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A Pioneer

Suniti Kumar Ghosh: His Contributions to Indian Historical Studies–I

Amit Bhattacharyya

[In continuation of our previous discussion in a series in the Frontier of Suniti Kumar Ghosh’s assessment of Gandhi and the national movement led by him as part of his contribution to Indian historical studies, we propose to take up in this section our next part leading to the transfer of power in 1947.]

The arrests of March 1929 in the Meerut Conspiracy Case were a big blow to the CPI. The Bombay group which consisted of S.V.Deshpande, B.T.Randive and Mrs.Nambiar formed the ‘Young Workers’ League’ and published their organ, Workers’ Weekly. This group which controlled some big trade unions like the GirniKamgar Union and the G.I.P. Railwaymen’s Union, against the opposition of non-Communists, for a general strike of the textile workers from later April 1929 in order to fight the offensive of the employers—rationalization, wage-cuts, intensified work, retrenchment, etc. This strike eventually failed.

In Bengal, the communists continued to work under the banner of the Workers and Peasants Party for some time, brought out communist literature and led strikes in jute mills and other industrial strikes in 1929, some of which gained partial victory. They tried to assist in the defence of the Meerut prisoners and maintain contact with the Communist International. The communists of Calcutta were also divided into groups. In 1931, Abdul Halim, SomnathLahiri, RanenSen and some others formed the ‘Calcutta Committee of the Communist Party of India. According to Ghosh, factionalism outside was being encouraged by the communist prisoners in the Meerut prison, who themselves were divided into factions. They expelled Dange from the party for his anti-party activities. In 1931, Randive formed a party of his own—the Bolshevik Party (Ghosh II, ibid, p.155).

Subhas Bose’s Assessment of the International situation and his Escape to Germany
Subhas Bose was arrested on 2nd July 1940 under the Defence of India Act. The idea gripped him that it would be better to escape to a foreign country and work for Indian independence from outside than languish in prison. He began a hunger in late November 1940 as a protest against his imprisonment and was released from prison on 5 December and interned in his own house. It was a top-secret plan in which members of the Kirti Kisan Party, the CPI, Forward Bloc’s Mian Akbar Shah of the NWFP, Bhagat Singh Talwar were involved. The route that Bose took was Calcutta—Peshawar—Kabul—Berlin via Moscow on an Italian passport.

According to Ghosh, in the late thirties, Subhas had hoped that the approaching imperialist war would provide an opportunity for India to liberate herself from the British yoke. However, the politics of the congress shattered his hopes. It was probably in the late 1939 that the idea dawned on him that he might try to escape to a foreign country, work for India’s freedom and raise an army to liberate India. He believed that the enemy’s enemy was his friend, whose help can be taken to free the motherland. In fact, during 1938-40, Subhas tried to make contacts with Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union (Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, cited in Ghosh, Vol.II, p.201). Immediately after the war started, he contacted the CPI to help him to send a message to Moscow. In his meeting with S.S. Batliwala, a C.C. member of the CPI, Subhas told him: “I trust Soviet Russia as one state which will not be interested in colonizing India. So I would be ready to welcome military help from Soviet Russia to secure our freedom from the claws of the British imperialists”. Instructed by Subhas and with help from the CPI, which gave him necessary contacts in London, Amiyo Nath Bose, Subhas’s nephew, who had just returned from England after his studies there, carried his uncle’s message to a Soviet representative in London (AmiyoNath Bose, “Socialist View”, Statesman, 30 June, 1 July 1992, in Ghosh, ibid, p.202).

Subhas wrote The Indian Struggle in 1934. There he advocated “a synthesis between Communism and Fascism” (Bose, ibid, pp.313-14, cited in Ghosh, p.202). At an interview with R. Palme Dutt in January 1938, Subhas said:

“My political ideas have developed further since I wrote my book [The Indian Struggle] three years ago… What I really meant was that we in India wanted our national freedom, and having won it, we wanted to move in the direction of Socialism… When I was writing the book, Fascism had not started on its imperialist expedition and appeared to me merely as an aggressive form of nationalism… I have always understood and am quite satisfied that Communism, as it has been expressed in the writings of Marx and Lenin and in the official statements of policy of the Communist International, gives full support to the struggle for national independence and recognizes this as an integral part of its world outlook” (Cited in Ghosh, p.202).

Subhas, Ghosh asserts, extolled the achievements of the Soviet Union and as late as 1942 acclaimed the Soviet Union, as “the greatest revolutionary force in the world”. He was not happy when Germany invaded the Soviet Union and, though he had tied his fate with Axis Powers, he was critical of the Nazi invasion (Bose, op.cit, p.410; Gordon, op.cit, p.432,451, cited in Ghosh, p.202). He despised Nazi racism and brutality but did not express anywhere “any sympathy for the millions of victims of Nazi aggression and brutality. He was, as Nambiar said, “a one-sided man”, that idea was Indian freedom” (Cited in Ghosh, ibid).

“Subhas”, according to Ghosh, “was essentially a bourgeois nationalist who, unlike Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Prasad, etc, was uncompromising in his opposition against British imperialism. Since at least the Calcutta Congress in 1928, he was consistent in his open opposition to Gandhi’s policies” (Ibid). His book, The Indian Struggle 192-1934, critical of Gandhi and Gandhism, which first appeared in London in January 1935, was banned in India immediately after its publication.

According to Ghosh, there seems to be an authoritarian tendency in Subhas’ outlook. He believed that it was the political elite who could lead the basic masses to freedom and then to Socialism and that it would be necessary to curb the democratic rights of the people for aome years after their liberation.

Ghosh points out “By escaping to Germany when other doors were barred against him, Subhasobjectively joined the most reactionary forces on earth whatever might have been his subjective wishes and however much hetried to assert his independence…” (Ghosh, pp.202-03, italics mine).

However, the stories of the free Indian government and the INA he organized in S-E Asia spread far and wide and brought about at the end of the war a rapid proleticization of the masses, even of the British Indian armed forces and “were an important factor which convinced the British imperialists of the necessity of changing their direct for an indirect one” (Ibid).

‘Quit India’: Before and After
World War II entered a new phase when Germany broke the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union and launched a blitzkrieg against it on 22 June 1941. They hoped to bring the Soviet Union to its knees within a few weeks. After the march of the Nazi troops and tanks into the Soviet Union, there began resistance which the Nazis had not bargained for. Soon the Soviet Union and Britain concluded a treaty of alliance. In August 1941, the USA and Britain issued the ‘Alliance Charter’ as the statement of their war policy, declaring their “respect” for ‘the right of all peoples to choose the form of Government under which they will live…” (Cited in Ghosh, p.207).

On 7 December Japan attacked Pearl Harbour and destroyed the US fleet there. She declared war on Britain and the USA. Then an alliance was formed between the Soviet Union, Britain and the USA.

Meanwhile, the members of the Congress Working Committee, which met at Bardoli from 23 to 30 December 1941, differed on the question of non-violence. Nehru, Azad and Rajagopalachari wanted to discard non-violence and participate in war efforts if the British would be persuaded to make some concessions to buy their support. On the other hand, Patel, Prasad and some others insisted on participation, refusing to compromise with their creed of non-violence. Gandhi insisted on the unconditional cooperation with the raj and refused to abandon non-violence, “the faith of a lifetime” (CWG, LXXV, pp.188-89, cited in Ghosh, ibid, p.208). A resolution offering conditional support to the war was adopted by the Working Committee.

At the Wardha meeting held in mid-January 1942, the AICC adopted the resolution with minor additions. While declaring at the meeting that he “won’t exchange ahimsaeven for independence, Gandhi supported the resolution and asked other ‘believers’ in non-violence to support it (Ghosh, ibid, p.208).

With the rapid advance of the Japanese in South-East Asia, US President Roosevelt was afraid that India was as good as lost. He continued to put pressure on Churchill without offending much the susceptibilities of the British imperialists to grant dominion status to India. Ghosh observes that the US imperialists had then been seeking an open door to the British colonies, especially India, and found in the war an opportunity to force Britain to relax her hold on India (Ibid, p.208).

Soon after the outbreak of the war, Joseph Kennedy, then US ambassador to Britain, wrote to Roosevelt: “War, regardless of the outcome, will merely hasten the process [of Britain’s decline as a world power] …the leadership of the English-speaking world will, willy-nilly, be ours” (Quoted in M.S. Venkataramani and B. K. Shrivastava, Quit India: The American Response in the 1942 Struggle, New Delhi, 1979, p.16, cited in Ghosh, p.208). In fact, in December 1940, Nehru was extolling the USA as the champion of democracy and freedom, and believed, like Gandhi, that the end of the British empire was quite near.

Nehru was highly critical of the ‘People’s War’ slogan of the CPI, which came to hold at the end of 1941 that after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union the imperialist was changed into a People’s War. He held China and Russia responsible for keeping British imperialism alive.

On 9 March, after Rangoon had fallen to the Japanese, the British cabinet decided to send Stafford Cripps to India to negotiate a settlement with the Indian leaders. Meanwhile bombs were dropped on Calcutta by Japan. America built up air bases in some districts of Bengal such as Bankura, 24-Parganas. The Jadavpur University was closed for closed for a long time and the campus was taken over by US soldiers and an Allied military base, Gandhi, by then, was more than certain that the collapse of the British empire was imminent. The Andaman Islands were occupied by the Japanese on 23 March. Then Gandhi and his associates did not think it prudent that India should “make herself”, to quote Sitaramayya, “a trailer to a sinking steamship or hitch her wagon to a fallen star” (Sitaramayya, II, p.283, cited in Ghosh, p.210). They preferred, as the near future will tell, to hitch their wagon to the ‘rising sun’ of Asia. Nehru, too, as Gandhi said, “is convinced that the British empire is finished” (CWG, LXXV, p.246, cited in Ghosh, p.211). But Nehru, unlike Gandhi, according to Ghosh, believed in the ultimate defeat of the Axis Powers and in the emergence of the USA as the dominant power which would shape the future of the world. Thus Nehru, in the new situation preferred to hitch his wagons to the American star, and not Britain’s. In India, the hopes of the US imperialists were pinned on Nehru.

Ghosh points out that the Congress Working Committee’s resolution rejecting the Cripps proposals agreed in principle to the partition of India, the resolution stated: “Nevertheless the Committee cannot think in terms of compelling the people in any territorial unit to remain in an Indian against their declared and established will” (Cited in Ghosh, p.213). As Sitaramayya observed, “this passage concedes the division of India into more than one political State and gives the go-by to the unity and integrity of India” (Sitaramayya, op.cit, II, pp.634-35, cited in Ghosh, p.215).

A view is in vogue—propagated by Rajendra Prasad and Sumit Sarkar and others—that the Congress leaders felt obliged to accept the partition in the interest of communal peace and freedom early in 1947—only after communal holocausts had started and after the functioning of the Interim Government in 1946-47 had revealed to them the impossibility of working with the Muslim League. This view, as S.K .Ghosh asserts, is far from correct. The facts, according to him, are: “the congress leaders exerted as much pressure on the British raj as possible to make a deal with them aloneand hand over to them an undivided India (of course, within the imperial framework), but as ‘freedom’ would be the product of negotiations between three parties—the raj, the congress and the League—they were afraid from the time the League raised the demand for separation that “in the last resort”they would have to agree to the partition of India on a religious basis” (Ghosh, p.216).

The situation on the war-front grew from bad to worse. Early in April, Colombo, capital of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Trincomalee, the headquarters of the British fleet, as well as Visakhapatnam and Kakinada coast were bombed by the Japanese. Madras city was hastily evacuated. The British prepared a plan of adopting the scorched-earth policy and blowing up even the Tata Iron and Steel Works at Jamsedpur, withdrawing from Assam and Bengal and building a new defence line across Bihar. As D. D. Kosambi wrote, the Japanese “had only to attack immediately in force for the whole of the defence system to crumble…” (D.D. Kosambi, Exasperating Essays, p.17).

Thus the people’s anti-British sentiment became intense. The British forced people to evacuate their homes on one two days’ notice in many villages in some coastal areas of Bengal. Boats and cycles were taken away from the people and their normal life was thus disrupted. With the Japanese attack, the British fled from Malaya, leaving the Indians to fend for themselves. Then with the Japanese occupation of Burma, streams of refugees—hundreds and thousands of them—started on their long trek through inhospitable regions into India and were denied any help by the British. Separate routes were fixed for the whites and the browns; the former were provided with food, shelter and transport, while the latter were denied them. Tales of horror to which they had been subjected reached India and added to the people’s hatred against the British raj.

According to Ghosh, two factors caused resentment among the big bourgeoisie against the British rulers. First, those who had stakes in Burma and Malaya could hardly reconcile themselves to the losses. As the Governor of the Central Provinces, Twynham, wrote to Linlithgow, “the losses incurred in Malaya Burma have stricken the Banias and Marwaris to their soul” (TOP, II, 117-18, cited in Ghosh, p.217). Second, the scorched earth policy that the government threatened to pursue in the event of Japanese penetration into India was like a nightmare to the Indian industrialists. They could hardly stomach the prospect of seeing their industries destroyed. Edgar Snow, who met many of them, wrote: “Indian industrialists and capitalists were among those suspicious and worried groups. Would not ‘scorched earth’ ruin their factories?” (Edgar Snow, People on our side, p.34).

What was the stand of the big compradors in such an uncertain situation? According to Ghosh, they had hailed the war and desired it to last long, but such a war as would scorch their factories and reduce them to ashes was not to their taste. No doubt, “the illusion about the invincibility of British arms lay shattered before their eyes. A section of them waited to welcome the Japanese” (Ghosh, p.217). In fact, WalchandHirachand told Edgar snow that “As for choice between the British and the Japanese, frankly he preferred to his chance with the latter” (Snow, op.cit, p.56).

In fact, the Congress leadership was a divided house. Gandhi resented Nehru’s call for co-operation with British war efforts and advocacy of guerrilla struggle against the Japanese in case of invasion. While warning Nehru, he advised Patel to resign from the Congress committee and himself decided to abstain from the next Working Committee meeting. Patel, Prasad, Kripalini etc. followed Gandhi unhesitatingly.

Nehru and Rajagopalachari stood for full cooperation with the British. Azad had faith in the ultimate victory of the Allies, but stood for conditional cooperation with the British raj. He was also opposed to the launching of any anti-British struggle. And he did not agree to the League’s demand for partition.

Gandhi decided to wait no longer. Two factors, according to S.K. Ghosh, mainly shaped his decision. One was his conviction that that Britain’s defeat was imminent; the other was the British cabinet’s scheme of allowing option to provinces to secede from the Indian Union. In fact, the loss of Burma and the retreat of the British army into Egypt, the latest in the unbroken series of military disasters faced by the Allies, coincided with the Cripps visit and the moment of Gandhi’s inspiration.

The apostle of non-violence affirmed: “We have to take the risk of violence to shake off the great calamity of slavery”. He would launch a non-violent movement, but if violence broke out in spite of him, then it was God’s wish. They would “have to take the risk of anarchy if God wills it”. He hoped that “pure ahimsa will arise out of such anarchy” (CWG, LXXVI, p.160, cited in ibid, p.218).

In fact, Gandhi’s demand for the immediate withdrawal of the Allied forces from India and immediate transfer of power to Indian hands (or to “God or, in modern parlance, anarchy”) grew more and more insistent. At the same time Gandhi developed another theme linked to the above. He went on declaring that “until British power is withdrawn from India can there be any real unity [between the two major communities]”, that “real-heart unity, genuine unity, is almost an impossibility unless and until the British power is withdrawn” (Cited in Ghosh, p.221). In the twenties, however, as Ghosh points out, he professed that the achievement of Hindu-Muslim unity was a condition precedent to attainment of ‘independence’ and was one of the three major planks of his constructive programme”. But in the thirties this plank fell off and gradually ‘independence’ became a condition precedent to Hindu-Muslim unity.

The memorandum of the Secretary of State, dated 28 January 1942, noted the Congress Party’s “ingrained conviction that it is the natural heir to the British government in India, and entitled to take over control both of legislative and executive power...” (TOP, I, p.82 emphasis added. Cited in ibid, p.221).

Gandhi, according to Ghosh, now considered “the vivisection of India to be a sin” and held that only “when the British power is entirely withdrawn and the Japanese menace has abated”, then “it will be time to talk of Pakistan and other ‘stan’s and to come to an amicable settlement or fight”. Gandhi thereby ruled out negotiations with the League before those conditions were fulfilled (CWG, LXXVI, 120,143,167 in ibid).

On 15 May, Gandhi had a meeting with prominent Congressmen of Bombay, including Patel, Bhulabhai Desai, B.G.Kher and Morarji Desai. There he made the following points:

First, if the British would not heed his advice to leave India, he would force them to leave—by non-cooperation or civil disobedience or by both. This time not individual satygraha, but all-out mass satyagraha would be launched to force them to leave.

Second, he did not think Japan would invade India and it would be possible “to come to terms with Japan” after the withdrawal of the British. The British were no better than the Japanese: the British would not willingly part with power. If the Japanese did invade India, Congressmen would resist them non-violently. He expected the Japanese to sign a neutrality pact with them. The Congress wouldlaunch our movement only against the British.

Third, Rajagopalachari conceded Pakistan but Gandhi could hardly swallow the splitting of India. Jinnah had not explained what Pakistan was. Hindu-Muslim unity was impossible of achievement because of the British. He insisted that the British should “leave India to anarchy”. If they refused to withdraw leaving India to anarchy, the Congressmen would have to create anarchy by launching satyagraha, “take charge of the anarchy and fashion it into Hindustan”.

Fourth, it seemed Gandhi, Azad, Nehru and Rajagopalachari spoke in four different voices. However, as Ghosh asserts, Gandhi was confident that Nehru and Azad would follow him so far as action was concerned. There would actually be two voices—his and Rajagopalachari’s and Congressmen would have to choose between them.

Fifth, Gandhi would take two months more to launch the fight against the British. Though he himself would not indulge in violence, his advice to all those “to whom non-violence is not a belief but a weapon” was: “you needn’t desist from helping Japan. Nay, to be true to yourselves, you should help it by every means, by even violent means, if possible”(TOP, II, pp.128-32; CWG, LXXVI, 106-11), cited in ibid, pp.222, 252).

Sixth, when India was free, she should remain neutral.

Before concluding, Gandhi decried the communists and ridiculed their theory of ‘People’s War’. Gandhi said that Congress could hardly depend upon Britain and America, “whose hands are stained with blood.”

According to Ghosh, that was the first time Gandhi expressed his determination to launch an all-India struggle against the British that would lead to anarchy, out of which he hoped to fashion a Hindustan. Similarly, Nehru, too, altered his previous position. He talked no more of co-operation with the British in the war efforts or of guerrilla struggle against the Japanese; instead, he directed his attacks against the British and criticized their denial of freedom to India (SW Nehru, XII, 358-9,368).

Nehru, too, changed his stand. He talked no more of cooperation with the British in the war efforts or of guerrilla struggle against the Japanese; instead, he directed his attacks against the British and criticized their denial of freedom to India (Ghosh, p, 222).

The Working Committee met at Wardha from 6 to 14 July in a tense atmosphere. It adopted a ‘Quit India’ resolution and referred it to the AICC, which would meet on 7 August in Bombay for final decision. The Committee’s resolution demanded immediate transfer of political power to a “provisional government representative of all important sections of the people of India”, while it agreed to “the stationing of the armed forces of the Allies in India should they so desire”. The resolution stated that if the demand was not met the congress would “be reluctantly compelled” to launch a widespread non-violent struggle under Gandhi’s leadership (Ghosh, p.224).

 [To be continued]

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Vol 57, No. 28, Jan 5 - 11, 2025