Communist Movement in Colonial India

The Communist movement in colonial India emerged as a prominent radical strand within the national liberation struggle during the early 1920s. Inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia, Indian revolutionaries sought to combine anti-imperialist resistance with socio-economic revolution to liberate workers and peasants from foreign rule and domestic feudal exploitation. Over three decades, the movement evolved through ideological debate, underground organization, trade union mobilization, state trials, and agrarian armed resistance.

Ideological Foundations and Foreign Formations

The ideological groundwork for Indian communism was laid both abroad and within British India following World War I.

Formation in Tashkent

• M.N. Roy, along with Evelyn Roy, Abani Mukherji, Rosa Fitingof, Mohammad Ali, and Mohammad Shafiq, founded the Communist Party of India (CPI) at Tashkent on October 17, 1920.
• Mohammad Shafiq was elected the first Secretary of the party.
• M.N. Roy represented the group at the Second Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow in 1920.
• Roy engaged in ideological debate with V.I. Lenin regarding the “Colonial Thesis,” advocating that communist parties in colonies should lead proletarian revolutions independently rather than submitting to bourgeois nationalist leaderships.

Early Internal Marxist Centers

• Independent socialist and communist circles emerged simultaneously in key industrial cities across India.
• S.A. Dange launched the English weekly The Socialist in Bombay in 1922.
• Muzaffar Ahmad brought out the Bengali journal Navayug in Calcutta.
• Ghulam Hussain edited Inquilab in Lahore.
• M. Singaravelu Chettiar established the Labour-Kisan Party of Hindustan in Madras in 1923 and organized the first May Day celebration in India.

Colonial Repression and State Conspiracy Trials

Fearing the spread of Marxist ideas and Soviet influence, the British colonial state launched a series of legal prosecutions to suppress the nascent communist network.

Peshawar Conspiracy Cases (1922–1927)

• The British government arrested Indian revolutionaries trained at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow and Tashkent as they crossed the North-West Frontier.
• Five sequential trials took place at Peshawar charging defendants with conspiring to overthrow the British Crown.

Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case (1924)

• Prosecutions under Section 121A of the Indian Penal Code were initiated against S.A. Dange, Muzaffar Ahmad, Shaukat Usmani, Nalini Gupta, M.N. Roy, Ghulam Hussain, Singaravelu Chettiar, and R.C. Sharma.
• The court convicted Dange, Ahmad, Usmani, and Gupta, sentencing them to four years of imprisonment.
• The trial publicised communist ideology across Indian newspapers, attracting young nationalists to Marxism.

Kanpur Communist Conference (1925)

• Satyabhakta organized the Indian Communist Conference at Kanpur in December 1925.
• Singaravelu Chettiar presided over the conference, where the CPI was formally established on Indian soil.
• S.V. Ghate was appointed the first General Secretary of the central committee.

Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929–1933)

• The colonial state arrested 31 labor leaders on March 20, 1929, including trade unionists and three British communists—Philip Spratt, Benjamin Bradley, and Lester Hutchinson.
• Defendants used the courtroom as a platform to articulate Marxist principles, receiving support from Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and international figures like Albert Einstein.
• Severe initial sentences were reduced on appeal by the Allahabad High Court in 1933 due to global public pressure.

Organizational Fronts and Trade Union Struggle

To build a mass base, communists operated through dual legal structures, trade unions, and peasant associations.

Workers’ and Peasants’ Parties (WPP)

• Formed between 1925 and 1928 across Bombay, Bengal, Punjab, and the United Provinces, WPPs functioned as a legal cover for underground communist work.
• WPPs worked within the Indian National Congress (INC) to push for complete independence (Purna Swaraj) and radical socio-economic programs.
• The All India Workers’ and Peasants’ Party held its national conference in Calcutta in December 1928.

Trade Union and Peasant Mobilization

• Communists gained control of the Girni Kamgar Union (GKU) in Bombay, leading the historic six-month textile strike in 1928.
• They played a dominant role in the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), causing a split in 1929 at the Nagpur session under Jawaharlal Nehru’s presidency.
• In 1936, communist leaders assisted in founding the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) alongside Swami Sahajanand Saraswati and N.G. Ranga to organize tenant farmers.

Strategic Shifts and War-Time Policies

| Phase | Strategy / Policy Line | Strategic Rationale and Impact | | | | | | 1928–1934 | Ultra-Left Line (6th Comintern) | Denounced Congress as “bourgeois”; boycotted the Civil Disobedience Movement; party banned in 1934. | | 1935–1939 | Popular Front Line (Dutt-Bradley Thesis) | Joined Congress Socialist Party (CSP); formed a united anti-imperialist front within the INC. | | 1939–1941 | Imperialist War Line | Opposed World War II as an inter-imperialist conflict; organized anti-war labor strikes. | | 1941–1945 | People’s War Line | Supported the Allied War effort post-Nazi invasion of USSR; ban lifted in 1942; stayed out of Quit India Movement. |

Mass Peasant Uprisings and Post-War Militancy

Following the conclusion of World War II, the CPI led militant peasant and popular movements across different regions of India.

Tebhaga Movement (1946–1947)

• Led by the Bengal Pradesh Kisan Sabha in Bengal.
• Sharecroppers (bargadars) demanded two-thirds share of the harvested crop instead of the customary half from landlords (jotedars).
• Popularized slogans like “Tebhaga Chai” (We want two-thirds) and “Inquilab Zindabad.”

Telangana Armed Struggle (1946–1951)

• Led by the Andhra Mahasabha and CPI against the Nizam of Hyderabad and feudal lords (deshmukhs).
• Peasants organized guerrilla bands (dalams) to resist forced labor (vetti) and land evictions.
• Established parallel peasant soviets in over 3,000 villages, redistributing lakhs of acres of land.

Punnapra-Vayalar Uprising (1946)

• Armed struggle of coir workers, agricultural laborers, and fishermen against the Diwan of Travancore, Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer.
• Opposed the proposed “American Model” independent constitution for Travancore.

Key Historical Facts and Trivia

• M.N. Roy’s real name was Narendra Nath Bhattacharya.
• S.A. Dange wrote the pamphlet Gandhi vs. Lenin in 1921, comparing the socio-political philosophies of both leaders.
• Singaravelu Chettiar presided over the 1925 Kanpur Communist Conference and moved the first resolution on the formation of the CPI.
• The Dutt-Bradley Thesis, authored by Rajani Palme Dutt and Ben Bradley in 1936, enabled Indian communists to join the Congress Socialist Party (CSP).
• The British government banned the Communist Party of India in July 1934, lifting the ban eight years later in July 1942 under the “People’s War” policy.
• The CPI was the first political party in India to demand complete independence (Purna Swaraj) at the Ahmedabad session of the INC in 1921 through Hasrat Mohani and Swami Kumaranand.
• P.C. Joshi served as the first formal General Secretary of the unified and underground CPI from 1935 to 1947, driving cultural mobilization through the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) in 1943.