*Saumyendranath Tagore and the Roaring Forties

Debkumar Som

During the 1940s, against the backdrop of global geo-politics, India’s various political factions, particularly those championing communist ideology, engaged in multifaceted debates over war and imperialism. Advancing communist thought required recognising diverse perspectives and approaches within inter-party discourse. Yet, India’s institutional communist parties (labelled by Saumyendranath Tagore as ‘legal communists’) have consistently avoided these debates owing to their hegemonic tendencies. Consequently, they now find themselves fragmented and grappling with an existential crisis. Their long-standing binary narrative, either Russia or China, remains fiercely guarded to avoid unsettling party leadership. As a result, the history of communist politics in India has yet to be written with integrity. There is hope: the suppressed debates still survive beneath the surface. “Saumyendranath Tagore and the Roaring Forties”, a compilation edited by Pritha Chatterjee and Basu Acharya, stands as evidence of this.

History is never one-sided, nor should its study be. Those long entrenched in power often forget this simple truth. They construct self-serving narratives through personality cults, hastening their own decline. That is why, when political upheavals lead to a change of power in any nation, the first casualties are often the statues of its leaders. Saumyendranath consistently opposed such idolatry, which is why he did not hesitate to dismiss the politics of Naxalbari as ‘infantile disorder’. He was a rare classical Marxist who sought revolutionary relevance not in superficial politics but in the brutal underbelly of society where oppression is most lethal.

It is a fact that his personality did bear traces of intolerance, and his thinking was often extreme, leading to repeated expulsions from party ranks. Yet, the logic and analytical rigour in his philosophy cannot be denied. For those who confine their Marxism within institutional rigidities, Saumyendranath remains an uncomfortable figure.

The present anthology compiles eight of his essays, most of which were published in ‘Red Front’, the mouthpiece of the Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI), between 1939 and 1945. Their immediate relevance cannot be dismissed. While the Communist Party of India under P C Joshi and those under M N Roy were blindly glorifying Stalin and promoting misguided political directions, Saumyendranath’s sharp critique exposed these fallacies. His voice was clear and straight.

Suppose one juxtaposes his writings with Joshi’s letters to Gandhi and Jinnah, or Roy’s pamphlet on fascism. In that case, it becomes evident that in the tumultuous forties, Saumyendranath’s was a singular and historically accurate voice. Unlike many, he did not blindly toe Stalin’s official line. As early as 1939, he had discerned Stalin’s manipulative schemes–be it the secret pact with Germany to partition Poland, or the promise of fuel supplies to Hitler–which Joshi and Roy conveniently ignored.

Saumyendranath understood that ‘The Russian bourgeoisie came to power without any special effort on their part. Power came to them as a pleasant surprise…’ Such piercing truths often led to expulsion from communist ranks–a tradition that persists even today. The difference between a revolutionary and a counter-revolutionary lies not in raising questions, but in the very time they are raised.

During the fervour around ‘People’s War’, when Indian communists were in turmoil, Saumyendranath outright rejected the term. He had long recognised that in Stalin’s era, real power lay with the bureaucrats who dictated the Soviet war policies. Decades later, as Stalin’s dictatorship was exposed through works like Solzhenitsyn’s ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ and Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and Margarita’, one wonders how bourgeois democrats, by branding him a ‘revisionist’, effectively undermined India’s communist movement.

The Indian communists’ blind allegiance to Stalin led them to act as imperialist lackeys during the war–a dark legacy that still haunts them. Saumyendranath, however, declared unequivocally:

“Only when a people’s government fights to protect itself or when it goes to the aid of a revolutionary uprising in response to an invitation of the masses of another country, can such a war be called a people’s war. The mere fact that the people have been drawn into a war and are compelled to fight their masters’ battles does not make a war a people’s war.” (‘Red Front’, March 1942)

Saumyendranath Tagore was among the few communist leaders worldwide who saw through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’s treachery–a deal which blinded communists globally and forced them to side with fascism.

Before delving into this anthology, readers must first go through the thirty-page introduction, complete with endnotes. It brilliantly outlines the positions of the Congress, Socialists, and Communist Parties during the war. Such work demands not just academic rigour but also a clear grasp of historical contexts, both national and international, and a deep respect for the subject.

The compilation can be divided into two sections: the first five essays deal with the World War, while the remaining three address the Quit India Movement (August Kranti). Though thematically distinct, both sections reflect his unwavering critique, first targeting Stalin’s wartime stance, then Gandhi’s.

A classical Marxist thinker, Saumyendranath was also a frontline activist, akin to Rosa Luxemburg. Though unlike her, he was a pro-Leninist.

Does this anthology hold relevance beyond historical value? Absolutely. Today, as the world lurches rightward and wars rage globally, his writings remind people how fascism lurks within bourgeois democracy, and how communist parties’ failures abet it.

“The strongest front of the European proletariat was smashed by Hitler and his gang, due to the treachery of the Socialists and the profound political mistakes committed by the Stalinists of Germany.” (‘Red Front’, October 1942)

His words regarding the rise of German fascism mirror the Left’s surrender to India’s right-wing ascendancy. Today, dissenters are jailed under sedition laws, labelled as ‘Urban Naxals’, while institutional communists remain fixated on electoral arithmetic. Saumyendranath’s essays are essential to understanding this political hypocrisy.

Each essay is prefaced with contextual relevance and annotated meticulously–a testament to the editors’ diligence. Their labour of love ensures Saumyendranath’s legacy, and not just as a political figure but also as a literary and cultural voice. One hopes they will next compile his Bengali essays on Palestine-Israel, Tagore, and European politics.

[*Saumyendranath Tagore and the Roaring Forties, Compiled and Edited by Pritha Chatterjee, Basu Acharya]

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Vol 57, No. 46, May 11 - 17, 2025