In India in the late 1920s and 1930s, a powerful left-wing group emerged, contributing to the radicalization of the national movement. The goal of political independence has taken on a more social and economic focus. The streams of national independence struggle and the stream of social and economic emancipation struggle of the oppressed and exploited began to merge. Socialist ideas took root in Indian soil, and socialism became the accepted religion of Indian youth, whose aspirations were symbolised by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. The Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) became powerful left-wing parties over time (CSP).

Role of Russian Revolution:

•    The impact of the Russian Revolution was pivotal in this regard. The Bolshevik (Communist) party, led by Vladimir I. Lenin, overthrew the despotic Czarist regime on November 7, 1917, and declared the establishment of the first socialist state. 

•    By unilaterally relinquishing imperialist rights in China and other parts of Asia, the new Soviet regime electrified the colonial world. 

•    Another point was made: if the common people — workers, peasants, and intellectuals — could unite to overthrow the mighty Czarism  empire and establish a social order free of exploitation of one human being by another, then the Indian people fighting British imperialism could do the same. 

•    Socialist doctrines, particularly Marxism, the Bolshevik Party''s guiding theory, gained a sudden popularity, particularly among Asians. 

•    Many young people who had actively participated in the Non- Cooperation Movement were unhappy with the outcome and with Gandhian policies and ideas, as well as the alternative Swarajist programme, and socialist ideas began to spread quickly. 

Several socialist and communist organisations sprang up across the country.

a.    S.A. Dange published Gandhi and Lenin and founded the first socialist weekly, The Socialist, in Bombay
b.    Muzaffar Ahmed published Navayug in Bengal and later founded the Langal in collaboration with the poet NazruI Islam

c.    Ghulam Hussain and others published Inquilab in Punjab

d.    M. Singaravelu founded the Labour-Kisan Gazette in Madras. 

Participation of youth:

•    From 1927 onwards, student and youth associations sprung up all over the country. Hundreds of youth conferences were held throughout the country in 1928 and 1929, with speakers advocating radical solutions to the country''s political, economic, and social problems. 

•    Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose campaigned across the country, denouncing imperialism, capitalism, and landlordism and preaching the socialist ideology. 

•    Socialism was also adopted by the Revolutionary Terrorists, led by Chandrasekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh.

•    Throughout the 1920s, the labour and peasant movements grew rapidly. As the world was engulfed by the Great Depression in the 1930s, socialist ideas became even more popular. 

•    Unemployment was at an all-time high throughout the capitalist world. The global economic downturn tarnished the capitalist system and drew attention to Marxism and socialism. 

Contribution of Jawaharlal Nehru:

•    The left-wing tendency within the Congress was reflected in the election of Jawaharlal Nehru as president in 1936 and 1937, and Subhas Bose as president in 1938 and 1939, as well as the formation of the Congress Socialist Party.

•    Above all, it was Jawaharlal Nehru who gave the national movement a socialist perspective and became the symbol of socialism and socialist ideas in India after 1929. His name became increasingly associated with the idea that freedom could not be defined solely in political terms, but also had to have a socioeconomic component.

•    At the age of forty, Nehru was elected president of the historic Lahore Congress of 1929. In 1936 and 1937, he was re-elected to the position. 

•    Nehru toured the country as president of the Congress and the most popular leader of the national movement after Gandhiji, covering thousands of miles and speaking to millions of people. 

•    Nehru propagated socialist ideas in his books (Autobiography and Glimpses of World History), articles, and speeches, declaring that political freedom would be meaningful only if it resulted in economic emancipation for the masses; it had to be followed by the establishment of a socialist society. 

•    Nehru thus shaped a whole generation of young nationalists and helped them acclimate. When Nehru met the peasant movement in eastern Uttar Pradesh in 1920-21, he became interested in economic issues. 

•    During his forced leisure in jail between 1922 and 1923, he read extensively about the history of the Russian and other revolutions. In 1927, he travelled to Brussels for the International Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, where he met communists and anti-colonialists from all over the world. By this time, he had come to accept Marxism in its broadest sense. 

•    He visited the Soviet Union the same year and was blown away by the new socialist society. When he returned, he published a book about the Soviet Union, on the title page of which he wrote Wordsworth''s famous lines about the French Revolution: ''Bliss was it in that drawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.'' Jawaharlal Nehru returned to India as a "self-conscious revolutionary radical," according to his biographer S. Gopal.

•    Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose formed the Independence for India League in 1928 to fight for complete independence and a "socialist revision of society''s economic structure." 

•    Nehru declared at the Congress session in Lahore in 1929. If India was to "end poverty and inequality," he said, it would have to adopt a full "socialist programme." 

•    The Congress was also unable to maintain the balance between capital and labour, as well as landlord and tenant, because the existing balance was "terribly skewed" in favour of capitalists and landlords. 

•    During the years 1933-36, Nehru''s commitment to socialism became more pronounced.

View of Gandhi: Nehru also emphasised the importance of class analysis and class struggle during these years. During this time, Nehru developed a complicated relationship with Gandhiji. He chastised Gandhiji for refusing to acknowledge the class divide, preaching harmony between the exploiters and the exploited, and proposing theories of capitalist and landlord trusteeship and conversion. 

•    Jawaharlal Nehru defended Gandhiji against his left-wing critics, claiming that ‘Gandhi has played a revolutionary role in India of the greatest importance because he knew how to make the most of objective conditions and could reach the heart of the masses; while groups with a more advanced ideology functioned largely in the air.''

•    Gandhiji''s actions and teachings had also "inexorably raised mass consciousness and made social issues vital." And his insistence on mass mobilisation at all costs, including the sacrifice of vested interests, has given the national movement a strong pro-mass orientation.''

•    However, Nehru''s commitment to socialism was made within a context that acknowledged the primacy of the political, anti-imperialist struggle as long as India was ruled by a foreigner. 

•    In fact, the goal was to reconcile the two commitments without jeopardising the latter. In 1936, he told the Socialists that the two basic urges that moved him were "nationalism and political freedom as represented by the Congress and social freedom as represented by socialism," and that "the problem of the Indian socialist is to continue these two outlooks and make them an organic whole." 

•    As a result, Nehru opposed the formation of an organisation separate from or independent of the Congress, as well as breaking with Gandhiji and the Congress''s right-wing. 

•    The goal was to persuade and transform the entire Congress in a socialist direction. And the best way to achieve this is to work under its banner and involve its workers and peasants more in the organisation. He also believed that the Left should not become a separate sect from the rest of the national movement.

A large number of Indian revolutionaries and exiles made their way to the Soviet Union, drawn by the Soviet Union''s revolutionary commitment. 

•    M.N. Roy, the most well-known and tallest of them, worked with Lenin to develop the Communist International''s policy toward the colonies. In October 1920, seven such Indians, led by Roy, met in Tashkent to form the Communist Party of India. 

•    The CPI urged all of its members to join the congress form a strong left-wing presence in all of its organs, collaborate with other radical nationalists, and work to transform the Congress into a more radical mass-based organisation.

•    The early Communists'' primary method of political action was to form and work through peasant and worker parties. Muzaffar Ahmed, Qazi Nazrul Islam, Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, and others founded the Labour-Swaraj Party of the Indian National Congress in Bengal in November 1925, which was the first of its kind. 

•    A Congress Labour Party was formed in Bombay in late 1926, and a Kirti-Kisan Party was formed in Punjab.

Workers and peasant party

•    Since 1923, a Hindustani Labour Kisan Party has existed in Madras. By 1928, all of these provincial organisations had merged into the Workers'' and Peasants'' Party (WPP), a pan-India party with units in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi. This party was made up entirely of Communists. 

•    The WPPs'' main goal was to work within the Congress to give it a more radical orientation and make it "the people''s party," as well as to organise workers and peasants in class organisations on their own, in order to achieve complete independence first and then socialism. 

•    The WPPs grew quickly, and communist influence in the Congress began to grow quickly as well, particularly in Bombay. 

•    In addition, Jawaharlal Nehru and other radical Congressmen praised the WPPs'' efforts to radicalise the party. The WPPs, along with Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose, the youth leagues, and other Left forces, were instrumental in establishing a strong left-wing within the Congress and steering the Indian national movement to the left. 

•    The WPPs also made rapid progress on the trade union front, playing a pivotal role in the resurgence of working-class struggles from 1927 to 1929, as well as in allowing Communists to gain a strong foothold in the working class.

•    The rapid growth of communist and WPP influence over the national movement, on the other hand, was checked and nearly wiped out by two developments in 1929 and after. 

Communist ideology in national movement

•    One example was the government''s harsh repression of Communists. Communists attempting to enter India from the Soviet Union were tried in a series of conspiracy cases in Peshawar in 1922-24 and sentenced to long prison terms. 

•    In the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case in 1924, the government attempted to paralyse the nascent communist movement by prosecuting S.A. Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, Nalini Gupta, and Shaukat Usmani. Each of the four was given a four-year sentence.

•    The thirty-two defendants were brought to Meerut for trial. The Meerut Conspiracy Case would soon become a national sensation. Many nationalists, including Jawaharlal Nehru, M.A. Ansari, and M.C. Chagla, were to take up the prisoners'' defence. 

•    Gandhiji paid a visit to the Meerut prisoners in jail to express his solidarity with them and to seek their cooperation in the coming struggle; the prisoners'' defence speeches were published in all nationalist newspapers, exposing lakhs of people to communist ideas for the first time. 

•    The government''s plan to separate the Communists from the rest of the national movement not only failed, but also had the opposite effect. In one way, however, it was a success. The growing working-class movement was left without a strong leader. It was difficult to replace it with new leadership at this early stage.

•    As if the Government''s blow wasn''t enough, the Communists dealt themselves a more lethal blow by abruptly veering toward sectarian politics or "leftist deviation," as leftists refers to it. 

•    Following the resolutions of the Communist International''s Sixth Congress, the Communists severed their ties with the National Congress and declared it a bourgeoisie class party. Furthermore, the Congress and the bourgeoisie it purportedly represented were declared to be imperialist supporters. 

•    Plans by the Congress to organise a mass movement around the slogan of Poorna Swaraj were seen as sham attempts by bourgeois leaders to gain influence over the masses in order to reach an agreement with British imperialism. 

•    In 1931, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact was described as proof of the Congress betrayal of nationalism by the Communists, who were out to ‘expose'' all talk of nonviolent struggle and advance the slogan of armed struggle against imperialism.

•    Finally, the Workers'' and Peasants'' Party was disbanded on the grounds that forming a two-class (workers'' and peasants'') party was unwise because it would be vulnerable to petty bourgeois influences. Instead, the Communists were to focus on forming an "illegal, independent, and centralised" communist party. 

•    The result of the Communists'' abrupt shift in political position was their exclusion from the national movement at a time when it was preparing for its greatest mass struggle and conditions were ripe for the Left''s influence to grow dramatically. Furthermore, the Communist Party split into several factions. The government took advantage of the situation by declaring the CPI illegal in 1934.

•    The Communist movement was saved from disaster, however, because many Communists refused to separate themselves from the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and actively participated in it, and socialist and communist ideas continued to spread throughout the country. 

•    As a result, many young people who had been involved in the CDM or Revolutionary Terrorist organisations were drawn to socialism, Marxism, and the Soviet Union, and eventually joined the CPI after 1934. When the Communist Party was reorganised in 1935 under the leadership of P.C. Joshi, the situation changed dramatically. 

•    Faced with the threat of fascism, the Communist International''s Seventh Congress met in Moscow in August 1935 and advocated for the formation of a united front with socialists and other anti-fascists in capitalist countries, as well as bourgeois-led nationalist movements in colonial countries. 

•    The Indian Communist Party was to re-join the mainstream of the national movement led by the National Congress. A document known as the Dun-Bradley Thesis laid the theoretical and political groundwork for the change in communist politics in India in early 1936. The National Congress, according to this thesis, could play "a significant and leading role in the work of realising the anti-imperialist people''s front."

•    The Communist Party began to urge its members to join the Congress and to enlist the masses under their control to join the Congress. 

•    At the same time, the Communist Party remained committed to the goal of bringing the national movement under the hegemony of the working class. Communists were now putting in a lot of effort inside the Congress. 

Socialist ideology in national movement

•    Many were members of the All-India Congress Committee and held official positions within the Congress district and provincial committees. 

•    They organised powerful peasant movements in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Bengal, and Punjab between 1936 and 1942. What''s more, they reclaimed their reputation as the most militant anti-imperialists in the public eye.

•    During the years 1930-31 and 1932-34, a group of young Congressmen who were dissatisfied with Gandhian strategy and leadership and attracted by socialist ideology worked in jails to form a socialist party. 

•    Many of them were involved in the late-twentieth-century youth movement. They studied and discussed Marxian and other socialist ideas in the prisons.

•    They were drawn to Marxism, Communism, and the Soviet Union, but they did not agree with the CPI''s dominant political line. Many of them were frantically looking for an alternative. 

Congress Socialist Party

In October 1934, under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, Acharya Narendra Dev, and Minoo Masani, they formed the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) in Bombay.

•    The CSP set out with the goal of both transforming and strengthening the Congress from the start. In two senses, the task of transforming the Congress was understood. The ideological sense was one of them.

•    Congressmen were to be gradually persuaded to adopt a socialist vision of India after independence, as well as a more radical pro-labour and pro-peasant stance on current economic issues. This ideological and programmatic transformation, on the other hand, was to be viewed as a process rather than an event.

•    The Congress''s transformation was also seen in terms of organisational changes, such as changes in its top leadership. Initially, the task was interpreted as a means of deposing the existing leadership, which was declared incapable of taking the masses'' struggle to a new level. 

•    The CSP was to become the nucleus of the Congress''s alternative socialist leadership. The task, as stated in the CSP''s Meerut Thesis of 1935, was to "wean the anti-imperialist elements in the Congress away from its current bourgeois leadership and place them under the leadership of revolutionary socialism." 

•    This perspective, however, was quickly found to be unrealistic, and it was abandoned in favour of a "comprehensive" leadership model, in which socialists would be included at all levels of government. 

•    At Tripuri in 1939 and Ramgarh in 1940, the idea of alternate Left leadership of the Congress and the national movement was realised. 

•    The CSP (along with the CPI) shied away from splitting the Congress on a Left-Right basis and giving the Congress an executive left-wing leadership. Its leadership (as did the CPI''s) recognised that such an effort would not only weaken the national movement, but would also isolate the Left from the mainstream, that the Indian people could only be mobilised into a movement under Gandhiji''s leadership, and that there was, in fact, no alternative to Gandhiji''s leadership at the time. 

•    However, unlike Jawaharlal Nehru, the CSP''s leadership, as well as that of other Left-wing groups and parties, was unable to fully theorise or internalise this understanding, and thus returned to the concept of alternative leadership time and time again. 

•    The CSP, on the other hand, was firmly rooted in the realities of the Indian situation. As a result, it never pushed its opposition to the Congress''s current leadership to the breaking point. When it came down to it, it abandoned its theoretical position in favour of a pragmatic approach similar to Jawaharlal Nehru''s. This drew the wrath of other left-wing organisations and parties; for example, in 1939, they were chastised for refusing to support Subhas Bose in his fight with Gandhiji and the Congress''s right wing. 

•    The socialists defended themselves at such times, revealing glimpses of an empiricist understanding of Indian reality. 

•    From the start, the CSP''s leaders were divided into three ideological currents: Marxist, Fabian, and Gandhiji-influenced. For a broad socialist party that was a movement, this would not have been a major weakness — in fact, it might have been a source of strength. However, the CSP was already a part of the National Congress movement, and a cadre-based party at that. 

•    Furthermore, Marxism in the 1930s was incapable of accepting such diversity of political currents on the Left as legitimate. As a result, the CSP was beset by confusion until the very end. Because of the personal bonds of friendship and a sense of comradeship among most of the party''s founding leaders, the acceptance of Acharya Narendra Dev and Jayaprakash Narayan as senior leaders, and the party''s commitment to nationalism and socialism, the party''s basic ideological differences were papered over for a long time.

•    Despite ideological differences among its leaders, the CSP as a whole accepted Marxism as the basic definition of socialism. 

In the 1930s, a number of other Left-wing groups and currents emerged. 

a.    In 1930, M.N. Roy returned to India and organised a powerful group of Royists, who went through several political and ideological transformations over the years. 

b.    After being forced to resign from the presidency of the Congress, Subhas Bose and his left-wing supporters formed the Forward Bloc in 1939. 

c.    During the 1930s, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, and various Trotskyist organisations were active. 

d.    There were also a few well-known left-wing figures, such as Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, Professor N.G. Ranga, and Indulal Yagnik, who worked independently of any organised left-wing party. 

•    Despite ideological and organisational differences, the CPI, CSP, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose, and other Left groups and leaders all shared a common political programme that enabled them to work together after 1935 and make socialism a strong current in Indian politics. 

•    Anti-imperialism, anti-landlordism, worker and peasant organisation in trade unions and kisan sabhas, acceptance of a socialist vision of independent India and of the socialist programme of economic and social transformation of society, and an antifascist, anti-colonial, and anti-war foreign policy were the main features of this programme.

•    Despite the fact that the Left''s cadres were among the most courageous, militant, and selfless of freedom fighters, the Left failed to achieve the fundamental goal it set for itself: establishing socialist ideas and parties as the dominant force in the national movement. 

Comparison to right wing

The Left, unlike the right-wing of Congress, failed to demonstrate ideological and tactical flexibility. It used simplistic formulae and radical rhetoric to counter the right-wing. 

•    It fought the right on slick and erroneous ground. It chose to focus on methods of struggle and tactics rather than ideological issues. 

•    For example, the most serious charge levelled against the Congress right-wing was that it wanted to reach an agreement with imperialism, that it was afraid of mass struggle, and that its anti-imperialism was tainted by bourgeois influence. Such accusations were easily dismissed by the right-wing. 

•    The people, not the Left, were the ones who believed it. Three significant events can be used as examples. 

1.    In the Congress in 1936-37, the Left fought the Right over elections and office acceptance, which was seen as a compromise with imperialism. 

2.    In the years 1939-42, a heated debate raged over the question of launching a mass movement, with Gandhiji''s reluctance interpreted as a sign of his softness toward imperialism and the squandering of a golden opportunity. 

3.    In 1945-47, the Left confronted the dominant Congress leadership, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad, on the issue of power-transfer negotiations, which were seen as British imperialism''s last-ditch effort to maintain dominance and the tired Congress leadership''s hunger for power, if not outright betrayal.

Flaws in left wing movement

•    The Left also failed to conduct a thorough examination of Indian reality. With the exception of Jawaharlal Nehru, the dominant Congress leadership was regarded by the Left as bourgeois, its policy of negotiations as a means of reaching a compromise with imperialism, and any recourse to constitutional work as a step toward the "abandonment of the struggle for independence." 

•    It relied on a simplified model for analysing Indian social classes and political behaviour. All efforts to guide the national movement in a disciplined manner were seen as placing restrictions on it. 

•    Rather than focusing on the nature of mass involvement, mobilisation, and ideology, it constantly compared armed struggle to nonviolence as a superior form and method of struggle. 

•    It was believed that the masses were always willing to engage in struggles of any kind if only the leaders were willing to initiate them. It consistently overestimated the public''s support. 

•    Above all, the Left misunderstood Gandhi''s struggle strategy. The failure of the various Left parties, groups, and individuals to work together, except for brief periods, was a major weakness of the Left. 

•    All attempts to form a united front of left-wing elements failed miserably. Their doctrinal disagreements and differences were numerous and passionately held, and the leaders'' temperamental differences were overwhelming. 

•    In 1939, Nehru and Bose were unable to work together for long and publicly feuded. Nehru and the Socialists were unable to work together on policy. 

•    After 1939, Bose and the Socialists drifted apart. From 1935 to 1940, the CSP and the Communists made titanic efforts to work together: In 1935, the CSP opened its doors to Communists and Royists in order to provide legal avenues for the illegal Communist Party to engage in political activity. 

•    The Socialists and Communists, on the other hand, quickly drifted apart and became bitter enemies. The inevitable result was a long-term schism between anti-Communist Socialists and Communists, who saw every Socialist leader as a potential bourgeois or (after 1947) American agent.

Significance of left wing movement

The Left was able to have a fundamental impact on Indian society and politics. One of its greatest achievements was the organisation of workers and peasants, which was discussed elsewhere. 

•    Its influence on Congress was also significant. On important issues, the Left was able to exert organisational control over nearly one-third of the votes in the All-India Congress Committee. 

•    From 1936 to 1939, Nehru and Bose were elected presidents of the Congress. Nehru was able to appoint three prominent Socialists to his Working Committee: Acharya Narendra Dev, Jayaprakash Narayan, and Achyut Patwardhan. In the presidential election of 1939, Subhas Bose defeated Pattabhi Sitaramayya by a margin of 1580 to 1377 as a candidate of the Left.

•    The Congress was given a strong Left-wing political and ideological orientation as a whole. Indian nationalism had been pushed "towards vital social changes," as Nehru put it, "and today it hovers, somewhat undecided, on the brink of a new social ideology." 

•    The Congress, including its right-wing, recognised that the Indian people''s poverty and misery stemmed not only from colonial dominance, but also from the internal socio-economic structure of Indian society, which needed to be drastically altered. 

•    The impact of the Left on the national movement was reflected in the Karachi session of the Congress''s resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy in 1931, the Faizpur session''s resolutions on economic policy in 1936, the Congress''s Election Manifesto in 1936, the establishment of a National Planning Committee in 1938, and Gandhiji''s increasing shift towards the Left. 

•    Other major achievements of the Left include the founding of the All-India Students'' Federation and the Progressive Writers'' Association, as well as the convening of the first All-India States'' People''s Conference in 1936. The All-India Women''s Conference was also heavily influenced by the left. Above all, the Communist Party and the Congress Socialist Party, two major left-wing parties, had been formed and were being built up.