When the Call Comes

From vilifying Subhas Bose to suppressing Hedgewar's call for readiness, the communist record of betrayal and the Sangh's steadfast resolve offer a study in contrasts during India's freedom struggle

- ANIRBAN GANGULY

In a short treatise, "Where are They: Communists under Communism," philosopher Ram Swarup (1920-1998) observes that the "communist strategy is simple. It consists in serial liquidation of enemies, constituted of all the non-communist opposition and the "non-proletarian" sector of the population. Blackmail, vilification, and character assassination are the characteristic methods used to achieve this end." Subhas Bose who was once the preferred leader of the communist bloc in the Congress had turned, by 1942, into their most vilified and hated object.

Communist leader and parliamentarian Hiren Mukherjee (1907-2004), in his "Bow of Burning Gold - a Study of Subhas Chandra Bose" notes that "the communists' organ National Front had been the first to propose, as early as 1938, that Subhas should be re-elected Congress president for another term." Yet within five years, that is by 1943, P.C. Joshi, general secretary of the CPI, and proponent of the 17 nationalities theory, writing in the CPI's mouthpiece, People's War, described Subhas Bose as the "arch-traitor to India's freedom and independence."

Gangadhar Adhikari, writing in the People's War on 25 July 1942, called Netaji's INA a "fifth-column army of the Japanese" and Netaji as "dangerous." The People's War issue of January 10, 1942, described Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's INA as a mercenary army of "rapine and plunder" and Netaji as the "lap dog of Japanese Imperialism."

In their well-documented study "The Sickle and the Crescent: Communists, Muslim League and India's Partition," educationist Sunanda Sanyal and historian Soumya Basu, point out that during the War the "sales of People's War shot up by 12 per cent; it came in five languages in addition to six regional language newspapers" and the total "circulation reached 65,000 copies." It was thus evident that by 1942, Indian communists had become apologists for and collaborators of the British and were benefiting from it.