Struggle for the Ideological Transformation of the National Congress in the 1930s

The Relative Autonomy of Party Practices: A Counterfactual Analysis of Left Party Ascendancy in Kerala, India, 1934–1940

“…Without giving this complex historical puzzle an air of inevitability, the failure of left parties and subordinate classes to steer the course of nationalist movements, unless in the context of a revolution, remains a comparative puzzle of interest. Within India alone, a vast literature has documented the difficulties communists faced within the anticolonial struggle, defeated by their own strategy of isolation, persistent repression by the British, and the successful capture of the movement by "right" and "centrist" forces aligned with Gandhi (Chandra 1986;Sarkar 1983;Vanaik 1989). In this regard, left ascendancy within the nationalist movement in Kerala presents itself as a comparative anomaly, because nationalism and communist party ascendancy developed largely as the same movement, or, put differently, the communist party arose out of the nationalist movement.…”

State Formation and Radical Democracy in India

“…Skilful political practice, developed by testing 'theory' in the real circumstances obtaining at that particular historical moment in British India, were crucial in transforming the potential for class and caste struggle into class formation. This formulation stands opposed to the voluntaristic formulations of nationalist movement scholars such as Chandra (1986) and Joshi (1992), who suggest that a suppressed historical alternative lay in the possibility of left parties (CSP, CPI and other left actors) 'transforming' the Congress Party. As the comparison between Kerala and Bengal in Chapter 5 illustrates, however, the political formations, that is, the balance of political forces which in large part reflected the underlying 'objective conditions', all but closed off the possibility of the transformation of the Congress Party in Bengal (and in other regions).…”

“…The strategy of mass mobilization adopted by the Congress Party leadership was to strike a fine line between restraint and radicalism. This followed from the 'compromise-struggle-compromise' strategy adopted against the British state (Chandra 1986) whereby Congress leaders alternated phases of negotiation and securing gradual concessions from the colonial state with phases of mass civil disobedience. However, the latter phases of struggle were carefully orchestrated, their forms carefully chosen and, under Gandhi's specific instructions, class antagonisms which were dangerously hovering beneath the surface were not allowed to erupt.…”

“…It has been argued that the 'sectarian' and 'isolationist' stance of the CPI, that is, its policy of isolating the party's activities from the mainstream (Congressled) nationalist movement prevented the communists from building their party until the mid-1930s. The 'failure' of the CPI in gaining political hegemony within the Indian nationalist movement has been pointed out by scholars such as Vanaik (1989), Sarkar (1983), Chandra (1986) and Joshi (1992). Vanaik, for instance, makes the familiar argument that:…”

“…The comparison with the CSP in Kerala adds further evidence to the hypothesis that the communists in Bengal would have faced a more difficult political terrain within which to gain political ascendancy. The choice on the part of the CPI to work outside the Congress Party, then, was not simply a strategic error, as Chandra (1986Chandra ( ) (1992 and others suggest. Instead, in the specific conditions of colonial Bengal, the communists were placed in a more disadvantageous position by a potentially far more formidable and organized opposition than were their counterparts in Kerala. This feature of the 'political field' in both instances in turn derived from two features of British colonial rule: (1) the different sets of objective conditions and caste-class relations; and (2) the greater importance of Bengal to the British administration, and hence its centrality in the anti-colonial struggle.…”