Idols & Idealism: Russian Archives Throw New Light On India’s Anti-War Politics Of 1940s And 1950s – Analysis
JV Stalin responses clear the air on 1942 Quit India movement, leadership of Netaji Bose
In our age when leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and America’s Donald Trump are engaged in regional wars, disrupting trade regimes, creating greater-than-ever stress for governments, migrants and professionals throughout the world, it is Vijay Singh, a retired professor of history from Delhi University who has been diligently digging through archives in Russia, UK and east European countries to clear the air on key issues of anti-war politics of the 1940s and 1950s in the vast Indian sub-continent.
Explained Vijay Singh, “through documents representing a section of the Molotov Holding of the former central party archives of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU), we are now studying the exchanges between the Communist Party of India (CPI)and the CPSU (Bolshevik) in 1952 after the discussions between the two parties in Moscow in 1951.”
The soft-spoken professor underlines the significance of this correspondence, “The materials we are referring to cover a series of historical questions of the CPI which have been extremely opaque in terms of the Soviet understanding; and which arise in discussions in turn provoked by the right-wing politics of the Congress, the communal forces and rightist sections of the socialist movement.” These have not only been contentious issues but continue to be debated and discussed till date. Infact the Indian left parties are invariably taunted in political forums for their stance on the 1942 Quit India movement which shook up the British Empire: it was Mahatma Gandhi’s clarion call to ‘do-or-die’ in the prolonged anti-colonial struggle.
The Molotov Holding in the CPSU(B) archives are shedding light on the Soviet view on the policies of the CPI during the wartime and the post-war period. Through 1951-52 Ajoy Ghosh, as the general secretary of CPI, had extensive exchanges with the CPSU (B) in Moscow and, in many ways, getting to know how JV Stalin was perceiving the politics of independent India. Said Vijay Singh, “This correspondence and documents form only a part of the extensive exchanges: there are earlier letters by Ajoy Ghosh and the responses of Stalin are not available to us. It is likely that other exchanges may come to light in the future and help us to understand the different positions better. The documentation also indicates the method by which the Soviet party formed its policies on various issues.”
Ajoy Ghosh: Global vision
For readers who may not be aware, Ajoy Ghosh remains a highly-respected national leader not only of undivided India but across the world. In fact Mainstream magazine, in its edition dated 21 February 2009, had devoted a major article titled ‘A Forgotten Communist’ where the author Sankar Ray wrote, “Primarily, Ghosh was committed to proletarian internationalism and worldwide battle for socialist transformation. Boris Ponomaryov, Alternate Member of the Polit-Bureau of the now-defunct Communist Party of Soviet Union for about two decades, described him as one of the ‘sterling leaders’ of the era of Communist International alongside the legendary Ho Chi-Minh, Dolores Ibaruri, the firebrand leader of the Republican struggle of Spain, French Communist stalwart Maurice Thorez, Antonio Gramsci’s comrade-in-arms Palmiro Togliatti, German Communist leader Walter Ulbricht and the British scholar-communist Rajani Palme Dutt among a few others.”
On 5 August 1952, Ajoy Ghosh wrote to Stalin, who was the general secretary of the CPSU (B), and the task of replying was entrusted to the USSR state security ministry under Comrade Ignatiev. “Here we find,” as Vijay Singh underlined, “the reply drafted by the central committee, the comments of the Soviet leadership, and the final draft prepared by the central committee on a particular range of questions. Of enormous value are the Soviet views of the approach of the CPI to the Congress Party and Subhash Chandra Bose in the period of the anti-fascist war. The Soviet party did not accept the CPI policies regarding the British. As is known, the CPI supported the British on the grounds that they were allied with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. The Soviet leadership was of the opinion that the British in fact avoided opening a second front against Fascist Germany and desired the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to engage in mutually destructive combat.”
To join the dots across historical time, Ajoy Ghosh’s letter expressing his concern and seeking the CPSU (B) guidance came ten years after the Quit India movement launched by the Congress in August 1942. It was at the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee on 8 August 1942 Mahatma Gandhi raised the call for ‘Do or Die’. The British imperial establishment, especially in New Delhi, could now witness the upsurge in the movement and it seemed as if the 1857 revolt or ‘First War of Independence’ was now being replayed. It is also important to note that by August 1952 the new Republic of India had conducted its first general elections with the Indian National Congress victorious with 364 seats, and a comfortable majority in the Parliament under the Prime Ministership of Pt Jawaharlal Nehru.
What’s equally noteworthy is the performance of the left parties in 1952: the CPI under Ajoy Ghosh won 16 seats, and almost 3.30% of the popular vote; the Socialist Party led by Acharya Narendra Dev was victorious with 12 seats, and JB Kripalani’s Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party had 9 seats to its credit. The People’s Democratic Front, communists based out of Hyderabad, was victorious in 7 parliamentary seats; the Peasants and Workers Party of India with two seats, the Revolutionary Socialist Party with 3 seats and the Forward Bloc (Marxist) with one parliamentary seat. This is a far cry from the 2024 general elections when the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has merely four seats, the CPI with two and the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation with two seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament).
In his correspondence with CPSU (B), Ajoy Ghosh enumerated the positive results of the parliamentary participation in 1951-52 for peasants and workers despite the problems arising from lack of experience in this sphere. In some quarters the parliamentary participation has been interpreted as the beginnings of a parliamentary path; hence it is interesting to note that the CPSU (B) in its revolutionary period saw nothing untoward in the CPI’s electoral participation, said Vijay Singh.
Forward Bloc and Bose
It is the Forward Bloc which demands reader attention now with Ajoy Ghosh seeking the opinion of the CPSU (B) through his letter to Stalin. The response, said the retired professor of history, needs careful study.
Ghosh, in his letter wrote, “We had to also note that Bose (that is Subhas Chandra Bose, also referred to as Netaji or Leader), by entering into a union with Japan, and also creating illusions that the Japanese army would liberate India, had betrayed the case of freedom, preparing the conditions for the enslavement of India. Therefore, distancing ourselves widely from both the Congress and Bose, we (meaning the CPI) had to try to develop a mass movement against the British up to a revolutionary seizure of power by the people, by using all forms of struggle, organizing mass campaigns against payment of taxes and rents, organizing guerrilla warfare in the countryside, organising general strikes and uprisings in the cities. Our criticism of Congress had to be aimed at exposing its deceptive stance on the question of bringing down the British dominance, and on denouncing Bose, who betrayed the Indian people in the interest of the Japanese. Following such tactics, we would not harm the interests of the USSR in the antifascist war but, on the opposite, would assist them.”
The CPSU (B) response is unambiguous; it stated: “In relation to this, the question of whether the Indian Communist Party had to change its tactics after the battle of Stalingrad is no longer relevant. No doubt, the whole mass of the followers of Subhas Bose cannot be seen as traitors or as “fifth column of Japanese fascism”, despite the fact that Subhas Bose during the war, being in Japan, openly sided with militarist Japan and fascist Germany, being in a status of an agent of the Japanese imperialists when they were creating the so-called Indian national army. On the question of Subhas Bose, one should not worsen the relations with the ‘Forward Bloc’ party in order not to lose the democratic part of this party as an ally.” The photographs of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at different events in Japan, and also with Adolf Hitler, have been in public domain, and adorn different museums dedicated to Bose and the Indian National Army he formed.
Forward Bloc, it may be recalled, had been an integral part of the Indian National Congress when it was formed on 3 May 1939 by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. After India’s Independence in 1947, Forward Bloc (Marxist) emerged as an independent political party with Sarat Chandra Bose, Subhas Chandra’s brother, being one of its key leaders.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and his struggle for India’s freedom from British imperial rule, cannot be complete without the mentioning the controversies, mysteries and myths surrounding the fate of this iconic hero of Bengal and the air-crash of 1945. Anuj Dhar, the journalist-turned-researcher has penned several works concerning Bose: Subhas Chandra Bose: India’s Biggest Cover-up in 2012 was followed by What Happened to Netaji in 2016 (published and distributed by Vitasta Publishing). When asked about the authenticity of his research, Anuj Dhar said that he was justified by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court and his research was stamped as ‘genuine and based on relevant material’.
Unravelling the truth
It is the Soviet connection and the conspiracy theory that Dhar has explored in his endeavour to unravel the truth about Netaji in 1945. Dhar mentioned reports that Dr. Saroj Das of Calcutta University, told his friend Dr. RC Mazumdar that Dr. S Radhakrishnan the-then Indian Ambassador to Soviet Union had told him that Bose was in Russia. In another report, former Indian ambassador Dr. Satyanarayana Sinha met CPI founder Abani Mukherjee’s son Georgey, who said his father and Netaji were imprisoned in adjacent cells in Siberia. In 1995, a team from Calcutta’s Asiatic Society found a bunch of declassified files that hinted at Bose having been in the USSR after 1945.
Dr. Purobi Roy, a member of the team of scholars, said she found a document stamped ‘most secret’ dated 1946, in the military archives of Paddolosk, near Moscow, which mentioned Stalin and Molotov discussing Bose’s plans whether he would remain in the USSR or leave. Dr. Roy also said she found a KGB report in Bombay from 1946, which said, “it is not possible to work with Nehru or Gandhi, we have to use Subhas Bose”. This implies Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was still alive in 1946. These names and events have been in the public domain for long, often quoted in the Indian and south-east Asian media.
In Dhar’s bestselling books, the accounts of the three enquiry commissions are detailed: The first two committees, Shah Nawaz Khan Committee of 1956 and Justice G D Khosla Commission of 1970, concluded that Bose died in an air crash. But Anuj Dhar alleges that the witnesses “who mostly belonged to the Congress government and Intelligence Bureau (IB)” presented ‘manipulated’ documents before these committees. In his book, Mr. Dhar cites truncated documents and false statements given by top officers of IB.
On the 119th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Prime Minister Modi released 100 secret documents which had been declassified and were relating to the mysterious disappearance of Netaji. Historians, military experts and the media reported that the release of declassified papers fails to confirm or contradict the long-held theory that Netaji died in a plane crash in Taipei on 18 August 1945. Quite clearly, the Netaji saga will continue to unfold different facets as the years go by.
