Inspired by the Russian Revolution, the ideology spread to various countries and India was deeply influenced by it. The Communist Party of India (C.P.I.) was first formed by Indian exiles abroad led by M.N. Roy, an associate of Lenin, at Tashkent in October 1920. Independent of this development, various left-wing groups in India converged at Kanpur in December 1925 to form the C.P.I. with S.V. Ghate as General Secretary. <\/span><\/p>\n The C.P.I. called upon its members to enrol themselves as the members of the Congress to transform it into a more radical mass-based organization. The C.P.I. first organized Workers and Peasants’ Parties (WPPs) within the Congress and worked through them in provinces like Bengal, Punjab, Madras and Bombay with the leaders being people like S.A. Dange, Muzzaffar Ahmed, Qazi Nazrul Islam etc. These parties grew rapidly and left-wing Congressmen like Nehru and Bose welcomed them, which led to the growth of the Left Wing within the Congress. The communists, by 1929, were able to establish their hold on the working class. <\/span><\/p>\n In 1929, the communist influence in the national movement was virtually wiped out due to two developments. Firstly, there was severe repression by the Government which arrested all major communist leaders like. S.A. Dange, Muzzaffar Ahmed etc., tried them and sentenced them to various terms of imprisonment through a series of Bolshevik conspiracy cases.<\/span><\/p>\n Secondly, the Sixth Congress of the Communist International asked the communists to break with the Congress as it was a party of the bourgeois and declared it as a supporter of imperialism. It also dissolved the WPPs and the C.P.I. was to be an independent party. This isolated them from the national movement especially when it was on the verge of taking off and the Government took this opportunity in 1934 to declare C.P.I. illegal. But the movement was saved from disaster as many C.P.I. cadres joined the Congress and participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement and many revolutionary terrorists joined the C.P.I. in 1934. <\/span><\/p>\n The C.P.I. got a facelift when it was reorganized under the leadership of P.C. Joshi in 1935 and the Seventh Communist International, faced with the threat of fascism, altered its position and advocated the formation of a united front with the socialists and other anti-fascists. The Indian communists returned to the mainstream national movement led by Congress and accepted it as the leader of the anti-imperialist struggle. The C.P.I. now asked its cadres to again enrol themselves as members of the Congress but at the same time, the party remained committed to the objective of bringing the national movement under the domination of the working class. They worked hard within the Congress, occupied official positions at all levels and during the period, built up powerful peasant movements in Kerala, Andhra, Bengal and Punjab, besides dominating the Trade Union movement. After independence, many of the communists contested elections and served as an effective opposition besides making the functioning of parliamentary democracy more effective in India. <\/span><\/p>\n It transformed Congress into a mass-based organization with a sound social base. The Congress and the national movement got radicalised. The Congress acquired a sharp socio-economic content and it accepted the primacy of issues affecting the workers and the peasants. The workers and peasants were weaned away from revolutionary terrorism and they became part of mainstream nationalist politics due to the strong left-wing in the Congress.<\/span><\/p>\n A major development of the period 1935-1939 was the increasing interest the Congress took in world affairs. The Congress had from its inception in 1885 opposed the use of the Indian army and of India’s resources to serve British interests in Africa and Asia. It had gradually developed a foreign policy based on opposition to the spread of imperialism. In February 1927, Jawaharlal Nehru on behalf of the National Congress attended the Congress Against Imperialism and Colonial Exploitation at Brussels organised by political exiles and revolutionaries from the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. <\/span><\/p>\n Nehru was elected to the Executive Council of the League Against Imperialism that was born at the Brussels Congress and also headed the Foreign Affairs Wing within the Congress and made Congressmen aware of all international developments and their consequences. In 1927, the Madras session of the National Congress warned the Government that the people of India would not support Britain in any imperial war outside India. <\/span><\/p>\n In the 1930s the Congress took a firm stand against imperialism in any part of the work and supported national movements in Asia and Africa. It condemned Fascism which was rising at the time in Italy, Germany, and Japan and the imperialism which developed as a consequence of it. It also extended full support to Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia, and China in their fight against aggression by the fascist powers. In 1937, when Japan launched an attack on China, the National Congress passed a resolution calling upon the Indian people to boycott Japanese goods as a mark of their sympathy with the people of China. And in 1938, it sent a medical mission, headed by Dr M. Atal and the famous Dr Kotnis to work with the Chinese armed forces. <\/span><\/p>\n A major development during this period was the spread of the national movement to the princely states. Appalling economic, political, and social conditions prevailed in most of them. Peasants were oppressed, land revenue and taxation were excessive, education was retarded, health and other social services were extremely backward and freedom of the press and other civil rights hardly existed. The bulk of the state revenues were spent on the luxuries of the princes, though there were some exceptions.<\/span><\/p>\n Moreover, the British authorities used the princes to prevent the growth of national unity and to counter the rising national movement. The princes, in turn, depended on the British to protect them from popular revolts and adopted a hostile attitude to the national movement. In 1921, the Chamber of Princes was created to enable the princes to meet and discuss under British guidance, matters of common interest. In the Government of India Act, 1935, the proposed federal structure. was so planned as to check the forces of nationalism. It was provided that the princes would get 2\/5th of the seats in the Upper House and 1\/3rd of the seats in the Lower House. Even the Cripps’ proposals contained the clause that representatives of the princely states in the proposed Constituent Assembly would be nominated and not elected so that they could protect British interests. <\/span><\/p>\n People of many of the princely states now began to organise movements for democratic rights and popular governments. The All India States’ Peoples’ Conference had already been founded in December 1927 to coordinate political activities in the different states. Popular struggles were waged in many of the states, particularly in Rajkot, Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Travancore. The princes met these struggles with violent repression. Some of them also took recourse to communalism. The Nizam of Hyderabad declared that the popular agitation was anti-Muslim, the Maharaja of Kashmir branded it as anti-Hindu; while the Maharaja of Travancore claimed that Christians were behind it. <\/span><\/p>\n The Congress supported the states’ people’s struggle and urged the princes to introduce representative government and to grant basic civil rights. In 1938, when Congress defined its goal of independence as including the independence of the princely states. Next year, at the Tripuri session, it decided to take a more active part in the states’ people’s movements. The freedom struggles in both British Indian and princely states were integrated when Jawaharlal Nehru became the President of the All India States’ Peoples’ Conference in 1939. The Quit India Movement’s scope was extended to princely states as well. The States’ peoples’ movement awakened national consciousness among the people of the states and helped Sardar Vallabhai Patel in the integration of princely states with India.<\/span><\/p>\n Another important development was the growth of communalism. The elections for the legislative assemblies, organised on the basis of the restricted franchise and separate electorates, in 1937 produced separatist sentiments. The Muslim League did not capture many of the seats reserved for the Muslims in the elections. The Muslims League, led by Jinnah, now turned their bitter opposition to the Congress. It began to spread the cry that Islam was in danger of being engulfed by Hinduism. It propagated the unscientific and unhistorical theory that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations that had antagonistic interests. In 1940, the Muslim League passed a resolution demanding the creation of a separate state to be called Pakistan after independence. <\/span><\/p>\n The Muslim League propaganda was gained by the existence of such communal bodies among the Hindus as the Hindu Mahasabha. The Hindu communalists echoed the Muslim communalists by declaring that the Hindus were a distinct nation and that India was the land of the Hindus. They wanted the Muslims either to adopt the Hindu religion and culture or leave India. They actively opposed the policy of giving adequate safeguards to the minorities. <\/span><\/p>\n Interestingly enough, the Hindu and Muslim communal groups did not hesitate to join hands against the Congress. Another characteristic the various communal groups shared was their tendency to adopt pro-government political attitudes. It is to be noted that none of the community groups and parties, which talked of Hindu and Muslim nationalism, took an active part in the struggle against foreign rule. They saw the people belonging to other religions and the nationalist leaders as the real enemies.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Growth Of Communism Inspired by the Russian Revolution, the ideology spread to various countries and India was deeply influenced by it. The Communist Party of India (C.P.I.) was first formed by Indian exiles abroad led by M.N. Roy, an associate of Lenin, at Tashkent in October 1920. Independent of this development, various left-wing groups in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcqbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Impact of the left-wing on Congress<\/h3>\n
Congress and World Affairs<\/h3>\n
States Peoples’ Struggle<\/h3>\n
Growth of Communalism<\/h3>\n