As India gained independence in 1947 amid intense communal violence triggered by the Partition, the Communist Party of India (CPI), founded just 22 years earlier, faced a crucial political choice. Its initial reaction was to pledge support to Jawaharlal Nehru, who was viewed as progressive by CPI general secretary P C Joshi as well as by the party’s influential mentor R P Dutt of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
This support, however, would soon disappear under the influence of B T Ranadive into open hostility toward the Nehru government, with the slogan “Ye azadi jhoothi hai (this freedom is a lie)” becoming the party’s official line.
In their book Communism in India, G Overstreet and M Windmiller attribute the resurgence of this sharp left turn to several factors. These included the ideological influence of the Yugoslav Communist Party on Indian Communists, as well as the challenge posed by the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), sponsored by the Congress, to the CPI’s traditional dominance in labour mobilisation through the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC). Additionally, the armed Telangana movement by communists against the Nizam of Hyderabad radicalised the party cadre and pushed them away from Joshi’s moderate line.
At the CPI’s Central Committee meeting in Mumbai in December 1947, radical voices openly challenged Joshi’s approach of acting as a “loyal Opposition” to the government. The radicals prevailed and Ranadive replaced Joshi as the party’s leader. A resolution was passed declaring that the Nehru government was “only leading to subservience to the Anglo-American imperialist camp”. The Ranadive faction soon began purging party members who continued to support Joshi’s moderate approach.
A Party Congress convened in Kolkata on February 28, 1948, further consolidated this shift. Ranadive argued that India’s “national bourgeoisie” was aligning itself with Anglo-American imperialism against the “democratic” Soviet camp. His close associate, Bhowani Sen, called explicitly for revolution, asserting, “The real solution to this problem is on the field of battle.” Ranadive was elected general secretary — the highest post in the CPI — by the Congress.
The party adopted a political thesis asserting that a revolutionary upsurge was underway in India and that the final stage of the revolution, marked by armed clashes, had arrived. Overstreet and Windmiller note that this assessment drastically overestimated the revolutionary readiness of Indian society.
Recognising the shift in the CPI’s line, the Nehru government responded in a calibrated but firm manner. Congress governments in several states initiated action against local Communist leaders, and many states banned the CPI outright. “In one coordinated sweep a large part of the CPI organisation was rendered impotent,” write Overstreet and Windmiller. While Ranadive denied that the party was collecting arms for insurrection, he asserted that either the government’s policy toward the CPI must change or the government itself must change.
Meanwhile, key Communist leaders such as Ajoy Ghosh and S V Ghate went underground to evade arrest. The CPI attempted to paralyse the Railways through a strike, but the effort failed. Most Communist leaders associated with the AITUC were arrested and jailed. In a speech delivered in February 1949, Nehru accused the CPI of engaging in “murders, arson, looting, and sabotage”.
The government seized party documents that called for guerrilla warfare, including a document from Bengal urging the Army to open fire on “Congress fascists”. Overstreet and Windmiller record that the government accused the CPI of bank robberies, train robberies, bomb attacks, and acid-bulb attacks at public meetings, including one at which Nehru himself was present. They add that the party later admitted to many of these actions.
Joshi accused his own party of promoting individual terrorism, a stance that led to his targeting by Ranadive and eventual expulsion from the CPI. Even Ghosh criticised Ranadive for what he termed “petty-bourgeois revolutionism”. S A Dange also publicly opposed the Ranadive line as conditions deteriorated further.
Undeterred, Ranadive continued accusing the Nehru government of counter-revolution and branding it “a fascist monster rearing its head”. He denounced the Constitution in late 1949 as a “slave Constitution” and an instrument of “fascist tyranny”. Ranadive, who looked to the Soviet model and believed that India had already come under capitalist domination, rejected Mao Zedong’s emphasis on agrarian revolution.
This position became untenable when the Soviet Union itself endorsed Mao’s strategy, arguing that agrarian revolution was appropriate for economically backward Asian societies. Faced with this reversal, Ranadive admitted to “sectarian” deviations in his politics and pledged allegiance to the revised Soviet line.
Leaders from Andhra Pradesh within the CPI, who had supported the Chinese approach, succeeded in removing Ranadive as general secretary at the Central Committee meeting in May 1950. He was replaced by Rajeshwar Rao. The new line emphasised agrarian violence, based on the belief that the masses themselves were demanding it. Joshi, by then outside the party, launched a campaign against the Andhra line, just as he had earlier opposed Ranadive’s policies.
Dutt then intervened, criticising the CPI for its failure to build an effective organisational structure. This prompted another internal shake-up. While Rao temporarily remained general secretary, a new Politburo was elected. Dutt also pressed for a reassessment of Nehru, arguing that his support for China’s entry into the United Nations was a positive step. Consequently, the CPI’s policy of all-out war against the Nehru government, which had lasted three years, was moderated in favour of a line of qualified opposition.
In May 1951, the CPI Central Committee approved a Draft Programme, following which Rao resigned as general secretary. He was eventually replaced by Ghosh. Despite this leadership change, significant ideological problems persisted, even as the party prepared to participate in the 1952 general elections.
In his analysis of the 1951 Programme in The Indian Left: Critical Appraisals, historian Bipan Chandra highlighted the continued hostility toward the Nehru government. He noted that the Programme described the government as “this government of landlords and princes, of financial sharks and speculators, this government hanging on the will of the British Commonwealth, of the reactionary big bourgeoisie collaborating with British imperialists”. It further alleged that government policies were enabling “US imperialist penetration” of India’s economy and state apparatus.
The Programme rejected Nehru’s policy of non-alignment, claiming that it amounted to “flirting with the U.S.” Instead of promoting peace, the CPI argued, Indian foreign policy consisted of manoeuvring and duplicity between the so-called camps of peace-loving and war-mongering nations. Even Nehru’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China and his refusal to label China the aggressor in the Korean War were dismissed as tactical moves exploiting rivalries between the US and the UK.
The Programme portrayed the Indian political system as authoritarian, placing quotation marks around the word “democratic” when referring to the Constitution. Chandra notes that the tactical line warned of a “growing drive towards fascism”. While the document claimed that people increasingly saw the government as their enemy, it conceded that popular disillusionment had not yet reached a level conducive to armed struggle.
In the first general election of 1952, the Congress won 364 seats with about 45% of the vote. The CPI emerged as the second-largest party, winning 16 seats with a vote share of only 3.3%. However, together with its allies, it secured 6.2 million votes and 23 Lok Sabha seats. As Chandra observes, the CPI performed “far better than was expected by friend or foe”, marking the beginning of a new, electoral phase in its political journey.