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VI. THE INDIAN PARTY APPROACHES A SPLIT: 1961 The year 1960 ended with the left faction of the CPI continuing to report to the Chinese party and to receive guidance from it, while gathering strength throughout India for an assault on the central party machinery in 1961 . There was a gradual increase in leftist strength and assertiveness throughout the Indian party before the party congress met in April 1961, and Suslov, the CPSU delegate to that congress, was obliged to counsel Ghosh to make substantial concessions to the leftists on the wording of the party's political resolution to preserve Ghosh in office as general secretary and to prevent a threatened open split in the party. There is good evidence, nevertheless, that the CPSU and Ghosh themselves favored a balanced line including both support and criticism of aspects of Nehru's foreign and domestic policies, and a long-term strategy of building a national democratic front through cooperation with "progressive" Congress Party leaders to achieve limited non-socialist reforms as a prelude to the gradual Communist assumption of power. Suslov did not have to contend with direct Chinese competition at the CPI Congress, the prospective CCP representatives having been ordered to leave India beforehand by the New Delhi government.
While the new National Council elected by the Congress had a reduced rightist majority — because of the leftists' threat to break up the party unless their wishes were acceded to — the rightists subsequently used this National Council majority to reverse leftist control of the Central Executive Committee and the Central Secretariat, the two top party organs charged with running the party. When Ghosh led a balanced CPI delegation to the 22nd CPSU Congress in October, however, even moderates who were normally staunch CPSU supporters were shaken by the open attacks there on the Albanian leaders and the renewed assault on Stalin. Ghosh indicated his reservations about Khrushchev's course of action by declining to attack Albania in his speech to the CPSU Congress — like a number of other normally pro-CPSU foreign delegates — although two months later, again like the leaders of some other parties, he belatedly added his mild disapproval of the Albanians. Greater turmoil resulted within the "CPI as a consequence of this CPSU Congress than had ever existed before, both because of the new CPSU offensive against Albania and the CCP and because of the attacks on Stalin and the displacement of Stalin's body. There were widespread attacks on Moscow and Khrushchev over these actions within all factions of the CPI, and at least one provincial party organization — that of Andhra Pradesh — passed a resolution condemning the CPSU, the second such resolution to be passed within the CPI in little more than a year. Ghosh Eventually published an article publicly regretting the manner in which Moscow had again embarked on deStalinization, and declaring that the CPSU had forfeited its claim to infallibility.
These internal difficulties of the CPI were greatly augmented by the simultaneous rekindling of the Sino-Indian border dispute, a statement by Ghosh strongly attacking the CPB and a subsequent People's Daily editorial condemning both Nehru and Ghosh. At the close of 1961, both leftist and rightist CPI leaders were warning of the likelihood of an open split in the Indian party after the elections of February 1962. While it seemed likely that the CPSU would make every effort again to prevent such a split, Moscow's chances of success in this effort were dependent on such factors as the future course of Sino-Soviet relations, the fortunes of the "peaceful coexistence" line, and the number of concessions Moscow was willing to make again to the CPI leftists. The Soviet problem was further complicated by the death of Ghosh in Jaunary 1962, and the lack of a suitable successor combining loyalty to the CPSU with acceptability to both wings of the Indian party.
A. Left-Faction Resurgence Before the April Congress The long and defiant struggle of the Chinese party against the CPSU in Moscow before the eyes of the entire movement, the near-standoff between Chinese and Soviet positions in the final Statement of the Moscow Conference, the Soviet surrender to Peiping on the key issue of whether to condemn factionalism in the Statement, and above all, the fact that both the CCP and the Indian party leftists stood unpunished and unchastened after their direct attacks on the CPSU — all this had the effect of encouraging the militant wing of the CPI, of emboldening these leftists in their efforts to strengthen their position throughout the party in preparation for the capture of control of the party at the coming party congress.
The most immediate sign of this emboldened leftist attitude was found in the blatantly ant i- Khrushchev and anti-CPSU whispering campaign about the Moscow conference which was conducted within the party shortly after the conference by the leftists in the party center — Basavapunnaiah, Bhupesh Gupta, and particularly Ranadive. Disseminated in this way were the assertions that the CCP had been supported against Moscow by all the Asian parties except India, by many Latin American parties, and by Czechoslovakia as well as Albania; that the Soviets had replied in a weak and unsatisfactory way to Teng Hsiao-ping's powerful criticisms of Khrushchev and his policies, and that the CPSU had eventually been forced to acknowledge that it had made major mistakes; that the Soviets had specifically admitted that their criticism of China on the border issue had been wrong; that Moscow had agreed to support whatever policy the CPR adopted in the future on the border dispute; that Peiping had been given authority over all the Asian parties, and particularly over the CPI,31 and that Suslov had sternly overcome Ghosh's objections to this; and finally, that Moscow had agreed to supply Peiping with the technical knowledge and all the assistance needed for the production of atomic weapons. It is virtually certain that all of these statements were false; but what was more significant was the openly anti-Soviet attitude which the leftists now were willing to convey through such fabrications.
This defiant leftist attitude was also demonstrated at CPI provincial party meetings toward the close of the year. In late November, a meeting of the West Bengal party by an overwhelming vote formally reaffirmed the pro-Peiping and anti-CPSU resolution adopted the previous month. Speaking at this meeting, Konar reportedly stated that he and the West Bengal Communist Party would never accept a "Moscow line that did not correspond to the Indian realities." He added that the day of abject CPI acceptance of Moscow policy was over, that "policy made in Moscow" no longer carried much prestige. He said that the West Bengal party would undertake a full program of peasant and industrial agitation the next year which would "further vindicate the West Bengal CP stand that continued social revolution as conceived by the Chinese party is vital to the Indian Communist movement." Konar cited the cases of Cuba, Algeria, and the Congo to support the claim that social revolution, even using violent means, did not mean an inevitable international war; he professed to believe that China had extended support all the way to Cuba, and would therefore have no difficulty in supporting the CPI. In short, he held that the Soviet thesis of peaceful coexistence had been used merely as an excuse for inactivity by the Indian party, and he refused to put up with this.
Left-faction assertiveness also was marked at meetings of the Kerala and Andhra parties held in early December; moderate leaders in both organizations were reported shocked at the degree to which leftist sentiment had increased. In Kerala, extremists were encouraged by the swing toward the left of former chief minister Namboodiripad, who had grown increasingly disillusioned with Ghosh's moderate line since the ouster of the Kerala government in 1959. In Andhra, a powerful leftist bloc led by Sundarayya now controlled nearly half the strength of the provincial party; here the leftists refused cooperation with the rightist leaders and were able to prevent the election of new party organs" or the adoption of a political report.
December National Council MeetingThis leftist offensive was also marked at the tumultuous meetings of the Central Executive Committee and the National Council which met in Bombay at the year's end to hear reports on the Moscow conference. It was later claimed that the rightist leaders at the CEC meeting cast doubt on the reality of the "unity" achieved between the CPSU and the CCP at Moscow, for which they were denounced by the leftists. Several accounts agree that the National Council heard conflicting explanations of the meaning of the ambiguous Moscow Statement from the opposing factions represented on the Moscow delegation, with Gupta and Namboodiripad reportedly providing an interpretation "along the lines of the Chinese article Long Live Leninism," portraying the Statement as accepting the CCP viewpoint, while Ghosh, Dange and Ramamurthi took the opposing line.
Much of the National Council debate apparently centered on the concept of the "national democratic state", which the CPSU had had inserted in the Moscow Statement to connote a transitional phase between a former colony's achievement of political independence and the assumption of direct Communist control. The national democratic state was there defined as one which had won complete economic independence from the imperialist world and assumed close economic ties with the bloc; which had adopted an "anti-imperialist" foreign policy; in which the state-owned sector had become predominant in the economy; and in which a list of "democratic reforms" and "democratic freedoms" had been achieved, two of the most important of which were land reform and freedom of activity for the Communist party. The national democratic state would be ruled by a broad united "anti-imperialist front" embracing "all patriotic strata" of the country concerned, including national bourgeoisie, peasantry, and proletariat. Although it has been implied by Soviet articles that the proletariat (the Communist Party) would have some importance in this coalition, the minimum degree of Communist influence acceptable in a national democratic front and the length of time the Communist party should be willing to wait to secure firm control have never been spelled out by Moscow. Peiping, long hostile to Soviet gradual is tic and evolutionary notions on the Communist assumption of power in underdeveloped countries, has been suspicious lest the new concept be used to justify a further indefinite delay in the achievement of Communist hegemony. Unlike Moscow, Peiping has therefore never publicly mentioned the national democratic state, and in fact was to print a veiled, attack on the concept in People's Daily on 10 October 1961, on the eve of the 22nd CPSU Congress.
Against the background of this fresh Sino-Soviet disagreement over a concept just placed in the equivocal Moscow Statement, the Indian party leaders split into three groups at the December National Council meeting in their application of the concept to India. An extreme rightist group considered India already a national democratic state, thought the Indian bourgeoisie was completing the democratic revolution in a consistent manner, and wished to support Nehru on all major policies. A centrist-moderate rightist group did not think India now a national democracy, but thought it could become so; this group wished to oppose the. reactionary policies of the Congress government but to support the progressive ones, and to make Nehru's progressive policies the basis for the establishment of a national democratic front in which the national bourgeoisie would in effect be allowed to remain temporarily in the lead. The leftists, who were numerous, thought Nehru's government was leaning more and more toward feudalism and imperialism, and called for a national democratic front led by the workers and peasantry which suitable bourgeois elements would be allowed to join but not to lead; this front would lead a struggle against the reactionary policies of the Nehru government. This internal party debate, of central importance to CPI policy, reached no conclusion at the December 1960 National Council meeting, and was to be resumed again at a similar meeting in February 1961 and still again at the party congress in April. A party commission was meanwhile set up to consider this issue in preparing a political resolution for the February National Council meeting. (A second commission was to write a new draft constitution for the party, and a third to study party policy toward the border dispute.)
While the leftists were thus stalemated on the question of "national democracy," they were apparently successful in imparting a more militant and revolutionary tone to the meeting generally; in line with the earlier Soviet stipulation in Moscow, the National Council members were reported to have been generally agreed that a peaceful transition to power was possible only if preparations for an armed capability were made simultaneously. Jaipal Singh, the head of the secret CPI organization in the Indian armed forces, was subsequently said to have been heartened by this new militant trend in the party and to have decided to reactivate his organization in May 1961 following an expected victory of the left faction at the party congress.
Meanwhile, the leftists — aware that the cessation of Sino-Soviet polemics as a result of the Moscow meeting had left the September CEC resolution attacking China out of date — moved to have the National Council formally repudiate the resolution. While this effort narrowly failed, several sources agree that the National Council tacitly decided to return to the compromise line on the border dispute enunciated at Meerut in November 1959, when the CPI had upheld the MacMahon line in the east, termed the Ladakh border in the west undefined, and refused to assign blame to either country for the dispute. No public statement on the border issue was made, however.
CCP Guidance to Leftists (December-February) During the months immediately following the Moscow Conference the left faction of the CPI was further encouraged by a series of contacts with Chinese embassy officials in which Ranadive and his representatives furnished the CCP with a running account of the current progress of the CPI factional battle as well as an elaborate assessment of the history of that battle over the past two years. In return, Peiping furnished the CPI militants with repeated oral and written interpretations of the 1960 Moscow Statement and guidance in the application of the provisions of that Statement to India. The essence of the Chinese advice was to regard the Moscow Statement as guidance to parties not in power to adopt a new and more militant line for the attainment of power. This was said by Peiping to pertain especially "to newly liberated countries where the class struggle is not being carried on," specifically including India, for whom the question of national democracy did not apply. The CCP found in the Statement the "implicit" assertion that peaceful coexistence between a Communist nation and a newly-liberated capitalist country does not require the Communist party of the latter country to give up its struggle for Communism for the sake of good relations between the two countries; this, said Peiping, "clarified" the concept of peaceful coexistence which had confused some parties in the past (meaning the CPI, among others) and had led to a pacifist approach. While the CPSU would also maintain (and had maintained for years) that the CPI should not give up its struggle for Communism or adopt a "pacifist" approach for the sake of Soviet-Indian relations, it is certain that Moscow would not read into this very broad negative generalization the authorization for a militant, across-the-board offensive against the Indian government which Peiping was trying to commend to the CPI leftists.
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CPI-CCP Correspondence In the midst of these dealings with the CPI left-faction leaders, Peiping at the end of December is believed to have sent a formal party letter to CPI headquarters — the only such message known to have been sent through official party channels after the Moscow Conference. [DELETE (5 lines)]. Details on this Chinese message are sketchy, although [DELETE (4 words) it was concerned in large part with the border issue. [DELETE (5 words)] the CCP expressed readiness to support any just struggles of the Indian people and expected the CPI to reciprocate on international issues of concern to Peiping; the Indian party was particularly expected to oppose and expose the Indian bourgeoisie when the latter instigated border difficulties. [DELETE (6 lines)]
Ghosh Circular Report Meanwhile, in preparation for the expected battle at the forthcoming National Council meeting in February, soon after the close of the December National Council session Ghosh, with the probable assistance of Dange, drew up a circular report on the Moscow meeting for circulation to all National Council members. This report was notable for its polemical tone. It emphasized more than once that while all parties had participated in preparing the Moscow Statement and while all parties were equal, the CPSU had played the "leading and guiding role... in preparing the Draft and in convening and steering the conference." Ghosh followed this up by reiterating the Soviet line and attacking the CGP position on the prevent ability and the consequences of war, warning (as Ulbricht had done publicly in his report on the Moscow Conference to the East German Central Committee in December) that it was "wrong" to want to conceal the destructiveness of nuclear war from the people. Ghosh endorsed the Soviet claim that their peaceful coexistence line was "the general line of the foreign policy of the socialist countries" — a point which is known to have been kept out of the Moscow Statement at Chinese insistence. Ghosh denied that the demand for general disarmament (a principal Soviet point) was a "bourgeois liberal" slogan, breeding "illusions about imperialism" (as the CCP had repeatedly said it was) . He said it was the task of all Communist parties to approach the mobilization of the masses "through simple and clear slogans and a non-sectarian approach." He stated that it was one of the aims of peaceful coexistence "to draw closer towards the socialist camp the newly-liberated and peace-loving states, thus consolidating and extending the peace zone." To this clear indication of the approach the CPSU wished to be taken toward India Ghosh affixed a strong endorsement of the need to create a national democratic front to bring about a national democratic state. Such a state, he emphasized, would not be the same as a people's democracy, since it would be ruled by a coalition of several classes "in which the working class and its party is an important but not yet the leading force."
On the other hand, Ghosh affirmed the need for the working class and the peasantry gradually to strive to "assume increasingly the leading role" in the national democratic state. Moreover, Ghosh also picked up from the Moscow Statement the more militant positions now again espoused by the CPSU, on the subject of just liberation wars (which he said do not weaken peace but strengthen it); on the Communist need to be prepared for violent as well as non-violent transition to power (confirming the CPI decisions taken in Moscow in December); on the need not to equate the peaceful path with reliance solely on parliamentary elections without regard for mass movements; and on the need to "unmask" demagogic bourgeois efforts to use the slogan of socialism to deceive the masses (while yet "fully supporting all measures of the national government which weaken the position of imperialism and feudalism.") Despite the concessions to militancy listed, however, Ghosh's circular was on the whole moderate in program as well as vehemently pro-CPSU. Most notably, he implied considerable tolerance for the "progressive role" of the Nehru government.
A couple of weeks after the dispatch of this circular report, Ghosh courageously carried the battle into the stronghold of the opposition by appearing (unexpected and unwelcome, as the leftists remarked) at a January conference of the West Bengal party State Council. There he heard Jyoti Basu, the West Bengal secretary, attack the central party leadership as having failed in its responsibilities. Basu charged that the leadership should have issued a self -critical report on revisionism in the CPI; he said the "so-called nationalist faction has forgotten Marxism and trailed behind the bourgeoisie;" he denounced the rightists for having mouthed diatribes against "China and international Communism;" and he found that the central leadership had harbored illusions about parliamentary politics, which had been used as a refuge from which to ignore mass movements. A West Bengal speaker who subsequently attempted to defend Ghosh's moderate program was almost shouted down, and found himself generally isolated at the meeting.
Ghosh thereupon got up and pugnaciously defended himself, the authority of the CPSU, and the moderate program he espoused for the CPI. Ultimately, he said, it was the Soviet draft enriched and enlarged by amendments and discussions that had been adopted almost in its entirety by the Moscow Conference. From this fact," he declared,
it was proved beyond doubt that the Soviet party was the leader of the World Communist movement — both in theory and in practice. If this basic fact were forgotten, the worst form of deviationism might creep into any national party giving rise to revisionism and chauvinism. It would be childish to even attempt to challenge the leadership of the Soviet Party or to think in that line. It was quite a different thing to point out mistakes or question certain formulations of the Soviet Party, but to question its leadership was altogether a foolish act. Even pointing out mistakes or suggesting possible rectifications should not be done in a manner so as to undermine the Soviet Party or to cast aspersions against it.
Unfortunately, Ghosh told the West Bengal leaders, in many centers in India attempts had been made to undermine the leadership of the Soviet party. Ghosh made a peculiar citation of authority to demonstrate the foolishness of such attempts: the Chinese party, he claimed, however great its differences with the CPSU on certain questions, had never tried in its writings or statements to belittle or undermine the Soviet leadership. (This would probably have been a good tack to take with the West Bengal party chiefs if they had not had abundant evidence to the contrary.) Ghosh also asserted that one should not forget that democratic centralism means that a strong center must guide all lower units — ignoring the fact that the CCP at Moscow had specifically rejected the notion that the discipline of democratic centralism applies in relations between parties of the international Communist movement.
In addition, Ghosh upheld the line he had marked out in the circular report for a CPI transition to power without civil war through utilization of the parliamentary method bolstered by a united front of workers, peasants and progressive bourgeoisie. The West Bengal party conference, however, rejected this approach and adopted one emphasizing that Nehru was not to be trusted, that there could be no unity "with any section of the bourgeoisie who are allied with the ruling class," that the worker-peasant alliance (in fact, the Communist party) must lead and control the national democratic front from the very beginning, and that a "fierce campaign" must be launched against the "anti-people policy of the government." Jyoti Basu meanwhile retired as party leader to concentrate on the forthcoming 1961 election campaign, but was replaced by another prominent leftist and strong supporter of the CCP, Promode Das Gupta. The leftists in control of the West Bengal machine at the same time succeeded in purging the only rightist previously represented on the West Bengal Secretariat.
February National Council Meeting A few weeks later, the National Council met to decide on the draft political and organizational reports to be placed before the party congress in April, as well as on a new draft program for the party to replace the one adopted in 1951. The National Council was also to decide on a new public resolution on the border dispute to be issued by the party; this appeared to be necessitated by the: Indian Government's publication in mid-February of the findings of the Indian team that had been negotiating with the CPR.
In most cases, the party commissions that had been preparing the individual draft reports had split along familiar lines into right and left segments, so that the National Council was presented with two or more drafts on each subject. For example, Ghosh and Ranadive each presented his version of the long-awaited party political resolution. Ghosh's resolution set forth the aim of replacing the present "vacillating" and "compromising" government with a government of a national democratic front which in turn would facilitate the peaceful transition to socialism. It called for a broad^based campaign seeking the cooperation of "patriotic elements in every party" to establish this front and secure gradual changes in the government's policies. In addition to endorsing the usual "united front from below" tactic of seeking to draw support from the rank-and-file of the Congress and of such parties as the Paja Socialists, Ghosh's resolution called for the employment of "united front from above" tactics in some cases — for example, the conclusion of direct alliances with local Congress committees or other local organizations "to which the peasants who are not under our influence are politically attached."32 Ghosh identified only the extreme right of the Congress party and of the big bourgeoisie as the enemy of the national democratic front, and consequently declared that the "democratic forces must adopt a correct attitude towards the small and medium industrialists" who are anti-imperialist, and that Communist-controlled trade unions must even abate their demands toward these industrialists in the interests of "drawing them closer to the democratic masses." While criticizing strongly the Indian government and Nehru for their policies toward feudalism, Western loans, land reform, and the Communist Kerala regime, this resolution several times praised Nehru, particularly for his foreign policy and his support for the public sector of the Indian economy.
In contrast, Ranadive's resolution took a much harsher view of Nehru, did not support alliances with local Congress committees, was not so eager to bring the bourgeoisie into the democratic front, and was much stronger in its exposition of the need to struggle against the policies of the Indian government. While Ghosh's political resolution was approved with minor amendments by the National Council, the leftists secured the right to circulate Ranadive's draft with Ghosh's and to have both considered by the party Congress in April.
A similar result followed the National Council battle over the proposed versions of the new long-range party program. Opposing drafts were submitted by Dange and Bhupesh Gupta. Dange's draft program, among other things, reportedly called for increased emphasis on the development of very broad party front groups in which very diverse non-Communists would be brought to the forefront; stressed that the CPI should make every effort to win the support of progressive members of the Congress Party throughout India; and proposed that the CPI support Congressmen judged sympathetic to the CPI in local and national elections. Gupta's draft attacked Nehru's policies at great length, opposed the creation of more broad-based front groups and particularly the use of Congressmen in these organizations, and reportedly called for an internal purge of rightist tendencies in the CPI. While Dange's draft was approved, Gupta also won the right to submit his text to the party congress.
In the case of the organizational report, only one draft was submitted -- by Namboodiripad — supposedly because the minority rightist faction on the commission preparing this report had refused to participate. Namboodiripad's report, in addition to submitting a draft of a new party constitution, severely chastised the indiscipline in the party as well as the revisionist and "Parliamentary" habits of thought he found widespread. While this report met with opposition in the National Council, it was finally decided without a formal vote to present it to the party congress, where more severe trials awaited it.
Finally, a sharp battle was fought in the National Council on the border issue, with inconclusive results. An effort by some of the rightists to secure an open condemnation of China was overwhelmingly defeated, and a subsequent attempt to obtain endorsement of the Indian case on the basis of the report of the Indian negotiating team was blunted. Eventually, a resolution was adopted and published formally reiterating the Meerut November 1959 formula (approval of the MacMahon line in the east and of an undefined ''traditional boundary" in the west), blaming nobody, saying that the Indian people think the Indian case is strong but that China also thinks her case is strong, and fervently calling for more negotiations. However, despite leftist protests, the resolution also upheld India's exclusive right to negotiate the boundaries of Kashmir — of which Ladakh is a part — with China (reproving CPR feelers on this subject to Pakistan), and to carry on frontier negotiations on behalf of Bhutan and Sikkim (reproving Chinese efforts to bypass New Delhi in contacting those two Indian dependencies) . The inclusion of these provisions was a definite victory for the rightist faction.
On the whole, the National Council meeting seems to have been a standoff, provisionally approving rightist positions on some questions and leftist positions on others, evading still other issues, and passing everything on to the party congress for the decisive battles. The leftists tended to be encouraged by this outcome; they kept the Chinese party informed of events, and passed on to Peiping their optimistic forecast of victory in April. Dange's forces, on the other hand, were rather somber; Dange thought the rightists had won their last victory (such as it was) on the border issue, and expected a very close division of forces at the party congress, with the outcome in doubt.
Continued Swing Toward Left in Provinces Information from a number of the CPI provincial organizations in the months before the party congress confirmed both the leftist claim of a swing in their direction and Dange's estimate of a very close alignment of forces. Leftist assertiveness was particularly noted on the border issue: in mid-February, while the rightists at the National Council meeting were vainly trying to get the party to endorse the report of the Indian negotiating team, an organ of the Kerala party prominently published the gist of the report issued by Peiping's negotiators, under the headline "Indian Documents Are the Products of British Imperialism." In West Bengal, local party meetings were being told that the West Bengal party organization fully accepted the Chinese contention that the Indian government was keeping the border issue alive in order to get aid from the West. One West Bengal leader in late February not only publicly denied that the CPR had committed aggression against India, but was quoted by the press as declaring that "we should be ashamed to criticize China, the greatest socialist country, living in the land of beggars." (Emphasis supplied.)
An index of the changing balance of forces in the party was furnished by the reception given the two drafts of the political resolution — Ghosh's version which had been endorsed by the National Council, and Ranadive's alternative — as they circulated through the provincial organizations. West Bengal party secretary Das Gupta told the leftists on the CPI Central Secretariat in mid-March that he did not intend to publish the National Council resolution in the West Bengal organ Swadhinata; subsequently, the West Bengal State Council overwhelmingly voted to reject the National Council draft and to accept Ranadive's resolution. Identical action was taken in the other left-faction stronghold in the Punjab, despite a personal visit and plea by Ghosh to try to stem the tide. Dange made a similar appearance before the vacillating party organization of Tamilnad, in south India, where the former rightist Ramamurthy had been reported inclining toward the left since the beginning of the year because of the need to preserve his position in the face of increasing left-faction sentiment; despite Dange's efforts, Tamilnad also rejected the Ghosh draft and accepted Ranadive's alternative. In Assam, neighboring the West Bengal organization and often influenced by it, the party leader Phani Bora, a Ghosh supporter, was obliged to trim his sails and avoid submitting either resolution to a vote to avoid being unseated by his leftist opposition.
In certain other provincial organizations, however, the Ghosh draft was endorsed; and in the right-faction stronghold of Maharashtra, where Dange and Ranadive held a furious debate in mid-March, the leaders laid plans to lobby among uncommitted delegations at the party congress for the Ghosh political resolution, as Well as for a direct indictment of the CPR oh the border issue.
B. Soviet and Chinese Policy Toward India Before the Congress These internal party struggles and maneuverings in preparation for the party congress were inevitably influenced by the very different policies being pursued toward India by the Soviet Union and the CPR. The Soviet posture toward Indict was composed, in equal parts, of a limited amount of pressure seeking specific foreign-policy objectives; a fair amount of public flattering of India and of Nehru; and discreet ambivalence on the question of the Sino-Indian border. The Chinese attitude, on the other hand, was one of simple and unremitting hostility, in which Peiping's energies were chiefly devoted to documenting the charge that Nehru had become an imperialist lackey of the United States whose every move was inimical to the interests of the entire bloc.
Soviet Policy Soviet pressure in early 1961 was chiefly concerned with the question of Indian support for United Nations operations in the Congo, support which Moscow sought strenuously and unsuccessfully to have withdrawn. In this effort the USSR appears to have worked in close coordination with the central leadership of the Indian Communist party. The December CPI National Council meeting, for example, issued a resolution mildly criticizing the Indian government for not having shown itself in "complete solidarity with the leading African governments" by having recognized the Gizenga regime in the Congo. Toward the end of January, an article by Joshi in the Republic Day issue of New Age, while generally praising Nehru's foreign policy, criticized his policy toward colonialism, saying that New Delhi had "remained silent too long before expressing Indian solidarity and on occasions was not firm enough."
In the third week of February, Nehru received letters from Khrushchev asking him to support Soviet demands on the Congo, including the end of UN activities there. Bhupesh Gupta, a parliamentary spokesman of the CPI, reportedly was briefed in advance on these letters by the Soviet Embassy, and on 27 February raised a question in Parliament designed to obtain public acknowledgement from Nehru that Khrushchev had requested him not to accede to any demands from Hammarskjold to send Indian troops to the Congo. Nehru at the time would only acknowledge having received letters from Khrushchev, but subsequently made his position clear by announcing that his government would send a brigade of combat troops to support UN operations in the Congo. Thereupon, a CPSU letter to the CPI at the end of February reportedly requested, among other things, criticism of the Indian government's foreign policy shortcomings. An article in Izyestiya on 9 March asked, in passing, if it was "so essential" for the Indian people to support the "bankrupt" UN Secretary-General; and an article in the CPI's weekly New Age three days later discreetly made the same point. An article by Ghosh published in Pravda on 5 April said that the Indian government had shown "unwarranted vacillation" on the Congo issue by not having recognized Gizenga or attacked Hammarskjold; this was repeated in Ghosh's speech to the CPI Congress, in the Political Resolution published after the Congress, and in the advice Suslov reportedly gave to CPI leaders during the Congress.
The only other major criticism made of Indian foreign policy by Moscow in the first half of 1961 concerned the Cuban invasion: on 4 April, an article placed in Literary Gazette expressed at some length Soviet "bewilderment" at Nehru's statement that he was unable to judge the right or wrong of the Cuba situation; this article was broadcast by Moscow six times to South Asia in English, and was understandably picked up promptly by NCNA.
These examples of pressure, however, have been more than balanced by the many Soviet statements and actions flattering and supporting the Nehru government. In December 1960, soon after the Moscow Conference, the Soviet New Times ran an article appraising and on the whole approving the new third Indian five-year plan. In late January, the CPI's New Age printed a two-part article by the deputy head of the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies on Indian state capitalism: a qualified verdict was rendered that so far state capitalism in India had been progressive and had fulfilled a national function. In late January a Soviet broadcast to Asia described how India was "growing stronger year by year, becoming more influential and more wealthy", primarily because of her progressive foreign policy. On Indian Republic Day, 26 January, the Soviet leaders sent warm congratulations to the people and government of India and to Nehru personally, praising them for India's contributions to the causes of peace, disarmament, and the ending of colonialism. The semi-annual CPSU slogans published in April similarly flattered India. On 28 April, a Soviet broadcast in Bengal (possibly meant for the West Bengal Communist Party to hear) stressed that the Soviet Union and India have "kept faith in the fundamental Bandung principles," and quoted Khrushchev on the Unanimity of views between the USSR and India on nearly all international problems placed before the UN. And in June another Soviet broadcast, in Mandarin to China, pointedly emphasized to Peiping the cooperation which India had furnished the bloc in opposition to imperialist schemes for the recognition of "two Chinas" by the United Nations.
These statements have been accompanied by the continuation of Soviet assistance to the Indian economy. During a Kosygin visit to India in February a credit agreement between the two countries, negotiated and announced the previous year, was signed with much fanfare; and a few days later the USSR Ambassador in New Delhi, Benediktov, publicly denied to Indian newsmen published reports in the Indian press about differences between the Soviet Union and the CPR over Soviet aid to India. A further sizable credit at low interest from Hungary was announced in March. In April the Soviet Ambassador to Mexico, while piously denying in a private conversation that Soviet foreign commercial activity was ordinarily subordinated to political motives, admitted that this was true in the case of India.
Finally, with regard to the Sino-Indian border issue, Moscow was equivocal in the first half of 1961. On the one hand, the CPI was apparently instructed to say as little as possible. Guidance to this effect may conceivably have been furnished Indian party leaders in Moscow in December 1960; at any rate, at the end of February 1961, a letter was received from the CPSU, signed by Suslov, asking the CPI not to make statements categorically condemning China, but on the other hand to do nothing either to antagonize further Indian public opinion on this issue. This guidance was reiterated by Suslov during his visit to India in personal briefings to CPI leaders on 6 and 14 April, and the CPI went from reiteration of the Meerut formula (in the February National Council resolution) to silence on the border issue (in the resolutions of the April party congress) . At the same time, the Soviet-linked Indian organ Blitz continued to manifest a strongly nationalistic, explicitly anti-Chinese line. The Soviet Union itself was non-committal, particularly in regard to the question of its maps of the Sino-Indian border, a topic on which New Delhi was repeatedly prodding Moscow during the spring. In March, an Indian spokesman declared that 1959 Soviet maps had shown Bhutan and Sikkim as independent states, whereas much older maps had shown them as Indian protectorates; he said India had brought up this matter repeatedly, the last time in November 1960, but that no positive reply had yet been received from the USSR. According to Indian government announcements, by April the GDR, Hungary, and North Vietnam had assured India that they would not print incorrect maps again, but other Communist countries — as Nehru put it on 21 April — "were reluctant to correct them as they felt to do so would mean taking an active political step."