CPR Policy
The Chinese attitude toward Nehru's government was typified by a pamphlet published in Peiping containing a collection of the speeches Chou En-lai made during his 1960 tour of Southeast Asia. Translated into various languages, this pamphlet contained a map of the south Asian area showing India as a country under imperialist domination, while Bhutan, Nepal, Burma, Cambodia and Indonesia were described as being "aligned with the Socialist countries." On 29 March it was disclosed in the Indian Parliament that the Indian customs had been instructed to seize all copies of this pamphlet.
Peiping's depiction of India as the principal imperialist agent in Asia, surrounded by other states friendly to the bloc, is consistent with the policy the CPR has followed over the past two years of attempting to isolate India, its chief Asian rival, through the settlement of existing controversies with other south Asian states on terms acceptable to the latter. (Examples have been the settlement of the Chinese-national dispute with Indonesia and the border question with Burma: in both cases the terms agreed to by Peiping are definitely known to have been strongly influenced by the desire to isolate India.) In late 1960 and early 1961, the CPR also put out feelers to Pakistan to negotiate the border with Kashmir and Ladakh (claimed by both Pakistan and India), while the Indian dependency Bhutan was enticed both with the prospect of independent border negotiations with China and with the possibility of economic aid from Peiping. These feelers — which the Indian Communist party felt obliged to denounce publicly in February, both in Parliament and in a National Council resolution — have since led to no concrete result, except to stimulate the aspirations of the Bhutan government for a greater degree of autonomy and for Indian permission to seek economic aid directly from the United States. These CPR gestures again demonstrated, however, Peiping's overall attitude toward the Nehru government and the continued Chinese intention to seek to weaken India's position among its neighbors. On 14 February, Nehru revealed that during the negotiations of the previous winter the CPR had stated that it respects only India's "proper" relations with Bhutan and Sikkim, whereas in April 1960 — Nehru claimed — Chou En-lai during his visit had said that China respects those relations, without qualification. Throughout 1961, there were a number of reports indicating Chinese intensification of efforts at subversion and propaganda within Bhutan; one leaflet distributed was said to have warned the Bhutanese against "collusion with the government of India to convert Bhutan into a land of slaves."
This Chinese attitude toward the Indian government has been accompanied by a determination not to yield in the border dispute. [DELETE (7 lines)] when in July R.K. [Ratan Kumar] Nehru, secretary general of the Ministry of External Affairs, stopped off in Peiping on his way home from Mongolia, the CPR was reported to have made fresh territorial claims to him orally; such new Chinese claims, however, have not subsequently been announced publicly. The Foreign Ministry official subsequently complained privately that the Chinese had treated him with "intolerable arrogance;"33 in response to his reassert ion of Indian claims, Liu Shao-chi is said to have told him that it was ridiculous of him to have travelled so far only to restate unacceptable conditions; and Mao, whom he claimed to know well, refused to see him. After this, both Prime Minister Nehru and a Chinese Embassy official in New Delhi were reported to have predicted, correctly, that relations between the two countries would continue to worsen.
It has been a principal Chinese endeavor — still unsuccessful — to obtain from the Soviet Union and the CPSU both a policy toward the Indian government and a Marxist appraisal of Nehru more consonant with Chinese national interests. In early June, Chen Yi was reliably reported to have again indicated Peiping's discontent on this score in a conversation with a bloc diplomat in Geneva. Chen repeated to this bloc official the long- standing CCP line on Nehru: his increasing closeness to Washington; his role as "spokesman for the interests of the Indian upper bourgeoisie"; his government's inability to solve the basic problems of the Indian people and consequent fear "that the example of the enormous accomplishments of New China will seduce the impoverished masses of the subcontinent;" all this serving to explain India's, unfriendly attitude toward China and its periodic fomentation of frontier incidents between the two countries. Chen went on to assert that the Indian government, by following a policy of "complete duplicity," had even gone so far as to aspire to a certain amount of support from Moscow against Peiping. Fortunately, he said, the Soviet press had "now" started to unmask this maneuver, which showed that the Soviet authorities had not let themselves be duped. (Chen's tone implied, however, that Moscow up to now had indeed let itself be duped.) Chen was intimating Chinese hopes that the various Soviet press allusions to Indian policy on the Congo and the one April Literary Gazette article criticizing Nehru over Cuba heralded a fundamental change in the Soviet line toward India. Such expectations, however, were neither realistic nor (probably) sincere; there have been no more such direct Soviet comments, and the gap between Chinese and Soviet policy toward India has again widened.
Peiping's propaganda has meanwhile continued to utilize every conceivable subject and pretext to attempt to discredit Nehru both to the bloc and the Communist movement and to the radical but non-Communist forces of the "national liberation movement." Working occasionally through direct commentaries, but principally through frequent, selective, and highly slanted NCNA reportage of events and statements, Peiping has built up a picture of Nehru as a faithful servant of United States policy on the Congo, on Laos, on Cuba, and on Berlin whom Washington has explicitly promised to reward for these services with large economic assistance, and who has accordingly offered ever more favorable terms for U.S. "imperialist domination" of the Indian economy. This long-standing and still continuing Chinese campaign, while apparently directed only incidentally to the Indian Communist party, has nevertheless helped to maintain that climate of opinion within which the pro-CCP left faction of the CPI appraises the Indian scene.
C. The Indian Party Congress, April
March WPC Meeting
Two weeks before the Sixth CPI Congress opened, a five-day meeting of the World Peace Council in New Delhi provided the Indian party with a practical demonstration at close quarters of the continuing differences between Soviet and Chinese policy toward India. In addition to furnishing a new occasion for subdued conflict between the CPSU and the CCP, the events of this meeting were significant in that they provided what was at least the ostensible reason for the CCP's failure to attend the Indian party congress and consequent abandonment of guidance of the congress to the CPSU.
The Chinese party indicated in advance to the left faction of the CPI that it intended to use the WPC meeting as a vehicle for attack on the Nehru government. On 13 March, 11 days before the meeting opened, a senior Chinese embassy official in New Delhi told a CPI confidant that the main mission of Peiping's delegation would be to put pressure on the other delegations to denounce India's role in the Congo, Laos, and Algeria, where Indian policy was said to be based "on the American pattern." This Chinese official emphasized to the Indian party leftist that Khrushchev's explicit request to Nehru on the Congo question had been spurned, and noted that President Kennedy at a press conference had quoted Nehru's statements to support his own views. A week later, another embassy official acknowledged that the Chinese delegation would have to fight at the WPC meeting for a denunciation of India, but stated that he expected many African and Asian delegations to assist Peiping in this effort. The Chinese embassy officers suggested that the importance Peiping attached to this matter could be judged from the importance of the delegation being sent; this delegation to be was headed by Liu Ning-i, president of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. (Liu had been one of the principal figures in the Sino-Soviet clash at the WFTU meeting in Peiping nine months before, and had subsequently attended the Moscow Conference of November 1960. Most notably, Liu had been attacked by name in the September 1960 secret resolution of the Indian Communist party, a resolution to which Peiping is known to have taken violent exception.)
While conclusive evidence is not available, reports from several different sources suggest that the CPR delegation at the World Peace Council meeting may indeed have made an attempt to get some critical reference to the Indian government's policy on colonialism included in the WPC resolutions, and that this attempt was defeated through Soviet influence. The scene of this struggle was apparently the closed meetings held from 25 through 28 March in the WPC commission on "National Independence and Abolition of Colonialism." [DELETE (4 words)] a draft resolution on the Congo placed before this commission with Chinese support contained a bitter attack on India and on Nehru's "pacifist attitude;" this provision was opposed by the Indian delegation, and was ultimately defeated. [DELETE (7 LINES)] The CPR delegate is said to have declared that the so-called neutral nations were merely playing the game of the imperialists in the Congo, and to have asked how such nations could extol Lumumba on the one hand and fail to condemn Hammarskjold and the actions of the UN on the other hand; if these neutrals were sincere in their protestations of neutrality, he said, they would have recognized the Gizenga government and supported it. To this statement, which certainly was primarily aimed at India, the Soviet delegate Tikhonov was said to have replied that he could not accept the view of those who criticized the neutral nations and said that they were playing the imperialists' game; while be thought Hammarskjold should be condemned, he extolled the role of the neutrals in the maintenance of world peace.34
On the other hand, [DELETE (5 words)] the USSR made considerable effort, both directly and through the CPI, to prevent the Sino-Indian border question from becoming an issue at the WPC meeting. This was in line with the position taken in the Suslov letter to the CPI at the end of February, when the CPSU apparently asked the Indian party to evade this topic as much as it could, consistent with the need to avoid complete alienation of the Indian public. Despite these Soviet intentions, the issue kept emerging at intervals throughout the WPC sessions, and had to be suppressed each time with difficulty. On the opening day, during the deliberations over formation of an agenda, one non-Communist Indian delegate proposed that a discussion be held on the question of whether some Indian territory was being occupied by the CPR, as a result of which the peace of Asia was being endangered. This suggestion was supported by a member of the CPI extreme rightist faction; and CPI leftists subsequently charged, probably falsely, that the latter had been encouraged by Romesh Chandra, the CPI functionary and Ghosh agent who was steering the WPC sessions. The proposal was in any case rejected by Sunderlal, Chairman of the All- Indian Peace Council, who made the mistake of publicly claiming that Prime Minister Nehru had requested that the question not be discussed: a claim which Nehru later publicly repudiated.
There were several subsequent reports to the effect that during one (or possibly more) at the closed meetings of WPC commissions some Western delegates attempted to raise the Sino-Indian border issue for discussion, that the CPR delegation thereupon threatened to walk out of the meeting, and that the proposal was defeated with Soviet assistance. At least one CPR walkout actually did take place over this issue during the WPC proceedings, in public. On the evening of 24 March the Chinese delegation attended ceremonies commemorating the centennial anniversary of the birth of the Indian poet Tagore, in the course of which Indian Cultural Minister Kabir said that Tagore would not have remained silent regarding China's encroachments on Indian soil. Liu Ning-i followed Kabir to the platform, criticized him severely for being unfriendly to a peace-loving neighbor, repeated Peiping's version of the Tibetan and border events, implied that the Indian government did not have the support of most Indians on these matters, and concluded with the charge that India was attempting "to reap the seeds of confusion sowed by British imperialism." Liu then led the Chinese delegates out of the meeting.
More important consequences flowed from this event than from anything else that happened at the WPC meeting. There was an immediate uproar among the Indian public and press; Nehru in Parliament a few days later termed the walkout "offensive"; and the right wing of the Indian Communist party made haste publicly to disown Liu: on 3 April Mrs. Renu Chakravarty declared in Parliament that "we do not agree at all" with "certain remarks made by the Chinese... We do not like what the Chinese did or said." Subsequently, the Indian government refused to extend the visas of those members of the Chinese delegation, including Liu, who had planned to remain in India after the WPC meeting to attend the Indian Communist party congress opening ten days later. The Ministry of External Affairs told Sunderlal that the continued presence in the country of the Chinese delegation would not be welcome.
Peiping did not attempt to send another delegation to attend the CPI Congress, and the Indian government did not prevent Moscow from sending a delegation led by Suslov to the Congress. The result was that the CPSU had the field to itself in providing guidance to the Indian party at an event of central importance. It seems likely that the Indian government had this in mind from the first, that New Delhi never had any intention of allowing the CCP to be present to encourage the CPI leftists and lobby for a thoroughly militant line, and that the government wished the Indian Communist party to be oriented along the moderate line New Delhi associated with the Soviet Union.35 It is therefore likely that Liu Ning-i's visa would not have been extended in any case; it is even possible that Minister Kabir's provocatory remarks were planned deliberately to entrap Liu into making public statements which could be used to justify this refusal and to make it politically unfeasible for the CPI to protest.36
Nevertheless, the actions of the CCP would seem peculiarly inept if it were assumed that a primary object of Peiping was to attempt to secure predominance within the CPI at this time. If this had been the first consideration, it would have been appropriate (despite the threat to national pride) to make another attempt to get a CCP delegation admitted to India to attend the party congress. Moreover, if Liu Ning-i's attendance at the congress on Indian soil had been considered vital, it would seem extraordinary to have first sent him to the World Peace Council meeting with instructions to attempt to secure a public condemnation of Indian government policy. Finally, if Peiping had had both the intention and the serious hope of securing a major change in the balance of forces within the CPI, it would probably have appointed a delegation to the congress headed by a man equal in stature to Suslov (number three or four in the Soviet hierarchy) , rather than by Liu Ning-i — who, while important, is a second-echelon figure not belonging to the CCP Politburo.37 (In June, the CCP did appoint such a man — Teng Hsiao-ping, CCP secretary-general — to lead a delegation to the Japanese party congress, to counter the CPSU assignment of Mukhitdinov, a lower-ranking Presidium member; the Japanese government, however, refused to admit either delegation.) These considerations suggest that Peiping had decided in March that despite the undeniable increase in CPI left-faction strength and the optimistic claims of their leaders, they were unlikely to score an organizational victory at the party congress, and that it would therefore be unwise to risk sending a top CCP leader to India to dispute the authority of Suslov. It is also possible that Peiping at this point in 1961 was still reluctant to abandon the conservative policy in the movement which it had apparently followed since the 1960 Moscow conference — of refraining from further overt attempts to displace CPSU influence in areas of continuing CPSU hegemony.
Ghosh Pravda Article
The Sixth CPI Congress was scheduled to begin on 7 April. On 5 April, the same day that Suslov and his entourage arrived in New Delhi, Pravda published a lengthy article by Ghosh keyed to the congress. In view of the many conflicting and distorted reports which later became current concerning the congress and Suslov's role in it, this Pravda article — which Moscow broadcast widely to South Asia — is of great importance in documenting the line which Ghosh and the CPSU both endorsed for the CPI before the congress battle began, and therefore in distinguishing which of the actions Suslov urged upon Ghosh during the congress were reflections of CPSU policy and which were tactical moves to preserve Ghosh's position and prevent a split in the party.
Ghosh's article repeats and expands the tributes paid in his draft political resolution to Nehru's contributions to peace and disarmament and his resistance to imperialist pressures. At the same time, Ghosh adds — in accordance with the trend of Soviet policy since his February draft was adopted— a lengthy, detailed criticism of the "vacillations" of the Indian government, particularly in regard to the Congo, which was not found in his draft resolution. The changes in the resolution eventually made on this topic were therefore foreordained before the congress, and owed nothing to the demands of the CPI leftists. Ghosh's conclusion was that the CPI must organize the masses to put pressure on the Indian government to overcome these "weaknesses" and make New Delhi's policy more "consistent."
On the internal economic situation, Ghosh's article placed only slightly more emphasis on the negative side of Indian government policy than had his draft resolution. His appraisal was still fairly balanced: he paid tribute to the first two five-year plans for broadening and strengthening the industrial basis of the Indian economy, noted that the third plan, "as before, places the stress on the development of heavy industry, mainly in the state sector," and concluded that Indian political independence now rested on a firmer economic base than before. Ghosh also stated that "it would be, of course, incorrect" to think that the Indian government has submitted to the blackmail attempted by the imperialists to force a reduction of the plan and a weakening of the state sector in exchange for the granting of loans to India. Nevertheless, Ghosh complained of instances of concessions made to foreign capital, of the growing ties between Indian and foreign bourgeoisie, of the government's failures to enact significant land reform, and of the dissolution of the Kerala government. He spoke of an "intensification of the contradiction between the government of India and the people." But on the whole, Ghosh's Pravda appraisal of the economy did not lean as heavily on the negative side as he was to do in his speech to the congress or in the final version of the political resolution, suggesting that here changes may have been forced by the need to offset CPI leftist pressure.
On the other hand, Ghosh added an element which he was to repeat in his Congress speech, which the leftists were to object to strongly, and which had not been found in his draft political resolution: an explicit statement that the continuation of the Sino-Indian border dispute had hurt the CPI more than anything else and had been the chief factor pushing the Indian government in the direction desired by imperialists and reactionaries.
Finally, Ghosh's Pravda article called for a "broad national association of all patriotic and democratic forces" — based on the alliance between the workers and peasants, the nucleus of the national-democratic front — to defend the state sector, achieve land reform, control the monopolies, prevent imperialist loans, criticize harmful tendencies in government, and so generally gain influence over government policies. Ghosh called vaguely for the overcoming of differences among democratic forces resulting from their belonging to different political parties, but did not clearly indicate which social classes, parties, or elements of parties might belong to the national democratic front, and on what basis.
To sum up: Ghosh and the CPSU had apparently agreed before the CPI Congress on a balanced line including both praise of Nehru's foreign policy and criticism of his vacillations; credit for aspects of the government's domestic policy and a certain number of detailed attacks on its faults; and emphasis on the harm being done to the Communist cause in India by the Sino- Indian dispute. They were also agreed on the need for a broad national-democratic front, but had not yet specified the makeup of that front beyond the generalized call for the inclusion of "all democratic forces."
Chronology of the Congress
On 6 April, Suslov arrived at the site of the CPI Congress, the town of Vijayavada, in Andhra Pradesh province of southern India. Either that night or on the morning of the next day, Suslov is reported to have briefed a few top representatives of all the CPI factions — Ghosh, Ranadive, Bhupesh Gupta, and Dange — and to have reiterated the Soviet request that the re be no CPI discussion of the Sino-Indian border dispute. [DELETE (7 words)]. Suslov is said to have later indicated to CPI moderates that this was all the more necessary because the CCP was not represented at the congress; if any resolution on the subject were passed, the Chinese would assume that he had sponsored it as a new CPSU attack on them. In fact, no resolution was to be passed and there was to be no congress discussion of the issue permitted, although four resolutions prepared from different viewpoints were presented.
On 7 April, the outgoing National Council met to decide the agenda for the congress, and there was an immediate factional battle over whether the congress was to take up first the political resolution or the long-term party program. The Ghosh-Dange forces, with their superior National Council resources, won this skirmish, and the right to consider the party program first; it was supposedly felt that there was greater congress support for the Dange draft of the program than for Ghosh's political resolution, and that an initial victory might affect later voting.
Early on the morning of 8 April, the congress began discussion of the two drafts of the program. A serious attempt was made to keep all the congress debates secret. Dange and others, speaking for the rightist draft, reportedly set forth the goal of "national democracy" for India, urging that "progressive" elements of the Praja Socialist party and the Congress party—especially the mass following of the latter— be drawn into the broad National Democratic Front alliance by the CPI, and proposing that the alliance seek above all to isolate the reactionary elements in the Congress party and in the right-wing parties. Ranadive and Bhupesh Gupta, who presented the leftist view, supported "people's democracy" -- or a limited alliance led by the Communists — as the goal for the CPI's new program. They tended to discourage any dealings with the Congress party; they wished to place little trust in the national bourgeoisie; and they sought to unite progressive forces clearly under the leadership of the working class, directing the mobilization of the masses against the Congress party.
The debate on the program went on for 11 hours, through the morning and afternoon congress sessions on 8 April and the morning session of 9 April. At some point Namboodiripad is said to have offered a "golden mean" draft program the details of which are unknown, but which apparently attempted to reconcile the, conflicts between the other two drafts. On the morning of 9 April, Ghosh gave a speech on the program in which he made a final effort to swing the congress toward the Dange draft, defending "National Democracy" as a correct slogan. It is not clear whether any vote was ever taken; the upshot, however, was that the congress could not agree. A party spokesman acknowledged this to newsmen after the morning session on the 9th, and attempted to gloss over the differences as concerning only questions of emphasis. The spokesman asserted that although both of the principal drafts had envisaged the formation of a united democratic front at a particular stage, opinion differed as to when the slogan of national democracy should be taken up. The congress had therefore decided that the new National Council to be chosen at the end of the congress sessions would work on a new draft program to be presented to the next party congress (which some reports indicated might be called after the Indian elections in 1962). Meanwhile, the spokesman announced, the CPI would continue to be guided by the Amritsar line.
[DELETE (6 words)] Suslov was instrumental in getting Ghosh to agree to shelve the question of the party program. Suslov is said to have argued that it was senseless for the CPI to further split itself over this issue when the old party program could be made to serve immediate needs. This was one of the first confirmations of the supposition that a primary purpose of the CPSU at the CPI Congress was to keep the CPI from formally splitting apart, and that as in 1960, the CPSU was prepared to make some concessions to this end.
In the meantime, Suslov had addressed the party congress on the afternoon of 8 April. He paid emphatic tribute to the importance of India to the outcome of the world struggle against imperialism and to the vital significance of the Indian policy of neutrality. He pointedly warned the CPI of the need for discipline and unity in its ranks. He spoke of the Indian party at one point as struggling "against imperialism and feudal oppression, for national independence, and for democracy and social progress," and at another point as working "with other national patriotic forces... to liquidate economic backwardness and to establish a stable and independent economy, to strengthen the political independence and sovereignty of their country, and to promote social progress." Suslov also referred to the "specific complicated conditions" in which the CPI had to work; alluded to the CPI's task as one of "determined struggle against imperialism and the remnants of feudalism" (not, it will be noted, against the ruling bourgeoisie); and called on the Indian party "to unite into a single national democratic front all the patriotic forces interested in India's advancement along the path of economic and social progress."38 In short, Suslov endorsed a national democratic program for the CPI — and a very minimal one at that — and breathed not a word about socialism being a goal toward which the CPI should strive. The same was true of the CPSU message to the Indian party congress read by Suslov; in contrast, the CCP message read out at the same session, while generally restrained in tone, did put in a word for socialism in India. As in the case of Ghosh's Pravda article, the conclusion seems inescapable that the CPSU, while not committing itself on the subject of alliances with the Congress party or Congress party units, was far more in sympathy with the general thrust of the Ghosh-Dange line than with that of the leftists.
Nevertheless, it has been widely reported — and there is good reason to believe — that it was Suslov who counseled Ghosh to insert in his General Secretary's Report to the congress (delivered on the afternoon of 9 April) material tending considerably more to the left on certain issues than did the National Council's Political Resolution which Ghosh had prepared back in February. [DELETE (5 words) Suslove may have given such advice tor a meeting of top CPI leaders on the evening of 8 April, when he is said to have criticized both the National Council draft and Ranadive's alternative, while supporting Namboodiripad's middle-of-the-road proposal for a Political Resolution.
This CPSU action was subsequently subjected to wide misinterpretation by both extreme left and right factions, being variously termed an attempt to placate the leftist leaders and a betrayal of the rightists. In fact, Suslov's advice to Ghosh appears to have been conditioned by four factors. The first and most important of these was the need to preserve the loyal CPSU adherent Ghosh in authority as General Secretary at all costs, in the face of trends within the party congress which threatened seriously to displace him.
Second was the need to neutralize enough of the following of the left-faction leaders at the congress — while rebuffing those leaders themselves — to head off any inclination by the leftists to try to take the provincial organizations they controlled out of the CPI. (The CPSU had for some time feared as a serious possibility such an organizational split in the Indian party, and, as has been seen, went to considerable lengths in early and mid-1960 to prevent it. [DELETE (4 lines)]. From Moscow's point of view, an open schism in the Indian party -- unlike the many mass expulsions of dissenters which have occurred in European parties — could prove disastrous to Soviet hegemony, because of Peiping's availability to inspire and guide a rival Indian Communist party.)
The Soviets were therefore prepared to underwrite an attempt by Ghosh to steal the leftist leaders' thunder by warning against expectations of an automatic and smooth parliamentary transition to power, provided that the essentials of the current Soviet line — the very broad alliance seeking limited democratic goals through peaceful means — were maintained. This implied a retreat from the exposed position taken by the 1958 Amritsar congress to the more reserved but still fairly optimistic view of peaceful transition to socialism taken by the Palghat Congress of 1956. This method of undercutting the arguments of the CPI leftist faction was somewhat analogous to the way in which the CPSU in 1960 had sought to undercut the Chinese appeal to the world Communist movement by adopting a more militant line on colonial revolutions; but it will be seen that Ghosh's retreat was not intended to support the CPI left wing any more than the CPSU retreat from the extreme version of the peaceful coexistence line was intended to support Peiping.
Thirdly, while the CPSU, unlike Ranadive, desired that a balance be kept between support and criticism of Indian government domestic policies, it was probably felt that the balance contained in the National Council draft Political Resolution was too heavily weighted toward the positive side to serve CPI short-term interests in the coming election campaign.
Finally, while the CPSU wished general support for Nehru's neutral foreign policy to be retained, it was necessary that Ghosh's speech row also reflect the specific criticism of New Delhi's Congo policy which had become apposite since the draft Political Resolution was prepared in February (as Ghosh had already, in fact, done in his 5 April Pravda article).
These considerations were all reflected in the speech Ghosh delivered to the CPI Congress on the afternoon of 9 April, and in the description of that speech published in Pravda three days later. Ghosh's speech was his second of the congress; it was a report given in his capacity as general secretary, opening the debate on the political resolution and introducing the National Council draft. In this report Ghosh, while praising Nehru's foreign policy in general terms, was, like the 5 April Pravda article, somewhat more specific than his draft political resolution had been on New Delhi's deficiencies regarding colonialism. At the same time, he placed somewhat more stress on the degree to which the Indian government had yielded to the attacks of domestic reactionaries and had shifted to the right, and spoke more of the "anti-people measures" of the government. He devoted less attention than had his draft political resolution to an explanation of how democratic tasks are in the "objective interest" of the national bourgeoisie, and in fact spoke less of the national bourgeoisie generally, instead concentrating on the danger of the "monopolistic bourgeoisie," who were no longer portrayed as the insignificant handful the draft political resolution had described.
Ghosh now criticized the line of the Amritsar congress, and favored instead the qualified endorsement of peaceful transition made by the Palghat Congress of 1956. The Amritsar resolution was described as both reformist (because it implied a belief that the parliamentary slide into power would be both automatic and smooth) and sectarian (because it did not appeal for a broad enough united front for strictly limited, non-socialist goals). Ghosh warned against interpreting the peaceful path to socialism as mere reliance upon parliament alone; this he termed a reformist deception which had been exposed by the Kerala events. Ghosh predicted that the conditions of life for the masses would remain bad under the third five-year plan, and that class contradictions would sharpen. He cautioned that anti-democratic tendencies might increase within the ruling class, that violations of parliamentary methods and traditions by the bourgeoisie — such as the means used to expel the CPI in Kerala — might increase; even a reactionary personal dictatorship, he said, might be a possibility after Nehru's death.
All this, however, was at least offset by an emphatic restatement of many central elements of the right-wing line. Ghosh upheld his political resolution's contention that conditions were nevertheless still favorable for the formation of a very broad national democratic front, whose chief goal would be not the replacement of the government but the enactment of a series of democratic reforms. While making it plain that the CPI would have to fight the next election on the basis of its own program, with the government necessarily made the clear target of electoral attack — and that therefore any general electoral alliance with the Congress party was impossible — Ghosh also made it plain that this did not mean abandonment of the long-term effort to draw both the following and the "progressive" section of the leadership of the Congress party into the national democratic front.39 As in his draft resolution, all Ghosh's allusions to Nehru except those concerning the Kerala events were most favorable; blame was almost invariably placed upon "the government," not upon Nehru. Ghosh also declared that it would be a "big mistake" to equate the Congress with the rightist Indian parties. Citing the Palghat line on the need to take into account the Congress' hold on the Indian masses, Ghosh reiterated the assertions made in his draft political resolution that a process of "rethinking" is going on among many Congress supporters and that an attempt must be made to appeal to the Congress masses and to progressive Congress leaders. His draft resolution had called on the CPI to undertake joint action with local Congress Party committees in peasant areas; Ghosh now similarly spoke of the need to take into account the loyalty of Congress followers to their organizations and to Nehru, as well as the need to make direct appeals "not only to the Congress masses but also to Congress committees, taking into account the issue concerned." In short, despite his ruling out of any general alliance with the Congress Party during the election campaign, Ghosh insisted that "united front from above" as well as "united front from below" tactics must be used toward the Congress in the long-term effort of building the national democratic front. This was anathema to the West Bengal left-faction leaders.
Worst still, from the point of view of the Ranadive faction, Ghosh went beyond the scope of his draft resolution to add a direct polemical attack on the "deep-rooted sectarianism" of CPI leaders who found themselves unable to mobilize the masses to combat the negative features of Indian government foreign policy because they were not willing or "inspired" to mobilize movements in support of favorable aspects of New Delhi's policy. It is again characteristic of the CPSU's attitude that this passage was included in its entirely in Pravda's highly selective account of Ghosh's speech. Also included in the Pravda summary was a pointed attack made by Ghosh on the contention of the old 1951 program of the CPI that the Nehru government was pro-imperialist.40 Ghosh also attacked the Ranadive alternative draft political resolution as reverting to the pre-Palghat line of mere hostility to the government, of mere "exposure of the government and the Congress and general propaganda about people's democracy" without any real attempt to reach Congress supporters. Ranadive's attitude, Ghosh said, was based on the "politically passive" expectation "that some day or other the masses, drawn by misery, would come over to us;" and Ranadive 's draft was "permeated with a sense of conspiracy." In attacking the CPI leftists in these terms, Ghosh was surely aware that he was repeating the language used in the assault on "contemporary left-wing adventurists" in the Communist movement made by Shevlyagin in a June 1960 Pravda article — in other words, that he was identifying Ranadive as a pupil of the Chinese.
Finally, Ghosh repeated the statements made in his 5 April Pravda article about the "heavy blow" dealt "to the democratic forces and to the CPI" by the Sino-Indian border dispute, and implied that the failure to settle this conflict has helped reactionary forces in their efforts to alter Indian foreign policy. The reiteration of this point originally made in Pravda suggests that it had Soviet approval; and it is known that the CPSU had utilized this charge about the baneful effect on the CPI of the Sino- Indian dispute in several of the secret confrontations with the CCP during 1960. It is possible that while the Soviets wanted the Indian party to avoid public denunciations of Peiping if at all possible, nevertheless Moscow also wanted the CPI to realize clearly the fact that the dispute was hurting the party, and to suggest again to Indian cadres that the CCP bore part of the responsibility for this.
A furious concurrent debate on Ghosh's report and on the political resolution next ensued at the CPI Congress on the morning of 10 April, and went on for five full days. On 10 April, Ranadive on the left and Namboodiripad in the center introduced their alternative drafts; but both of them now found that they had been outflanked by Ghosh. Many elements of Namboodiripad's balanced plan for both CPI support and criticism of the government had already been accepted by Ghosh (a fact which the secretary general had acknowledged in his speech); while Ghosh's leftist points calling for a strongly anti-government election campaign had stolen many of Ranadive's arguments. The left-faction leaders, who were more anxious to seize organizational control of the CPI than to secure modifications of wording in the political resolution, were reported to have commented at this time that Ghosh had "beat us with our own stick."
The right wing of the party under Dange, however, felt betrayed by Ghosh's retreat, and made an unsuccessful attempt to head it off. Following the introduction of the Namboodiripad and Ranadive drafts, Dange convened a factional meeting of the CPI right wing, with delegates from many provinces present. At this meeting Dange is reported to have been pressed by extremists on the right to attempt to force a congress decision on their terms. Dange is said to have replied that he was unsure of his following's strength, and suggested that it be tested by submitting a motion to the congress approving the National Council political resolution unmodified by anything in Ghosh's speech. According to the report, this was done, and the motion was defeated by a vote of 205-197. Dange is subsequently said to have told his followers that they were unable to carry the party with them now, must accept modifications in the resolution, and should rely on the resolution's retention of the "national democracy" slogan to protect the essence of their views.
On the morning of 11 April, Ghosh is reported to have explained to the delegates that he, Ranadive, and Namboodiripad were negotiating over the political resolution, and that debate was to continue in the meantime. On the afternoon and evening of 11 April, as previously arranged in the agenda, the congress was adjourned for private dickering; on 12 April debate was resumed; and on the morning of 13 April the congress voted on numerous amendments to Ghosh's report, which was to be disposed of before the political resolution. Certain amendments to the speech from both sides were adopted: from the left, provisions stating that unity with the national bourgeoisie was to be predicated on the extent to which it fought imperialism and feudalism, calling on the CPI to explain to the people the falseness of the Congress party's use of socialist slogans, and calling on the party, while developing common activity with Congressmen, to explain to the Congress party masses the inadequacy of that party's policy; and from: the right, an emphatic explanation of the need for cooperation and alliances with patriotic organizations and "leading Congressmen." With these contradictory elements added, Ghosh's General Secretary's Report was formally accepted by the party congress on the morning of 13 April, and was later duly published in this form in New Age.
On the afternoon of the same day, discussion of the political resolution resumed. The leftist and centrist draft resolutions were now withdrawn, and the delegates agreed to seek adoption of the Ghosh National Council resolution With amendments. The battle now again revolved around which amendments were to be accepted; more than two hundred were reported offered, and the voting was said to be close and bitter, with the delegates shouting and heckling one another. On 14 April, the party congress finally voted to accept the Ghosh resolution plus three amendments of some consequence leaning on the whole toward the left-faction side: these were said to relate to the pernicious role of Western capital in India; the need for the party to lead mass struggles; and the circumstances under which cooperation with leftist elements among Congress party leaders would be feasible. The resolution was also amended to include the final section of Ghosh's report dealing with the party's tactical line during the coming election campaign: as has already been noted, this was the most markedly anti-government aspect of Ghosh's speech. Ghosh was authorized by the congress to tidy up the resolution along these lines and release it later. As eventually published in the 7 May New Age, the resolution in its final form clearly showed the influence of the leftist amendments, which gave to it a more consistently militant and anti-Congress tone overall than that of Ghosh's speech, let alone that of the original National Council draft. This was the greatest achievement the left-faction leaders were to register at the party congress and was a good indication of their strength among the delegates However, because the leftists were unable to follow this up by seizing organizational control of the party, and because neither the CPSU nor Ghosh was behind them, the incorporation of many leftist views into the resolution did not mean enforcement of those views upon the party as a whole, because provincial party organizations could and did find in the resolution some language to justify the moderate or extremist course the particular faction in control of each province intended to continue to follow.
Later on 14 April, Suslov is reported to have had another conversation with CPI leaders. Although much of what he said on this occasion is available only through the distorting prism of left-faction propaganda,41 the CPSU official appears to have reiterated previous Soviet emphasis on the need for the CPI to maintain both support for Nehru's progressive foreign policies and criticism of his policy shortcomings in an effort to bring pressure on the Indian bourgeoisie to arrest India's slide toward the West and pull it toward the bloc. Suslov also seems to have repeated his advice to CPI leaders not to volunteer any public attacks on the CPR, subject again to the important qualification that the CPI as a mass party was bound to encounter questions on this issue and had a responsibility to answer them.
On the morning of the 15th, Namboodiripad presented his organizational report on the party, together with his proposed draft of a new party constitution. Both were apparently briefly discussed by the congress and then shelved, like the party program, as too controversial for the party to consider in its present divided state. Namboodiripad's report was a long and scathing documentation of the process by which the Indian Communist Party since the early 1950s had lost every semblance of internal discipline or coherent centralized direction, touching inter alia on such factors in this process as the 1947-1951 factional battles for the leadership, the tremendous effects of deStalinization on the CPI, and the steady growth of parliamentary illusions throughout the party. Although there may be some truth to subsequent CPI leftist claims that Suslov read and approved aspects of this report, it is very doubtful that any CPSU representative could have approved of the way Namboodiripad tried to resolve the dual question of discipline within and among Communist parties. After deploring the erosion of faith within the CPI in both democratic centralism and the solidarity of the international movement, Namboodiripad hailed the 1960 Moscow Statement as "pointing out the way in which the ideological-political issues of the international movement are to be further discussed and decided." He declared:
While every national party will discuss and decide questions of national importance as a centralized party in which it is obligatory for the minority to submit itself to the majority and for the lower units to submit themselves to the higher units, the international relations of the world Communist movement are so arranged that "the Communist and Workers parties hold meetings whenever necessary to discuss urgent problems" and otherwise maintain the unity of the international movement. This would give us a clear perspective of the way in which the world Communist movement is growing and is arranging its affairs. This new conception of the unity of the world movement — should help us a good deal in overcoming the consequences of the shocks felt by us after the Twentieth CPSU Congress.
The context of this passage suggested that Namboodiripad was implying that he welcomed the 1960 Moscow Statement as representing Soviet public acknowledgement that it was loosening the reins on the world movement, and that only such a relinquishment of CPSU authority could satisfy the demands of CPI members and restore their willingness to accept internal discipline in view of the misuse to which the CPSU had put party discipline in Stalin's time. But if Namboodiripad thought the CPSU was in fact willing to accept as final the defeat it had suffered on this issue in 1960 at the hands of the Chinese party; he was naive; and this may have had something to do with the fact that his report was shelved.
It was also on 15 April that four separate draft resolutions were presented to the congress on the border question, expressing, with varying degrees of warmth, regret at the position taken by Peiping. In accordance with Suslov's advice, none of these resolutions was adopted or even allowed to be discussed by the congress.
The final major battle of the CPI congress, over the election of a new National Council, began on the evening of 15 April and went on through an all-night session until the morning of 16 April, accompanied by booing, heckling, and delegate walkouts. The issue was joined when the old National Council on 15 April was unable to agree on the customary Communist single list of candidates for the new party organ, because the leftist leaders insisted on complete autonomy for the provincial committees in choosing their own slates of representatives. This was a move designed to allow the leftists in control of such provincial organizations as those of West Bengal and the Punjab to purge the few rightist leaders from their provinces previously placed on the National Council. The struggle was transferred to the congress plenum, and the leftists attempted to carry out their purge; but the rightist faction retaliated by proposing changes from the floor. The leftists from West Bengal, the Punjab, and Tamilnad then withdrew their slates and walked out of the congress, leaving a rump of the new National Council elected. Although Dange reportedly wished to allow this rump: to go ahead and function — which would have formalized an open schism in the CPI -- Ghosh worked frantically through the night (with, presumably, Suslov's help) to try to find an acceptable compromise. In the end, it was agreed to amend the CPI Constitution to enlarge the limit fixed for the National Council sufficiently to accommodate the leftist slates plus the persons the leftists had ousted.42 Thereupon, the leftist Ramamurthi announced on 16 April that all those who had withdrawn from the new National Council were now back; the Italian party observer Pajetta was said to have commented privately on the strong factional discipline this revealed.
The upshot of this struggle — in which the open split the CPSU feared had almost materialized — was that the rightists retained a reduced majority on the National Council; of the 110 members of the new body, 56 were estimated to be rightists, 36 to be leftists, with 18 neutrals. It will be seen, however, that the tactics the leftists had used to achieve this limited improvement of their position were to cost them dearly when the time came for the rightist-led National Council to elect a new Central Executive Committee and Central Secretariat.
Later on 16 April, Ghosh was duly re-elected general secretary of the party, and the congress closed. Neither wing of the party had obtained everything it wanted, but many of the leftist leaders could and did congratulate themselves on the greatly increased strength they had shown at the congress, and claimed they had made at least a start toward seizing control of the party. Extremists on both sides tended to be bitter and to offer contradictory estimates of what had happened. At an alcoholic luncheon with cronies later in the month, Dange took an exaggeratedly pessimistic line, complaining that Ranadive now had the strongest organization in the CPI and blaming Suslov for the concessions to the leftists Ghosh had made The Andhra extreme leftist Sundarayya, on the other hand, told friends a week after the congress that he regretted that the congress could not give a clear lead to the people, and was caustic about the proposed formation of a national democratic front including "so-called" progressives of the Congress party. Sundarayya thought that some comrades had betrayed the party, lured by the prospect of temporary gains; that the parliamentary path had been tried and had failed, and should have been abandoned; that the party was losing its spirit of sacrifice and revolutionary character, and therefore the rightist resolution had been accepted by the congress;43 that the leftists had tried to reorient and revolutionize the party, but had failed, because "a powerful section" of the party wished to support Nehru's government. If the party supported Nehru, he said, it might as well not exist as a separate party, and should join the Congress organization (an echo of the Chinese guidance to the leftists provided in December 1960). Sundarayya asked how the CPI could cooperate with a robber, even though a small fraction of his spoils went to the underprivileged; he could not understand how there could be a "good" robber (echoing the Red Flag articles of April 1960). Support for Nehru and for the parliamentary system was estranging the CPI from the masses, he felt; "when leaders like me shed blood," he added, "only then can the party grow."
In the sense, therefore, that the Sixth CPI Congress did not encourage Sundarayya to shed his blood and did indicate continued (if conditional) reliance upon parliamentary tactics, the outcome favored the rightists. On the other hand, in line with the party's retreat from the Amritsar expression of faith in a parliamentary transition to socialism to the Palghat assertion that the feasibility of a parliamentary transition would depend on the future attitude shown by the bourgeoisie, steps seems to have been taken at the congress to expedite decisions previously taken to build up the party's underground organization. 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 the possibility of Chinese help to and guidance for these CP I 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, and the failure of the leftists to do this, together with the apparent CPSU moves to preempt supervision of this field, may have induced Peiping to back off.