The Story of a GREAT BETRAYAL

By Panchajanya

This Blog Post is to evaluate the role of CPI(Later CPI & CPM) in India Freedom Struggle and later(such as China War, etc)
Nationalism
as a concept alien to communism. For a communist, Ideology comes first
before country. For several Years, they had difficulty accepting India
as a single country, they used to call India a confederation of
nations.
So it is not surprising that the communists called all
national heroes name- Mahatma Gandhi, Subhas Bose, Jaya Prakash Narain
to name a few. Sabotaged the Quit movement, refused to accept India’s
freedom, started an armed rebellion against the Indian state, sided
with China in the Sino-Indian conflict in 1962, supported the Emergency
and press censorship in 1975, criticized Pokharan-II etc.
However,
the most subversive role of the communist movement has been providing
philosophical and intellectual underpinning to all such anti-national
movements. CPI leadership supported the two nation theory thus
Pakistan demand of the Muslim league. They even accepted Sikhs Demand
for separate homeland.
Communists role during Quit India Movement is well Known. The role of CPI
during China war is more Disgusting. It ranged from Declaring “Chairman
Mao, Our Chairman” to Giving overt and covert support to china.

We will Broadly divide this Segment into two Section namely Before Independence, After Independence

Before Independence:

The
story of Communist betrayal of the freedom movement is sickening. The
CPI newspaper kept denouncing Gandhiji  and Subhas Chandra Bose as
“blind Messiahs” and accused  them of decadence. In February 1941 the
Communist wrote  that “the national movement under bourgeois leadership
has entered into a blind alley”. The Communists heaped abuse on
Gandhiji, the Congress. Jayaprakash Narayan and Subhas Babu, and
denigrated the clarion call of “Do or
Die” as an indication of bankruptcy of thought.

K.K. Chaudhari in his Book Quit India Revolution: The Ethos of Its Central Direction:

Chaudhari says that “on many occasions the Communists were indeed more royalist  than even the King of England“.
In submissions to Sir Reginald,  Joshi showed what a splendid job he
and his party were doing to break up the Quit India Movement. Chaudhari
writes that the 120-page report “could not have been improved by any other collaborator of the British or by any quisling“.
Joshi was so anxious to prove the CPI’s utility to the British rule
that he claimed that he was doing a better job of stemming the Quit
India Movement, of denouncing Subhas Babu and leaders of the Congress
underground. than the government itself! Notes Chaudhari: “The tone and contents of Joshi’s performance report reveal crystal clear what the CPI had done to sabotage the 1942 movement.”

On the Communist Support for Creation of Pakistan he writes

“By
incessant and vociferous repetition Communists proclaimed the thesis
that (1) India was not one nation but a collection of several separate
nationalities. (2) the demand for Pakistan is a just and democratic one
because Hindus would oppress them in future; (3) the Muslim League
itself has become progressive and secular and Jinnah himself was
secular and anti-religious and (4) the Congress must concede to the
Muslims the right to self-determination.”

Benediktov Diary:

The
diaries of former Soviet Ambassador to India IA Benediktov give a good
Insight on various acts of CPI. The Benediktov diaries form part of the
Russian Archives Documents Database at the National Security Archive of
George Washington University, Washington, DC. Excerpts from the diaries
can be accessed on the website of the Cold War International History
Project of the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington, DC.

One of entries
describe a conversation with the Secretary of the National Council of
the Communist Party of India (CPI), Bhupesh Gupta. During the
conversation, Gupta urgently requests Soviet financial aid for the
Indian party for use in an upcoming election campaign; the answer
conveyed by Benediktov ten days later suggests that the Soviets
responded positively to the request, although the amount is not
indicated:

Followed by:

Today
I received Gupta at his request. Gupta communicated that on 16-17
January a meeting of the Secretariat of the CPI took place in Delhi, at
which was discussed the future work of the party apparatus in
connection with the death of A[joy]. [Kumar] Ghosh….Gupta said that he
desires that the ties of the CPI and CPSU do not become weakened in any
way after the death of Ghosh. The assistance in various forms and the
comradely advice of the CC CPSU have always been enormously useful to
us, he underscored….Gupta said that no other party, not even the
communist party of China, can occupy in the hearts of Indian communists
the place which belongs to the CPSU…
Gupta reported that after the
death of Ghosh at the present time in the party there is an acute
insufficiency of means for the preelection campaign. He expressed the
fear that with the death of Ghosh the source for receiving means for
the communist party from the CPSU might be closed. These questions were
handled by Ghosh alone, Gupta underscored. He never consulted with him
/Gupta/, and even less with [Elamulam M.S.] Nambudiripad and G. Nair/
with the latter two only about using the assistance/. All these matters
were held in strictest secrecy from other leaders of the party and
members of the National Council. This explains the fact that not a
single report on this question has appeared in the press. Gupta said
that he cannot singlehandedly take on responsibility in questions of
assistance, therefore he considers it necessary to consult with
Nambudiripad, whom he characterized as a person of crystalline honesty
and whom Ghosh trusted. Gupta confidentially reported that A. Ghosh had
not consulted on this problem with Akhmed or with [Shripad Amrit]
Dange, who once proposed that he entrust to him alone all matters
connected with the receipt of aid from abroad.

The Mitrokhin Archive II:

“The Mitrokhin Archive” refers to the collected notes taken by Vasili Mitrokhin
over 30 years. They became public following his 1992 departure from
Russia to Great Britain. The notes purportedly contain Soviet 
intelligence operations details obtained from KGB archives. Mitrokhin
was a Major  and senior archivist for the USSR’s foreign intelligence
service and the First Directorate of KGB. 

In this he describes:

The CPI
was funded in many ways, including transfer of money through car
windows on Delhi roads: “(C.) Rajeshwar Rao, general secretary of the CPI from 1964 to 1990, subsequently provided receipts for the sums received.”
Then there was the infamous rupee-ruble trade: “In 1959, the CPI
general secretary, Ajoy Ghosh, agreed on plans to found an
import-export business for trade with the Soviet bloc, headed by a
senior Party member codenamed DED…Within little more than a decade
its annual profits had grown to over 3 million rupees.”

Mrs Raj Thapar former communists of “Thapar couple Fame:

Mrs Raj Thapar former communists of “Thapar couple”‘ fame in her memoir “All These Years (Penguin, 1991)” writes “To
this day I cannot fathom what lay behind the communist support for the
idea of Pakistan, what vested interests possessed them to waste their
cadres, their energy, to help what obviously the most reactionary trend
in our political life. And of all people, (Mohan Kumaramangalam), who I
then thought had devoured all the basic writings of Marxism, how could
he hold, support, back and supply Jana was with the intellectual
arguments he so urgently needed.“

A Glimpse thru Mahatma Gandhi’s Letter

His letter to Communist leader P C joshi on June 11, 1944  on How Communist Betrayed Labour Leaders:
Role of Communists was so illustrious that even Mahatma Gandhi got wind
of their deeds.In his letter to Communist leader P C joshi on June 11,
1944 Gandhi himself talked about the Communist party helping the
authorities arrest the leaders of labor unions.

“MY DEAR JOSHI,
I
had expected a prompt reply to the questions I had raised at our
meeting. Meanwhile some additional questions have arisen which please,
answer when you answer my first questions.
1. What is the meaning
of “people” in “people’s war”? Does it mean war on behalf of India’s
millions, or the Negroes in East, South or West Africa, or the Negroes
of America, or all of them? Are the Allies engaged in such a war?
2. Are the finances of the Communist Party, represented by you, subject to public audit? If they are, may I see them?
3. It is stated that the Communist Party has actively helped the authorities to arrest leaders and organizers of labour strikes during the last two years.
4.
The Communist Party is said to have adopted the policy of infiltrating
the Congress organization with a hostile intent.
5. Is not the policy of the Communist Party dictated from outside?
Yours sincerely,
M. K. GANDHI”

In
his reply on June 14, 1944 P. C. Joshi does not deny the charge: He
says it cannot be proven. Then gloats about this achievement of theirs:

“That
we successfully prevented the Indian working class from resorting to
strikes even in a period of their worsening material conditions is the
measure not only of our influence over it but its capacity to
understand national interests as its own.”

(Letter no 136, page 100 and Appendix IX, page 444)




http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL084.PDF

How Communists acted as Fifth Columnist for British:  In an Article article of V Sundaram  Writes:

“Bhulabhai
Desai reported in the light of cold documentary evidence how the
Communist Party of India had functioned as a fifth Columnist, acting as
a paid agent of the British Government in India. His recommendations
were referred to a Committee consisting of Pandit Nehru, Sardar Patel
and G B Pant who endorsed the findings of Bhulabhai Desai. Charge
sheets were then served on the Communist members.”

http://www.newstodaynet.com/2007sud/feb07/280207.htm

This
fact of history (if the article of V Sundaram is not good enough) can
be verified through a look at the correspondence of Mahatma Gandhi with
P.C. Joshi (a general secretary of the Communist party at the time).
Refer Letter of Mr. Joshi to Gandhi dated February 1,1945(Appendix VIII
page 470)  here Mr Joshi talks about question of their moral bonafides
and the file containing the evidence against them.
http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL085.PDF

Letter no 595, Page no 354:  In this letter Mahatma Gandhi Sarcastically asks P. C Joshi

Received your letter. Shall I reply in the national language?

Then Continues Saying

I did not write to you because you yourself had asked me not to do so. Yes, you are right, complaint was mine……

But complaints continue coming to me.

http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL085.PDF 

Letter no 721, Page no 413 In this letter Mahatma Gandhi writes on unprincipled nature of Communists:

Many
honest Congressmen come to me or write to me from the various provinces
that communists have no principles save of keeping their party alive
and beating their opponents with any stick that came to their hands.

In
this letter, it is also mentioned that Bhulabhai Desai who was
preoccupied and not keeping well was one of the members of the tribunal
suggested by communists to have the charges against them examined)

http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL086.PDF

Letter no 658. Letter to P. C Joshi dated August 21, 1945

The
news, almost daily poured into my ears by Congressmen to the effect
that the Party is  unscrupulous in its methods and that it even resorts
to violence.

Letter no 515. Letter to Dr. Syed Mahmud January 22, 1945

As
to the Communists, you should see the papers. I went out of my way to
meet them and to befriend them. But Joshi wrote peremptorily that I
should not write to him any more. He wanted me to speak to him
thro[ugh] Bhulabhai, Mrs. Naidu or C. R.

 Letter no 409, Letter to Shanta Patel  dated July 16, 1945

The
Congress working committee appointed a sub committee consisting of
Pandit Nehru, G B Pant and Sardar Patel to look at the charges

http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL087.PDF

After Independence:

CIA Dossier

Excerpts from CIA Dossier which was declassified recently

http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/ESAU/esau-15.pdf

How CPI Started Betraying during China War

On
the 28th, Nehru for the first time made a statement in Parliament
substantiating the press r e p o r t s of such Chinese incursions and
armed clashes . This statement inflamed Indian public opinion;
according to a private comment that day by the chief of the Communist
Indian Press Agency, it confused and staggered the party members.
During the next two days the CPI Central Secretariat, minus Ghosh, held
an emergency meeting on the problem, following which the party issued
the first in what was to be a long and varied series of statements on
the border, a vague declaration glossing over the question of border
violations, holding (as the Chinese were to do) that the entire border
has never been defined, making no mention of the MacMahonline , and
urgently calling for negotiations. The CPI subsequently came under wide
public attack as a result of its failure in this statement to take a
clear-cut stand supporting the Indian government position.
Page 61

How CPI planned to start Armed Rebellion

In Feb 1958 an official of the Soviet Embassy contacted CPI
Leaders to renew the request to setup an underground organization.
While Ajoy Ghosh refused, HK Surjeet and others privately decided that
Ghosh was taking a complacent line and decided to reach out to the CPSU
outside of party channels. The CPI did proceed to recruit a secret organization within the Indian Army.

In February 1959, Ajoy Ghosh in his report to the Central Executive Committee that China Russia insisted that the CPI
must develop a standby apparatus capable of armed resistance, while
intensifying penetration of Indian Military forces.

In the
September Central Executive Committee meeting Ajoy Ghosh argued against
the tendency to welcome Chinese military presence on Indian borders to
justify a new militant line for the CPI. This was rejected by
the hard left who argued that with the PLA now present along the Indian
Border the Indian Party had a channel of support for Armed Operations
and a potential liberator in the event of mass uprisings.

CPI Propaganda War and Ideological Support

On
the border question, the leftists circulated at the CEC meeting a
document upholding the Chinese case entirely , and claiming that the
dispute was linked both with a shift in Indian foreign policy and
Nehru’s reactionary domestic tendency recently shown in Kerala. This
document said that the government was using the dispute to distract the
Indian people from the real issues and to create a situation where the CPI could be isolated and outlawed. It called on the party to “expose this game of  the Nehru government”.

Ghosh, however, is reported to have proposed a “middle way” suggested to him in Moscow, whereby the CPI
would state that acceptance of neither the MacMahon line nor the line
shown on Chinese maps should be made a precondition for Sino-Indian
negotiation . This formula, plus a statement of the CPI‘s
conviction that socialist China could never commit aggression, formed
the core of the CEC resolution eventually adopted on this subject and
published on 25 September. This second CPI resolution on the border dispute aroused a great public uproar; the CPI‘s
failure t o place any blame upon China or to support any aspect of the
Indian government’s position was widely denounced as virtually
treasonable.

The history behind CPI Resolution criticizing Chinese Aggression!

On
11 July Ghosh left for one of his periodic visits to Moscow, to consult
with CPSU leaders on a variety of subject. In early September Ghosh
returned to India, bearing with him instructions reportedly given him
by CPSU Presidium member Kuusinen to see that the CPI in its
forthcoming Election Manifesto made some gesture in support of the
Indian nationalist position on the border issue.

During a Central
Executive Committee meeting held from 11 to 17 September at which a
draft Election Manifesto was prepared, a plank on the border issue was
drawn up, reportedly by Ghosh personally, which was said to have
condemned China as an aggressor, to have strongly supported the Indian
position on the border.

However, when during the following week
Ghosh attempted to get the National Council to approve this plank, ,
from Ranadive, denying all support to the Indian position . Sundarayya
and Basavapunniah threated to leave the meeting, and Sundarayya and
Konar each warned that their respective organizations in Andhra Pradesh
and West Bengal would not be bound by the plank if adopted. When the Ghosh CEC plank was submitted to a vote, it was defeated, 25-22. The
CCP was duly informed by the leftists of the details of the struggle
over Ghosh’s plank, as well as of the fact that Kuusinen had encouraged
Ghosh to write that plank.

How CPI hoped to switch side to China During War

The
left – faction members of the CPI Central Secretariat–Ranadive,
Bhupesh Gupta, and particularly Basavapunniah–became increasingly
active late in 1959 in promoting the line given them in Peiping
throughout the CPI. In mid-November, Basavapunniah was reported by two
sources to have repeated,to a meeting of CPI leaders concerned with
creating an underground organization, his belief that the CPI lack of a
contiguous foreign supply base during the Telengana revolt had now been
remedied with the Chinese occupation of Tibet and other frontier areas.
In late December he was said to have reiterated to a meeting of the
Maharasha State Council Mao’s statement to Ghosh that Tibet, Sikkim,
Bhutan, and the Northwest Frontier Agency are provinces peopled by the
same race, that China had a historic right to these territories, that
the MacMahone line was not valid , and that the Indian government’s
raising of “the bogey of Chinese aggression” had resulted from its
realization that Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and India would be deeply
affected by the social and economic revolution in Tibet.

How CPI planned to sabotage Defense Services

Dange
claimed that the CPI had decided to establish a network of underground
“combat cells” all over India during the next two years, to be used in
case of need; and Jaipal Singh, the head of the CPI secret organization
in the defense services , told a recruit after the congress that his
organization was in full swing again after having been deactivated in
May 1960 because of party factionalism and government attention to his
activities . Nothing more has been heard since the congress about tile
possibility of Chinese help to and guidance for these CPI underground
activities ; there had been indications earlier in the year that
Peiping had responded to the leftist plea for such help by predicating
it upon leftist seizure of organizational control of the CPI at the
party congress,


page 153

GOI Reply to Parliament on  CPI Stand during Indo China War:

On
November 13, 1962 while replying to the discussions in the Rajya Sabha,
Lal Bahadur Shastri pointed out that Jyoti Basu equated India with
China during the war and called the Chinese aggression as provoked by
Indian statements and “across an imaginary line called MacMohan line”.
But the Marxists were not merely satisfied with words. Kalimpong town
had become a den of Chinese spies. Every move of the Indian army was
monitored and reported to the enemy. Like in 1942, the communists
played a major role in helping the Chinese.

B. Raman(ex Boss of IB)  in an Article “China’s Interest Is Our Interest’  Published in Outlook  writes:

After
joining the IB in 1967, I went on a visit to Kolkata. Those were the
days of the Cultural Revolution in China. The Marxists were not yet in
power in West Bengal, but were very active. As I was travelling in a
taxi from the Dum Dum airport to downtown, I saw the following slogan
painted by the Marxists on the walls everywhere: “China’s Chairman is
our Chairman.”

http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070820&fname=ramanchina&sid=1

A Report by CID – Andhra Pradesh State Police by Sri ABV Rao, IPS

He Reports

The
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (M-L-M) ideology was propounded by the radical
elements of undivided Communist Party of India starting from 1964. It
resulted in several break ups of the original Communist Party into two
main factions of CPI and CPM and several splinter groups on the M-L-M
lines. Besides ego clashes of leaders and competition for leadership,
the most important factor responsible for the rise of these splinter
groups was the active –ideological and material- support extended to
them initially by the Communist Party of China and later, by some other
East Block countries.

Once
formed under the directions and guidance of the Chinese Communists, the
Indian M-L-M parties acquired a momentum of their own and pursued their
own course. Holding on to slogans like “China Chairman (Mao) our
Chairman”, they became more Maoist than Mao himself!! The Deng reforms
altered the ML parties’ course as little as the fall of communism in
USSR altered the political agenda of the mainline Communist Parties of
India (CPI and CPM). The ML parties found a ready phrase to denounce
Deng’s reforms – “Revisionism” – used extensively by Mao to denounce
the Soviets after the Stalinist era.

http://www.cidap.gov.in/documents/Investigation%20of%20Extremist%20offenses.pdf

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