845.00/1534
Memorandum by Mr. Calvin H. Oakes of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs
The recent action of the Government of India in lifting the ban against the Communist Party is of some interest as indicating certain complexities of the political situation as it exists today in India.
Communism in India is said to date from 1918 when Moscow first began to take an interest in that country. For some years the Communist Party of India, which had become well organized in 1928, was financed from Russia and took its orders direct from that country. Later, however, the Party came under the guidance of the Communist Party of Great Britain and Party Organizers from England visited India in order to assist in building up the Party there.
In 1934 the Government of India considered it necessary to declare the Communist Party in India an illegal organization, and its [Page 709] leaders were subsequently put in prison. This incarceration of its leaders and lack of funds from abroad has greatly hampered the Party’s work and its members are believed to number only a few hundred. The strength of the Party lies, however, in the many persons not party members who, communists at heart, are influential in such movements as that of the Kisan Sabhas (peasants’ organizations), and who act as directed by Communist-inspired propaganda.
The objective of the Communist Party in India has been a revolution of peasants and workers in which it is hoped that the Indian Army will participate. The Government of India having been overthrown, it is then planned to establish an Indian Soviet Republic. The strategy of the Party has been to capture political power through control of the Indian National Congress, and with this in view the Indian Communist Party, along with various other left wing parties, became an integral part of the Indian National Congress. It will be recalled that several years ago the political reports from India dealt largely with the contest then occurring between the right and left wings of the Congress. As is well known, the right wing retained its command of the Congress Party.
With the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Communists in India worked energetically to sow discord throughout the country and to prevail upon the Congress to adopt an overtly hostile attitude toward the war effort. When England and Soviet Russia became allies, however, the Communists naturally felt obliged to change their attitude and were faced with the problem of reconciling support in India for an “anti-Fascist” front while continuing their fight against “Imperialism” as it exists under British rule in India. The Party’s new policy was announced at the end of December 1941, when it proclaimed itself “pro-war” (i. e. in favor of support of the British war effort in India) on the ground that the war was no longer an “imperialist” war but a “peoples’” war which must be supported.
The group in control of the Congress Party has in the meantime abandoned its policy of non-embarrassment to the British in the war effort and is about to embark upon a line of action which can have-disastrous effects upon the war effort in so far as the Indian theater is concerned. The official position of the Indian National Congress and that of the Communists or extreme left wing of the Congress are therefore exactly the reverse of what they previously had been. The Communists’ attitude has become “healthy” from the British point of view, and because of this “healthy” attitude the British have considered it desirable to remove the ban on those whom they formerly considered” their arch enemies, and find themselves on the verge of civil war with that element which formerly protected them in part from the designs; of the Communists.
[Page 710]Whether the latter development is one which the British could have prevented through greater foresight is immaterial to this memorandum. The wisdom of facilitating the dissemination in India of Communistic propaganda is, however, seriously questioned. In view of the religious, racial, and emotional factors involved, it is considered improbable that the Communist Party can, despite its desire for “India’s unity with the United Nations”, materially lessen the opposition which will be forthcoming against the British in any movement such as is now threatened. Furthermore, in allowing the Communists freedom of action in India, the Government may have lifted the lid of a Pandora’s box from which will issue far more elements dangerous to the British position in India, immediate as well as future, than friendly even for the moment. In this connection it may be pointed out that the British military in India reported in February that there was every reason to believe that the Communists in India are still more concerned with their ultimate revolutionary objectives than with the present war emergency.
The following secret instructions to Party members, alleged by the British military to have been issued last January, set forth rather explicitly what is believed to be the Party’s attitude:
“To think that our new line is making up with Imperialism is a dangerous illusion. Our new line gives us a programme of action which is the only way out of the present stagnation.…30 To relax our efforts to build up and strengthen the underground organisation of our Party is endangering the very existence of our party…30 it becomes our duty to strengthen our underground organisation so that we may better co-ordinate our legal and illegal activities.”
The danger exists of course that, realizing that their efforts in support of the war effort would have limited value in the present crisis, the Communists may abandon their interest in the war front as a whole and, through adding to disturbances, endeavor to advance their main objective in so far as India is concerned.
The extent of this danger is indicated by the following pronouncement of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, made in reply to the action of the Government of India in lifting the ban against the Communist Party:
“We Communists will proclaim our unqualified support to the national demand for recognition of Indian independence and establishment of a National Government and popularize the only path for winning that demand through national unity here and now and India’s unity with the United Nations.”
“India’s unity with the United Nations” would appear to be but a secondary consideration.
[Page 711]In a telegram addressed simultaneously to the British Communist Party the General Secretary stated:
“Our fellow patriots are being provoked to a suicidal course by the recalcitrant insolence of imperialist rulers. Your task is to press your Government to negotiate with the Congress on the basis of the recognition of Indian independence and the immediate establishment of provisional National Government.”
The tragedy of the British position in India, wherein the Government is obliged to turn for help to an element which treats it with such contempt, needs little comment.
It may be added that the Indian Princes, controlling one-third of the area of India, have, through their loyalty to the British Crown, assured a maximum war effort from at least that portion of the country. This loyalty is, however, based on self-interest and these Princes will find less enchanting Britannia’s couch should she take thereto many partners of too noxious an odor. Too, those groups in British India who have thus far supported the British Raj, may not long continue to do so if elements destructive of their interests are to be allowed to flourish under that Raj.