Indian Freedom Struggle 7



Subhas Chandra Bose

 Subhas Chandra Bose was most dynamic leader of India`s struggle for independence. He is more familiar with his name Netaji. His contribution towards India`s Freedom struggle was of a revolutionary. Subhas Chandra Bose was born on 23rd Jan, 1897 in Cuttack, Orissa, India. From his childhood he was a bright student and was a topper in the matriculation examination from the whole of Kolkata province. He graduated from the Scottish Church College in Kolkata with a First Class degree in Philosophy. Influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda, he was known for his patriotic zeal as a student. He went to England to fulfil his parents` desire to appear in the Indian Civil Services. He stood fourth in order of merit. But he left civil Service`s apprenticeship and joined India`s freedom struggle.

During his service with the Indian National Congress, he was greatly influenced by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Sri Aurobindo. He did not agree with Gandhiji`s methods of achieving Independence through non-violence. He believed that the only way of achieving Independence was by shedding blood. He therefore returned to Kolkata to work under Chittaranjan Das, the Bengali freedom fighter and co-founder of the Swaraj Party. He was imprisoned for his revolutionary activities on various occasions. In 1921, Bose organized a boycott of the celebrations to mark the visit of the Prince of Wales to India for which he was imprisoned for the first time. Bose was elected to the post of Chief Executive Officer of the newly constituted Calcutta Corporation in April 1924. That same year in October, Bose was arrested on suspicion of terrorism. At first, he was kept in Alipur Jail and later he was exiled to Mandalay in Burma. Bose was once again arrested on January, 1930. After his release from jail on September 25, he was elected as the Mayor of the City of Kolkata. Netaji was imprisoned eleven times by the British over a span of 20 years either in India or in Rangoon. During the mid 1930s he was exiled by the British from India to Europe where he championed India`s cause and aspiration for self-rule before gatherings and conferences. Throughout his stay in Europe from 1933 to 1936, he met several European leaders and thinkers. He travelled extensively in India and in Europe before stating his political opposition to Gandhi. Subhash Chandra Bose married Emilie Schenkl, an Austrian born national, who was his secretary, in 1937 in German. Bose wrote many letters to Schenkl of which many have been published in the book “Letters to Emilie Schenkl”, edited by Sisir Kumar Bose and Sugata Bose.

Subhas Chandra Bose became the president of the Haripura Indian National Congress against the wishes of Gandhiji in 1938. He was elected as the president for two consecutive terms. Expressing his disagreement with Bose, Gandhi commented “Subhas` victory is my defeat”. Gandhi`s continued opposition led to Netaji`s resignation from the Working Committee. He was left with no alternative but to form an independent party, the “All India Forward Bloc”.

In his call to freedom, Subhas Chandra Bose encouraged full participation of the Indian Masses to strive for independence. Bose initiated the concept of the “National Planning Committee” in 1938. His correspondence reveals that despite his clear dislike for British subjugation, he was deeply impressed by their methodical and systematic approach and their steadfastly disciplinarian outlook towards life. The contrast between Gandhi and Bose is captured with reasonable measure in a saying attributable to him “”If people slap you once, slap them twice”. Having failed to persuade Gandhi for the mass civil disobedience to protest against Viceroy Lord Linlithgow`s decision to declare war on India`s behalf without consulting the Congress leadership, he organised mass protests in Kolkata. The disobedience was calling for the `Holwell Monument` commemorating the Black Hole of Kolkata. He was thrown in Jail and was released only after a seven-day hunger strike. Bose`s house in Kolkata was kept under surveillance by the British. With two pending court cases; he felt that the British would not let him leave the country before the end of the war. This set the scene for Bose`s escape to Germany, via Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. In Germany he instituted the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz, broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio. Here he founded the “Free India Centre” in Berlin, and created the Indian Legion consisting of some 4500 soldiers who were the Indian prisoners of war. The soldiers had previously fought for the British in North Africa prior to their capture by Axis forces.

Workers and Peasants Party

 The Workers and Peasants Party (WPP) was a political party in India, which worked inside the Indian National Congress 1925-1929. It became an important front organisation for the Communist Party of India and an influential force in the Bombay labour movement. The party was able to muster some success in making alliances with other left elements inside the Congress Party, amongst them Jawaharlal Nehru. However, as the Communist International entered its ‘Third Period’ phase, the communists deserted the WPP project. The WPP was wound up, as its leadership was arrested by the British authorities in March 1929.

Founding of the party The party was founded in Bengal on November 1, 1925, as the Labour Swaraj Party of the Indian National Congress. The founding leaders of the party were Kazi Nazrul Islam, Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, Qutubuddin Ahmad and Shamsuddin Hussain. The founding manifesto was signed by Kazi Nazrul Islam.During the first three month of existence, the party organisation was very provisional. At the All Bengal Praja Conference, held at Krishnagar on February 6, 1926, a resolution was moved by Faizuddin Hussian Sahib of Mymensingh for the creation of a workers-peasants party. The move was seconded by Braja Nath Das of Bogra. The resolution was passed by the conference, and in accordance with this decision the name of the party was changed to ‘Workers and Peasants Party of Bengal’.Dr.Naresh Chandra Sengupta was elected party president and Hemanta Kumar Sarkar and Qutubuddin Ahmad were elected as joint secretaries.

Build-up of the WPPs of Bengal and Bombay

As of 1926, the WPP of Bengal had only 40 members, and its growth in membership was very slow.A two-room party office was set up at 37, Harrison Road, Calcutta. British intelligence perceived that the Bengal Jute Workers Association, the Mymensingh Workers and Peasants Party (with branch in Atia), the Dhakeswari Mill Workers Union, the Bengal Glass Workers Union, the Scavengers’ Union of Bengal (with branches in Howrah, Dacca and Mymensingh) and the Workers Protection League were led by the party. Soon after the 1926 conference of the WPP of Bengal, the underground Communist Party of India directed its members to join the provincial Workers and Peasants Parties. All open communist activities were carried out through Workers and Peasants Parties. The Comintern  organiser M.N. Roy took part in the build-up of the WPP. A WPP was formed in Bombay in January 1927.D.R.Thengdi was elected president and S.S.Mirajkar general secretary. The WPPs gained influence within the Bombay and Bengal Pradesh Congress Committees. From the WPP of Bombay, K.N. Joglekar, R.S. Nimbkar and D.R. Tengdi were elected to the All India Congress Committee. From the WPP of Bengal, two party representatives were elected to the AICC. The WPP representatives together with Nehru were able to convince the AICC to make the Indian National Congress an associate member of the League against Imperialism.

Madras Congress

At the 1927 annual Congress session in Madras a leader of the WPP of Bombay, K.N.Joglekar presented a proposal for a resolution in the Subjects Committee, that the Indian National Congress should demand full independence for India. The proposal was seconded by Jawaharlal Nehru. At the open session of the Madras Congress, Nehru moved the resolution and Joglekar seconded it. The resolution was passed unanimously. This was the first time in history that the Indian National Congress officially demanded full independence from British rule. During the Madras session, the WPP functioned as a fraction. Directly after the Madras Congress, the WPP took part in a ‘Republican Congress’ meeting together with other left elements of the Congress Party and radical trade unionists. Nehru chaired the meeting.

Trade union struggles

 Particularly the WPP of Bombay was successful in mobilising trade union work. It built unions amongst printing press, municipal and dock workers. It gained influence amongst the workers of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway. During 1928 the WPP led a general strike in Bombay, which lasted for months. At the time of the strike, the Girni Kamgar Union was founded.

Anti-Simon struggle

During the protests against the Simon Commission, the WPP played a major role in organising manifestations in Calcutta and Bombay. In Bombay it also mobilised ‘hartal’ (general strike) in protest against the Simon Commission.

1928 Bengal party conference

The WPP of Bengal held its third conference in Bhatpara, in March 1928. After the conference the executive of the party published the conference documents in a book titled A Call for Action. In the book an argument is presented that national independence was not possible as long as capitalists dominated the freedom struggle. British intelligence sources claimed that Philip Spratt had been the author of the book.

Formation of WPPs in Punjab and UP

 At a conference in Lyallpur in September 1928 the Punjab Kirti Kisan Party (Workers and Peasants Party of Punjab) was formed by the Kirti group. Chabil Das, a Lahore propagandist of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, was elected president of the party. In October 1928 two WPPs were formed in the United Provinces. One of them was the Bundelkhand Workers and Peasants Party, with N.L.Kadam as its secretary and headquartered in Jhansi. The party held its founding conference in Jhansi on October 28-October 29, 1928.Jhavwala from Bombay presided over the conference. The other was the U.P. Peasants and Workers Party which was founded at a conference in Meerut. P.C. Joshi was elected president and Dharamvir Singh was elected general secretary The Meerut conference was attended by Philip Spratt, Muzaffar Ahmed and Kedar Nath Sahgol.

All India WPP conference

In late November 1928 the WPP of Bengal executive committee met with Philip Spratt and Muzaffar Ahmed. They decided to appoint Sohan Singh Josh of the Punjab Kirti Kisan Party to chair the All India Workers and Peasants Conference, to be held in Calcutta in December. The provincial WPPs attended All India Workers and Peasants Conference in Calcutta on December 22-December 24, 1928, at which the All India Workers and Peasants Party was formed. A 16-member national executive was elected. The Bengal, Bombay, Punjab and United Provinces were allocated four seats each in the national executive. Out of these 16, ten were either identified as CPI members or as ‘communists’.R.S. Nimbkar was the general secretary of the party. The conference discussed an affiliation of the party with the League against Imperialism. Spratt and Ahmed urged the conference to approve the affiliation of the party to the League. The conference decision to postpone a decision on the issue to a later occasion.

1929 Bombay municipal election

The party contested the January 1929 Bombay municipal election, mustering around 12,500 votes.

Comintern turns against the WPP

The political fortune of the WPP was to be terminated by changes in policy of the Communist International. The July 1928 sixth congress of the Communist International declared that ‘The Union of all communist groups and individuals scattered throughout the country into a single, illegal, independent and centralized party represent the first task for Indian communists.’ This was a statement made in opposition to the building of the ‘multi-class’ WPP. The new line was promoted at the congress by the Finnish communist Otto Kuusinen. In his report, he stated that it was ‘necessary to reject the formation of any kind of bloc between the Communist Party and the national-reformist opposition’ in the colonies. Moreover, he claimed that parties like WPP could develop into petty bourgeois parties. Leon Trotsky concurred with this view. In June 1928, he had submitted a document which called WPP an invention of Joseph Stalin and that the party was a ‘thoroughly anti-Marxist formation’. Abani Mukherji, a founding member of CPI, had described WPP as a ‘Kuomintang Party’ and that WPP ‘is accumulating by itself the elements of future Indian Fascism.’. S.N.Tagore and the delegates of the Communist Party of Great Britain argued for retaining the WPP. This declaration created confusion amongst the communist ranks in India. On December 2, 1928, the Executive Committee of the Communist International had drafted a letter to the WPP, which singled out the WPP as consisting ‘…largely of petit-bourgeois intellectuals, and they were tied up with either the system of landlordism and usury or straight away capitalist interests.’ The letter did however take long time to reach the WPP. The Tenth Plenum of the ECCI, July 3-July 19, 1929, directed the Indian communists to break with WPP. When the communists deserted it, the WPP fell apart.

Meerut Conspiracy case

On March 20, 1929, arrests against WPP, CPI and other labour leaders were made in several parts of India, in what became known as the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Most of the WPP leadership was now put behind bars. The trial proceedings were to last for four years, thus outliving the WPP. Tengdi, the WPP of Bombay president, died whilst the trial was still going on.S.S. Mirajkar stated in his defense that:”It has already been pointed out to the Court that the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party was a party inaugurated with a view to establish national independence through revolution.” Abdul Majid on his behalf stated that:”If there is any resemblance between the Communist Party and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party is that the immediate programme of the former and the ultimate programme of the latter is one and the same … As both are revolutionary bodies it is necessary that their national revolutionary programme should resemble each other.”

The judgement in the case was ended with the following passage:

 “As to the progress made in this conspiracy its main achievements have been the establishment of Workers and Peasant Parties in Bengal, Bombay and Punjab and the U.P., but perhaps of deeper gravity was the hold that the members of the Bombay Party acquired over the workers in the textile industry in Bombay as shown by the extent of the control which they exercised during the strike of 1928 and the success they were achieving in pushing forward a thoroughly revolutionary policy in the Girni Kamgar Union after the strike came to an end.”After the arrests of its main leaders, the WPP was dissolved.

Policies

The founding manifesto of the Labour Swaraj Party stressed that the party was organised on the basis of class struggle, for the liberation of the masses. The party combined demand for full independence with socio-economic demands. In 1927, the WPP of Bombay presented a programme of action to the All India Congress Committee. The programme proposed struggle for full independence combined with active socio-economic policies for the toiling classes. The WPP of Bengal had submitted a manifesto the Madras Congress session, which sought that the Congress should engage in mass struggles for full independence and that a Constituent Assembly should determine the constitution of an independent India. The party also worked for the abolishment of ‘zamindari’ system in agriculture.

Publications

The organ of the Labour Swaraj Party, and later the WPP of Bengal, was Langal (‘Plough’). The chief editor of Langal was Kazi Nazrul Islam and the editor was Manibhusan Mukhopadhaya. Langal stopped publication after 15 issues. On August 12, 1926 it was substituted by Ganavani. In 1928, the party also had a weekly Hindi organ, Lal Nishan (‘Red Flag’). A weekly newspaper in Kushtia, Jagaran (‘awakening’), was politically close to the party.In Punjab the publication Kirti (‘Worker’) had been started in 1926 by Santokh Singh of the Ghadar Party. Soon it became the organ of the Punjab Kirti Kisan Party and managed by Sohan Singh Josh.

COMMUNAL AWARD

When the Indian leadership failed to come up with a constitutional solution of the communal issue, the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald announced his own formula for solving the problem. He said that he was not only a Prime Minister of Britain but was also a friend of the Indians and thus wanted to solve the problems of his friends. After the failure of the Second Round Table conference, Mr. MacDonald announced the ‘Communal Award’ on August 16, 1932. According to the Award, the right of separate electorate was not only given to the Muslims of India but also to all the minority communities in the country. The Award also declared untouchables as a minority and thus the Hindu depressed classes were given a number of special seats, to be filled from special depressed class electorates in the area where their voters were concentrated. Under the Communal Award, the principle of weightage was also maintained with some modifications in the Muslim minority provinces. Principle of weightage was also applied for Europeans in Bengal and Assam, Sikhs in the Punjab and North West Frontier Province, and Hindus in Sindh and North West Frontier Province.

Though the Muslims constituted almost 56 percent of the total population of Punjab, they were given only 86 out of 175 seats in the Punjab Assembly. The Muslim majority of 54.8 percent in Punjab was thus reduced to a minority. The formula favored the Sikhs of Punjab and the Europeans of Bengal the most. The Award was not popular with any Indian party. Muslims were not happy with the Communal Award, as it has reduced their majority in Punjab and Bengal to a minority. Yet they were prepared to accept it. In its annual session held in November 1933, the All India Muslim League passed a resolution that reads; “Though the decision falls far short of the Muslim demands, the Muslims have accepted it in the best interest of the country, reserving to themselves the right to press for the acceptance of all their demands.” On the other hand, the Hindus refused to accept the awards and decided to launch a campaign against it. For them it was not possible to accept the Untouchables as a minority. They organized the Allahabad Unity Conference in which they demanded for the replacement of separate electorates by joint electorates. Many nationalist Muslims and Sikhs also participated in the conference. The Congress also rejected the Award in Toto. Gandhi protested against the declaration of Untouchables as a minority and undertook a fast unto death. He also held meetings with the Untouchable leadership for the first time and try to convince them that they were very much part of the mainstream Hindu society. He managed to sign the Poona Pact with Dr.B.R. Ambedker, the leader of Untouchables in which the Congress met many of the Untouchables’ demands.

Poona Pact of 1932

Poona Pact of 1932 is an agreement between the untouchables or depressed classes of India and the Hindus. Dr. B.R.Ambedkar led the depressed class. The Poona Pact took place at Yerawada Jail in Pune, Maharashtra on 24th September, 1932.During the first Round Table Conference, Ambedkar favored the move of the British Government to provide separate electorate for the oppressed classes as was done in case of other minorities like Muslims, Sikh etc. The British invited various Indian leaders in Round Table Conferences during 1930-32 to draft a new constitution involving self rule for native Indians. Mahatma Gandhi did not attend the first Round Table but was present in the later ones. Gandhiji strongly opposed the proposal of separate electorate for the depressed classes as he thought that it would disintegrate Hindu society. He went for an indefinite hunger strike starting from September 20,1932 against the decision of the then British Prime Minister J.Ramsay Mac Donald. Mr. Ramsay granted communal award to the depressed classes as he gave them separate position in the constitution for governance of British India.

The whole country was agitated at the health concern of Mahatma Gandhi. A mass upsurge generated in India to save the life of Gandhiji.  Ambedkar was put in a great pressure and he was forced to soften his stand. The compromise between the leaders of caste Hindu and the depressed classes were achieved when Dr. B.R.Ambedkar signed the Poona Pact on September 24, 1932.The resolution was announced in a public meeting on September 25 in Bombay, which confirmed-” henceforth, amongst Hindus no one shall be regarded as an untouchable by reason of his birth and they will have the same rights in all the social institutions as the other Hindus have”. This was a landmark step for Dalit movement in India that gave share to the Dalits in the political empowerment of democratic India.

The following text represents the agreement achieved between the leaders acting on behalf of the oppressed classes and of rest of the community, regarding the position of that particular class in the legislature and certain other matters involved with their welfare.

1.There shall be reserved seats for the depressed classes out of general electorate seats in the provincial legislature as follows- Madras 30; Bombay with Sind 25; Punjab 8; Bihar and Orissa 18; Central Provinces 20; Assam 7; Bengal 30; United Provinces 20. Total 148.These figures are based on the Prime Minister`s (British) decision.

2. Election to these seats shall be by joint electorate subjects by the following procedures – the members of the depressed classes formed the Electoral College, which was in liberty to elect the panel of the depressed classes. Voting system was taken into consideration then. The legislature pointed out that the method of the single vote and four persons getting the highest number of votes in such primary elections shall be the candidates for election by the general electorate.

 3. The symbol of the Depressed Classes in the Central Legislature shall be based on the principle of joint electorates and reserved seats by the method of primary election in the manner provided for in clause above for their representation in the provincial legislatures.

 4. In the Central Legislature eighteen per cent of the seats allotted to the general electorate for British India in the said legislature shall be reserved for the Depressed Classes.

5. The system of primary election to a panel of candidates for election to the Central and Provincial Legislatures as herein-before mentioned shall come to an end after the first ten years, unless terminated sooner by mutual agreement under the provision of clause 6 below.

6. The system of representation of Depressed Classes by reserved seats in the Provincial and Central Legislatures as provided for in clauses (1) and (4) shall continue until determined otherwise by mutual agreement between the communities concerned in this settlement.

7. The Franchise for the Central and Provincial Legislatures of the Depressed Classes shall be as indicated, in the Lothian Committee Report.

8. There shall be no disabilities attached to any one on the ground of his being a member of the Depressed Classes in regard to any election to local bodies or appointment to the public services. Every endeavour shall be made to secure a fair representation of the Depressed Classes in these respects, subject to such educational qualifications as may be laid down for appointment to the Public Services.

 9. In every province out of the educational grant an adequate sum shall be earmarked for providing educational facilities to the members of Depressed Classes.

Emergence of the Communist Party of India

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