley College, Colombo, 1911-15. School master, Prince of Wales, Wesley College, Zahira, and Sri Sumangala. Established Kolonnawa Vidyala (now named the Terrence de Zilva School). Active in Suriya Mal campaign, 1933-35. Founding member LSSP, 1935. Jailed during WWII. Councillor, Kolonnawa Urban Council.

APPENDIX B

Program of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India (1942) Author s Note: The founding meeting of the BLPI, convened clandestinely in Bombay in May, 1942, adopted the "Draft Programme of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India." The BLPI published this document as a pamphlet in 1942. I The following text has been transcribed from that pamphlet. The Draft Programme was ratified, with minor changes, at the First Representative Conference of the BLPI held in 1944. SECTION 1. THE BRITISH CONQUEST AND EXPLOITATION OF INDIA

India, the largest, the longest dominated and exploited of British conquests, the richest field of investment, the source of incalculable plunder and profit, the base of Asiatic expansion, the inexhaustible reservoir of material and human resources for British wars, the focus of all British strategic aims, the pivot of the Empire, and the bulwark of British world domination, offers, after 200 years of subjection, the most complete demonstration of the working and results of the colonial system of modern imperialism. Every European colonizing power directed its first efforts towards India, and the bitterest struggles for the glittering prize were fought on the battlefields of Europe and India alike. The success of Britain in defeating her continental rivals as well as the native rulers ofIndia, and the consolidation of her domination in India paved the way for her subsequent world supremacy. The conquest and exploitation of India was one of the main bases of capitalist development in Britain, giving

J

Draft Programme of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India. Indian Section of the Fourth International, 1942. Hull.

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direct support to her social and political structure. The plunder of India was a main source of the primitive accumulation of capital which made possible the English Industrial Revolution. The exploitation of the Indian market and of Indian raw materials provided the basis of British industrial expansion in the 19th century. Today India provides a field of investment for a quarter of the British overseas capital holdings, and sends to Britain roughly £ 150 million annually, as tribute, in various forms. After 200 years of Imperialist rule, India presents a picture of poverty and misery of the masses, which is without equal in the world-the more striking because up to the 18th century the economic condition of India was relatively advanced and Indian methods of production and of industrial and commercial organizations could compare with those of any part of the world, and because of the vast natural wealth and resources of the country, which cannot be utilized and developed under the system of imperialism. European capitalist penetration ofIndia began with the Portuguese establishment of their factory in Calicut. The British (1600), the Dutch (1602), and the French (1664), formed their trading companies in the course of the 17th century. The British conquest of India, carried out piecemeal, and in the most ruthless, vindictive and deceitful manner, differed from every previous conquest of India in that, whereas earlier foreign conquerors had left untouched the traditional economy, British Imperialism "broke down the whole framework of Indian society." 2 The first steps of this destruction were carried out by (a) the colossal

This quote, and the others that follow, is from Karl Marx, "The British Rule in India," an article originally published in The New York Tribune (25 June 1853). These articles slipped into obscurity. David Riazanov, the director of the MarxEngels Institute, combed through old issues of the New York Tribune and found this and other articles that Marx had written on India and China. In 1925 he published several of these articles, including "The British Rule in India," in Unter dem Banner des Marxismus. R. Palme Dutt translated the article back into English and published it in Labour Monthly (December, 1925). Dutt quoted from this and the other long-lost Marx articles in his two books on India, Modern India (1926) and India Today (1940). The BLPI very likely got these quotes from India Today.

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direct plunder by the East India Company; (b) the British neglect of irrigation and public works; (c) the wrecking of the Indian land system and its replacement by a system of landlordism and individual land holding; (d) the direct prohibition of and heavy duties on the export of Indian manufactures to Europe, and to England .. But it was the operations of 19th century British industrial capitalism and the governmental policies initiated by it in India that decisively broke up the Indian economic structure. The industrial capitalists of Britain had a clear-cut aim in India-to reduce it to an agricultural colony of British capitalism, supplying raw materials and absorbing manufactured goods. Britain captured and developed the market for her industrial goods on the basis of the technical superiority of English machine industry (for which the plunder of India had provided the accumulated capital), while at the same time utilizing the state power to block the export ofIndian goods to Europe and to permit the free entry of British goods to India. The destruction and collapse of Indian manufactures in this unequal struggle against British competition, was the inevitable result. The ruin of millions of artisans and craftsmen was not accompanied by any growth of newer forms of industry, and the old urban centers of Indian manufactures (Dacca, Murshidabad, Surat), were depopulated and laid waste. The work of destruction was not confined to the towns. "The handloom and the spinning wheel were the pivots of the structure of Indian society" which was based on the "domestic union of agricultural and manufacturing pursuits." 3 "British steam and science uprooted over the whole surface of Hindusthan the union between agricultural and manufacturing industry." 4 "The British intruder, who broke up the Indian handloom and destroyed the spinning wheel" struck at the roots of Indian society by destroying the balance of the village economy. 5 Thereby Britain produced "the greatest, and to spt:ak the truth, the only

3

Karl Marx, "The British Rule in India."

4

Karl Marx, "The British Rule in India."

5

Karl Marx, "The British Rule in India."

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social revolution ever heard of in Asia," "actuated in this matter only by the vilest interests, and stupid in her manner of enforcing them."

6

To consolidate the conquest of India and to develop the Indian market and resources for exploitation by the British capitalist class as a whole, the East India Company was replaced in 1858 by direct governmental administration. After a century of neglect of the most elementary functions of government, the British inaugurated a process of active development of the country by (a) building a network of raiIroads; (b) the development of roads; (c) the introduction of the electric telegraph and of a uniform postal system; (d) the introduction of the benefits of Western education to a limited class of Indians; and (e) the introduction of the European banking system into India. While opening up India for commercial penetration and providing a market for the British iron, steel, and engineering industries, this process of development-especially the construction of railways-at the same time laid the foundations of a new stage, that of the development of British capital investments in India. Modern Imperialist Exploitation

The last decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th were marked by the imperialist export of finance-capital from the countries of Western Europe and North America to every corner of the globe, and by the conquest and exploitation of all backward countries through the colonial system. Between 1880 and 1914 the major European powers and the U.S.A. had carved up the whole world into colonies and spheres of exploitation. This period of modem imperialist expansion was marked in India by an intensification of British exploitation and a corresponding change in its character, wherein the finance-capitalist exploitation of India came to dominate all other forms. Nevertheless the new basis of exploitation did not replace the already established forms of plunder and industrial and trading exploitation, but was auxiliary and paralled to these processes.

6

Karl Marx, "The British Rule in India."

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British capitalist investment in India developed at a rapid pace in the second half of the 19th century, with the expansion of railway construction and also with the establishment of tea, coffee and rubber plantations and other minor enterprises. The holdings of British capital in India developed not so much through the export of British capital as through the investment of the spoils of British plunder in India, at highly profitable rates. The sterling debt of the Indian Government, which includes more than one-third of the total holdings of British capital in India, has been manipulated to include the cost of every Imperial undertaking (including wars for the subjugation of India and other colonial wars) which could conceivably be charged to India. The costs of the public works schemes. carried out and of railway construction, themselves multiplied by wasteful spending, constitute but a small proportion of the colossal total of the public debt. At the same time, the almost continuous excess of the value of Indian exports to Britain over that of imports, has left no room for a real export of capital to India. Nevertheless, the volume of British holdings in India today exceeds £1,000 millions. With the post-war weakening of Britain's share of the Indian market (Britain's share ofIndian imports dropped from 63% in 1913 to 29% in 1937) in the face of foreign competition and the rise in Indianespecially cotton-industry, British Imperialism has consolidated its financial stranglehold on the Indian economy as its chief source of profit in India. Of Britain's total overseas investments, the proportion which has been invested in India has risen from 11 % in 1911 to 25% in 1937. Nevertheless, there has been, since 1927, (with the world economic depression), a sharp drop in the actual volume of British capital newly invested in India, which reflects the general stagnation of the economic development of India. The Retardation of Industrial Development by Imperialism

The capital investments of Britain in India have never led to the industrialization of India on a scale proportionate to their volume. The colossal waste involved in the railway construction of the last century and the unproductive expenditure which swelled India's public debt,

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first created the glaring disproportion between the size of British investments and the slow economic development of the country. Up to 1914,97% of British capital invested in India was devoted to purposes of government (i.e. wars, the heavy costs of bureaucratic administration, levies for costly durbars etc.), transport, plantations, and finance. These investments served as auxiliaries to the commercial penetration of India, and its exploitation as a source of raw materials, did not lead to the development of modern industry on any commensurate scale. The industrial development that has taken place in recent times bears no relation to India's needs. The vast resources ofIndia have not been tapped. The rate of Industrial advance, far lower than that of other large non-European countries, has not, even in modern times, kept pace with the decline of Indian handicrafts; with the result that, from 1911 to 1931 there has been an actual decline in the proportion of the population dependent on industry (including domestic industry). The growth ofIndian industry has been greatly impeded by British Imperialism, for fear of competition with home industries, by means of administrative neglect, by a hostile tariff policy, and by unfavourable currency manipulations. Until 1914 this policy of opposition to Indian industrial development was openly followed, particularly by the removal of import duties on competing British goods. The brief and half-hearted reversal of policy after 1914 and during the period when British capital flowed into share in the profits of the post-war boom, was nullified by the later raising of the exchange rate, which disastrously hit Indian exports. Under these conditions, the development of modern industry in India has taken place at a very slow rate, and in a lop-sided fashionchiefly in light industry. The basis necessary for real industrial development, namely heavy industry, has never been laid. Until 1914, large organized production was represented chiefly by the cotton, jute, and coal-mining industries, and by the tea, rubber and coffee plantations. The post-war period, when foreign competition was reduced, was marked by a short and feverish boom, which led to the development of other industries, including iron and steel, cement,

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manganese, and other minor types. This period was utilized for investment by British capital which, during the years 1921 to 1923 , flowed in at an average annual rate of over £30 millions. But the brief post-war boom was followed by a period of stagnation and decline, prolonged by the currency policy of the Government, and finally intensified by the world economic crisis of 1929. Indian industry shows even today no indication of recovery. The scope of the industrialization undertaken for defence purposes during the present imperialist war is not calculated to include an all-sided development of Indian industry but is restricted to the strategic needs of British Imperialism. Such an all-sided development of industry is excluded by the conditions of imperialist exploitation itself, by the direct hostility of the Government to industrial development in India, by the determination of Britain to maintain its share of the Indian market, and above all by the insoluble problems of the home market caused by the extreme impoverishment of the agricultural population under Imperialism. The industrialization of India, on which her future depends, cannot be carried out without the overthrow of Imperialism and a sweeping transformation of agrarian relations. The Comprador Character of the Indian Bourgeoisie

Despite the hostility of Imperialism to the industrialization of India, it is British and not Indian capital that has always held the dominant place in Indian industry, not only through the decisively greater volume of its investments in industry, but also through its financial stranglehold on the whole Indian economy. The Indian capitalist class, whose growth was mainly connected with the development of the cotton industry, has never been able to shake off the controlling power of British financecapital. The paid-up capital of joint-stock companies registered in India was only Rs.80 crores in 1914, which is a measure of the belatedness and weakness of Indian capital. Today the figure has risen to over Rs.300 crores. The permeation of British capital into companies registered in India, however, reduces the importance of this figure, which in any case cannot compare with the total paid-up capital of foreign (mainly British) companies operating in India, which exceeds £700 millions. Despite the advance of Indian capital, British capital

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remains in effective monopolist domination in banking, commerce, exchange, insurance, shipping, in the tea, coffee and rubber plantations, and in the jute industry. In iron and steel, Indian capital has been forced to come to terms with British capital, and even in the cotton industry, the home of Indian capital, the control of British capital through the managing agency system is very great. Already in 1928 (before the economic crisis) British managing agents controlled the majority of the capital of cotton companies (50.3%). The economic depression which affected Indian industry after 1924 and especially after 1929, and the bankruptcy liquidations and difficulties of many Indian firms which had risen in the post-war period, were utilized by British capital to strengthen its hold on Indian industry. Most decisive for the controlling power British finance-capital is the role of the foreign banking system, working in conjunction with the Government's financial and exchange policies. Financial power remains monopolized in British hands through the Reserve Bank of India, the Imperial Bank of India, and the big exchange banks. The Indian joint-stock banks hold less than one third of bank deposits in India, and are themselves being invaded by British capital The Indian capitalist class, therefore, despite its growth in recent times, remains essentially dependent on, and an agency of British finance-capital, performing a subsidiary role in the exploitation of India. Despite its dreams of industrialization, and of a broadened base of exploitation for itself, the Indian bourgeoisie, shackled as it is to Imperialism, cannot play the historical role of the West-European bourgeoisie in liberating and developing the productive forces. The industrial advance of India demands absolutely the overthrow of Imperialism, with which Indian bourgeois interests are indissolubly bound, and the overthrow of which they are bound to resist. Nevertheless, the rising productive forces in India are straining against the fetters of imperialism and of the obsolete economic structure which it maintains and protects. This conflict finds its expression not only in the industrial stagnation, but in a much sharper way in the agrarian crisis, which is the index of the bankruptcy of imperialist economy, and the main driving force towards revolution.

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Imperialism and the Agrarian Problem

Britain relegated to India the role of an agricultural appendage to imperialism. The ravages of Indian industries carried out in the 19th century at once drove the popUlation of the ruined industrial centers back to the land, and ruined the lives of millions of artisans in the villages. The resulting over-crowding of agriculture has today reached a stage of where three-fourths of the entire Indian population are solely dependent on the land, and where the proportion of the land available for cultivation has fallen to less than 1 114 acres per head of the agrarian population. The effects of this exaggerated disequilibrium in the economy are further aggravated by the stagnation and deterioration of agriculture itself, for which too the British are directly responsible, through their disruption of the village economy, their iniquitous exactions of land revenue, their expropriation of the peasantry, their creation of parasitic forces in semi-feudal landlordism, and their notorious neglect of public works on the land-which have from time immemorial been the function of the government-and without which in India the cultivation of the soil cannot be carried on. The criminal indifference of the government and the suffocating parasitism of the landlords are responsible for the incredibly low productivity and exhaustion of the soil, for the primitive agricultural technique, for the waste of labor in fragmented holdings, for the neglect of cultivable soil (of which 35% is left waste in India and Burma), and for the recent actual shrinkage in the area under cultivation whereas the population is on the increase. These conditions, which have depressed the vast majority of the rural population to a level of unspeakable poverty and chronic semi-starvation, and have led to a state of permanent agricultural crisis, are inevitably paving the way for a sweeping revolution as their only outcome and solution. The characteristic process of imperialism, the expropriation of the colonial population from the land, was carried out by the British under cover of legal forms, which, in fact, transformed the "eternal" land system of the Indian village commune into an inextricable amalgam of feudal and semi-feudal rights and tenures. The British introduced into India "the great desideratum of Asiatic society-private property in the

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land," making in this connection a series of unsuccessful and really absurd (and in effect infamous) experiments in economics. 7 In Bengal they created a caricature of English landed property on a large scale; in South-Eastern India a caricature of small allotment property; in the North they transformed to the utmost of their ability the Indian commune with common ownership of land into a caricature of itself. The aims which guided the British transformation of the land system were two-fold-firstly, to guarantee the effective collection of their extortionate land revenue which rose steeply from the time of the conquest (from £4 millions in 1800 to £23 millions in 1936-37); and in the second place, to create a social basis within India for Imperialism by the creation of Indian landed interests "deeply interested in the continuance of British dominion." 8 It is above all the still unbroken alliance between British Imperialism and the Indian landlordism that links up the overthrow ofImperialism with the agrarian revolution in India. Landlordism was created and fostered by the British, not only in the provinces of permanent and temporary zemindari (Bengal, U.P., Bihar, Punjab), but also in the ryotwari areas (including Bombay, Madras etc.) where the processes of mortgage and sub-letting have caused analogous developments. In many parts oflndia sub-infeudation and sub-letting have been carried out to fantastic lengths, so that the cultivator of the soil is despoiled by an increasing army offunctionless intermediaries in addition to the big parasites and the Government itself. A great proportion of the real cultivators of the soil are without

7

The quote is from Karl Marx, "The Future Results of the British Rule in India," published in The New York Tribune (22 July 1853), and quoted in R. Palme Dutt, India Today (1940). This quote is a paraphrase. In Modern India (1940) R. Palme Dutt gives the following quote from the speech of Lord WilIiam Bentinck, the Governor-General of India from 1828 to 1835: "If security was wanting against extensive popular tumult or revolution, I should say that the Pemlanent Settlement, though a failure in many other respects and in its most important essentials, has this great advantage at least, of having created a vast body of rich landed proprietors deeply interested in the continuance of British Dominion and having complete command over the masses of the people." R. Palme Dutt, India Today (1940), pp. 211-12.

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rights of any kind and remain unaffected even by the temporary legislation by which the Government has sought to stave off the impending crisis. Even in the Ryotwari areas, where settlement was originally made with the cultivators themselves, the latter have been dispossessed to a great extent by money-lenders and others. From the beginning, landlordism under British rule has been parasitic in character, since, landlords neither supply agricultural capital nor control farming operations. Today landlordism, taken in conjunction with its superstructure of sub-infeudation and sub-letting, is the most effective barrier to the development of modern large scale farming. The penetration of finance-capital in the agrarian field, which characterizes the recent period, far from freeing the productive forces from the incubus of feudalism, or introducing modern productive technique, has taken place for the most part within the framework of feudal and semi-feudal relations, and become enmeshed with feudal forms of exploitation. The net result has been to add to the burdens of the peasantry by decisively accelerating their expropriation from the land, and by crushing them under a load of debt which amounted in 1937 to £1,350 millions. The money-lenders' exactions and confiscations, together with the payments demanded by the government and the landlords' extortions, form for the peasantry of triple scourge, which have reduced the greater proportion of cultivators in India to the status of unprotected tenants, share-croppers, and landless wagelaborers. Capitalist inroads have sharply accelerated the differentiation of classes within rural society, increasing the numbers of parasitic rentreceivers on the one hand and of propertyless elements ori the other, as a comparison of the 1921 with the 1931 census figures illustrates: Non-cultivating proprietors taking rent

1921.. ........ 3.7 millions. 1931 ......... .4 millions. Agriculturallaborers (i.e. landless elements, sub-tenants, wage-Iaborers)

1921.. ....... .21. 7 millions. 1931.. ........ 33 millions.

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The particularly rapid growth of parasitic landlordism in recent times, as well as the sharp rise in rural debt (from £400 millions in 1921 to £ 1,350 millions in 1937), 'i~ really the reflection of the invasion of moneyed interests, big and small, in the agrarian field, having failed to find effective outlets {or investment in productive industry. Thus the direct plunder of the-peasantry of the early British period has given place to a network o(:forms of exploitation of modem finance-capital, with its host of subsidiary parasites in the Indian economy. The Indian 'capitalist class, no less than the British Government and the semifeudal landlords, are tied to the existing order of rural society and interested in its perpetuation. Nevertheless, the abolition of landlordism in all its forms in defiance of all these vested interests, the abolition of rural debt, and the unencumbered transfer of the land to the cultivators themselves, is the basic social task of the Indian revolution and the absolute prerequisite of agricultural advance in India. British Imperialism, in the epoch of declining world capitalism, has become the most powerful reactionary force in India, buttressing in turn all other forms of reaction. Its failure to develop the productive resources in India through industrialization, and the chronic stagnation and decay of agriculture under its rule, make its continued existence incompatible with the advancement of India, and render its overthrow an historical inevitability. To maintain its rule in India in face of the rising tide of mass revolt, British Imperialism uses all the weapons of bureaucratic and military repression with increasing viciousness. Nevertheless, the day of reckoning cannot be long postponed. The solution of the terrible problems of the toiling millions of India demands the overthrow and elimination of British Imperialism, which is the foremost task of the coming Indian revolution.

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SECTION 2. THE INDIAN SOCIAL CLASSES AND THEIR POLITICAL ROLES

The Native Princes

The revolt of 1857 represented the last attempt of the old feudal ruling class of India to throw off the British yoke. This revolt, which despite its reactionary leadership, laid bare the depths of mass discontent and unrest, created an alarm in the British rulers, and led to a radical change of their policy in India. Seeking for bases of social and political support within India, the British abandoned the policy of annexing the Indian States within British India, and embarked on a policy of guaranteeing the remnants of the feudal rulers their privileged and parasitic positions in innumerable petty principalities, buttressing their power and protecting them against the masses, and receiving in return the unqualified support of these elements for the British rule. The princes of the Native States, maintained at the cost of a chaotic multiplication of administrative units, are today only the corrupt and dependent tools of British Imperialism; and the feudatory states, "checkerboarding all India as they do, are no more than a vast network of fortresses" erected by the British in their own defence. 9 The variety of the states and jurisdiction of the feudal princes defies a generalized description, but they bolster alike the reactionary policies of Imperialism in India. The despotism and mis-government practiced by the great majority of these rulers in their territories, have created and perpetuated conditions of backwardness extreme even in India, including the most primitive forms of feudal oppression and the institution of slavery itself. Their collective interests are represented by the Chamber of Princes, instituted in 1921, which is the most reactionary political body in India.

This quote seems to be a paraphrase. In Modern India (1940) R. Palme Dutt quotes L.F. Rushbrook-Williams, a forn1er government official, as follows on page 395: "The situation of these feudatory States, checkerboarding all India as they do, are a great safeguard. It is like establishing a vast network of friendly fortresses in debatable territory."

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The Landlords

The most solid supporters of British rule in India, after the princes are the landlords. In fact the majority of the princes are themselves no more than glorified landlords, playing the same parasitic role as the landlords of British India. The rapid extension of landlordism in modern times through the development of intermediary and new parasitic classes on the peasantry, has not only increased the numbers of those who receive land-rents, but firmly linked their interests with those of the Indian capitalist class, through the ties of investment and mortgage. The political role of the landlords has always been one of complete subservience to British Imperialism, which alone guarantees their parasitic position. Landlordism is today the most formidable buttress of British Imperialism within Indian society, as well as the greatest obstacle in the way of agricultural development which demands a thorough-going democratic revolution in the agrarian field and the liquidation of landlordism in all its forms. The Indian Bourgeoisie

The second half of the 19th century saw the rise of an Indian capitalist class in Bombay and other industrial and commercial centers. The Indian bourgeoisie of the early period, being of a predominantly commercial character, and conscious of their own weakness and completely dependent position in economy, offered no challenge whatever to British rule. This weakness found its reflection in the early policies of the Indian National Congress, which, since its inception in 1885, loyally co-operated with British Imperialism and offered only the mildest criticism of governmental policies. But the growing strength of the industrial bourgeoisie in the last two decades of the 19th century and the deep economic conflict between their own interests and those of their British competitors, drove them, from the first decade of the 20th century, to utilise the national political movement as a means to strengthen their bargaining power against British Imperialism and extend their own field of exploitation. The growing strength of the industrial bourgeoisie was reflected in the change of policies of the Indian National Congress since the early years of the present century.

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The bourgeoisie, in the absence of any competing class and especially of an independent proletarian movement, assumed complete leadership of the national political movement from the beginning through its party, the Indian National Congress. The bourgeois leadership of the movement was clearly demonstrated in 1905 by the choice of the economic boycott of foreign goods as the method of struggle against the partition of Bengal. The aims of the bourgeoisie during this period were defined as the "attainment of colonial selfgovernment within the empire" as junior partner of the imperialists. They abandoned the struggle for a policy of co-operation with the government after the grating of the Morley-Minto reforms, their own immediate purposes being satisfied. The last years of the First World War, and the years which immediately followed it, were marked by the development, for the first time since 1857, of a mass struggle on a national scale against Imperialism, based on the discontent and unrest of the peasantry and the working class. This discontent was especially marked in Bombay, where the wave reached its highest point in 1920, for which year the number of strikers reached the gigantic total of 1.5 millions. The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms were designed to meet this rising threat by buying off the bourgeois leadership, and they succeeded to an extent, that section of the bourgeoisie who wanted whole-hearted cooperation with the government seceding from the Congress to form the Liberal Federation (1918). But taking advantage of the growing mass movement, the Congress bourgeoisie launched under its own banner the passive resistance movement, and the later mass civil disobedience movement of 1921-22, but betrayed the movement from the inside the moment it showed signs of developing into revolutionary channels. The movement, which despite its timid and unwilling leadership, had attained the undeniable character of a mass revolt against the British Raj, was abruptly called off when at its height by the bourgeois leader Gandhi, and a period of demoralization for the masses followed. The reactionary and treacherous character of the bourgeois leadership was shown clearly in the Bardoli resolution of 1922, which condemned the no-tax campaign of the peasantry and insisted on the continuation of rent-payments to the landlords, assuring the Zemindars that the

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Congress ·"had no intention of attacking their legal rights." 10 The bourgeoisie this demonstrated their reactionary attitude towards the land question, in which lies the main driving force towards revolution in India. The reactionary and treacherous character of the bourgeois leadership was also displayed in the doctrine of Ahimsa by the foisting of which on the movement in 1921-22 and ever since, the bourgeoisie have attempted to ensure their control of the national movement by restricting the form and scope of the struggle and insuring against its moving into revolutionary channels. The working class upsurge of 1928-29 with the tremendous growth in the organized strength of the working class and the adoption by the workers for the first time of a proletarian (communist) ideology, marked the beginning of a new phase in the oppositional role to imperialism of the bourgeoisie, which from now on underwent a progressive weakening. With the worsening conditions of the late twenties, the mass struggle developed again at a rising tempo, and was again led to defeat by the Congress (1930-34). The aims of the new struggle were limited by Gandhi beforehand to the celebrated eleven points which represented exclusively the most urgent demands of the Indian bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, the movement developed in 1930 far beyond the limits laid down for it by the Congress, with rising strikes, powerful mass demonstrations, the Chittagong Annoury raid, and the rising at Peshawar and Sholapur. Gandhi declared openly to the Viceroy that he was fighting as much against the rising forms of revolt as against British Imperialism. The bourgeois aim was hence-forward to secure concessions from Imperialism at the price of betraying the mass struggle in which they saw a real and growing threat to themselves. Then Gandhi-Irwin settlement was a settlement against the mass movement, and paved the way for the terrific repression which fell on the movement during its ebb in the years 1932-34.

10

On February 12, 1922 the Congress Working Committee, summoned to ratify Gandhi's decision to halt the Non-Cooperation struggle, passed the famous Bardoli Resolution which included the following clause: "The Working Committee assures the zemindars that the Congress movement is in no way intended to attack their legal rights."

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Since 1934, Gandhi and the leaders of the National Congress have had as their chief aim that of preventing the renewal of the mass struggle against Imperialism, while using their leadership of the national movement as a lever to secure the concessions they hoped to obtain from Imperialism. They see in the rising forces of revolt, and especially in the emergence of the working class as a political force, a threat to their own bases of exploitation, and are consequently following an increasingly reactionary policy. Re-organizing the party administration so as to secure to the big bourgeoisie the unassailable position of leadership (1934), they transferred the center of activities to the parliamentary field and to working the new constitution in such a way as to secure the maximum benefits to the bourgeoisie; until the intransigence of the British Government in the war situation and the withdrawal of many of the political concessions of Provincial Autonomy again forced the Congress into opposition (1939). At present the Congress bourgeoisie is engaged in a restricted campaign of individual (non-violent) civil disobedience, with narrowly defined bourgeois aims, and under the dictatorial control of Gandhi himself. By this move they hope to prevent the development of a serious mass struggle against Imperialism, the leadership of which will be bound to pass into other hands. The main instrument whereby the Indian bourgeoisie seek to maintain control over the national movement is the Indian National Congress, the classic party of the Indian capitalist class, seeking as it does the support ofthe petty bourgeoisie and if possible of the workers, for their own aims. Despite the fact that revolutionary and semirevolutionary elements still remain within the fold of the Congress, despite its mass membership (5 millions in 1939), and despite the demagogic programmatic pronouncements (Constituent Assembly, Agrarian Reform), which the Congress has repeatedly made, the direction of its policy remains exclusively in the hands of the bourgeoisie, as also the control of the party organization, as was dramatically proved at Tripuri and after. The Indian National Congress in its social composition, its organization, and above all in its political leadership can be compared to the Kuomintang, which led the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 to its betrayal and defeat.

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The characterization of the Indian National Congress as a multiclass party, as the "National United Front" or as "a platform rather than a party" is a flagrant deception, and is calculated only to hand over to the bourgeoisie in advance the leadership of the coming struggle, and so make its betrayal and defeat a forgone conclusion. The more openly reactionary' interests of the Indian bourgeoisie find expression in many organizations which exist side by side with the Congress. Thus, the Liberal Federation (1918) represents those bourgeois elements who co-operate openly with the Imperialists. The sectional interests of the propertied classes are represented by various communal organizations, notably the Muslim League (1905) and the Hindu Mahasabha (1925), which are dominated by large landlord interests and pursue a reactionary policy on all social and economic issues, deriving a measure of mass support by an appeal to the religious and communal sentiments of the backward masses. The Petty Bourgeoisie

Because of their position of dependence on the capitalist class, and in the absence of a real challenge to its leadership from the proletariat, the various elements of the urban petty bourgeoisie and of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia have always played a satellite role to the bourgeoisie. The radicalization of the petty bourgeoisie under Imperialism found its first and strongest expression in the prolonged terrorist movement in Bengal and elsewhere, despite the heroism of its protagonists, the failure of which demonstrates finally the utter inability of the petty bourgeoisie intelligentsia to find an independent solution of its own problems. Today the urban petty bourgeoisie finds its political reflection mainly in the various organizations within the folds of, or under the influence of the Indian National Congress, such as the Forward Bloc, the Congress Socialist Party, (till recently), the Radical Democratic Party of M.N. Roy, etc. Within the Congress, the petty bourgeois leaders have repeatedly lent themselves to be used by the bourgeoisie as a defensive coloration before the masses, bridging with their radical

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phrases and irresponsible demagogy the gap between the reactionary Congress leadership and the hopes and aspirations of the masses. Thus the demagogy of Bose and Nehru, as well as the socialist phrases of M.N. Roy and the Congress Socialist Party, to say nothing of the "Marxism" of the National Fronters of the Communist Party of India, have in turn served the Gandhian leaders as a smoke screen for their own reactionary maneuvers. The humiliating capitulation of the C.S.P. to the Congress leadership, the conversion of Roy and his Radical Democrats to imperialist war-mongering and their transformation into open agents of the pro-imperialist section of the Indian bourgeoisie, are symptoms of the diminishing political role of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia, which, however theatrically it may pose before the masses in normal times, exposes in times of growing crisis its political bankruptcy, and exists only to be utilized by the bourgeoisie in their deception of the masses. The Peasantry

The Peasantry comprises the vast majority of the Indian population (70%). The stagnation and deterioration of agriculture, the increasing land hunger, the exactions of the government, the extension of parasitic landlordism, the increasing load of rural deb't and the consequent expropriation of the cultivators, are together driving the peasantry on to the revolutionary road. Peasant unrest, leading frequently to actual risings-Santhal Rebellion of 1855, Deccan Riots of 1975, Indigo War-has been a recurring motive in recent Indian history. In the last decades, and especially since the world economic crisis (1929), the peasant movement has been on the rise, and has taken on a more and more radical character. It is precisely the depth and scope of the agrarian crisis that places the revolution against Imperialism on the order of the day, contributing to it the driving force and the sweep which are necessary to accomplish the overthrow of the ruling power. Nevertheless, the agrarian crisis alone cannot produce a revolution, and the peasantry requires the

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leadership of another class to raise the stmggle to the level of a national revolution. The isolation and the scattered character of the peasant economy, the historical and political backwardness of the mral masses, the lack of inner cohesion within the peasantry, and the conflicting aims of its various strata, all combine to make it impossible for the peasantry to play a leading or even an independent role in the coming revolution. The invasion of moneyed interests has sharply accelerated the disintegrating tendencies within the peasantry. The creation of a vast army of landless peasants, share-croppers and wage-Iaborers on the land has immensely complicated the agrarian problem, and rendered necessary revolutionary measures of the most far-reaching character. The basic antagonism between landlord and peasant has not been reduced by the entry of finance-capital into agriculture, since this did not bring with it any change for the better in farming methods or in the system of land-tenure. On the contrary, the landlord-peasant antagonism has been given a sharper emphasis by the extension of parasitic claims on the land, and the overthrow of landlordism by the transference of the land to the cultivators remains the primary task of the agrarian revolution. Nevertheless, this basic antagonism has been supplemented by a new one, which is reflected in the growth of an agricultural proletariat in the strict sense of the word. Besides this, the invasion of finance-capital has . made the problems of mortgage and rural debt more pressing in some parts of India than in others, and these facts taken together will probably give to the agrarian revolution, at least in some areas, an anti-capitalist character at a very early stage. It is clear that the rural laborers are still too closely connected with the peasantry and share too closely the misfortunes of the peasantry generally, for the movement of the rural workers as such to assume national significance. But at the same time, these new problems of agriculture cannot be solved by the overthrow of landlordism alone, which cannot by itself put an end to land hunger, or reduce the heavy and disproportionate pressure of the population on the land. The introduction of socialist measures of large-scale collective farming, etc. will become necessary at some stage, depending on the correlation of political forces and the prospects of industrializing agriculture.

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Leadership of the Revolution

The leadership of the revolution, which the peasantry cannot provide for itself, can come only from an urban class. But the Indian bourgeoisie cannot possibly provide this leadership, since in the first place, it is reactionary through and through on the land question itself, sharing as it does so largely in the parasitic exploitation of the peasantry. Above all, the bourgeoisie, on account of its inherent weakness and dependence on Imperialism itself, is destined to play a counter-revolutionary role in the coming struggle for power. The leadership of the peasantry in the coming petty bourgeois democratic agrarian revolution that is immediately posed can therefore come only from the industrial proletariat, and an alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is fundamental pre-requisite of the Indian revolution. This alliance cannot be conceived in the form of a "Workers' and Peasants' Party" or of a "democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants" in the revolution. It is impossible so to fuse within a single party or a dictatorship the policies of two classes whose interests only partially coincide and are bound to come into conflict sooner or later. The revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and peasantry can mean only proletarian leadership of the peasant struggle and, in case of revolutionary victory, the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship with the support of the peasantry. The Peasant Movement

The growth of the peasant movement in recent times has led to the formation of various mass organizations among the peasantry, among which the most important are the Kisan Sanghas, (Peasant Committees), which are loosely linked up on a district, provincial, and finally all-Indian scale in the All-India Kisan Sabha, whose membership in 1939 was 800,000. These associations, whose precise character varies from district to district, are in general today under the control and influence of petty bourgeois intelligentsia elements who, as pointed out before, cannot follow a class policy independent of the bourgeoisie, although the growing mass pressure upon them is reflected

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in the more sharply radical demands they at forced to put forward. There is no means of deciding in advance the exact role of the kisan sanghas in the coming revolution. This will be determined by the correlation of forces within them, which in turn will depend largely on the consciousness and militancy of the lower layers of the peasantry and the measure of control they exercise in the kisan sanghas. But it can be stated beforehand, on the basis of the experience of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, that the existence of kisan sanghas, on however wide a scale, does not offer a substitute for the separate organizations of poor peasants and agricultural laborers in Rural Soviets, under the leadership of the urban working class. Only the soviets can assure that the agrarian revolution will be carried out in a thorough-going manner. The Working Class

The industrial proletariat is the product of modern capitalism in India. Its rapid growth in the period since 1914 can be illustrated by a comparison of the Factory Acts statistics for 1914 and 1936.

1914 1936

No. of Factories

No. of Workers Employed

2936 9323

950,973 1,652,147

The numerical strength of the industrial proletariat can be estimated at 5 millions, distributed mainly as follows (1935 figures):(a) Workers in power-driven factories (including those of the Native States) (b) Miners (c) Railwaymen (d) Water Transport Workers (e) Plantation Workers

1,855,000 371,000 636,000 361,000 1,000,000

The Indian working class is chiefly employed in light industries (cotton, jute etc.), but also to some extent in the iron and steel, cement, and coal-mining industries. The degree of concentration in industrial

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establishments is relatively high, owing to the recency of industrial development and the typically modern character of many of the new enterprises. Despite its numerical weakness in relation to the total population, the proletariat holds a position in Indian society which is quite out of proportion to its actual size, on account of the vital place it occupies in the economy of the country. The proletariat has grown with the investment of British capital from the beginning of capitalist production in India to this day. Although the native bourgeoisie has come belatedly on the scene to take part in the capitalist exploitation of the working class, the main and effective means of production are in the hands of British capital. Consequently, the working class has developed, out of all proportion, to the relative growth of the Indian bourgeoisie. The wage rates of the Indian proletariat are among the lowest, the living conditions the most miserable, the hours of work the longest, the factory conditions the worst, and the death-rate the highest, in the civilized world. When these facts are taken together with the fabulous profits made by the capitalist, (British and Indian alike), out of Indian industry, it becomes clear that the working class is the most ruthlessly and directly exploited class in India. The fight to remedy these intolerable conditions and to protect themselves from the steadily worsening conditions of exploitation bring the workers directly to the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and the capitalist system, the destruction of which is necessary to their emancipation. Working-Class Struggles

The record of proletarian struggle in India can be traced back to the last century; but the movement took on an organized character only in the post-war period. The first great wave of strikes (1918-21) signaled the emergence of the Indian working class as a separate force, and gave to the national political movement during this period a truly revolutionary significance for the first time in its history. In 1920, on the crest of this strike wave the Indian Trade Union Congress was formed. The second great strike wave of the late twenties, es·pecially in Bombay, showed an immense advance in the working class movement, marked by its increasing awakening to communist ideas.

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In 1929 the T.U.C. was split in two by the agents of the Imperialists in the working class movement, who insisted on cooperation with the Whitley Commission and the International Labor Office. Thus arose the reactionary Trade Union Federation (1929). The main body of the T.U.C. came under the control of the Communists and the nationalist bourgeoisie. But with the arrest of the Communist leaders on trumped-up charge, (the Meerut Conspiracy case), and the disastrous "Red Trade Union" policy followed by the Communists in accordance with the instructions of the Comintern bureaucracyleading to a further splitting of the T. U.c. in 1931 into trade unions under Communist control and trade unions under the influence of the nationalist bourgeoisie-the wave of working class struggle subsided once more. It was in this period, (i930-31), that the Communist Party of India, which commanded the confidence of the awakening workers, made the grievous political mistake of standing aside from the political mass movement which was again developing into a mass revolt against the British Raj. The tendency towards economic recovery commencing in 1936 combined with the mass activities in connection with the election campaign of the Congress led to a revival in the mass movement which entered once again on a period of rise. The Congress Ministries saw a resurgence of the working class strike movement with the Bengal Jute Strike (1937) and the Cawnpore Textile Strike (1938), which was arrested only by measures of increased repression introduced by the Government since the outbreak of war; but not before the Indian working class had clearly demonstrated its attitude towards the Imperialist war, particularly by the mass political anti-war strike in Bombay of 86,000 workers. In the political arena the working class has repeatedly demonstrated its heroism and its readiness for unremitting struggle. Its failure, nevertheless, to wrest the leadership of the national movement from bourgeois hands, must be explained by its own weakness in consciousness and organization, added to by the defects of its leadership in the critical years in particular.

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The Communist Party ofIndia which alone in the last two decades could have afforded the Marxist leadership that, above all things the working class needed, made instead a series of irresponsible mistakes, which find their expression in the bureaucratically conceived policies of the Comintern. In conformity with its false central programmatic aim the "democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants," the C.P.I. fostered the growth of Workers' and Peasants' Parties from 1926-28, at the expense of an independent working class party. This policy was shelved in 1929 to make way for an ultra-left sectarian policy, (in the celebrated "Third Period" days of the Comintern), the signal expression of which lay in the splitting of the trade union movement by the formation of "Red Trade Unions." This sectarian policy of the C.P.I. led to its isolation from the mass struggle of 1930-31, and made the bourgeois betrayal of the struggle so much the easier. In the period of ebb which followed, the C.P.I. was illegalized (1934) and has remained so since. From 1935 onwards the C.P.I., (again at the behest of the Comintern, now openly and flagrantly the tool of the Soviet bureaucracy), reversed its policy once more, and held out the hand of collaboration to the bourgeoisie through its policy of National Front which credited the bourgeoisie with a revolutionary role. The C.P.I. was transformed into a loyal opposition within the Congress, having no policy independent of that organization, a state of things which continued even into the period of the imperialist war. The mechanical echoers of every new slogan advanced by the Comintern to suit the changing policies of the Soviet bureaucrats, the C.P.1. has shown its reactionary character by its vacillating attitude towards the imperialist war. Today this attitude is the most shameful and callous of all, since in servile obedience to the counte-rrevolutionary Kremlin clique, they are openly advocating unconditional and active support of the Imperialist war. With its false theory of National Front, the C.P.I. is making ready to repeat the betrayal of the Chinese Revolution by handing over the leadership of the revolutionary struggle to the treacherous bourgeoisie. The Communist Party of India, because of the prestige it seeks to obtain from the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, is today the most dangerous influence within the working class of India.

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The Congress Socialist Party (1934) has from the beginning followed a policy of utter subservience to the Congress bourgeoisie, and remains today completely without a base within the working class. Surrendering its claim to an independent existence, the C.S.P. has been split wide open by the Communists who worked inside it, and is today an empty shell, devoid of political substance. To the left of the Communist Party, disgusted with its bureaucratic leaders and its reactionary policies, there exist a number of small parties and groups, occupying centrist positions. Such are the Bengal Labor Party (Bolshevik Party), the Red Flag Communists, etc. Without a clear-cut revolutionary policy and without making a decisive break organizationally and politically with the Comintern, these parties and groups are unable to offer the working class the independent leadership it requires. Nevertheless, these groups and parties contain may tried fighters who would be invaluable in a revolutionary working class party. This party can only be the Bolshevik-Leninist Party ofIndia, the party of the Fourth International in India, which alone, with its revolutionary strategy based on the accumulated experience of history and the theory of Permanent Revolution in particular, can lead the working class of India to revolutionary victory. Despite its subjective weakness in organization and consciousness, inevitable in a backward country and in the conditions of repression surrounding it, the working class is entirely capable of leading the Indian revolution. It is only class objectively fitted for this role, not only in relation to the Indian situation, but in view of the decline of capitalism on world scale, which opens the road to the international proletarian revolution. The proletariat needs above all to develop its own independent political party, free from the influence of the bourgeoisie, and armed with the weapons of revolutionary Marxism, to lead it not only in the day to day struggles but above all in the coming revolution. Without such a party the proletariat must fail in its historic task of leading the masses of India to revolutionary victory.

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SECTION 3. THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION

India faces a historically belated bourgeois-democratic revolution, the main tasks of which are the overthrow of British Imperialism, the liquidation of a semi-feudal land system, and the clearing away of feudal remnants in the form of the Indian Native States. But although the bourgeois-democratic revolution occurring in the advanced capitalist countries in previous centuries found leadership in the then rising bourgeoisie, the Indian bourgeoisie, appearing on the scene only after the progressive role of the bourgeoisie in the world as a whole has been exhausted, is incapable of providing leadership to the revolution that is unfolding in India. In the first place, as a historically belated class, they do not possess the strength and independence of the early bourgeoisie of former times. Connected with and dependent on British capital from their birth, they have progressively been brought into a position of subservience to British finance-capital, and today display the characteristics of a predominantly comprador bourgeoisie enjoying at the best the position of a very junior partner in the firm, British Imperialism & Co. Hence, while they have been prepared to place themselves, through the Indian National Congress, at the head of the anti-imperialist mass movement for the purpose of utilizing it as a bargaining weapon to secure concessions from the imperialists, they have restricted its scope and prevented its development into a revolutionary assault on imperialism. Incapable from the very nature of their position of embarking on a revolutionary struggle to secure their independence, and fearful of such a struggle, they have maintained their control over the mass movement only to betray it at every critical juncture. Secondly, unlike the once revolutionary bourgeoisie of former times, which arose in opposition to the feudal landowning class and in constant struggle against it, the Indian bourgeoisie is closely connected with the landlords through mortgages. They are therefore incapable of leading the peasants in the agrarian revolt against landlordism. On the contrary, as is clearly demonstrated by the declared policy and actions of the Indian National Congress, both during the Civil Disobedience Movements and in the period of the Congress Ministries, they are staunch supporters of zemindari interests.

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Finally, unlike the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of former times, the revolution in India is unfolding at a time when large concentrations of workers already exist in the country. The industrial proletariat numbering 5 millions occupies a position of strategic importance in the economy of the country which cannot be measured by its mere numerical strength. It is important to remember, moreover, that a hitherto unca1culated but undoubtedly very high proportion of these workers are employed in large concerns employin·g several hundreds and thousands of workers. The high degree of concentration of the Indian proletariat immeasurably advances its class consciousness and organizational strength. It was only in the post-war years that the Indian working class emerged as an organized force on a national scale. But the militant and widespread strike-waves of 1918-21 and of 1928-29, which were the precursors of the mass civil disobedience movements of 1920-21 and of 1930-34 respectively, testify to the rapidity of the awakening. These workers are in daily conflict not only with the Imperialist owners of capital, but also with the native bourgeoisie. The workers, moreover, being a class exploited not only by indigenous capital, but also in fact predominantly by foreign capital, have as a class grown to an extent out of all proportion to the size and strength of the Indian bourgeoisie. Faced by the threat of this new and growing class, which is rapidly awakening to consciousness and making a bid to play an independent role in the national political arena, the Indian bourgeoisie has grown more conservative and suspicious. With every advance in organization and consciousness of the workers, they have drawn nearer to the Imperialists and further away from the masses. Even the oppositional role they were wont to play against Imperialism has become a caricature of its former self. Fearful already of any kind of mass movement against Imperialism, the aim of their control over the national movement through the Indian National Congress is today not so much the securing of concessions from Imperialism as preventing the outbreak of an antiimperialist movement on a mass scale. It is clear that not a single one of the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution can be solved under the leadership of the Indian bourgeoisie. Far from leading the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the Indian bourgeoisie will go over to the camp of the Imperialists and landlords on the outbreak of the revolution and will play an actively counter-revolutionary role.

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The urban petty bourgeoisie, daily becoming declassed and ..' pauperized under imperialism, and declining into economic insignificance, cannot even conceive of playing an independent role in the coming revolution. Since, however, there is no prospect whatever of improving their condition under imperialism, but on the contrary they are faced with actual pauperization and ruin, they are forced on to ' the revolutionary road. The peasantry, the largest numerically and the most atomized, backward and oppressed class, is capable of local uprisings and partisan warfare, but requires the leadership of a more advanced class for this struggle to be elevated to an all-national level. Without such leadership the peasantry alone cannot make a revolution. The task of such leadership falls in the nature of things on the Indian proletariat, which is the only class capable of leading the toiling masses in the onslaught against Imperialism, landlordism and the Native Princes. The concentration and discipline induced by its very place in capitalist economy, it numerical strength, the sharpness of the class antagonism which daily brings it into conflict with the Imperialists who are the main owners of capital in India, its organization and experience of struggle,and the vital position it occupies in the economy of the country, as also its steadily worsening condition under Imperialism, all combine to fit the Indian proletariat for this task. It is only under the leadership of the Indian proletariat (as distinct from the "hegemony of the proletariat," which is an equivocal and deceptive phrase coined in preparation for handing over the leadership to the bourgeoisie) that the revolution in India can be carried to a victorious conclusion. But the leadership of the working class in the bourgeois-democratic revolution poses before the working class the prospect of seizing the power and in addition to accomplishing the long overdue bourgeoisdemocratic tasks of proceeding with its own socialist tasks. And thus the bourgeois-democratic revolution develops uninterruptedly into the proletarian revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only state-form capable of supplanting the dictatorship of the imperialist bourgeoisie in India. The realization of the combined character of the Indian revolution is essential for the planning of the

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revolutionary strategy of the working class. Should the working class fail in its historic task of seizing the power and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, the revolution will inevi~ably recede, the bourgeois tasks themselves remain unperformed, and the power swing back in the end to the imperialists without whom the Indian bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself against the hostile masses. A backward country like India can accomplish its bourgeois-democratic revolution only through the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The correctness of this axiom of the theory of permanent revolution is demonstrated by the victorious Russian revolution of October 1917, as it is confirmed on the negative side by the tragic fate of the Chinese revolution of 1925-27. The seizure of power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the supreme task of the Indian working class. The illusory slogan of "democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants" (postulating a non-existent intermediate stage prior to the proletarian dictatorship in which the bourgeois-democratic tasks are performed), which the Bolshevik Party, under the leadership of Lenin, abandoned in time to save the Russian revolution, can result, only in confusing and misleading the workers. In China, the "democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants" was demonstrated in practice to be nothing more than the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In India, moreover, where the Imperialists are the main owners of capital, the revolutionary assault of the workers against Imperialism will bring them into direct and open conflict with the property forms of the Imperialists from the moment the struggle enters the openly revolutionary stage. The exigencies of the struggle itself will, in the course of the openly revolutionary assault against Imperialism, demonstrate to the workers the necessity of destroying not only Imperialism but the foundations of capitalism itself. The workers will learn that it is a desperate struggle not only against Imperialism, but also against its economic and political agencies in India, against the native bourgeoisie, and all their flunkeys. Thus, though the Indian revolution will be bourgeois in its immediate aims, the tasks of the proletarian revolution will be posed from the outset. The expropriation ofthe capitalists will be on the order of the day on the very morrow of the seizure of power by the workers.

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But the revolution cannot be stabilized even at this stage. The dictatorship of the proletariat in India alone cannot maintain itself indefinitely against the hostile forces of World Imperialism without the support of the international proletariat. It will find a powerful ally, no doubt, in the Soviet Union, the first workers' state. But the ultimate fate of the revolution in India, as in Russia, will be determined in the arena of the international revolution. Nor will India by its own forces be able to accomplish the task of making the transition to Socialism. Not only the backwardness of the country, but also the international division of labor and the interdependence produced by capitalism itself-of the different parts of the world economy, demand that this task of the establishment of Socialism can be accomplished only on a world scale. The Indian proletariat will, of course, proceed with the socialist transformation of society to the extent that this is possible in the concrete circumstances, but the establishment of the socialist society will depend on the course of international revolution. The victorious revolution in India, however, dealing a mortal blow to the oldest and most widespread Imperialism in the world, will, on the one hand, produce the most profound crisis in the entire capitalist world and shake World Capitalism to its foundations. On the other hand, it will inspire and galvanize into action millions of proletarians and colonial slaves the world over and blaze the trail of World Revolution. Accordingly the Bolshevik-Leninist Party declares its fundamental aims to be the following: (1) The Overthrow of British Imperialism. (2) The Seizure of Power by the Working Class and the Establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. (3) The Confiscation and Nationalization of all Factories, Mines, Banks, Plantations and Other Capitalist Concerns. (4) The Nationalization of the Land. (5) The Abolition of the Native States.

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SECTION 4. THE PROGRAMME OF TRANSITIONAL DEMANDS

The strategic task of Bolshevik-Leninists in the present period, a prerevolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organization, consists in overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions in India (accentuated enormously by the present Imperialist World War) and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard. This strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered' attention to all, even small and partial question of tactics. It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between the present demands and the programme of the Indian revolution. The Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India stands in the forefront of all day to day struggles of the workers and lends its support to the struggles of the peasantry and other oppressed sections. But it carries on this day to day work within the framework of the actual, that is, revolutionary perspective of the overthrow of Imperialism. At the same time, the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India puts forward a programme of transitional demands flowing from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the masses ano unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the overthrow of Imperialism and the conquest of power by the proletariat. This is of particularly great importance in the present epoch, when every serious demand of the proletariat, and every serious demand of the peasantry and wide strata of the petty bourgeoisie is incapable of realization under imperialism (nor in fact within the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state). The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day to day work, but because, it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution. The essence of the transitional demands is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against imperialism and the very bases of the bourgeois regime itself. The task of the transitional programme lies in the systematic mobilization of the masses for the revolution under the leadership of the proletariat.

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The National Political Movement

The supreme task of the Indian proletariat is the conquest of power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But, to fulfil this task the proletariat must, as a pre-condition, lead the peasantry and other democratic petty bourgeoisie to the overthrow of British Imperialism, the liquidation of landlordsim and the abolition of the Native States. This is the only road in India to the proletarian dictatorship. The struggle for the revolutionary achievement of these democratic tasks can go forward only under the leadership of the proletariat and will necessitate the most resolute struggle against the Indian bourgeoisie and their petty bourgeois agencies in the political movement. Hence, the Indian situation not only demands that the Indian proletariat advance by all the means within its power its own class struggle against capitalism, imperialist and native alike. It is also imperative that the proletariat should participate actively in the wider national political movement, with the aim of wresting the leadership Of the anti-imperialist struggle from the hands of the reactionary native bourgeoisie, and further that it should give its fullest support to the developing peasant struggle against landlordism, thereby laying the foundations of the revolutionary worker-peasant alliance, which is the absolute pre-requisite of the victory of the Indian revolution. The necessity to participate in the national political movement does not, however, in the least imply a policy of mass affiliation (individual or collective) to the Indian National Congress which, though predominantly petty bourgeois in composition, is completely dominated and led by the Indian bourgeoisie and functions as the servile instrument of its class policies. To regard the Congress as a "National United Front," or to entertain any illusions whether of capturing the Congress from the bourgeoisie or of successfully exposing its bourgeois leadership while remaining loyal to the Congress, would be fatal to the independence of the proletarian movement and its assumption of political leadership, and would serve only the reactionary interests of the bourgeoisie. The Bolshevik-

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Leninist Party therefore, denounces the Indian National Congress as the class party of the Indian bourgeoisie, and calls upon the workers to place no trust whatever in the Congress or its leaders. This does not of course absolve Bolshevik-Leninists from the task of doing fraction work (of course, in all cases under strict party discipline) within the Congress, so long as there remain within their folds revolutionary and semi-revolutionary elements who may be won away from these organizations. Nor does the Bolshevik-Leninist Party follow a sectarian policy with regard to such activities of the Congress as are progressive. It will discern the progressive acts of the Congress and support them, but critically and independently, without confounding its organization, programme or banner with the Congress for a moment. "March separately, strike together"-must be the watchword of the policy of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party in relation to all progressive actions under the aegis of the Congress, to every oppositional and revolutionary action undertaken against British Imperialism. At the same time the Bolshevik-Leninist Party must put forward its own slogans, foresee the inevitable betrayals of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois leaders, warn the masses against them, and this gain the confidence of the masses on t~e basis of their revolutionary experience. Constituent Assembly

The slogan of Constituent Assembly has been widely accepted by many political organizations in India as the central slogan of the antiimperialist movement. But this slogan, conceiving of an intermediate democratic stage in the Indian revolution, when a democratically elected parliament will have the power, is illusive and deceptive. It is destined in the later phases of the revolution to be utilized by the bourgeoisie and its agents as a slogan in opposition to and for the sabotaging of the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship in the soviet form. Hence the Bolshevik-Leninist Party cannot under any circumstances give it unqualified support. However, the slogan of Constituent Assembly, advanced as a fighting slogan to overthrow imperialism, is capable of assuming a progressive character in the early stages of the revolutionary struggle.

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In such circumstances, the Bolshevik-Leninist Party will lend its critical support to the slogan, not as one capable of objective fulfillment even for a successful revolution, but as a rallying cry in the specific stage of the struggle. At the same time, the Bolshevik-Leninist Party must advance and popularize its own slogan of soviets. In any case Bolshevik-Leninist Party cannot render any support whatsoe~er to the fraudulent slogan of Constituent Assembly as put forward at present by the Congress. In the mouths of the bourgeoisie this slogan does not connote the overthrow of imperialist rule but becomes a deceptive catchword signifying their evasion of the struggle; for it is advanced as an aim to be realized without a revolutionary victory over imperialism and dispensing with the need for its overthrow. Democratic Rights

With the development of the mass political struggle in India since the beginning of the century, British Imperialism has instituted a system of repressive legislation, progressively inaugrating a gendarme regime not less systematic and ruthless than that of Russian Czarism or German Fascism. Since the commencement of the imperialist war repression has been many times intensified. Even those nominal rights previously possessed by the masses have been openly withdrawn, and a naked rule of terror substituted through the Defence of India Act, administered by a bureaucracy discarding every pretence of constitutional government. The press has been gagged by a series of iniquitous Press Acts and a systematic police censorship of all publications. Rights of free speech and assembly have been so curtailed that they are practically nonexistent. Radical and revolutionary political parties are compelled to lead an underground existence. Even the formation and functioning of mass organizations, such as trade unions and kisan sabhas, is seriously hampered by innumerable restrictions on their working, by the persecution of their members, and by the frequent illegalization of the organizations themselves. The right-to-strike no longer exists in all "essential war industries," and elsewhere is so fettered by arbitrary legislation as to be practically non-existent. Thousands of militant mass leaders have been imprisoned on flimsy pretexts or detained without trial. The restriction of individual movement by means of externment

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and internment orders has become a commonplace. The spearhead of these repressive actions has been directed against the working class and its allies the peasantry, and they have as their special aim the beheading of the mass movement against imperialism. The widespread hostility towards British Imperialism among all oppressed sections in India, and the fact that in their economic struggles the masses daily collide with the repressive machinery of the government, gives to the struggle, for democratic rights in the prerevolutionary stage, an ever increasing revolutionary potency. The Bolshevik-Leninist Party must prepare the proletariat to lead the democrl!tic struggle of all oppressed sections with the aim of directing it towards the general assault on British Imperialism. The BolshevikLeninist Party therefore advances the following transitional demands: RELEASE OF ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS. FREEDOM OF SPEECH, PRESS AND ASSOCIATION. REPEAL OF ALL REPRESSIVE LAWS. The struggle for democratic rights assumes a special importance in the Native States in view of the fact that the most elementary civil rights have always been openly denied to the masses of the people by the feudal despotism. These Indian States have long lost all semblance of historical justification and are maintained artificially by British Imperialism solely as bastions of support for itself scattered throughout India. Hence every form of feudal tyranny is tolerated and supported by the British in the Native States, and their rulers have been repeatedly defended by British arms against the revolts of the oppressed masses, especially of the exploited peasantry. The party puts forward as a transitional demand the slogan of the COMPLETE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE NATIVE STATES. The struggle of the masses in the Native States against their rulers will inevitably draw them into the struggle against British Imperialism on which the rulers are utterly and directly dependent. Consequently, it is impossible to view the two struggles in the Indian States and in British India in crosssections. Furthermore, the fermentation that the Indian struggle

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produces and has produced in the Native States, only reinforces the closeness and even identity of the two movements. Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours

Two basic afflictions in which are summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system: unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle. The Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges flowing from capitalism's death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India demands employment and decent living conditions for all. Against the bounding rise in prices caused by the war, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in proportion to the increase in prices of consumer goods. Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, "structural" as well as "conjunctural," the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in a solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other programme for the present catastrophic period.

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If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands, inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. "Realizability" or "unrealizability" are in the given instance a question of the relationship offorces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what its immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery. Trade Unions in the Transitional Epoch

The Bolshevik-Leninists stand in the front-line trenches of all kinds of struggles, even when they involve the modest material interests or democratic rights of the working class. They take active part in mass trade unions for the purpose of strengthening them and raising their spirit of militancy. They fight uncompromisingly against any attempt to subordinate the unions to the bourgeois state and bind the proletariat to "compulsory arbitration" and every other form of police guardianship. At the same time the Bolshevik-Leninist Party resolutely rejects and condemns trade union fetishism. Trade unions, even the most powerful, embrace no more than 25% of the working class in any capitalist country, and at that predominantly the more skilled and better paid layers. This percentage is even smaller in the colonial conditions of India. For, the inability and unwillingness of the Imperialist and Indian bourgeoisie alike to grant concessions has hindered the development of a stable trade union movement, and repression, with which every attempt at independent proletarian organization is met, is a formi4able obstacle to the growth of trade unions. The more oppressed majority of the working class is drawn only episodically into the struggle, during a period of exceptional upsurges in the labor movement. Dur-ing such moments, it is necessary to create organizations, ad hoc, embracing the whole fighting mass: Strike Committees, Factory Committees, and finally, Soviets. Therefore the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India should always try not only to renew the top leadership of the trade unions, boldly and

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resolutely in critical moments, advancing new militant leaders in place of routine functionaries and careerists; but also to create in all possible instances, independent militant organizations corresponding more closely to the problems of mass struggle against bourgeois society; not stopping, if necessary, even in the face of a direct break with the conservative apparatus of the trade unions. If it be criminal to turn one's back to mass organizations for the sake of fostering sectarian fictions, it is no less so to passively tolerate subordination of the revolutionary mass movement to the control of openly reactionary or disguised conservative ("progressive") bureaucratic cliques. Trade unions are not ends in themselves; they are but means along the road to proletarian revolution. Factory Committees

During a transitional epoch the workers' movement does not have a systematic and well-balanced but a feverish and explosive character. Slogans as well as organizational forms should be subordinated to the indices of the moment. The leadership should respond sensitively to the initiative of the masses. Sit-down-strikes, the latest phenomena of this kind of initiative, go beyond the limits of "normal" capitalist procedure. Independently of the demands of the strikers, the temporary seizure of factories deals a blow to the idol-capitalist property. Every sit-down-strike poses in a practical manner the question of who is the boss of the factory: the capitalist or the workers? If the sit-down-strike raises this question episodically, the factory committee gives it organized expression. Elected by all the factory employees, the factory committee immediately creates a counterweight to the will of the administration. The prime significance of the factory committee lies in the fact that it becomes the militant staff for such working class layers as the trade union is usually incapable of moving into action. It is precisely from these more oppressed layers that the most self-sacrificing battalions of the revolution will come. From the moment that the committee makes its appearance, a factual dual power is established in the factory. By its very essence, it

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represents the transitional state because it includes in itself two irreconcilable regimes: the capitalist and the proletarian. The fundamental significance of the factory committee is precisely contained in the fact that, they open the doors if not to a direct revolutionary, then to a pre-revolutionary period between the bourgeois and the proletarian regimes. That the propagation of the factory committee idea is neither premature nor artificial is attested to by the fact that sit-down-strikes have already taken place in India. Waves of this type will be inevitable in the immediate future. It is necessary to begin a campaign on favor of factory committees in order not to be caught unawares. Unemployment

The struggle against unemployment is not to be considered without calling for a broad and bold organization of public works. But public works have a continuous and progressive significance for society, as for the unemployed themselves, only when they are made part of a general plan, worked out to cover a considerable number of years. Within the framework of this plan, the workers would demand resumption, as public utilities, of work in private businesses closed as a result of the war. Workers control in such cases would be replaced by direct workers' management. Expropriation of Capitalists in Certain Industries

The socialist programme of expropriation, that is, of political overthrow of the bourgeoisie and liquidation of its economic domination should in no case during the present transitional period hinder us from advancing, when the occasion warrants, the demand for the expropriation of certain key branches of industry vital for national existence or of the most parasitic group of the bourgeoisie. The difference between these demands and the muddle-headed reformist slogan of "nationalization" lies in the following: (1) We reject compensation; (2) we warn the masses against demagogues who, giving lip service to nationalization, remain in reality agents of capital;

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(3) we call upon the masses to rely only upon their own revolutionary strength; (4) we link up the question of expropriation with that of the seizure of power by the workers. The Peasantry

The party actively supports all concrete struggles of the peasantry against exploitation and oppression, including struggles for the reduction of land revenue and rent, reduction of debt and the abolition of feudal dues, forced labor, serfdom etc. It participates in the activities of Kisan Sabhas and all genuine peasant organizations as representatives of the revolutionary proletariat, popularising its own programme in relation to the peasantry, and seeking to lay foundations of the worker-peasant alliance which is the indispensable condition of the victory of the Indian revoluti9n. Above all, it seeks to expose the reactionary role of the Congress and to wean away the peasantry from the influence of the bourgeoisie, pointing out that not one of the fundamental demands of the peasantry will ever be conceded by the bourgeoisie and that it is only with the leadership and assistance of the proletariat standing in opposition to vested interests of all the exploiters, that these demands can be fulfilled. The party seeks to link up each concrete struggle of the peasants with the general political struggle against imperialism-a task rendered easier by the direct role of repression and extortion played by the imperialist bureaucracy. Finally, the party will pay special attention to the interests of the more oppressed and down-trodden sections of the peasantry, and, as these layers increasingly come to consciousness, will help them to formulate and come forward with their own special demands. In the initial phase of the agrarian upsurge, the slogan of ABOLITION OF LANDLORDISM without compensation is likely to rally behind it the middle peasantry drawing with them considerable numbers of the more oppressed sections of the peasant masses. The party accordingly advances the slogan of "Abolition of landlordism without compensation."

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The abolition of landlordism alone, however, will not meet the needs of the lowest and most exploited layers of the peasantry (agricultural laborers and landless peasants). But as the struggle develops, these sections will become increasingly articulate and will come forward with their own demands involving a more thoroughgoing solution of the agrarian problem. Accordingly, in proportion as the agrarian struggle deepens with the coming into consciousness of these layers, the party increasingly advances the slogan of LAND TO THE TILLERS OF THE SOIL, which connotes a more thorough-going and radical redistribution of the land. The party puts forward the slogan of LIQUIDATION OF AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS, which is capable of uniting all sections of the exploited peasantry in the agrarian struggle. Soldiers

The rank and file of the Indian Army is recruited almost exclusively from the peasantry and increasingly from its more depressed and backward strata. By a policy of carefully segregating the army from the mass of the population and of making invidious distinction between socalled martial and non-martial races, British Imperialism attempts to keep the army immune from the political ferment in the country. The soldiers, however, being mainly peasants in uniform, are naturally sensitive to peasant demands and cannot fail to be affected by an agrarian upsurge in the country. Since the attitude of the soldiers is of decisive importance in every revolution, the Bolshevik-Leninist Party must face the urgent task of widespread revolutionary propaganda (against imperialism and the imperialist war and on the land question) in the Indian Army. It must link up this propaganda with the concrete grievances of the soldiers-the unsatisfactory conditions of service, their despatch for wars abroad, etc. This task, which has been immensely facilitated by the increased accessibility of the soldiers in the prevailing war conditions (the quartering of troops amidst the civilian population, frequent movement of troops, etc.), becomes all the more urgent with the heavy recruitments that are increasingly being made for the purposes of the imperialist war.

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However, under the very strict conditions of discipline that obtain in the army, the possibility of carrying on partial struggles is practically non-existent. The vital need is for a broad central slogan which will provide a focal point for all the specific demands of the soldiers, and thus rally them at a time when the repercussions of the class struggle in the country or the lowering of the soldiers' morale through military defeats is breaking down the discipline of the army. Accordingly, the Bolshevik-Leninist Party, whilst carrying on the widest revolutionary propaganda among the soldiers by all means within its power, advances the transitional slogan of SOLDIERS COMMITTEES to put forward all demands of the rank and file and to act on their behalf. Students

The Bolshevik-Leninist Party recognises that students, particularly in India, where, for the most part they come from all strata of a petty bourgeoisie that is fast heading for pauperization and ruin, are a valuable source of cadres for the revolutionary movement. Nevertheless, the student body is not a homogenous one performing a separate social role, or capable of interfering independently in politics. The Bolshevik-Leninist Party can attach no serious significance to the "independent" mobilization of students for the realization of "specifically student demands," as the Stalinists and other radicals of various shades are attempting to do. The party's own aim is to draw students into the revolutionary political movement, and with this aim it works in existing student organizations and participates in the agitation for student demands. Nor is it a question of setting up revolutionary student organizations, but of doing revolutionary propaganda among the students. Further, the existing student organizations offer to a limited extent a platform for political propaganda which can reach wide strata of those engaged in the national political movement. Hence, the Bolshevik-Leninist Party will utilise to the full all opportunities of advancing its own programme on the platform of student organizations-not however, as a "student program" but as that of the revolutionary proletariat.

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Soviets

Factory Committees, as already stated, are elements of dual power inside the factory. Consequently, their existence is possible only under condition of increasing pressure by the masses. This is likewise true of special mass groupings, such as peasants' committees for the seizure of land, soldiers' committees, etc. that may arise for struggle, the very appearance of which bears witness to the fact that the class-struggle has overflowed the limits of the traditional mass organizations. These new organs and centers, however, will soon begin to feel their lack of cohesion and insufficiency. Not one of the transitional demands can be fully met under the conditions of preserving the imperialist regime. At the same time, the deepening of the social crisis, enormously accentuated by the war, will increase not only the sufferings of the masses but also their impatience, persistence and pressure. Millions of toil-worn "little men," to whom the reformist leaders never gave a thought, will begin to pound insistently on the doors of the workers' organizations. The unemployed will join the movement. The peasant masses, the soldiers, the oppressed layers of the cities, the women workers, proletarianized layers of the intelligentsia-all of these will seek unity and leadership. As the struggle moves ever more openly in the direction of civil war, and as the fullest resources of the counter-revolutionary terror are mobilized by the government, the prime need will be for the co-ordination and centralization of the vast and increasing forces daily awakening to consciousness and struggle. Such a form of organization is required as will harmonize, coordinate and centralize the different demands and forms of the revolutionary struggle. In marshalling the mass forces during this critical period, the working class must necessarily take the lead, guided by its party in adapting the lessons of its own revolutionary experiences in the European and Chinese arenas to the problems of the Indian revolution. The main form of mass organization for the concrete battles to smash British Imperialism in India will be the Soviets; revolutionary councils of workers, peasants and soldiers delegates, elected on the widest possible franchise of the exploited, subject to immediate recall,

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and therefore voicing with the least distortion the ever sharpening demands of the masses in the struggle. The soviets will concretize the worker-peasant alliance. Soviets are not limited to an "a priori" programme. The organization, broadening out together with the movement, is renewed again and again in its womb. All political currents of the proletariat can struggle for the leadership of the proletariat on the basis of the widest democracy. The slogan of Soviets therefore crowns the programme of transitional demands. Soviets can arise only when the mass movement enters an open revolutionary stage. From the first moment of their appearance the soviets, acting as a pivot around which millions of toilers are united in their struggle against the exploiters, become competitors and opponents of local authorities and then of the central government. The soviets initiate a period of dual power in the country. Dual power in its turn is the culminating point of the transitional period. Two regimes, the dictatorship of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat supported by the peasantry, stand irreconcilably opposed to each other. The fate of India depends on the outcome. Should th:e revolution be defeated, the fascist dictatorship of the imperialist bourgeoisie will follow. In case of victory, the power of the soviets, that is, the dictatorship of the proletariat will be established and the road to the socialist transformation· of Indian society will be opened. With the entry of the struggle into the open revolutionary stage the Bolshevik-Leninist Party calls for: THE FORMATION OF WORKERS' SOVIETS. THE FORMATION OF A WORKERS' MILITIA. THE SEIZURE BY THE WORKERS OF FACTORIES, BANKS, PLANTATIONS, ETC. THE DIRECT SEIZURE OF THE LAND BY PEASANT COMMITTEES.

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THE ORGANIZATION OF THE PEASANT POOR IN PEASANT SOVIETS AND OF THE SOLDIERS IN SOLDIERS' SOVIETS. THE ARMED OVERTHROW OF IMPERIALIST RULE. SECTION 5. INTERNATIONAL

The Crisis of Imperialism and the Imperialist War

The working class ofIndia, like their fellow-workers all over the world, are today in the throes of the Second Imperialist World War. From the time when, expanding imperialism partitioned up the world into colonies and spheres of influence, alterations in the relative strength of rival imperialisms led to new armed struggles for the redistribution of colonies in accordance with the new correlations of power. But, the First Imperialist World War of 1914-18, which forced every Imperialism to enter the arena, signalled the entry of World Capitalism into the stage of permanent decline. From this bitter conflict, in which millions of lives were sacrificed and vast productive forces squandered, World Imperialism emerged, not merely exhausted by the war, but permanently weakened by the defeat of Russian Czardom not by an imperialist enemy but by the Russian working class. When the Russian workers transformed the imperialist war into civil war and overthrew their capitalist rulers, they broke the chain of world capitalism and inaugurated an era of international revolution. But, thanks to the treacherous role of the Social Democratic parties and the failure of revolutionary parties to mature swiftly in the fire of events, the post-war revolutionary upsurge of the workers of Europe was defeated, and world capitalism hastened to rebuild itself. The war of 1914-18, far from solving the crisis of declining capitalism, reproduced these same problems in a more accentuated form. The post-war period was one of constant economic and political crisis in the capitalist world and of unparalleled destitution and exploitation forthe toiling masses. British and French Imperialisms largely transferred the weight of this crisis on to the backs

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of their colonial peoples. Other capitalist structures, as in Italy, Germany and Japan, survived only by throwing the whole burden of the crisis on their own working class, through that form of the dictatorship of finance-capital known as Fascism, under which, all independent organizations of the workers are suppressed and their exploitation pitilessly increased. Under Fascist dictatorships, these younger imperialisms annexed all that could be annexed by aggression against weak or backward countries (Japanese invasion of China, Italian annexation of Abyssinia, German seizure of Austria and Czecho-Slovakia). But, these annexations only served to sharpen the rivalry between the newer and younger imperialisms forced to expand, and the older established imperialisms obstructing their growth; since, on the one hand, they roused the jealousy and suspicion of the older imperialisms, while on the other hand, they by no means solved the imperialist-expansionist problems of the younger imperialisms. This inter-imperialist rivalry reached its logical culmination, war, in September 1939, with the commencement of open hostilities between Germany-the most powerful of the younger imperialisms-and Anglo-French Imperialisms, in a struggle for the redistribution of colonies and for world domination. Thus commenced the Second Imperialist World War. Already major military events have altered the balance of power. The German armies have over-run the continent of Europe. The invasion of France and military defeat of French Imperialism have taken place. Italy has entered the war on the side of the German Imperialists. The U.S.A, the largest and most powerful capitalist state in the modem world, has ranged herself on the side of Britain in the Imperialist conflict. Seeking a solution for the insoluble problems of the era of permanent world capitalist decline, which she entered in 1929, U.S.A. Imperialism has been compelled to enter the struggle in order, after the defeat of Germany, to secure her own world domination as the only way out of the economic impasse. Japanese Imperialism, conflicting with the interests of British and American Imperialisms in the Far East, entered the struggle in order to secure for herself the extension and consolidation of her Empire in the Pacific.

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M.N. Roy and his radical democrats, as well as a number of trade union bureaucrats who, together with the social chauvinists in the "democratic" countries, have entered into the open service of the imperialist bourgeoisie, are seeking to maintain that the above conflict is not an imperialist war but a war of Democracy against Fascism. But, in the face of the experience of the intensified repression with which British Imperialism is today attempting to maintain her stranglehold over the empire, there is no necessity to demonstrate that the Imperialists are fighting one another not for political principles but for domination over the world under cover of any principles that will suit their purpose. To substitute political or moral abstractions for the actual aims of the warring imperialist camps, is not to fight for democracy but to help the brigands to disguise their robbery, pillage and violence. With the mass slaughter, the unparalleled destruction and untold sufferings entailed by the war, the international proletariat and the oppressed masses of the colonies are being driven to the point where they will see in revolution the only way out. "The chief enemy of the people is in its own country." The prime task of proletarian revolutionaries in the present imperialist conflict is to follow the policy of revolutionary defeatism in relation to their "own" government and to help develop the class struggle to the point of civil war regardless of the possibility of such a course leading to the defeat of one's "own" imperialist government, brought about, or hastened by the revolutionary movement of the masses, is an incomparably "lesser evil" than victory gained at the price of the political prostration of the proletariat. International developments are governed by two main contradictions. The first is the contradiction of the existence of a workers' state (the Soviet Union) in a capitalist world. The second is the inter-imperialist rivalry which has now broken out openly into war. Admittedly it is the decline of the world revolutionary movement, thanks to the reactionary and counter-revolutionary policies of the Comintern bureaucracy, which enabled the inter-imperialist rivalry to assume greater magnitude than the former contradiction and to lead to the outbreak of the imperialist war. The only obstacle in the path of

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war was the fear of the property-owning classes of revolution. It is precisely because they felt themselves immune from imminent danger of such an upheaval that the imperialists have dared to plunge the world into a holocaust of slaughter. But the supercession of the capitalistworkers' state antagonism by the inter-imperialist antagonism and the temporary postponement of a united capitalist war of intervention against the Soviet Union by no means removed the danger of an attack on the Soviet Union by one of the parties· in the inter-imperialist embroilment. War has a logic of its own, as is borne out by the attack on the Soviet Union by Germany. Nor has the danger of a united capitalist war of intervention against the Soviet Union been indefinitely postponed. The capitalist-workers' state antagonism which is today temporarily in the background may, however, at any moment in the course ofthe present war, assume the greater importance; in which case peace at the expense of the Soviet Union and a united capitalist war of intervention would be on the order of the day. Further, even in the event of the military defeat of Germany, the danger of a capitalist overturn in the USSR, either through the Stalinist bureaucracy becoming an agency of Anglo-American Imperialism, or through an interventionist war against the Soviet Union, would arise immediately. The Working Class, the Soviet Union, and the War

The working class of Russia seized power in October 1917 and established the dictatorship of the proletariat. But with the defeats of the post-war revolutionary movements, the workers of the USSR, isolated in a capitalist world, have had to battle against the most tremendous odds. Externally they are surrounded by capitalist enemies who have the destruction of the workers' state as a fundamental aim. Internally the backwardness of the country and the failure of the support that only the World Revolution could have brought them, have together paved the way for the growth of a bureaucracy that stands in opposition to the interests of the working class both in the USSR and in the rest of the world. This bureaucracy, headed by Stalin, which has imprisoned, expelled, persecuted and murdered the proletarian vanguard representing the true historical interests of the proletariat, came to power by corrupting the Bolshevik Party and converting it into

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a bureaucratic instmment, as well as by bureaucratising the Soviets which have today been juridically liquidated under the New Constitution. By these means the bureaucracy has expropriated the workers of the Soviet Union of political power. Their single aim is the maintenance of their own power and privileged position, at whatever cost to the world revolutionary movement and the Soviet Union itself. Disguising this real aim with the un-Marxian theory of "Socialism in one country," they have converted the Comintern into an instmment of their foreign policy and utilized it even to the extent of sabotaging the struggles of the workers in other countries (China, Spain, France), thus betraying the real defence of the Soviet Union. Today, with their bureaucratic inefficiency and reactionary policies, they have brought the very existence of the USSR into extreme danger. Having long since abandoned the path of international revolution, which is the only real and ultimate defence of the USSR, the bureaucracy has followed a policy of placing its trust for this defence solely on its military resources and upon pacts with capitalist governments. The bankruptcy of the policy is tragically revealed today, with the Soviet Union bearing the full brunt of the German interventionist attack, while her only real and dependable ally, the international proletariat, disoriented, disorganized, and immeasurably weakened by the criminal policies of the Comintern bureaucracy, lies prostrate under the heel of Fascism or deceived by the democratic prating of the Anglo-American bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, the chief gains of the October Revolution, the nationalization of banks and industries and the monopoly of foreign trade, still remain, and have made possible the striking economic progress in the USSR, which contrasts markedly with the continued post-war crises of the capitalist world. The victory of the Bonapartist bureaucracy of the USSR over the proletarian vanguard is by no means equivalent to the victory of the capitalist counter-revolution, although the former blazes the trial for the latter. The Soviet bureaucracy, which is not a new ruling class but a ruling caste, plays a dual role, and has hitherto been forced to defend the social bases of the workers' state as the basis of their own power and position, although they can do so only

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both bureaucratically and inefficiently. The USSR therefore, though a degenerate workers' state, remains the first real conquest of the World proletarian revolution, and its unconditional defence against imperialist attack remains the imperative task of the world proletariat. The defeat of the Soviet Union would signify not only the collapse of the Soviet bureaucracy, but also the wiping away of the conquests of October, and the re-introduction of capitalism. The proletarian vanguard of the entire world supports the Soviet Union in her war against German Imperialism in spite of the parasitic bureaucracy and the un-crowned Negus in the Kremlin, because the social regime of the USSR despite all its deformations and ulcers represents an enormous historical step forward in comparison with putrefied capitalism. But the parties of the Fourth International, while defending the Soviet Union from imperialist attack, do not for a single moment give up the struggle against the Stalinist apparatus. Incapable of carrying out the real defence of the Soviet Union, the Stalinist bureaucracy seeks the aid not of the international proletariat, but exclusively of AngloAmerican Imperialism. The possibility cannot be ignored of this policy leading to the Stalinist bureaucracy becoming the agents of the AngloAmerican Imperialists for the destruction of the monopoly of foreign trade in the Soviet Union and its ultimate conversion into an appendage of Anglo-American Imperialism. The workers' state will be able to emerge victorious from the holocaust of war only under one condition, and that is, if it is assisted by the revolution in the West or in the East. But the international revolution, the only way of saving the Soviet Union, will at the same time 'signify the death-blow for the Soviet bureaucracy. Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union has produced the situation of a mixed war, in which Germany is waging on the one hand an imperialist war against rival imperialisms, and on the other hand a war of intervention against the Soviet Union. In this situation the Soviet Union finds herself in a military alliance with Britain. Guided by her own imperialist interests, British Imperialism has entered into this alliance and is rendering military aid to the Soviet Union only because the exigencies of the struggle against German Imperialism compel her to

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do so, and only in expectation of later undermining and destroying the conquests of October. This situation does not alter for a moment the implacable hostility of the Indian proletariat to British Imperialism and the Imperialist war. The policy of the Indian proletariat should continue to be one of intensification and prosecution of the class struggle directed towards the overthrow of the Imperialist bourgeoisie and the seizure of power. However, it is the duty of the Indian proletariat, at the same time, to render all independent aid within its power to the Soviet Union in her struggle against German Imperialism. That is to say, all such aid should be given under the direct control of working class organizations and not the imperialist state machine. But in the nature of practical actions, the proletariat should be prepared to make an exception so as directly not to hamper the aid that may be rendered to the USSR by the imperialists in the form of the sending of arms, supplies and technicians. But the proletariat must continue its policy of opposition to the entire imperialist war machine and can make no exception in this opposition in regard to the supply of imperialist troops to the Soviet war front. For not only is any support of the imperialist war machine tantamount to the indefinite postponement of the perspective of the seizure of power, and thus an abandonment of the only real and effective defence of the Soviet Union, but these conscripted slaves of capital sent to the Soviet Union under the command of the imperialist generals would furnish the imperialists with a Trojan Horse for use against the revolutionary workers of the USSR and for effecting a capitalist overturn. It is true that independent proletarian support to the Soviet Union can take on a decisive scope only when the levers of power and economy are in the hands of the Indian proletariat. But the solution for this not the abandonment of the class struggle but its intensification and orientation towards the seizure of power which is the only means by which the real defence of the Soviet Union can be assured.

The line at present being imposed by the Comintern on its sections in the "democratic" countries and their colonies, of supporting the "democratic" imperialisms against the fascists in the imperialist war, is

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a betrayal of the interests of the international proletariat including the proletariat of the Soviet Union, and serves only the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy who hate and dread the prospect of international revolution. But it is the international revolution alone that can save the Soviet Union. And to abandon the tactic, of revolutionary defeatism, one of the strongest levers of the proletarian revolution in time of war, is tantamount to abandoning the path of world revolution, shamelessly betraying the interests of the international proletariat, and sacrificing the real defence of the Soviet Union. The Second International

The Social Democracy bears the historic responsibility for the failure of the World Revolution at the close of the First Imperialist World War and in the years immediately following. Formed in 1889, the Second International was a loose federation of the majority of the Social Democratic parties of Europe. Though freely using the name and ideology of Marx, the parties of the Second International, basing themselves on a privileged upper stratum of workers and on sections of the petty bourgeoisie, who are bribed by concessions made possible by colonial exploitation and plunder, increasingly followed a policy of opportunism. On the outbreak of the Imperialist War, the opportunism of peace-time gave place to the most rabid social-chauvinism, and they wholeheartedly supported their own governments in the imperialist / carnage. And in the revolutionary upsurge at the close of the war, they became indispensable instruments in the hands of the bourgeoisie for arresting and defeating the revolution and preserving the dictatorship of finance-capital. Today these agents of the bourgeoisie are repeating their betrayal of the workers' struggle by supporting the bourgeoisie of the "democratic" countries in the Imperialist War. In India, the supporters of the Second International (Mehta, Aftab Ali & Co.) play even a viler role than their western counterparts, becoming as they do, the agents of the imperialist bourgeoisie in the ranks of the colonial workers.

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The Third International

The need for a revolutionary International to replace the effete Second International led to the formation of the Communist (Third) International in March 1919 on the direct initative of Lenin. From 1919 to 1923 the Comintern represented the truly revolutionary elements of the international working class. In these years the Comintern, under the theoretical guidance of Lenin and Trotsky, was a powerful weapon in the hands of the international proletariat in the cause of World Revolution. The decisions of the first four world congresses of the Comintern provided an invaluable guide to the international proletariat and are valid to this day. But with the rise of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union with its abandonment of the path of world revolution in favor of the impossible aim of building socialism in one country, the Comintern itself was transformed into an instrument of the Soviet bureaucracy, and entered a period of progressive degeneration and decline. The ultra-leftist policy of adventurism and putschism pursued by the Comintern in the years 1924-25 (at a time when the European working class movement had entered a period of ebb), was responsible for crushing defeats of the European proletariat. A rightward swing followed in the years 1925-27 (in which period the Stalinist bureaucracy was leaning on the kulak and the Nepman in the Soviet Union in its struggle against the proletarian wing of the party). This opportunist policy led to the fiasco of the Anglo-Russian Committee, which served as a cloak for the British trade union bureaucracy to hide their betrayal in the General Strike of 1926, and was responsible for the strengthening of the hold of the reactionary trade union bureaucracy over the British proletariat. This same policy was responsible for the tragic fate of the Chinese Revolution (1925-27), where the young Communist Party of China was tied firmly to the boot-strings of the Kuomintang, and the workers and peasants delivered, bound hand and foot; to the bloody vengeance of the Chinese bourgeoisie. In 1927-28 the proletarian wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (the Left Opposition) was expelled from the party and the organizational victory of the bureaucracy completed. In 1928 the

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bureaucracy was compelled by events to make an abrupt "volte face" in its policy. It now adopted a policy of ultra-leftism in what is known as the "third period," in which suddenly a "revolutionary upheaval" was ordered uniformly on an international scale. In this period Stalinist bureaucracy operated mainly by commanding the masses with an ultimatum (bureaucratic ultimatism). The fatal policy of splitting the trade unions (propagation of the Red Trade Union policy), the revival of Stalin's absurd theory of Social Fascism, and a total rejection of the decisions of the 3rd and 4th Congresses with regard to the tactic of the united front, led to the criminal betrayal of the interests of the proletarian masses. The biggest defeat that the international proletariat has suffered in its history occurred in Germany, where the ultra-leftist policy of considering the Social Democrats the chief enemy led to the shameful capitulation of the working class without a struggle and the victory of Fascism. This disastrous policy of rejecting the course of a united front with the Social Democrats against Hitler found its support in Soviet Russian foreign policy which saw its task in keeping alive German-French antagonism in order to stave off intervention from the west. The miserable collapse of the German Communist Party delivered the final proof that the Comintern had transformed itself from a subjective factor of the world revolution into an objective obstacle to it. From this fact resulted the absolute necessity of building the Fourth International. From 1933 onwards it became clear that the Comintern has degenerated into an abject instrument of the foreign policy of the Soviet bureaucrats. The infamous policy of class collaboration known as the "Popular Front" was adopted, and every opportunity presenting itself was utilized to make an alliance not only with the Social Democracy but with the liberal bourgeoisie. In return for a military alliance of the "democratic" imperialisms against the Fascist powers threatening the Soviet Union, the Comintern shamelessly offered to 'liquidate the class struggle and to become the recruiting agents of the imperialists in such countries for the coming war. This reactionary policy led to the liquidation of the revolution in Spain, where the hired agents of the Comintern, by massacring the

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revolutionary proletarian vanguard, not only paved the way for Fascism but executed in advance a goodly share of its labors. In France, the growing revolutionary wave, which reached its peak in the General Strike of 1936, was repeatedly stemmed by the Communist Party of France in the interests of maintaining the Popular Front Government. By the treacherous policy of Popular Front the Comintern actively aided the bourgeoisie of Britain and France to draw the workers into the imperialist war. With the radical change in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union consequent on the Russo-German pact of non-aggression, the line of the Comintern was accordingly changed. The myth of a "war against Fascism" was now abandoned, and the Comintern, incapable of a policy of revolutionary defeatism, imposed a policy of military defeatism on its sections in the Allied countries, which made them not the representatives of the revolutionary proletariat but in effect the agents of the German Imperialists. With the attack by Germany on the Soviet Union, yet another "volte face" has been made, and the masses in the "democratic" countries and their colonies are being called upon to support the imperialist war which is claimed to have transformed itself into a war of the democracies fought for the principles enunciated in the Atlantic Charter. The Fourth International

The Third International, following the Second, has completely perished as an International. Today, the Comintern stands completely exposed as the counter-revolutionary instrument of the corrupt and parasitic Soviet bureaucracy, which has disorganized, betrayed and sabotaged the revolutionary movement ofthe international proletariat and brought the very existence of the first workers' state into the most extreme danger. The future of mankind for decades, as the question of the fate of the first workers' state itself, will be decided in the critical years ahead in the arena of the international revolution. The international proletariat will rise again. The Comintern never!

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The Fourth International is the heir to the great historic tradition of Marx, Engels and Lenin, continued through Trotsky and the Left Opposition since 1923. The Fourth International is now the only international organization which not only clearly takes into account the driving forces of the imperialist epoch, but is armed with a system of transitional demands which are capable of uniting the masses for the revolutionary struggle for power. At present, sections of the Fourth International exist in thirty countries. True, they are only the vanguard of the vanguard. But despite the discrepancy between its forces today and tasks of the morrow, and in spite of the cruelest persecutions of the imperialist bourgeoisie, the social democracy, and, in particular, of the Stalinist Mafia culminating in the brutal murder ofTrotsky himself, the Fourth International is the one uncompromising international organization which can supply both theoretical guidance and organizational strength to the revolutionary proletariat. And the harsh and tragic dialectic of our epoch is working in its favor. Brought to the extreme pitch of exasperation and indignation the masses will find no other leadership than that offered them by the Fourth International. Its tempered cadres will lead the toilers to the great offensive.

Bibliography The best introduction to the life and thought of Trotsky in English, in my opinion, remains Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography. I There is also a growing body of scholarly literature on the Fourth International and its many national sections. 2 The bibliography which follows is limited solely to works relevant to the subject and timeframe of this book. GOVERNMENT RECORDS

India Office Library and Records, British Library, London. Public and Judicial Department Records. Abbreviated in footnote citations as IOL: LlPJ. Home (Political) Department Records, National Archives ofIndia, New Delhi.

Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky. 1879-1921 (New York, 1954); The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky. 1921-1929 (London, 1959); and The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky. 1929-1940 (London, 1963). Since then the volume of "Trotsky studies" has grown tremendously. The late Pierre Broue, the most eminent Trotsky scholar since Deutscher, has made a notable contribution with his biography. Pierre Broue, Trotsky (Paris, 1988). Broue also deserves credit for publishing the first account of the Indian Trotskyist movement. Pierre Broue, "Notes sur I'Histoire des oppositions et du mouvement trotskyste en Inde dans la premiere motie du XXe siecle," Cahiers Leon Trotsky. March 1985, pp. 11-44. The most complete single work on the Fourth International is Robert J. Alexander, International Trotskyism 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement (Durham, 1991). There are several journals which publish specialized research on various Trotskyist parties and personalities: Cahiers Leon Trotsky (since 1979), Revolutionary History (since 1988), and Journal of Trotsky Studies (since 1993). There are also several "Trotsky institutes" which issue publications: In Paris the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur les Mouvements Trotskyste et Revolutionnaires Internationaux (CERMTRI) publishes the Cahiers du Mouvement Ouvrfer. In Italy the Centro Studi Pietro Tresso, founded in 1983, publishes Quaderni Pietro Tresso. In Buenos Aires the Centro de Estudios, Investigaciones e Publicaciones Le6n Trotsky publishes the Boletin del CEIP and specialized studies.

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ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS

Albert Glotzer Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. Documentary Sources of Labour History in Tamil Nadu, Archives of Indian Labour, Noida (U.P.), India. Joseph Hansen Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. Jock Haston Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Brynmor Jones Library, The University of Hull, England. Abbreviated in footnote citations as Hull: Haston. Library of Social History Collection, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. Abbreviated in footnote citations as Hoover: LSH. Max Shachtman Papers, The Tamiment Library, New York University, New York City Socialist Workers Party Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. Abbreviated in footnote citations as Hoover: SWP. Trotsky Papers (Trotskii colI. bMS Russ 13.1), Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Cambridge, MA. TROTSKYIST NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS

Age Kadam [Forward March]. Fortnightly Hindi press of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party. Bombay. 1949. Bolshevik Leninist. Initially the quarterly journal of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party of India, Bombay, published irregularly, 1941; became quarterly journal of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party ofIndia. Bombay. May 1942-February 1943; reverted back to the journal of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party. Bombay. 1943-46. Fight. Fortnightly press of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party (Ceylon Unit) Section of the 4th International. Colombo. November 1945-August 1946. 338

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Inkilab [Revolutionj. Bi-monthly Gujarati newspaper of the Gujarat Committee of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party (Fourth International). Ahmedabad.1941-1942. Janashakti [Peoples Power]. Fortnightly Hindi press of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party (Fourth International). Bombay. August 1947March 1948. Jivan [Life]. Weekly Hindi press ofthe Revolutionary Workers Party of India. Allahabad. 1948. Kranti [Revolution}. Illegal Hindi press of the Mazdoor Trotskyist Party of India. Bombay. 1943. New Spark. Fortnightly press of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party ofIndia. Bombay. April 1947-September 1948. Permanent Revolution. Quarterly journal of the Bengal Committee of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India. Calcutta. January 1943January/April 1945. Revolution. Irregular English press of the Mazdoor Trotskyist Party of India. 1942. Samaj [Society]. Weekly Hindi newspaper. Allahabad. 1937-38. Samasamajist. Weekly English press of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party. Colombo. 1936-40. Intermittent during WWII. Resumed November, 1944 as organ of the Lanka Sama SamajaParty, Ceylon Unit of the Bolshevik Leninist Party ofIndia, Section of the Fourth International. Colombo. 1945-50. Socialist. Fortnightly English newspaper of the Mazdoor Trotskyist Party of India. Bombay. 1948. Spark. Fortnightly press of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India. Calcutta. March 1946-July 1946. Spark. Organ of the Workers Group (Fourth Internationalist). Bombay. 1941.

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Tanakha [Spark]. Irregular Gujarati newspaper of the Kathiawad Committee of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party ofIndia. Bhauvnagar, n.d. Workers International News. Journal of the Workers International League (1938-1944) and Revolutionary Communist Party (194449). London. 1938-49. PARTY INTERNAL BULLETINS

Internal Bulletin. Published irregularly by the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India. Bombay, December 1946-September 1948. Internal Bulletin. Published irregularly by the Bolshevik Leninist Party ofIndia (Ceylon Unit). Colombo, 1947. Internal Bulletin. Published irregularly by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party. Colombo, 1947-48. PUBLICATIONS OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL AND THE BRITISH AND US SECTIONS

Correspondance Internationaliste. Published by the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. Paris, 1939. Fight. Published by the Marxist Group (Trotskyists); became the Revolutionary Socialist League. London, 1936-38. Fourth International. Published by the Socialist Workers Party. New York, 1940-48. International Bulletin. Published by the American Committee for the Fourth International [Workers Party]. New York, 1940. International Bulletin. Published by the Socialist Workers Party. New York, 1940-41 International Bulletin. Socialist Workers Party. New York, 1940-41. Labor Action. Published by the Workers Party. New York, 1940-47. Militant. Published by the Socialist Left of the Labour Party. London, 1942. '

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Militant. Published by the Socialist Workers Party. New York, 1937-48. New International. Published by the Socialist Workers Party. New York, 1939-40. New International. Published by the Workers Party. New York, 1940-47. Quatrieme Internationale. Published by the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. Paris, 1945-48. Red Flag. Published by the British Section of the International Left Opposition; became the Communist League. London, 1933-37. Press Information Service and Service d'Information et de Presse pour la Quatrieme Internationale. Published by the International Secretariat ofthe International Left Opposition. Brussels, 1936-37. Socialist Appeal. Published by the Revolutionary Communist Party. London, 1944-49. Workers International News. Published by the Workers International League of Great Britain. London, 1938-49. UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS

Arya, Raj Narayan. "The History ofTrotskyism in India." Unpublished typescript, signed by author. [1983]. 33 pages. - - - . "Trotskyist Movement in India." Unpublished typescript, dated 1983 in author's hand. 22 pages. D.G [Douglas Garbutt]. "Report on the Fourth International Movement in India." Internal document, Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain. N. d. [probably late 1946]. Kolpe, S. B. "Interview with Gus" [Transcript of taped interview on the history of Indian Trotskyism given to Gus Horowitz, SWP]. n.d. Pal, Gour. "Indian Trotskyism and the Revolutionary Communist Party." Unpublished typescript. Signed, with corrections and additions in author's hand, n.d. 108 pages. Section B, "Trotskyist Parties in India," 8 pages.

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Perera, N.M. Thotalanga Matiya. Unpublished autobiography, 38pp. Only first four chapters were written. n.d. Roy, Ajit. "Reminiscences of Early Days in India and Britain." Tape recorded in Calcutta for Sam Bornstein, December 1975. Transcript in collection of the late Al Richardson, London. [Scott, Lewis]. "Red Passage to India," n.d. [1944]. Typed, 28 pages [Report by a SWP seaman on his contacts with the underground Indian Trotskyists in 1944]. PRIMARY SOURCES: BOOKS, PAMPHLETS, AND SELECT ARTICLES

Abhayavardana, Hector. Introduction to Leon Trotsky, Trade Unions in the Epoch ofImperialist Decay. Indore: Spark Syndicate, 1947. "Amendment by C.C. ofB.L.P.!. to the last section of the International April Conference Resolution, entitled 'Our Tasks in the Colonies'," Internal Bulletin, n.s., n.d. [December 1946-January/February 1947], p. 7; also Quatrieme Internationale, March-April 1947, p. 33. Dissayaneke, S.B. "Ceylon Letter." Fourth International, July 1948, pp. 158-59. Draft Programme of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Indian Section of the Fourth International. 1942. "The First Representative Conference of the BLPI" [September 20-25, 1944], Permanent Revolution, vol. 2, nos. 2-3 (April-December 1944), pp. 11-12. Reprinted: "India," Fourth International, April 1945, p. 126. Fourth International and the Soviet Union. Articles by Leon Trotsky and Max Shachtman. Fourth Internationalist Library, Vol. 3. Calcutta: Bolshevik Leninist Party, 1943. Friends of Trotsky Society, Bombay: published by M.G. Purdy, n.d. Printed leaflet, 2 pages. "Gandhi on the Road to Betrayal," July 20, 1944. Reprinted in Fourth International, October 1944, p. 308.

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[Goonewardene, L.S.] For an Anti-Imperialist Left Front. An Appeal to the Left Forces in the Country. Bureau of the Central Committee, Bolshevik Leninist Party ofIndia. May 20, 1945. Goonewardene, L.S. The Third International Condemned! Colombo: Lanka Sama Samaja Party, 1940. Govindan, C. R. [Colvin R. de Silva]. The Dissolution of the Comintern. Fourth Internationalist Library, Vo!. 6.Calcutta: Bolshevik Leninist Party, July 1944.

- - - . First Round of European Socialist Revolution. n.p. [handwritten date at the end: "February 16, 1945"]. Also original typed manuscript with handwritten edits, 36 pages. Grant, E. and Scott, A. The Road to India 50 Freedom; The Permanent Revolution in India and the Task of the British Working-Class. In Workers International News [Workers International League of Great Britain], vo!. 5, nos. 3/4, n.d., pp. 1-23. Gunawardena, Philip. "British Imperialism on Trial at Kandy" [Speech by Philip Gunawardena in court.] Mimeographed, 2 pages. n.d. [1943]. Gunawardena, Philip and Perera, NM. "Indian Struggle: Next Phase," [Bombay] [1943].

Hindi mazdur tratskist parti. Karyakram [Workers Trotskyist Party of India. Program] Author: Comrade Seven [Murray Gow Purdy]. Bombay: Maharashtra Committee, March 1, 1943. Hindi mazdur tratskivadi parti [Workers' Trotskyist Party of India]. Published by Sitaram B. Kolpe. Bombay [1946]. Also translated into English. The Inside Story of Calcutta Demonstrations. [Calcutta] December 20, 1945. Reprinted: "Les fusillades policieres de Calcutta," Quatrieme Internationale, August-September, 1946, pp. 57-60; and Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no. 21, March 1985, pp. 111-15.

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Karalasingham, V. "Indian Bourgeoisie Bares its Teeth-Repressive Measures Against Trotskyist Controlled Unions," n.d. [June 1947]. Typed, 2 pages. [reporting on the MLU strike]. - - - . Introduction to Leon Trotsky, The Lesson of Spain. The Last Warning. Bombay: Spark Syndicate, 1948. "Letter from India," Fourth International, November 1942, pp. 345-46. Manickam [Bodi M. Muthiah]. "100,000 Madras Workers Protest Trotskyist Union Leader's Arrest," n.d. [1947]; reprinted "100.000 grevistes it Madras exigent la liberation d'un dirigeant trotskyste arrete," Quatrieme Internationale, May-June, 1947, pp. 75-76.

Manifesto of the Bolshevik Mazdoor Party of India. Bombay: Chandravadan Shukla, 1947. "Manifesto of the Fourth International," Fourth International, October 1942, pp. 296-301; reprinted Manifesto of the Fourth International. To the Workers and Peasants of India. Calcutta: Bengal Committee of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party, 1943.

Mazdoor Trotskyist Party Analyzes the Classes in India and Calls for Workers and Peasants Revolution. Bombay: Sitaram Kolpe, 1946. The Mazdoor Trotskyist Party of India. Draft Programme. Issued by the Provisional Committee of the Mazdoor Trotskyist Party of India. Calcutta: May 15, 1942. Mirza, Hakim [Kamalesh Bannerji], "After Thoughts on Dissolution of the Comintern," Workers International News, vo!. 5, no. 6 (February 1944), pp. 10-13. Menon, S. Krishna [S.C.C. Anthony Pillai], "The Famine in India," Permanent Revolution, vol. 2, no. 1 (January-March 1944)]; reprinted in Fourth International, October 1944, pp. 314ff.

Ministry-Makers and "Leftist "-Fakers. n.p., April 1945; reprinted Fourth International July 1945, pp. 199-200.

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Morarji, Suren [Hector Abhayavardhana]. The Saboteur Strategy of the Constructive Programme. [Mysore] Bolshevik Leninist Party of India [1945]. Parthasarathi, V.S. [Leslie Goonewardene]. Marxist Study Course. Calcutta: Gupta Rahman & Gupta, 1945. [Perera, Selina] "An Interview with a Comrade: Ceylonese Masses Want No Part ofthe Bosses War," Socialist Appeal, November 10, 1939. "The Programme for Ceylon: Appendix to Program of the BolshevikLeninist Party of India on the Tasks of Ceylon," reprinted in Fourth International, October 1946, pp. 316-19; "The Marxist Movement in Ceylon: Appendix to Program of Bolshevik Leninist Party of India," reprinted in New International [New York], February 1947, pp. 46-50. Purdy, Murray Gow. Bolshevik-Leninist-Trotskyist Draft Provisional Programme. Signed "Yarrumji Eedrupji" [Murray Purdy spelled backwards with the suffix ''ji'']. [Bombay, 1938].

- - - . Constituent Assembly: Is it Possible in India? And its Alternative. A Marxist-Trotskyist Analysis. Surat: Surya Printing Press, n.d. - - - . Introduction to Lenin 50 Last Testament. Bombay: M.o. Purdy, 1940. - - - . (ed.) Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto. Surat: Surya Printing Press, 1942. - - - . "Provisional draft programme of the Bolshevik-LeninistsTrotskyists of the Indian Empire. Declaration." Bombay [1938]. Appended to letter from Murray Gow Purdy to [James P.] Cannon and [Max] Shachtinan, dated "Beginning of December, 1938." Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Russ 13 .1 (document 15281).

- - - . The South African Indian Problem-A Revolutionary Solution. Bombay: S.K. Kombrabail, 1943. Foreword dated August 1942.

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Rafiq [Chandravadan Shukla]. Permanent Revolution and India. Bolshevik Mazdoor Party of India. [ca. 1943]. Includes "Fundamental Theses of Permanent Revolution" by L.D. Trotsky. - - - . "Proletarian Leadership of the Indian Revolution," Bolshevik Leninist, vol. 2, no. 2 (November 1943), pp. 1-2ff; reprinted Proletarian Leadership of the Indian Revolution. Bolshevik Mazdoor Party Publishing House [ca. 1943-44]. Reissner, Larissa. Svyazhsk: An Epic of the Russian Civil War, 1918. Reprint. Colombo: Bolshevik Leninist Party, August 1948. "The Road to Freedom for Ceylon" [Section of the 1941 program], reprinted in Fourth International, April 1942, pp. 117-18. Roy, Ajit. In Defence of the Colonial Revolution. Revolutionary Communist Party [UK], n.d. - - - . Why the Communist Party Takes a New Turn. Calcutta: D. Bose [1948]. Roy, Lily [Colvin R. de Silva]. Socialism Reaffirmed: a Reply to Mr. Masani. n.p., 1944. Also serialized in Fourth International, March, April, and May 1945. Selvaraj, G. The Meaning of the Simla Surrender. Madras. n.d. [1946]. Sen, Indra. Jai Prakash and the Road to Socialism. Antony Pillai, 1947. - - - . "The Road to Socialism in India: An Answer to the Congress Socialists," reprinted in Fourth International, June 1947, pp. 18284. Shukla, Chandravadan. Ninth August Betrayed. Bombay: Age Kadam Prakashan, 1949. - - - . Samyavad ane hind [Communism and India]. Ahmedabad: Majoor Sahitya Prachar Sabha, 1939. - - - . Socialistic Pattern? Ahmedabad: Age Kadam Publishers, 1955. - - - . Introduction to B. Hunter, Is Russia Moving to Communism? [Bombay] Age Kadam Publication No. 2, 1949.

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de Silva, Colvin R. Against Helotry. Being two speeches on the Citizenship Bill and the Immigrants & Emigrants Bill. Colombo: Bolshevik Leninist Party, Ceylon Unit, 1948.

- - - . Independence: Real or Fake? Colombo: Lanka Sama Samaja Party, 1948. - - - . The Present Political Situation in India. Being the Inaugural Address delivered on 5-3-48 at the All Bengal Students' Congress Annual Conference at Uluberia. Colombo, n.d. [1948]. - - - . "Quelle independance pour Ceylan?" Quatrieme Internationale, January-February, 1948, pp. 53-54. de Souza, Doric. China 1925-1950: Revolution, Counter-Revolution, Imperialist and Civil War. Part One: 1925-False PerspectivesCommunist Subordination to the Kuo Min Tang. Colombo: Bolshevik Samasamaja Publications, 1950. "The Struggles of the Colonial Peoples and the World Revolution" [Resolution Adopted by the Second World Congress of the Fourth International, April 1948], reprinted in Fourth International, July 1948, pp. 144-58. Rev. Horathepala Palitha Thera (ed.), Philip Gunawardene Lipi Saranaya [A Collection of the Life and Times of Phi lip Gunawardena]. Colombo, 2003. Tilak, K. [Leslie Goonewardene]. From the First to the Fourth International. Calcutta: Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Bengal Committee, 1944. - - - . "Indian Correspondence," Fourth International, October 1946, pp. 310-12.

- - - . The Rise and Fall of the Comintern (from the First to the Fourth International). Introduction by Ajit Roy. Bombay: Spark Syndicate, 1947. - - - . "The Wavell Plan-A New Form of Old Slavery," reprinted in Fourth International, September 1945, pp. 279-81.

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"To the Toilers of Ceylon (A Summary of the Election Manifesto of Our Ceylon Unit), " New Spark, August 30, 1947, p. 7. Trotsky, Leon. "A Letter on India," Writings of Lean Trotsky (193940). New York: Merit, 1969, p. 14. - - - . "Open Letter to the Workers of India," New International, September 1939, pp. 263-66. "Trotskyism in India," Fourth International, October 1944, p. 299; also "Le mouvement Trotskyste aux Indes," Quatrieme Internationale, July-August, 1945, pp. 25-27. Vardhan, H. A. [Hector Abhayavardhana]. The August Struggle and its Significance. Bombay, Bolshevik Leninist Party, 1947. "La victoire electorale des Trotskystes et le projet d'independance de Ceylan (Declaration du Secretariat International de la IVe Internationale)," Quatrieme Internationale, January-February, 1948, pp. 54-55. "Views, Demands, and Program of the Revolutionary Workers Party (Trotskyist)" (translated from Hindi), Jivan, 6 February 1948.

Vote for August! Vote for Struggle! Calcutta: K. Banerjee. [December, 1945]. Interviews

Abhayavardhana, Hector. Colombo, 17-18 December 1997. Amamath, S. Bombay, 14 June 1974. Anthony Pillai, S.C.c. Bombay, 14 December 1973. Anthony Pillai, Suresh and Yasomi. Boralugoda (Sri Lanka), 20 December 1997. Arya, Raj Narayan. Kanpur, 21 April 1974. Banda, Mike [Van der Poorten]. London, 20 November 2003. Banerji, Sailen. Calcutta, 1,7, and 9 February, 1974; and 26 April 1974. Belani, Jagu. Bombay, December 1973.

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Bhattacharyya, Keshav. London, 16 July 1974 and 24 July 1977. Boda, Tulsi. Bombay, 17 and 27 December 1973. Bose, Dulal. Calcutta, 2 February 1974. Chatterji, Sudarshan. Calcutta, 3, 5, and 8 February 1974. Das, Sitanshu. New Delhi, 25 March 1974. Desai, Magan. Baroda, 21 December 1973. Drieberg, Trevor. New Delhi, 31 March 1974. Femando, Meryl. Mt. Lavinia (Sri Lanka), several sessions in May 1974. Goonewardene, Leslie. Colombo, June 1979. Gunawardena, Dinesh. Colombo, 20 December 1997. Gunawardena, Gitanjana. Colombo, 20 December 1997. Gunawardena, Lakmali. Newark (Delaware), 20 August 1997 and Colombo, 18 December 1997. Gunawardena, Prasanna. Colombo, 20 December 1997. Jayaratpe, Osmund. Colombo, 18 December 1997. Karalasingham, v. Colombo, 22 May 1974. Kolpe, Sitaram. Bombay, 15 December 1973 and 19 June 1974. Mishra, Hiranand. Calcutta, 7 February 1974. Mukherji, Basanta Dev. Calcutta, 9 February 1974. Parija, Murlidhar. Bombay, 12 and 23 December 1973. Perera, Selina. Calcutta, 29 January 1974 and 10 February 1974. Plastrik, Stanley. New York City, 7 December 1974. Rao, S.R. Bombay, 13 June 1974. Rao, T.R. Bombay, 13 June 1974. Roy, Ajit Kumar Mukerji and Annie. Calcutta, 10 February 1974. Roy, Karuna Kant. Calcutta, 30 January 1974. Roy, Pumangshu K. Calcutta, 2 February 1974. Samarakkody, Edmund. Mt. Lavinia (Sri Lanka), May 1974 and June 1979.

The Trotskyist,Movement in India and Ceylon

Sen, Indra. Calcutta, 16 and 17 January, 1 and 5 February, 3, 26 and 27 April, 1974. Shukla, Chandravadan. Bombay, 27 December, 1973 and 7, 12, and 13 June 1974. Singh, Mahendra. Varanasi, 2 January 1974. Siriwardena, Regi. Colombo, 17 and 20 December 1997. Udyawar, S.P. Bombay, 24 December 1973. SECONDARY SOURCES

Abhayavardhana, Hector. "Categories of Left Thinking in Ceylon," reprinted in Rajan Philips (ed.), Sri Lanka: Global Challenges and National Crises: Proceedings of the Hector Abhayavardhana Felicitation Symposium. Colombo: Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue and Social Scientists' Association, 2001, pp. 353-73. - - - . "Daisy Ferdinandusz Rajakarunanayake - A Devoted Mother and Silent Lady of the Left," The Island, 30 July 2000.

- - - . Hector Abhayavardhana: Selected Writings. Colombo: Social Scientists' Association, 2001. - - - . "How the LSSP Turned Trotskyist," Lanka Guardian, 15 July 1982, pp. 1,'23. - - - . "Marxism and Some Features of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party," reprinted in Rajan Philips (ed.), Sri Lanka: Global Challenges and National Crises: Proceedings of the Hector AbhayavardhanaFelicitation Symposium, pp. 375-89. - - - . "NM-the worker-rural poor alliance," Lanka Guardian, October 1, 1979. - - - . "Selina Perera-The Forgotten Socialist Militant," Pravada, v.4,no. 10-11, 1997,pp. 19-20. - - - . "The Significance of Disfranchisement of Plantation Workers," Lanka Guardian, 15 January 1986, pp. 7-8.

350

The 1i"Otskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

- - - . "The War: Its Importance in Colvin's Development as a Marxist Leader," Lanka Guardian, 15 June 1982, pp. 12-14. Alexander, Robert J. "Trotskyism in Ceylon/Sri Lanka: The Rise of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party" and "Split and Decline of Ceylon/Sri Lankan Trotskyism," in International Trotskyism 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991, pp. 159-194. - - - . "Trotskyism in India," in International Trotskyism 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991, pp. 516-533. Amarasinghe, Y. Ranjith. Revolutionary Idealism and Parliamentary Politics: A Study of Trotskyism in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists' Association: 1998. Anandalingam, G. and Abraham, Mary. "Left-Wing Politics and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, " South Asia Bulletin, vol. 6, no. 2 (Fall 1986). Appanraj, K. Anja Nenjan: Thoyizh Sangha Medai s.c.c. Antoni Pillai Vazhkai Varalaru [The Fearless One: Biography of the Intellectual Labour Leader, S.C.C. Anthony Pillai]. Chennai : H.M.S. Chennai Nagar Council, 1995. Arjuna. Pilip Gunavardhana caritaya [The Life of Philip Gunawardena]. Moratuwa: Sarat Gunasena [1969]. Basu, Jyoti (ed.). Documents of the Communist Movement in India. 26 vols. Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1997-99. Baghavan, R. S. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Marxism. Introduction by C.L.R. James. London: Socialist Platform, 1987. Balasubramanian, V. October Puratzhi: Trotsky [October Revolution: Trotsky]. Madurai: Samadharma Illakiya Pannai, 1991. Basu, Nirban. The Political Parties and the Labor Politics, 1937-47. Calcutta: Minerva Associates, 1992.

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Birchman, Robert. "Revolutionary Developments in India," Fourth International, May 1946, pp. 158-59. Bomstein, Sam and Richardson, AI. Against the Stream: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain, 1924-1938. London: Socialist Platform, 1986.

- - - . Two Steps Back: Communists and the Wider Labour Movement, 1939-1945: A Study in the Relations Between Vanguard and Class. London: Socialist Platform [1982]. - - - . War and the International. London: Socialist Platform, 1986. Broue, Pierre. "Notes sur \'Histoire des oppositions et du mouvement trotskyste en Inde dans la premiere motie du XXe siecle," Cahiers Leon Trotsky, March 1985, pp. 11-44.

- - - . Trotsky (Paris: Etudes et documentation intemationa\es, 1988). Casciola, Paolo. Trotsky and the Struggles of the Colonial Peoples. Foligno: Centro Studi Pietro Tresso, 1990. "Comrade Mallikarjun Rao," Marxist Outlook, vo!. 1, no. 3 (April 1966), pp. 22-25. Chowdhuri, Satyabrata Rai. Leftist Movements in India, 1917-47. Calcutta: Minerva Associates, 1977. Section on "The Bolshevik Leninist Party," pp. 231-232. De Silva, E. P. NM: A Short Biography. Colombo: Times of Ceylon, 1975. Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921 (New York, 1954); The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929 (London, 1959); and The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940 (London, 1963). Ervin, Charles Wesley. Phi/ip Gunawardena: The Making of a Revolutionary. With introduction by Hector Abhayavardhana. Colombo: Social Scientists' Association, 2001.

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- - - . Pilip Gunavardhana: Viplavavadiyakuge Hadagasma [Second edition of Philip Gunawardena: The Making of a Revolutionary] Colombo: Godage, 2005. - - - . "Trotskyism in India: Origins through World War 11 (193545)," Revolutionary History, vol. 1, no. 4 (Winter 1988-89), pp. 22-34. Translated: "Le trotskysme en Inde pendant la guerre," Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no. 39 (September 1989), pp. 77-111. - - - . "Trotskyism in India, 1942-48" in Blows Against the Empire: Trotskyism in Ceylon. Edited by Al Richardson. London: Porcupine Press, 1997. Goonewardene, Leslie. A Short History of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party. Colombo: Gunaratne, 1960. - - - . The History of the Goonewardene, 1978.

L.s.s.P.

in Perspective. Colombo: Leslie

Gunasekera, Vernon. Pilip: ohuge jivitaya ha desapalana satan [Philip: His Life and Political Experiences]. Colombo, 1960. Gunawardena, Lakmali. Kusuma: A Life in Left Politics. Colombo: L. Gunawardena, 2004. - - - . Philip: The Early Years. Boralugoda: Philip Gunawardena Foundation, 1996. Gunawardena, Robert. "M age desapalana atdakima" [Story of My Political Life], serialized in Lankadipa [Colombo], September 1971-January 1972. Translated as "My Political Life," serialized in the Daily Mirror [Colombo], November-December, 1971. "Corn. Haradhan Chatterjee" [obituary], Janata, 1 April 1951. Jayawardena, Visakha Kumari. "The Background to the Formation of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party," Young Socialist [Colombo], no. 1 [new series] (March 1980), pp. 11-26. - - - . "The Origins of the Left Movement in Sri Lanka," Modern Ceylon Studies, vol. 2 (1971), pp. 195-221; "Origins of the Left Movement in Sri Lanka," Social Scientist, vol. 2, no. 6/7 (January/

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The Trotskyist Movement ill India and Ceylon

February 1974), pp. 3-28; reprinted The Origins of the Left Movement in Sri Lanka. [Colombo] Sanjiva Books.

- - - . The Rise of the Labor Movement in Ceylon. Durham: Duke University Press, 1972. - - - . "Vivienne Goonewardene-'La Pasionaria' of Sri Lanka," Pravada,v.4,no. 10-11, 1997,pp. 16-18. Karalasingham, V. Politics of Coalition. Colombo: International Publishers, 1964. Lerski, George J. Origins of Trotskyism in Ceylon. Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1968. - - - . "Trotskyism in Sri Lanka," Studies in Comparative Communism, vol. 10, nos. 1-2 (1977), pp. 109-32. - - - . "The Twilight of Ceylonese Trotskyism, Pacific Affairs, vol. 43, no. 3 (Fall 1970), pp. 384-93. Liyanage, Pulsara: Vivi: A Biography of Vivienne Goonewardena. With an introduction by Hector Abhayavardhana. Colombo: Women's Education and Research Centre, [1998?]. - - - . "Vivie: The Beginnings of a Biography," Lanka Guardian, September 15, 1996, pp. 15-17. - - - . "Leslie and Vivie," Lanka Guardian, October 1, 1996, pp. 17-18. Madapata, Chris. "Trotskyism in Revolutionary Movements: Sri Lanka in an Asian Context," South Asia Bulletin, vol. 7, nos. 1-2 (1987), pp. 23-38. Mahindapala, H.L.D. "The Lankan Left," series in Lanka Guardian, May 15,1997, pp. 5-6ff; June 1, 1997, pp. 17-21ff; July 1,1997, pp. 15-20; and October 1, 1997, pp. 2-3. Masani, Minoo. Bliss Was it in That Dawn. New Delhi: ArnoldHeinemann, 1977. Misra, Bankey Bihari. The Indian political parties: an historical analysis ofpolitical behavior up to 1947. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976. 354

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"Le mouvement revolutionnaire en Inde et la IV e Internationale, 19301944," Les Cahiers du CERMTRI, no. 98 (December 2000) . ...

Muthiah, Wesley and Wanasinghe, Sydney, eds. The Bracegirdle Affair: An Episode in the History ofthe Lanka Sama Samaja Party. Colombo: Young Socialist Publication, 1998.

- - - . Britain,. World War 2 & the Sama Samasamajists. Colombo: Young Socialist Publication, 1996. Palitha Thera, Horathepala. Santhi Gurunnanse [Biography of Warnakulasuriya Santiago Fernando]. Colombo: S. Godage, 2004. Peiris, GL. Some Themes in the Life and Work ofDr. Colvin R. de Silva. Colombo: Star Press, 1991. Perera, N.M., "Philip Gunawardena: The Father of Socialism in Ceylon," 1972, reprinted in Daily News [Colombo], January 13, 1999. Perera, Reggie. "Journey into Politics," memoirs serialized in the Ceylon Observer (Sunday Edition), August-September, 1962. Perera, T. "The Bracegirdle Saga: 60 Years After," What Next, no. 5 (1997), pp. 15-17. Poulisse, Jan. "Trotskij over Groot Britannie en India," Kleio, vol. 18 (1977) pp. 314-18. Ramaswamy, B.M.K. Tiratski vaazhkkai varalaaru: oru thiranaayvu [Trotsky Biography: An In-Depth Analysis]. 2 vols. Madurai: Samadharma Illakiya Pannai, 1989-90. Richardson, Al (ed.) Blows Against the Empire: Trotskyism in Ceylon. London: Porcupine Press, 1997. Samarakkody, Edmund. "The Struggle for Trotskyism in Ceylon," Spartacist, no. 22, Winter 1973-74. Samaranayake, Ajith. "The Golden Afternoon of the LSSP," Sunday Observer [Colombo], November 23, 1997.

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- - - . "The Sama Samajists in India," Sunday Observer [Colombo], November 30, 1997. Samaraweera, Vijaya. "Sri Lankan Marxists in electoral politics, 19471977." Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol. 18, no. 3 (Nov. 1980), p. 308-24; revised in K.M. de Silva (ed.). Universal Franchise: 1931-81, The Sri Lankan Experience. Colombo: Department of Government Printing, 1981. Shourie, Arun. The Only Fatherland: Communists, "Quit India" and the Soviet Union. New Delhi: ASA Publications, 1991. Sinha, L. P. The Left-Wing in India, 1919-47. Muzaffarpur: New Publishers, 1965. Section on "The Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India," pp. 528-30. Siriwardena, Regi. "Remembrance of Politics Past-The LSSP Documents of the 'Thirties and Early 'Fourties," serialized in the Lanka Guardian, May 1, 1996, pp. 7-9; and June 1, 1996, pp.6-7.

- - - . Working Underground. The LSSP in Wartime: A Memoir of Happenings and Personalities. Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 1999. "Trotskyism in Turkmenistan," Central Asian Review, 9 (1961), pp. 144-48. "Vernon 'Gunasekera (1908-1996)," Cahiers Leon Trotsky, 60 (November 1979), p. 124. "Vivienne Goonewardene (1916-1996)," Cahiers Leon Trotsky, 60 (November 1979), pp. 123-24. Weerawardana, D. D. Ceylon General Election-1956. Colombo: M. D. Gunasena, 1960. Section on "The Left Movement," pp. 59-75. Wijesekera, Chitra. Women in Our Legislature: A Sri Lankan Study (From 1931 to 1977). Ratmalana: Sarvodaya Vishva Lekha, 1995. Wriggins, W. Howard. Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New Nation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960.

356

Index Abhayavardhana, Hector, 94, 112n, 118,128, BIn, 132, 134n, 135, 139n, 159n, 161n, 166n, 171n, 189,192n,221-3,225,233,235, 238n,241,248,250 Adhikari, Dr. Gangadhar, 143-4 Aggarwala, Hans Raj, 57n, 250 Ali, Aruna Asaf, 181 All-India Trade Union Congress, 57n, 169,217,251,302-4 Amamath, S., 211, 248, 250-1 Ambedkar, Dr. Bhimrao Ramji, 86n Angadi, Ayana Veerayaswami, 152, 251 Anthony Pillai, Caroline, 192n, 211-2,251 Anthony Pillai, S.C.c., 70, 102-3, 138, 139, 140, 142, 145, 192n, 208-17, 222n, 223, 225, 231n, 235-6,238,241,246,248,251-2 Appanraj, K., 95, 102, 112, 137, 206,252 Artisans in India, 1, 3, 9-11, 282-3,288 Arya, Raj Narayan, Ill, 222n, 231n, 236, 241, 244-5, 249,253 Attlee, Clement, 173, 187,218 Attygalle, Richard, 162, 253 Azad Dastas, 120 Bagchi, Amal, 202-3, 253 Baghavan, R.S., 162,196,253 Balaram, G., 209, 212

Balasingham, V., 95, 254 Balasubramaniam, V., 136, 254 Banerjea, Dhiren, 135, 254 Banerji, Kamala, 176 Banerji, Sailen, 203 Bannerjea, Surendranath, 18, 21 Bannerji, Kamalesh, 72n, 91-2, 97, 98-100,102-4, 119, 176, 190, 196-7, 201, 204n, 238, 245-7, 254-5 Barbusse, Henri, 49n Bebe1, August, 25 Belani, Jagu, 249, 255 Bengal Labour Party, 170n, 305 Bemstein, Eduard, 25 Boda, Tulsi, 169n, 199-200, 231n, 246,248,255 Bolshevik Leninist Party ofIndia and Ceylon (BLPI): preconferences, 96-7, 99; program, 99, 103-4, 106-9,280-336; on WWII, 100-2, 110-11, 116, 141, 325-32; defense of USSR, 101, 121-22, 142,243-4,328-32; formation meeting, 103-4,280; structure, 104-5; affiliation to Fourth International, 105,240; attitude to Indian National Congress, 108-9, 140,293-7, 312-3; in Bombay, 110-11, 1179,131-2,198-200; in United Provinces and Bihar, 111, 11920, 134-5; in Bengal, 111, 119, 132-4,192, 198,201-5,228; in Madras, 111-2, 136-8, 192, 198,

357

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

208-17,228; in Madura, 120, 135-6,206-7; in Quit India movement, 114, 116-22, 126; optimism of, 112, 129-30, 191, 192; First Party Conference (1944), 139-46,280; on the Congress Socialists, 122, 140, 234-5; on China in WWII, 1401; on national question and Pakistan, 142-6 175, 190-1,2234,227; factionalism within, 15472, 193-98; on independence for India, 173; election strategy (1945-6), 174-6; in INA demonstrations (1945-6), 17681; in RIN Mutiny (1946), 1823; on Cabinet Mission Plan (1946), 187; Second Party Conference (1947), 215, 219-26, 234-5; on constituent assembly question, 187-8,218,219-23, 227,228-9,313-4; on communal violence, 190-1; financial resources, 110, 134, 150, 192, 199; trade union activity, 110-11, 118-19, 133, 135-8, 149-50, 166, 182, 192,200-3,206,208-17; peasant organizing, 207, 320-1; on-independence ofIndia, 218, 225-7,230-1; Third Party Conference (1948), 230-1; Special Party Convention (1948),238-40; on Nehru government, 227-8; on Princely States, 228-9, 315-16; entry tactic, 232-40; merger with Socialist Party, 240-9 Bolshevik Leninist Party ofthe United Provinces and Bihar, 80, 91-2,98

358

Bolshevik Mazdoor Party of India, 81-2, 104, 165, 167-9, 199-200, 249 Borodin, Mikhail, 41 Bose, Dulal, 91, 176n, 201, 202-3, 231n,255-6 Bose, Sarat Chandra, 177-8 Bose, Subhas Chandra (Netaji), 53, 108,176-7,298 Bukharin, Nikolai, 42-3, 46, 51, 52n,69 Bunby, Fred, 142, 151, 234, 236;256

Cama, Rustom Bhikaji (Madame Cama),25 Capitalist class in India, 15-17, 21, 107,285-7,293,300,306-7 Caste, 35, 86-7, 108; see also Harijans Ceylon Federation of Labour, 194 Ceylon National Congress, 60 Chatterji, Haradhan, 176, 177, 179, 202-3,256 Chatterji, Sudarshan, 204n Chattopadhyaya, Gautam, 91 n, 185 Chattopadhyaya, Virendranath, 49n,69 Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), 42, 43,49n, 141 Chittagong Armoury Raid (1930), 295 Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-32),78,107,294,306-7 Clive, Robert, Governor of Bengal, 2-3

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Communalism: in India, 35,108, 188-91,209,219,223; in Ceylon, 189, 198 Communist International (Comintern): formation, 27; on colonial question, 27, 29, 50; support for Khilafat movement, 27; Second Congress (1920), 2931,37; Third Congress (1921), 38; Fourth Congress (1922), 38, 39-40; on the united-front tactic, 38-9; on formation of "peoples parties," 39-40; policy in China (1925-7),39,41-4,333; Fifth Congress (1924), 40,50; Sixth Congress (1928), 46, 51; on twostage revolution theory, 42, 44-6, 107; ultra-left period (1929-33), 51,53,63,304,333-4; policy for Indian National Congress, 52, 76, 79, 304; Popular Front line (1935-9),63-7, 76, 79, 334-5; Seventh Congress (1935), 65, 79n; intervention in Spanish Civil War (1936-9),68,334-5; and Stalin-Hitler Pact (1939),71, 335; Peoples' War line (1942-5), 100,304,335; dissolved (1943), 130; see also Communist Parties. Communist Parties: America, 49; Ceylon, 75, 195; China, 39, 414,45-6,247,333; France, 64, 66, 335; Germany, 38, 40, 53, 63, 334; Great Britain, 50-2, 56, 57,66n, 67n, 76,89, 143n, 152; Mexico, 49; South Africa, 82; Spain, 68 Communist Party ofIndia, 53, 57n, 62,66-7,76,79,80-1,108,111, 113-4, 116-7, 118n, 120-2, 127,

131-2,133,138,143-5,170n, 174, 177-81, 183, 185-6,202, 208,210,213,220,224,227, 237,240,247,298,303,304 Congress Socialist Party (CSP), 601,73,76-8,80-1,84,88, 108, 115, 119-20,171-2,173-4,181,184, 206,226,232,234,297-8,305 Constituent Assembly, 173, 187, 218-23,232,314 Cooray, Lionel, 111, 112, 127-8, 161n,256 Cornwallis, Charles, GovernorGeneral ofIndia, 4, 6, 7 Cripps, Stafford, 164, 173 Curzon, George Nathaniel, Viceroy ofIndia,20

Dalhousie (James Ramsey, First Marquess of Dalhousie), Governor-General of India, 12 Dange, S.A., 208n Das, Sitanshu, 119, 132-3, 139n, 176,233,235n,257 De Silva, Colvin R., 57, 58,61,69, 71,92,97, 109 110, 128, 133, 139n, 140, 142, 145, 158, 161, 174,191, 192n, 195n, 197,214, 222n,225,230-1,275-6 De Silva, Susan, 59, 160,276 De Souza, Doric, 70, 71n, 96-7, 99-100, 112, 121n, BIn, 132, 139n, 140, 155-61, 163n, 163-4, 170-2, 193, 195, 221n, 225-6, 278 De Souza, Violet, 131 n Dev, Acharya Narendra, 79 De Zylva, Terrence, 70, 279

359

The r,'otskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Dharmapala, Anagarika, 162n Dimitrov, Georgi, 68, 72n Drieberg, Trevor, 131n, 257 Durai Raj, P.V., 257 Dutt, Clemens, 50, 53, 56 Dutt, Rajani Palme, 46, 50-1, 53, 106n, 143n, 281n, 289n, 292n Dutt, Romesh Chunder, 20

Einstein, Albert, 49n Elayaperumal, 207 Engels, Friedrich, 9n, 13n, 31; letter to Kautsky on colonialism (1882), 23, 26

Fernando, Amaradasa, 155-6 Feudalism in India, theory of, 4, 5, 14,19,32,46,106-7 Fourth International (FI): founding (1938),63, 73, 85n; International Executive Committee (IEC), 72n, 126,238; International Secretariat (IS), 74, 238, 245-6; Bureau, 93; on Indian independenc~, 126,231; on entry tactic in India (1947-8),238-40, 245; on Korean War, 243 Forward Bloc, 111, 119, 169, 170, 172,297

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma), 28, 33-4, 36, 38, 52, 78,83-4,87, 108-9, 113-5, 131, 165,173,184,232,248,294-6

360

Garbutt, Douglas, 150-1, 182,258 Gee, Edward Dennis, 123-4 Ghosh, Aurobindo, 22 Glass, Frank, 82-3, 125n Godes, M.S., 46 Goonesinha, Alexander E., 58, 59,63 Goonewardene, Cho10mondoley, 195,258 Goonewardene, Leslie, 57-8, 62, 68-9,89,93,95-7,99-100,1024, 110, 128, 132, 139n, 140 142, 150,155,160, 161n, 162, 172, 174,191, 192n, 195n,204n,222, 225,230-1,233-5,238-9,246, 258 Goonewardene, Vivienne, 102, 128, 16In, 189, 192n,259 Gopalan, A.K., 145 Gordon, Sam, 74 Green, Richard, 157, 162 Gunadasa, Mike, 157, 162 Gunasekera, A., 194 Gunasekera, Vernon, 57-8, 84n, 259 Gunawardena, Caroline, see Caro1ine Anthony Pillai Gunawardena, Kusuma, 127-8, 159,167,260 Gunawardena, Philip, 48-51, 5363,65-6,70,72,75,92,97,104, 109-11, 112n, 118n, 121, 127-9, 141,156-64,166-7,169-72,174, 191,193-8,229,232-4,260 Gunawardena, Robert, 58, 63, 97, 110,116,127-9,155, 157, 160, 197,261 Gupta, Balkrishna, 90, 92, 261

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Harijans, 86; see also Caste Harvani, Ansar, 78,261-2 Hindu Mahasabha, 297 Hume, Allan Octavian, 18

Independent Labour Party (ILP), 54, 78n India League, 53, 70, 84n, 152 Indian Mutiny (1857), 12-l3, 292 Indian National Anny (INA), 176-9 Indian National Congress: fonnation, 17-8; character of, 18-9,20,293,306; and the landlords, 19-20,36, 79, 293, 306; and the Princes, 19; on the working class, 34; on the Muslims, 108n; Moderate group within, 19,21-2; Extremist group within, 19, 22; and peasantry, 20, 79, 107; in Swadeshi movement (1906-8),21-2,29,294; and Morley-Minto refonns (1909), 22, 294; and MontaguChelmsford refonn (1919), 294; Bardoli resolution (1922), 36, 294; Gandhi-Irwin settlement (1931),295; Simla conferences (1945-6), 173, 187; elections (1945), 174; on INA demonstrations (1945-6), 17781; on RIN Mutiny (1946),1846; on Cabinet Mission, 219; on Constituent Assembly, 219; in independent India, 247; see also Civil Disobedience movement, Non-Cooperation movement International Left Opposition, see Left Opposition

Jadhav, Lakshman, 182,200,237 Jallianwala Bagh massacre (1919),28 James, C.L.R., 70, 89-90, 92 Jha, Jagadish, 201, 262 Jinnah, MuhammadAli (Quaid-iAzam), 143, 187, 188-90 Joshi, P.C., 77"Il3-4, 120,

Kabir, Humayun, 91, l33 Kalyanasundara Mudaliar, Thiru V. (Thiru Vi. Ka.), l37n, 208, 211, 214,216 Kamenev, Lev, 45, 69 Kanpur Mazdoor Sabha, 80 Karalasingham, V., 57n, 132, 139n, 141-2, 162, 192n,222n,231~ 236,238n,239,244-5,262 Karkal, Ramesh, 111, 128n, 183, 200n,246,263 Karuppa Pillai, Sholavandan, 95, 112 Kautsky, Karl, 23-6 Kemal, Mustafa, (Ataturk), 38 Keuneman, Pieter, 70 Khan, Zahrul Hasan, 201, 203, 236,263 Khilafat movement (1920-22),278,34,35,108n Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party, 248 Kodial, Raghuvir, Ill, 128n, 263 Koley, Satyen, 176, 263 Kolpe, Sitaram, 88, 89n, 264 Koppar, P.G., 128n Korean War, 243-4 Kotelawala, lC.T. (Jack), 112, 195n, 264

361

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Kotelawala, John, 162n Kripalani, Acharya, 248 Krishnamurthy, T.G., 95, 112, 120, 207,210 Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), 39,41-2,45,296,333

Landlords in India, 3, 6-7, 13-4, 19-20,36, 79, 107,282,288-91, 293,299 Landy, Avrom, 49 Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP): formation, 48, 61; the "T Group" within, 56, 57; links with Congress Socialist Party, 61; on Spanish Civil War, 68-70; on Moscow Trials, 69; pro-Moscow faction within, 70; at odds with Comintern, 66-8, 71; opposition to WWII, 66, 72, 92; contacts with Fourth International, 73-4; expels pro-Moscow faction, 75; transformation into a Trotskyist party, 76, 100, 155-8; contacts with Indian Trotskyists, 92, 95100; plantation strikes, leadership of, 92; repression during WWII, 92-4, 112; thesis of single Indo-Ceylonese revolution, 94, 100; jailbreak of leaders, 104; factionalism within, 154-63,169-72,193-8; split (1945-50), 197-8; on Tamil rights, 198; on independence (1948),229-30 League Against Imperialism, 49, 50n, 54,56,69,89

362

Lee, Raff, 83 Left Opposition, 43-5, 51, 52n, 55, 58, 82-3, 84n, 85, 333; see also Trotskyist parties Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich: opposition to WWI (1914-17), 26; on nationalists in Asia, 27, 30-1, 37; on need for a revolutionary policy for Asia, 28; theses on national and colonial question (1920), 29, 31; on "revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry," 37n, 309; on united-front tactics (1920),38,39; his Last Testament (1922),88; calls for Stalin's removal (1923),88, 143n; theory of imperialism, 226 Liberal Federation ofIndia, 294, 297 Lohia, Ram Manohar, 247-8 Lotvala, R.B., 84

Madras Labour Union (MLU), 137n, 208-17 Managing agency system, 15, 17, 287 Mandekar, Anant, 199-200, 237n, 264-5 Manickam, see Bodi M. Muthiah Manuilsky, Dimitri, 66, 68 Maring (Hendricus Sneevliet), 39 Marx, Karl: on British land settlements in India, 8-9; on character ofpre-colonial India, 9, 46; postulates an Asiatic Mode . of Production, 9n, 32n; rejects idea of "Indian feudalism," 9,

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

32,42,45,46, 106; on British plunder of colonies, 9-10; on impact of British manufactures 11-12; on the Indian Mutiny, 13; on nationalism, 24; supports India's freedom, 12,23; questions prognosis for capitalism, 23n; his writings on Asia slip into obscurity, 29, 281n; and are rediscovered (1925), 29, 45, 106n; on "combined development" in India, 33 Marxian Propaganda League, 54 Masani, Minoo, 73n, 78, 84, 205 Mazdoor Trotskyist Party of India, 105,249 Mazumdar, Niharendu Datta, 170 Mehta, Ratilal, 84 Mendis, Allan, 111, 138, 159n, 265 Menon, V.K. Krishna, 70, 84n Mishra, Hiranand, 98, 133,201, 221n, 238n, 240,245,249,265 Mitra, Chitta, 265 Moplah revolt (1921),35 More, Prabhakar, 182, 200, 235n, 248,266 Moscow Trials (1936-8), 46n, 6970; see also Stalin: execution of political opponents Mountbatten, Louis (Lord), Admiral Viscount, Viceroy of India, 192,214,216,218-9,227 Mukherji, Basanta Dev, 266 Munroe, Thomas, Governor of Madras, 7-8 Miinzenberg, Willi, 49n Muslim League, 108, 139, 142-6, 173-4,178,181,184-91,192, 220,297

Muthiah, Bodi M., 112, 138, 139n, 149,211,214,236,266

Namboodripad, E.M.S., 114n, 144 Narayan, Jaya Prakash, 49, 60, 69, 120,232,240,242,244,247-8 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 49n, 53, 69, 113,173, 178, 188,215,219, 220,226,232,247,298 Nin, Andres, 68 Non-Cooperation movement (1920-22), 33, 34-6,48, 52n, 107, 108n,294-5

Pablo, Michel, 238, 245-6 Pakistan question, 108, 142-5, 174-5,187,190,223-4 Palani Velayutham, G., 209, 266 Pardiwala, H.R., 119 Parija, Murlidhar, 88, 89, 267 Parulekar, N.B., 118n Patel, Shanta, 169n 199-200 Patel, Vallabhbhai (Sardar), 79n, 186 Peasantry in India, 1,3-8, 20n, 35, 79, 107, 117,282,288-91, 298-9,300-1,308,320-1 Peiris, Henry, 231n, 267 Perera, G.P. ("Elephant Perera"), 156n Perera, George ("Chumbi"), 156n Perera, Lorenz, 158n, 162,267 . Perera, Milton, 157, 162 Perera, N.M., 57-8, 59, 62, 67, 92, 97, lOOn, 110, 127-9, 156, 158, 161,169-70, 193-8, 195, 197, 267-8

363

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Perera, Patrick, 160n Perera, Reggie, 268 Perera, Selina, 73-5, 128, 139n, 170, 192n, 201, 243-5, 247-8, 268-9 Perera, W.J. ("Hospital Perera"), 156n, 163, 193-5 Permanent Revolution, theory of, 37n, 44, 47, 86, 106-7,218,300, 306-10 Permanent Settlement (1793), 6, 20,289 Pillai, S.C.C. Anthony, see Anthony Pillai Pillai, V.O. Chidambaran, 23 Plastrik, Stanley, 73, 74n Plekhanov, Georgii, 58, 157 Pollitt, Harry, 56 Praja Socialist Party, 248 Pratap, Sheo, 78 Princes, 14-15, 19,21, 107,228, 292-3, 308, 315 Purdy, Murray Gow, 82-9, 96,1003,105,108,122-5,204n,249, 269 Purohit, Vinayak, 118, 128n, 139n, 140,163n,235n,269-70

Quit India revolt (1942-43), 49n, 111, 113-27, 165, 174,203,217

Radek, Karl, 38-9, 43-6, 64n Radical Democratic Party, 297-8, 327 Rai, Lala Lajpat, 22

364

Ramaswamy, B.M.K., 95, 112, 136,138,192n,206,236,270 Rao,M.Madhava,210,23In, 270-1 Rao,Mahadev,210 Rao, MallikArjun, 88-9,123,125, 249n, 271 Rao, T.R., 243, 271 Reilly, FrankT. (Tommy), 151 Revolutionary Communist Party (British Section of Fourth International), 89n, 125n, 152, 154n,233,237 Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI), 170, 203-5 Revolutionary Socialist League (Bengal), 92, 96 Revolutionary Socialist Party of India, 111, 119, 177 Revolutionary Workers League of India, 89 Riazanov, David, 29,45-6, 281n Ridley, Frank, 54-5 Rivera, Diego, 49n Roy, Ajit, 70, 89-91,130, 152, 198,206,228,231n,241,245, 271-2 Roy, Karuna Kant, 78, 98, 131n, 139n, 272 Roy, Manabendra Nath, 29-33,367,39-43,46,50-1, 52n, 118, 194,297-8,327 Roy, Purnangshu K., 98, 133, 146, 148,150,176,201,221n,225, 231n,240,245,249,272 Roy, Suprova, 176 Ryotwari Settlement (1813),8, 289-90

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Sahajanand, Swami (Sahajanand Saraswati), 79 Saklatvala, Shapurji, 50-I, 53 Samarakkody, Edmund, 92, 97n, 162,195,273 Sampurnanand,248 Sanyal, Dhiresh, 176 Sastry, V.S.S., 152, 198-9, 222n, 223,233,235n, 238n, 245, 273 Satchithanandam, V., 70, 272-3 Scott, L., 148-50 Second International (Social Democrats), 23-5, 26, 28, 53, 243,332 Selvaraj, G., 138,210, 231n, 273-4 Sen, Indra, 91, 98-9,104,119, 139n, 140, 142, 145, 182, 198, 222n, 225, 230-1, 237-8, 241-2, . 246, 248, 274 Senanayake, Daisy, 274 Senanayake, Reggie, 89, 97,128, 274 Shachtman, Max, 73n, 141,205, 243-4 Shastri, Hariharnath, 80 Shastri, Onkarnath, 77-81, 91-2, 98-9, 103-4, 134-5,275 Shukla, Chandravadan, 81-2, 89, 96, 101, 103-5, 110, 162, 165-9, 199-200,249,275 Silva, K.P., 231n Silva, P.H. WilIiam, 70, 89, 161, 195n, 276-7 Silva, Sam, 156n Sinclair, Upton, 49 Singh, Ajit (Sardar), 22 Singh, Ambika, 123,249 Singh,Mahendra, 124

Singh, Vishwanath, 134n Siqueiros, DavidAlfaro, 49 Sircar, Mukundlal, 169 Siriwardena, Regi, lOOn, 112n, 154n, 159n, 160, 162,277 Socialist Party ofIndia, 232, 234, 236-7,240-4,247-8; see also Congress Socililist Party Socialist Workers Party (USA), 734, 83n, 87, 121n, 125n, 141, 146n, 147-8, 183n,215,218n, 222n, 234, 244n Solomon, M.T., 97, 112, 128, 138 Soysa, Bernard, 96, 97, 98-100, 102-4,128,162,277 Stalin, Joseph: Lenin calls for his removal (1923),88; votes to suppress Lenin's Last Testament (1924), 88n; role in fight over China policy (1925-8), 42-3, 456, 51; "Social Fascism" theory (1929-34),51-3; on two-class parties in the East, 52n; Popular Front line (1934-39), 65; and Spanish Civil War (1936-9),678; Stalin-Hitler Pact (1939),64, 71-2; execution of political opponents,46,64n,68,69,72, 246n Stanley, Sherman, see Stanley Plastrik Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan), 27, 38-9,41 Suriya Mal movement, 59-60

Tagore, Saumyendra Nath, 91n, 170,203-5 Tata Iron and Steel Company, 21

365

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon

Third International, see Communist International Tilak, Bal Gangadhar (Lokamanya), 19,23, 137n Tilakar, A.H., 89n Transitional Program of the Fourth International (1938),856, 100, 106, 220 Trivedi, Rajendra, 248 Trotsky, Leon: opposition to WWI (1914-7),26; as Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs (1917), 26n; authors founding Manifesto of Comintern (1919), 27; suggests Red Army offensive towards British India (1919), 28n; praised by Lenin (1922), 88n; formulates theory of Permanent Revolution for Russia (1905), 37n, 44, 204n; calls for insurrection in Germany (1923), 40n; on "socialism in one country" (1925), 226; on twostage revolution theory, 42; calls for revolutionary policy in China (1925-7), 42-4; forms Left Opposition (1923), 44, 46-7; generalizes theory of Permanent Revolution (1927), 45, 47; expelled from Bolshevik party, 45; exiled to Alma Ata, 46; critique of Comintern Program (1928), 52n; on Stalinist theory of "Social Fascism," 52-3; on forming two-class parties in the East, 52; on M.N Roy, 52n; on rise of Nazis, 63, 65; calls for new International, 63; against the Popular Front, 65, 218n; on the entry tactic (1934-8),171,233;

366

on Indian independence 27 94 218; on constituent asse:nbl~ , slogan, 220-1; on WWII, 130; History of the Russian Revolution (1930), 78, 90; The Revolution Betrayed (1938), 71; "Open Letter to the Workers of India" (1939), 74n, 82, 94; "Letter to an Indian Comrade" (1939), 74-5, 170 Trotskyist parties: China, 82n, 83, 141; France, 58, 171n,246; Germany, 53n; Great Britain 70 73,89, 91n, 92, 109; Spain, 58, ' 68; South Africa, 88n; USA, 734,82-3,87, 88n, 171n; see also Revolutionary Communist Party (British Section) and Socialist Workers Party (USA) Troyanovsky, K.M., 30, 31n

Udyawar, S.P., 118, 278 Untouchables, see Harijans

Vaidialingam, A., 70 Van Kol, Henri, 24-5 Vanniasingham, R.H., 198, 199n Vasconcelos, Jose, 49 Venkataram, R., 120

Wavell, Archibald Percival, ViceroyofIndia, 173, 187, 192, 218 Wickremasinghe, Esmond, 112, 155, 163,278

The Trotskyist Movement in India and Cey/on

Wickremasinghe, Dr. S.A., 62, 70, 75n, 157n WiIliam, D.G ("Galle Face WiIliam"), 156n Workers' and Peasants' Parties, 52, 300,304 Workers Group (Fourth Internationalist), 88-9 Workers Party of USA, 141, 146; see also Max Shachtman Working class in India, 16,23,27, 80,294-5,301-5,307 World War I, 26, 72, 76, 294, 325, 332 World War 11: Trotskyist opposition to, 66, 72, 76, 81-2, 88,92, 101-2, 110-11, 116, 141 325-32,

Youth Leagues (Ceylon), 58, 59

Zaheer, Sajjad, 144 Zinoviev, Grigori, 27, 40n, 45,51, 52n,69 Zuberi, Umar Abid, 179,201,246, 278-9

367