A Communist Revolutionary Remembered

Asok Chattopadhyay

Come November 18 and the fifty years after the demise of a great Communist revolutionary is going to be surpassing unceremoniously. He is Pramodranjan Sengupta, publicly known as Pramod Sengupta. He was born in Dumka in the then Santal Pargana (now Jharkhand) in British India on April 11, 1907, two years after the Partition of Bengal. His father Harshanath Sengupta was a renowned doctor in Dumka. While a mere boy of 18, Pramod Sengupta met with the revolutionaries like Hemantakumar Sarkar, Anantahari Mitra and Mahadev Sarkar while studying at Krishnanagar Government College in Nadia district of undivided Bangladesh in 1925. And as a result he was attracted to their revolutionary politics.

In December 1926, he was arrested from Shibchar, a village of Faridpur district in Dakshineshwar bomb case. By then he had succeeded in the IA (Intermediate of Arts) examination. After his release from prison in November 1927, he went to England for higher studies. While studying at the London School of Economics, he came in contact with the dock workers and joined the India League and subsequently joined the trade union movement of the dock workers and became a member of the British Communist Party. But owing to differences with Bradley, the leader of the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain), he left England.

He went to Germany in 1928 at the invitation of Soumen Thakur (Soumendranath Tagore) and got acquainted with the people of the Berlin Committee there. While returning to England, the French police arrested him with a revolver. After his release, he came in contact with Rajani Palm Dutt, Sapurji Saklatwala and Harry Pollitt. During 1934-1935, he participated in the Communist Group of Studies with a number of Indian students in London. This communist group of studies later formed the anti-imperialist Pragati Lekhak Sangha (Progressive Writers Association). He was also associated with the International Peace Movement.

In 1936 he went to Spain where there was a civil war running against Franco’s fascism. Pramod Sengupta participated in that anti-fascist struggle. From there, he went to France through Germany and was arrested by the French police again. After his release from prison in 1937, he returned to England and joined the Hindustan Standard, a renowned newspaper in London as a journalist.

He went to France in 1938. At this time he started and pursued his research on Agro-Related Development in India. In 1940, Hitler’s Nazi forces occupied Paris and enthroned their stooge (satellite) government in France, forcing Pramod Sengupta to leave everything and move to southern France. He spent almost two years in a camp there.

He joined the Indian National Army during the World War II. It may be recalled that Subhash Chandra Basu founded this organisation in Berlin. Pramod Sengupta was appointed as the programme director of this organisation. He also edited the Azad Hind, the mouthpiece of the organisation, for some time. After the war, he was arrested by the British Military Mission Police in 1945 and spent ten months in prison. After his release, he returned to India in November 1946 and joined the post of the associate editor of the Eastern Express. During that time he was associated with many organisations like Shanti Sangsad (Peace Council), Bharat-Soviet Suhrid Samiti (Indo-Soviet Friendship Association), Chin Bharat Suhhrid Samity (Sino-India Friendship Association), Bharatiya Gananyatya Sangha (Indian People’s Theatre Association) and even associated with the Civil Liberties Movement respectively.

After mid-August 1948, the Civil Liberties Committee decided to hold a public meeting at the Calcutta Maidan on 28 August at the Bharat Sabha Hall in Calcutta. Pramod Sengupta was present in this meeting and the circular released from this meeting was signed by him. In 1949, a meeting was held at the Mahabodhi Society Hall, College Street, in protest against the banning of the Communist Party of India by the Congress government, chaired by Pramod Sengupta. Due to joining the leftist movement, he was re-arrested under the Preventive Detention Act in 1950 and remained incarcerated in the Presidency Jail of Calcutta. After release, he joined the Communist Party of India. Later he joined the Rights Movement organisations and when the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) was established on 25 June 1972, he became the first General Secretary of this organisation.

In 1966, Romain Rolland’s birth centenary was celebrated all over the world. There was strong antagonism among a section of Indian intellectuals about Rolland. Pramod Sengupta along with other intellectuals like Amiyabhushan Chakra-borty, Khagendranath Mitra, Mohit Moitra, and Saroj Dutta took an important role by joining the Romain Rolland Committee of India against the odds. And the result of his active role in this respect brought in print of his famous work entitled Kalanter Pathik Romain Rolland, in the same year (1966). In the Preface of this book he wrote:

‘Romain Rolland was the greatest representative of the French and European art, civilisation and humanism and the eternal guardian of his conscience…But it is a pity that Indians are very little acquainted with Rolland’s great dynamic thought. Whatever has been studied about Rolland in Bengali, it has not been done in other languages   of India…. He is a symbol of the revolutionary tradition of equality, friendship and freedom of the French Revolution; he had never compromised against his conscience, against ideals, against his faith a bit…His hatred against mental and moral cowardice, his fearless honesty and ever-awakened conscience did not allow him to halt. Rolland’s life is a clear mirror of this conflicting age, a wonderful history of the clash between the old and new ideas over time’.

In consequence of the Naxalbari movement, the Naxalbari O Krishak Sangram Sahayak Committee was formed in Kolkata on 14 June 1967. This committee was chaired by Pramod Sengupta, Satyananda Bhattacharya and Sushital Roychowdhury respectively were joint-president of this committee. Thereafter, on 12th November 1967, the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) was formed. Six of the seventeen members present in this meeting were from West Bengal. Among these six were Charu Majumder, Sushital Roychowdhury, Saroj Dutta, Asit Sen, Pramod Sengupta and Parimal Dasgupta. But due to political differences, Sengupta was expelled from this coordination committee in January 1969.

As a Marxist intellectual, Pramod Sengupta wrote several important books. Notable among those are: Bharatiya Mahabidroha, Nil Bidroha O Bangali Samaj, Kalanter Pathik Romain Rolland, Naxalbari and Indian Revolution. Apart from this, his significant book in this context on Naxalbari movement was Biplob Kon Pathe. His famous work entitled Bharatiya Mahabidroha was first published in the month of August 1957 i.e. on the eve of the centenary year of the Indian great rebellion of 1857. In the Preface of this book he wrote:

‘...It goes without saying that there is a special need for a fresh exploration and discussion of the Indian great rebellion (1857). Whatever histories etc. have been written so far about this great historical event, they are almost all written embedded with the view shared by the British imperialists. The time has come for a re-examination of the character and features of this Indian great rebellion based on historical data with an Indian national perspective.’

And with a view to bowing the interest of the Indian national perspective impregnated with the series of peasant’s revolt against the alien British rule, he took a vow to get up with this precious volume. Eminent historian Suprakash Roy and the Communist intellectual Saroj Dutta were notable among those who helped Pramod Sengupta a great deal in the making of this book to the public.

In contrast to the glorious historic chapter of armed revolt rising against the foreign rule in Bengal from the late 1750s onwards, the nil andolon of 1860 simultaneously gave birth to a new type of constitutional movement quiet unpreconceived so long. Many a middle-class loyal Bengali intellectual of the time joined this movement. On the eve of the centenary year of this movement, his volume entitled Nil Bidroha O Bangali Samaj was published. Pramod Sengupta wrote in the prologue entitled ‘Author’s Note’ of this book:

at that time. Sadly to say... no history of it (indigo peasants’ struggle) has been written in a hundred years, although it is evident that this revolt had shaken not only the British Government of Bengal, but all sections of the Bengali society.

The Nil Bidroha O Bangali Samaj was first published on August 15, 1960 on the centenary of the Indigo movement. This valuable volume was brought to public by the National Book Agency, a publication unit run by the undivided Communist Party of India. Later another edition of this volume was published by Radical Book Club on 7 November 1978.

Another work entitled Biplob Kon Pathe was first published on May 1, 1970. In the Introduction of this book he wrote:

‘Why is the communist movement, the movement for democratic revolution in India—despite the hard struggle and continual sacrifices of the party men and the masses of the people—failing again and again, why is it time and again that rightwing revisionist or leftwing fundamentalist leadership gets an opportunity to lead it to astray, even if the Naxalbari movement renews its search for the path of revolution? This revolution again faces failure under the influence of petty bourgeois revolutionaries. —Isn’t the main reason for this the weakness of the concept of the Marxist ideology among Indian revolutionaries?’

Apart from Biplob Kon Pathe, another published work of his is known as Marxism and Parliamentarianism.

Pramod Sengupta breathed his last on November 18, 1974. A long and eventful fifty years have smoothly passed by afterwards. It is easy to find out the lapses between his thought and practice indeed, but his dedication to the cause of the emancipation of the Indian people both from the fetters of alien British Imperialist Government and thereafter from the so-called independent Indian ruling class and its allies stands beyond question.

 July 1-5, 2024

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Vol 57, No. 15 - 18, Oct 5 - Nov 2, 2024