The Indian Communist Party and the Sino-Soviet Dispute

Re: The Indian Communist Party and the Sino-Soviet Dispute

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Part 2 of 3

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.
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Re: The Indian Communist Party and the Sino-Soviet Dispute

Postby admin » Wed Jul 01, 2020 6:43 am

Part 3 of 3

D. The CPI Between Its Congress and the 22nd CPSU Congress

June National Council Meeting

Two months after the Sixth Congress, the new National Council met at Bangalore, with its most important task the election of the Central Executive Committee and the Central Secretariat, the executive bodies that would be charged with immediate supervision of the party until the next party congress. Both of the old organs had previously turned out to have leftist majorities, despite the large rightist majority on the old National Council which had elected them: a fact suggesting that the polarization of the party which was brought to everyone's awareness under the impact of the Sino-Soviet dispute in 1959 and 1960 had not gone nearly so far in 1958 when the party organs were last chosen. Now, this discrepancy was intolerable to the rightists; and the new National Council, with a much smaller rightist majority than before, replaced the old Central Executive Committee dominated 14 to 9 by the leftists with a new body in which the moderates had a 13 to 12 edge. An even greater change occurred in the Central Secretariat, which is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the party, and which the leftists had been able to use to their own advantage on several occasions in Ghosh's absence. This body was cut down to five members, of whom the first four — Ghosh, Dange, M.N. Govindan Nair,44 and Z.A. Ahmad — were moderates, while Bhupesh Gupta was the sole leftist remaining. Although some reports have suggested that this one-sided result came about partly because certain leftists, including Ranadive, withdrew their names rather than participate in a larger rightist-dominated Secretariat, the direction of the change was not caused by these leftist maneuverings. The most important effect of the Secretariat reshuffle was to ensure that until the next party congress the central direction of the Indian Communist Party would remain in hands at least more likely than before to be loyal to the CPSU under all circumstances. For this reason, it seems reasonable to believe — although there is no direct evidence — that the basic trend of these changes, if not the details, was endorsed by the CPSU in advance.

Provincial Factional Struggles

The CPI was supposed to have united to concentrate its energy in preparations for the electoral campaign. However, factional infighting -- slightly subdued -- went on as before, particularly in the provincial party organizations. The right wing scored a temporary victory in a marginal province in June, when the Andhra Pradesh party narrowly elected a rightist as the new party secretary against a leftist opponent supported by Sundarayya. In July, the northern Uttar Pradesh organization controlled by rightist Central Secretariat member Ahmad again defeated the local left-wing opposition. In May and June Ranadive and Dange both were reported making strenuous efforts to strength the positions of their minority adherents in the respective opposition strongholds of Maharashtra and West Bengal; in neither case did these efforts bear immediate fruit.

While most CPI leaders during this period were guided by the Soviet advice to remain circumspect in their public statements on the border issue, this was not so of everyone: Ahmad in July indicated that the party would take a clearly nationalist stand on the question of Chinese incursion into India, a position for which he was severely berated in the West Bengal organization, and from which he subsequently retreated. Ramamurthi, the leftist from Tamilnad, on the other hand was quoted in June by a provincial bourgeois newspaper as having declared in a private interview that India, not China, had committed aggression on the border. The leftist attitude on this score was made clear by Ranadive in May when he told a closed party meeting that the attitude Nehru showed toward China on the border dispute should be an important criterion for the appraisal of his foreign policy.  

Both Dange and the leftist leaders acknowledged in the months after the Sixth Congress that the line the CPI was now following was an ambiguous one designed solely for the interim period of the election campaign, and that a more consistent line (by which they meant one following their own views) would have to be sought after the elections. In the meantime, as expected, the provincial organizations and central factions were interpreting the tactical line for the elections to suit themselves. In some cases this meant completely ignoring everything that had happened at the party congress. A central party official was to complain in the fall that certain provincial committees had not even troubled to get the Political Resolution translated into their respective languages, so that party members were not told of what was supposed to be the official line of the party. This official noted the "depressing" fact that "some leading cadres have not even cared to read the resolution," and that no provincial committee had bothered to inform the party center what if anything it was doing to explain it to local party members. (At the June meeting of the National Council, Namboodiripad had lamented the "sorry state, of affairs whereby the Central Office of the party... is not in a position even to collect information on the organizational position of the party in various states and regions.")

Even when the provincial organizations took cognizance of the line the congress had adopted, they reacted in opposite directions. On the one hand, during the spring and summer right-wing party units in Delhi and Andhra were negotiating to support Congress candidates, Namboodiripad was pledging CPI support for a Congress or Praja Socialist candidate for the Kerala Assembly speakership, and Ghosh and Namboodiripad were seeking to pull the CPI out of its political isolation by issuing public appeals to the Congress and Praja Socialist parties to form a united front with the CPI to fight communalism in India. On the other hand, West Bengal party meetings heard attacks on the rightist activities of the central party leadership, and criticism of Bhupesh Gupta for agreeing to serve as the sole leftist on the rightist Central Secretariat. In August, followers of Konar prepared a draft resolution for the West Bengal party attacking the political resolution adopted at the CPI Congress, complaining that even Ranadive's proposals had not gone far enough to the left, and denouncing the party leadership for failing to see that the National Democratic Front line was unsuitable for India. Konar himself at a Provincial Executive Committee meeting declared that this line was unrealistic, and attacked the central leaders for wishful thinking on the question of cooperating with progressive Congress party elements, declaring that Ghosh and the others in New Delhi appeared to want to avoid serious battles oh the economic as well as the political front. He asked the West Bengal organization to scotch any illusions about the growth of a "bourgeois" democratic front in their province, and stated that the West Bengal party was fighting for a leftist alliance in West Bengal rather than for a bourgeois democratic alliance.

What this meant in practice was that the leftist West Bengal leadership not only emphatically rejected attempts by the local right-wing minority to have the provincial party support occasional progressive Congress Party candidates, but also refused to allow the important but vehemently anti-Chinese Praja Socialist party into the alliance they were constructing for the elections, declaring that they would "not surrender to attempts to smuggle Congress it e political thought into the leftist alliance." Instead, the West Bengal party allied itself only with a group of tiny splinter parties on the extreme left which it could expect to dominate without the need for compromise. Moreover, because Konar and the other extremist leaders held out the unrealistic hope to party cadres that they could unaided win control of the West Bengal Legislature and form a purely Communist provincial government, the party was niggardly in allotting legislative candidatures to its allies in the leftist alliance, to the point of endangering that alliance. Finally, the left-faction leadership of the West Bengal party is reported to have attempted to continue its purge of rightist opposition within the provincial party by denying party nominations for seats in the legislature to leading rightists.

Ghosh and Basu Visits to Moscow

Meanwhile, on 11 July Ghosh left for one of his periodic visits to Moscow, to consult with CPSU leaders on a variety of subjects. In addition to holding discussions on the international situation and on CPI internal dissension and policies. Ghosh is said [DELETE (1 line)] to have taken part in meetings of an international committee considering fresh CPSU-CCP grievances. While this is completely unconfirmed, it is quite possible that the CPSU gave Ghosh some briefing on the current state of Sino-Soviet relations. There is no evidence, however, that Ghosh was told of a Soviet intention to attack the Albanian leaders — and thus indirectly the CCP — at the 22nd CPSU Congress in October.

A few weeks after Ghosh's departure for the Soviet Union, he was followed there by Jyoti Basu, the West Bengal leader who had stepped down as provincial party secretary in January. Reports indicate that during the two or three weeks that Basu remained in Moscow, the Soviet leadership made some effort to influence his views both on the issue of the "national democratic front" and on the question of the relations of the West Bengal party to the CCP. While there was some indication both before and after Basu's journey that his views had become a trifle less extreme than those of Konar or Promode Das Gupta (the new provincial party secretary), there was not subsequent evidence that the CPSU had succeeded in driving a serious wedge into the pro-Chinese left-faction phalanx in West Bengal which Konar and Gupta now controlled.

September National Council Meeting and Election Manifesto

In early September Ghosh returned to India, bearing with him instructions reportedly given him by CPSU Presidium member Kuusinen to see that the CPI in its forthcoming Election Manifesto made some gesture in support of the Indian nationalist position on the border issue and in condemnation of the Chinese position. While it is undoubtedly true that the CPSU gave such advice primarily because it wished the CPI to make the most effective possible appeal to nationalist sentiment in the elections, the fact that this consideration had so much greater weight with Kuusinen in September than with Suslov in April strongly suggests that Moscow was at least partly influenced by the fact that it was about to launch a major offensive against the CCP and its adherents at the CPSU party congress the following month. This is also suggested by the extreme nature of the plank that Ghosh is reported to have attempted to get the CPI to adopt. During a Central Executive Committee meeting held from 11 to 17 September at which a draft Election Manifesto was prepared, a plank on the border issue was drawn up, reportedly by Ghosh personally, which was said to have condemned China as an aggressor, to have strongly supported the Indian position on the border, and to have specifically commended the Indian government study team for its report which "proved" the correctness of the Indian stand.

However, when during the following week Ghosh attempted to get the National Council to approve this plank, it was found that the expected rightist margin in the Council had disappeared, presumably partly because less than half the Council members were actually present, and partly because some who were willing to support moderate measures on domestic CPI policy were not willing to back an open condemnation of the Chinese. Three amendments to the plank were offered, one strengthening it, one leaving it essentially unchanged, and a third, from Ranadive, denying all support to the Indian position. During acrimonious debate Ranadive charged that Ghosh was reneging on an understanding reached at the CPI Congress not to discuss this issue, Sundarayya and Basavapunnaiah threatened to leave the meeting, and Sundarayya and Konar each warned that their respective organizations in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal would; not be bound by the plank if adopted. When the Ghosh CEC plank was submitted to a vote, it was defeated, 25-22. The issue was finally put off by instructing Ghosh to amend the draft in the light of the National Council discussion; and as a result of negotiations between the factions Bhupesh Gupta finally prepared the compromise version that was finally included in the Manifesto released to the press on 12 October. Despite press reports to the contrary, this version was not any advance on previous CPI positions. Exactly like the February 1961 National Council resolution, it affirmed the MacMahon line in the east and an unspecified "traditional frontier" in the west, supported India's title to all of Kashmir (and therefore implicitly her exclusive right to negotiate with the CPR for Ladakh), and called for a political settlement. Even this much, however, did not please the leftists, who had wished the CPI to continue to maintain the party's congress' policy of silence on this issue. The CCP was duly informed by the leftists of the details of the struggle over Ghosh's plank, as well as of the fact that Kuusinen had encouraged Ghosh to write that plank.

Otherwise, the National Council meeting was chiefly notable for its rejection of the leftist attitude on electoral alliances. In areas where no Communist candidate was to be offered, the Council reportedly approved both the conclusion of alliances with the Praja Socialist Party for the defeat of reactionary Congress candidates, and support for "acceptable, progressive" Congress candidates to defeat the nominees of extreme right-wing parties. Both of these tactical measures had been and continued to be rejected by the West Bengal party organization.

E. The 22nd CPSU Congress and Its Aftermath

Suslov at the CPI Congress in April had reportedly again requested that the CPI send a "balanced" delegation of leftists and rightists to the CPSU Congress in October. This request was fulfilled; in addition to himself, Ahmad, and the Maharashtran leader Sardesai — three moderates — the delegation included Promode Das Gupta, the West Bengal leader, and from one to three lower-level figures associated with the leftist faction.45 The CPI delegation witnessed the tumultuous events of the congress, and heard Ghosh address the congress on 21 October. During or shortly after the congress Ghosh appears to have had private discussions with Khrushchev and Mikoyan (during one of which the other members of the delegation may have been present); and early in November, after the close of the congress, all members of the delegation except Ghosh went on a tour of the Soviet provinces, while Ghosh remained in Moscow to confer with Suslov. It also seems reasonable to expect that some members of the delegation — most notably Das Gupta, the leftist leader46 -- would have met with members of the CCP delegation during the congress, and one report of uncertain reliability purported to give details of such a conversation between Chou and the CPI leftists, in which Chou attacked Khrushchev's actions and policies along familiar Chinese lines.

There is little doubt that the CPI delegation, and Ghosh personally, were profoundly disturbed by the violent assault unleashed on the Albanian leaders at the congress in what was to prove the opening step in a campaign to force Peiping to relinquish support of Albania and thereby undermine its own challenge to CPSU authority over the international Communist movement. Ghosh well knew the reaction this would evoke from the left-faction strongholds of the CPI, and he may have surmised that Chou En-lai's charge that the CPSU action was an un-Marxist way to try to resolve differences between Communist parties might receive sympathy even in sections of the Indian party normally loyal to the CPSU. In view of his subsequent statements, Ghosh may even have felt this way himself, although he certainly held no brief for the basic views of the Albanians or the Chinese; in any case, his primary concern was to preserve his own position and if at all possible to prevent the public facade of CPI unity from being destroyed on the eve of a national election. In his speech to the CPSU Congress Ghosh therefore refrained for the time being from joining in the attack on the Albanian leadership; in this evasion he was joined at the congress by a number of other leaders of non-bloc Communist parties who in the past had demonstrated at private interparty meetings staunch loyalty to the CPSU and hostility to the CCP.

This was not all, however: even worse, from Ghosh's point of view, was the equally violent attack at the CPSU Congress upon Stalin. This attack placed upon the public record and even elaborated the denunciations of Stalin's crimes — and the revelations of the realities of Soviet life under his regime — that had previously been recorded only in Khrushchev's 1956 secret speech (which, while published by the West, did not have quite the same standing with non-bloc party members as a direct, public avowal of the facts by the CPSU). Ghosh could not forget the staggering and lasting effect upon CPI morale and discipline wrought by the first great denigration of Stalin; Namboodiripad in his organizational report to the April 1961 CPI Congress had declared the present chaos in the party in large part attributable to that event. Ghosh knew that despite the 1956 move against Stalin, the latter 's memory was still revered by many members of all factions of the Indian party. The CPI general secretary also knew that his own position was in large part dependent upon that CPI rank-and-file faith in the happiness of life in the USSR and the eternal wisdom of the CPSU which Khrushchev was busily demolishing. For all these reasons, it is credible that, as reported, Ghosh in his private talk with Suslov "had a serious discussion over the deStalinization issue" and protested against the CPSU decision to remove Stalin's body from his tomb. (Ghosh, in fact, publicly confirmed this in New Age on 10 December.) It was also reported that when during the congress the entire CPI delegation met with Khrushchev, this issue was also raised; one delegate was said to have commented that Stalin was still highly regarded outside the USSR, and Khrushchev reportedly replied that this was an issue which the individual parties must handle as they see fit.

When Ghosh and the others returned to India in the first week of November, they found the party already in turmoil. During the 1-5 November meeting of the Andhra Pradesh provincial party council, a complete split had developed, with the rightists supporting Khrushchev's action and calling Stalin a "sadist" and "fascist," and the leftists denouncing Khrushchev and saying that he should be "shot dead." The provincial council finally narrowly passed a leftist-sponsored resolution attacking the CPSU and Khrushchev— the second time such a resolution was passed within the Indian party, the first having been the West Bengal statement of October 1960.47 The resolution condemned both the Soviet public attack on Albania (as a regrettable violation of the principles governing the settlement of such disputes) and the new attack on Stalin (as improper, disgraceful and tragic treatment of a still-respected figure). Though this resolution was not made public, four members of the Andhra party Council are reported to have cabled Khrushchev condemning his "vindictive" action. A number of party agencies and district committees of the West Bengal party meanwhile wrote to party headquarters cancelling their subscriptions to New Age in protest against the reports of Soviet attacks on Stalin which the central CPI publication was carrying. West Bengal leaders in mid-November were privately commenting that the Soviet "open and vituperative denunciation" of Albania had "certainly violated the 81-Party Conference code of conduct between two sister parties," and that "the treatment of Albania was little different from the conduct of a colonial power." Calcutta district party leaders were reported quoting NCNA releases indicating Chinese support for Albania. In Kerala, the party organ Jana Yugam on 31 October said that it was tragic that the battle against Stalinism had degenerated into an attack on his body, and one Kerala leader asked for the body to be sent to the Kerala party. Namboodiripad on 3 November reportedly praised Stalin and his work in a press conference. Members of the secretariat of one CPI district committee in Maharashtra published an open letter to Khrushchev urging him to "reconsider the propriety" of the decision to move Stalin's body, and asking (like Hoxha) whether Khrushchev's actions against his rivals was not building up a concentration of his own power and a cult of his own personality. Communists in the Tamilnad city of Madurai carried pictures of Stalin in a procession of 18 November. The turmoil was equally great among sections of the party which accepted the accusations against Stalin: in early November, a general meeting of the Bombay City party organization was reported to have been broken up by wild heckling from the rank-and-file, who shouted demands to the Bombay leaders to explain what they had been doing while Stalin was committing his crimes.

Much of this was discussed at a meeting of the CPI's Central Executive Committee in early November which heard Ghosh report on the CPSU Congress events but took no action. In mid-November Sundarayya, Das Gupta, Namboodiripad, and several of the leftist-dominated provincial organizations were reported demanding a meeting of the National Council to discuss the CPI position on Stalin and Albania; but Ghosh was opposed, because he knew that any such meeting would be disastrous for the party on the eve of the elections. He instead preferred to postpone the meeting until after the elections; the members of the National Council were polled, and it was reported that they agreed with him. Basavapunnaiah thereupon commented that Ghosh was hiding behind the elections to prevent the party from meeting to decide the issue, and that the internal controversy would continue to rise nevertheless.

Finally, Ghosh spoke out himself, in an effort to calm things down. On 10 December, he published an article in New Age in which he deferred to a later meeting of the National Council any evaluation of the 22 Congress' attack on Albania "as well as the comment made by Chou En-lai on the propriety of making such open criticism." At the same time, he finally went on record with qualified support for Moscow against Albania by mildly condemning Albanian attacks on Soviet foreign policy and on the 20th Congress decisions as "not in conformity" with the 1960 Moscow Declaration.48 (Ghosh's anxiety about the effect of the Sino-Albanian-Soviet struggle upon the CPI, however, was made manifest when he told a 16 December press conference that "these differences should be ironed out by negotiations and discussions as agreed to at the meeting of Communist parties in Moscow last year" — a statement suggesting that Ghosh privately agreed with Chou En-lai's point.)

In his 10 December New Age article, Ghosh attempted to combat disillusionment with the Soviet party with a lengthy tribute to the accomplishments of the Soviet Union, the significance of the new CPSU program, and the role of the CPSU as the "vanguard of the world Communist movement." At the same time, he stated that a "big majority" of CPI members had been "deeply hurt" by the decision to move Stalin's body, he insisted that Stalin was a distinguished Marxist-Leninist of extreme importance, and he expressed "deep regret" that the struggle against Stalin's cult had been carried so far. Moreover, Ghosh implicitly sided with the Italian party in declaring that the question of how the excesses occurred and how they would be prevented from recurring had not been properly answered. Ghosh added this pointed warning that Khrushchev had undermined not only Stalin's but the CPSU's authority:

The 20th Congress ... not merely ended the deification of Stalin, but also demolished the belief in the infallibility of any Party or any leader. This was necessary for such a belief is contrary to the very spirit of Marxism-Leninism.49 (Emphasis added)


Ghosh concluded by admitting that even CPI members were "dumbfounded and demoralized" by these events, by begging party members to keep silent, and be declaring that it was impossible to hold a National Council meeting to discuss recent developments until after the approaching elections.

Sino-Soviet Policy on India and the Return of the Border Dispute

By the time Ghosh wrote the New Age article cited, however, another factor had arisen to exacerbate greatly relations between the CPI factions and between Moscow and Peiping: a revival of the border dispute.

During the latter half of 1961, the Soviet and Chinese attitudes toward the Nehru government had continued to move further along the lines each had marked out. The USSR maintained a policy of economic assistance to India and continued to depict Nehru's foreign policy as generally progressive, while simultaneously sustaining discreet pressure upon the Indian government to bend toward the Soviet view on specific topical issues. In the latter half of the year, the emphasis shifted from the Congo and Cuba, and the most important of these pressures were now concerned with the Soviet resumption of nuclear testing, Nehru's stand at the neutralists' conference, and particularly the Berlin issue. The CPI was repeatedly briefed by the CPSU on these issues in the spring and summer, and maintained continued propaganda pressure in support of Moscow's position. While Nehru's actions and statements in each of these matters was far from wholly satisfactory to Moscow, the USSR did not at any time repeat its earlier direct criticism of the Indian government. Meanwhile, a subsidiary campaign which the Soviet Union had been actively promoting for a long time — both directly and through the CPI- — to induce Nehru to take armed action against the Portuguese enclave of Goa finally bore fruit in December, with a number of gratifying consequences: it forced the United States and Britain to take stands publicly condemning India; it promoted disharmony between Portugal and the other NATO allies; it distracted some Indian public attention and anger from the Chinese border dispute; it enabled the CPI to wear the cloak of Indian nationalism it had been unable to assume on the Chinese border issue; and it bolstered the stock of the unpopular but pro-Soviet Indian defense minister, Krishna Menon, who was reported in trouble in his campaign for re-election to Parliament from Bombay.  

Aside from the question of the Sino-Indian border, there was only one aspect of Soviet policy toward the non-Communist world during this period which caused any internal difficulties for the CPI: the decision to resume nuclear testing. This decision caused the Indian party some embarrassment in the election campaign because of its earlier vigorous campaigns against American testing; it also evoked some disarray on the fringes of the party, among fellow-travellers and extreme right-wing party members. Thus the Indian branch of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee reportedly adopted a resolution expressing regret at the Soviet decision, an abortive attempt was said to have been made in the All- India Peace Council to do the same, and two rightist CPI leaders in Kerala made public statements opposing the USSR's action. On the whole, however, the internal CPI troubles over this issue were so minor as to be totally obscured by the violent disturbances which shook the party in November and December over other issues.

Peiping in the latter half of 1961 maintained its vitriolic line toward Nehru, continuing in its propaganda to build up a picture of him as a faithful servant of American imperialism and enemy of both Peiping and Moscow. To maintain this single-hued portrait, Chinese propaganda continued to make extremely tendentious selections from Nehru's statements, going to extravagant lengths in this regard in connection with the neutralist conference and Nehru's remarks on the Berlin issue. On the Indian side, general relations with Peiping continued to worsen, with the Indian government taking steps to round up and expel more Chinese from Calcutta and to discourage all activities of the India- China Friendship Society.

In the meantime, the border issue again became inflamed, with Peiping and New Delhi again exchanging charges of fresh border incursions in a series of notes in the summer and fall. On 20 November, Nehru brought these matters to public attention before the Indian Parliament, thereby setting in motion new violent denunciations of the CPR by the Indian and Western press. [DELETE (7 words)] Peiping believed that Nehru had been persuaded to take this action by President Kennedy during the Indian Prime Minister's November visit to the United States; indeed, Peiping subsequently publicly said as much. The Chinese Communist regime may also have believed that despite India's public support for Peiping 's admission to the United Nations, Nehru's statement was timed to help the United States block this action by influencing hesitant neutrals against Peiping.

Already angered by this action of Nehru's, Peiping was infuriated when on 21 November, the day after Nehru's statement, Ajoy Ghosh issued a public statement on his own initiative as CPI general secretary strongly criticizing the CPR. Ghosh expressed "surprise and regret" at the information disclosed by the Indian government, implicitly accepting the Indian version as beyond question. He declared that the Chinese actions could not but heighten tension and embitter relations between the, two countries, and "demanded" that the CPR government put an end to such actions and take measures to ensure that they would not recur.

It is likely, in view of Peiping's reaction, that the CCP concluded that Ghosh had been incited to make this statement by the CPSU — particularly in the context of the increasingly open propaganda and organizational battle that was simultaneously developing between the Soviet-led parties and the Chinese- Albanian bloc. A CPI leftist member of the delegation to the CPSU congress subsequently claimed that the Chinese delegation to that congress had briefed the CPI at the time on the Chinese version of the current border controversy; and a fairly reliable source reports statements by the Maharashtra leader Sardesai, another CPI representative at the Soviet congress, alleging that Khrushchev told the Indian delegation that Nehru, as a "patriotic leader," was bound to resist aggression, and that the CPI should take a "practical" attitude toward this problem. Although this evidence is not conclusive, it does seem probable that the CPSU was also aware in October of the Sino- Indian exchange of notes, considered it possible that this would lead to public polemics, and authorized Ghosh to take such action as he saw fit if this happened.50

After waiting two weeks, Peiping in early December published the texts of the notes it had exchanged with New Delhi, followed by a ferocious People's Daily editorial denouncing the "anti-Chinese campaign launched by Nehru in India." In this editorial, Peiping summed up all its efforts of the past year to indict Nehru as an enemy of progressive mankind, and charged that he had initiated his "anti-Chinese campaign" at American instigation to hurt the bloc, as well as to bolster what Peiping depicted as the sagging chances of the Congress party in the coming Indian elections. In addition, in this editorial the CCP finally gave vent publicly to its long-held feelings about Ghosh, attacking him for having "trailed behind Nehru and hurriedly issued a statement in condemnation of China ... without bothering to find out the truth or to look into the rights and wrongs of the case."

This unprecedented CCP attack upon Ghosh was also necessarily both an indirect slap at the CPSU and a Chinese action in support of the leftist CPI faction and in condemnation of the rightist faction. It served to further increase the tension between the opposing groups within the party. The West Bengal party secretariat was already reported to have banned from its distribution system the 26 November issue of New Age which contained Ghosh's attack on Peiping; and Bhupesh Gupta was said to have conveyed an ultimatum from the West Bengal party to Ghosh that circulation of New Age would be halted completely in that province if such statements continued. Other. leftists meanwhile avowed their intention to contradict Ghosh if they were questioned during the election campaign about Ghosh's statement.51 The West Bengal party organ Swadhinata did in fact publish articles strongly attacking Nehru along the lines Peiping had taken, and as in the past, these articles were picked up by NCNA and People 'g Daily. As one consequence of this Swadhinata line, an information official of the Soviet embassy was reported to have refused an interview to a representative of the paper; earlier, West Bengal leaders had privately charged that the USSR had cancelled promised visits by Major Titov and Paul Robeson to a "peace festival" sponsored by the West Bengal party in early November because of the stand of the provincial organization.

The Peiping-Nehru polemic was soon intermeshed with the broader Sino-Soviet battle going on concurrently, with Albania amplifying Peiping's denunciations of the Indian leader, and other East European states, like the USSR, refusing to do so. Even before the 7 December People's Daily editorial had been published, Moscow's alarm at the whole trend of events was made apparent when on 2 December TASS announced that an invitation extended to Brezhnev during the summer to Visit India at an opportune time was now being accepted, and that Brezhnev was to arrive within two weeks. When Brezhnev arrived on this emergency journey, he was accompanied by a deputy chairman of the USSR's State Commission for Foreign Economic Relations, and it appeared likely that the Soviet policy of support and economic help for the Nehru government was to be emphatically reaffirmed.

By mid-December, Ghosh had backed off very slightly from his extreme anti-Chinese position, telling a press conference that some political parties wished to make capital of the Sino-Indian dispute, and praising Nehru for not seeking war with China as a means of settling the dispute. At the same time, he reaffirmed that if Peiping indulged in any act of aggression, India would be justified in repelling the intruders . Other CPI rightists were not so forebearing toward Peiping. Central Secretariat member Ahmad on 13 December publicly declared, in response to a question about the Chinese attacks on Ghosh, that Ghosh could well look after himself "and needs no advice from outside as to what he should do in a matter with which the Indian people as a whole are vitally concerned." Ahmad dismissed as "absurd" the People's Daily contention that India's foreign policy and her attitude toward the CPU was determined by the "lure of the dollar," and reasserted CPI support for Nehru's foreign policy.

F. Prospects for the Indian Communist Party

By the end of 1961, then, the Indian Communist Party had reached a point at which the right wing of the party was openly criticizing the CCP and was being criticized by it; was supporting Moscow generally against Albania and China, though regretting the means that had been used to attack Albania; was itself shocked by and divided over the new assault on Stalin, and was publicly regretting that Khrushchev had reopened this issue. The left wing was publishing statements supporting the Chinese line on Nehru; was censuring and sometimes even boycotting the central party organ for its anti-Chinese statements; had adopted at least one resolution attacking Khrushchev and the CPSU; and was generally united in opposition to the Soviet moves against Albania, China, and Stalin.

On 6 November, Indian leftist members of the National Council are said to have conferred with Basavapunnaiah and to have agreed with his judgment that the CPI could no longer be held together, and must break up after; the 1962 elections. Basavapunnaiah was said to have felt that it was only the elections which were maintaining the facade of CPI unity now, and that the only thing which could pull the party together might be an unexpected success at the polls. Later in the month, after conferring with Ranadive, Basavapunnaiah took a slightly less extreme position, asserting that the leftists were preparing a document which would force the issue of the CPI's international allegiance at the CPI Congress or National Council meeting to be held after the elections. He added that if the rightists did not agree at least to a policy of non-alignment with either Peiping or Moscow, the leftists would initiate a split in the party. At about the same time, S. G. Sardesai, secretary of the Mararashtra provincial party organization and a leader of the right-wing CPI faction, reportedly warned a meeting of his followers to be prepared for a split between the pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese wings of the CPI (and of other Communist parties) as a result of the Sino-Soviet struggle.

In evaluating the reality of the leftist threat to split the party, it must be remembered that non-alignment, insofar as it involves neutrality on policy issues disputed by Moscow and Peiping, is simply not possible for the CPI. For example, the question of policy toward the Nehru government, on which many of the differences between the CPSU and CCP have focused in recent years, cannot be evaded by the Indian party; the CPI must lean either to one side or the other, since it can neither avoid having a policy toward Nehru nor reconcile the incompatible policies of the Chinese and Soviet leaderships. Similarly, the questions of whether or not to continue to seek power through parliamentary elections, of whether to seek to draw the national bourgeoisie into an alliance, cannot be indefinitely evaded in fact although they can be blurred over in compromise resolutions. Entirely apart from the policies urged on each wing of the party by Moscow and Peiping, extremists of each wing have their own convictions which they will not give up. The CPI in recent years has prevented this fundamental contradiction from tearing it apart only by allowing the provincial organizations dominated by one or another faction to follow in practice their own line, within very broad limits commonly agreed upon in the center.52 With the continued polarization of the party along Soviet and Chinese lines, however, this arrangement has tended to break down, because worsening relations between the CPSU and the CCP have inevitably led to open conflict between the autonomous leftist provinces and the center. Basavapunnaiah on 6 November declared that if the Chinese party were to "take action against the CPSU" — meaning a direct attack on Khrushchev — this would cause the breakup of the CPI; and in this he was probably correct. In the absence of Sino-Soviet mutual direct denunciation, however, the CPSU will in the near future probably continue to strive to maintain the facade of unity in the Indian party. It would do so if only because the three greatest centers of Communist popular strength in India — Kerala, Andhra and West Bengal — are also centers of considerable left-faction rank-and-file strength, so that in the event of the formation of two Communist parties in India the leftist one, oriented toward the CCP, might well take with it a great deal of the present party.

By the estimate of the CPI itself, the February elections are unlikely to help the party significantly, and are hence themselves unlikely to help keep the party united. Therefore, whether and how long the CPSU, in the absence of an open Sino-Soviet split, would be successful in holding the Indian party together would depend on a number of long-term factors which are beyond the scope of this paper: how many concessions the CPSU would be willing again to make to the leftist faction; the development of Sino-Soviet relations, and of the policy of the Chinese leadership toward the CPI; how far the Soviet deStalinization campaign is continued and extended, and how far Soviet prestige suffers in consequence; whether Nehru and his successors within the Indian government and the Congress party veer toward the left or the right on foreign and domestic policy; the overall state of East-West relations, and the prospects for the peaceful coexistence line; and the related question of the future views of the Soviet leadership on the current balance of power, the level of acceptable risks, and the consequent choice of a more or less militant policy toward the West.

Finally, Soviet short-term chances of averting a schism in the CPI must hinge in large part on Moscow's success or failure in finding a suitable successor to Ajoy Ghosh, who died on 13 January 1962. It will be most difficult to discover any CPI leader who is both firmly reliable from the CPSU's point of view and capable of conciliating the opposing wings of the Indian party in their present hostile mood. The most obvious candidate will be E.M.S. Namboodiripad, who has aspired to succeed Ghosh for several years and who has served as acting general secretary on occasion; however, Namboodiripad has made many gestures toward the leftists over the past two years in response to their growing strength within the party, and there are good indications that he is now distrusted both by the CPI's right wing and by the CPSU. If Namboodiripad were chosen general secretary, this might increase leftist influence within the central CPI machinery sufficiently to induce the party militants not to split away — but at the cost of reduced Soviet influence within the Indian party and increased disaffection by the CPI rightists. If on the other hand Moscow were to succeed in installing as general secretary a rightist such as Dange or even some neutral nonentity, Soviet influence in the party center might be preserved, but the danger of a leftist split would be increased. The most hopeful expedient for Moscow would seem to be to accept Namboodiripad reluctantly as the new CPI leader and attempt to influence him subsequently to turn again in the Soviet and moderate direction. This, Namboodiripad is opportunistic enough to do; but there is as yet no evidence that Moscow has resolved upon this course, or that, if followed, it would extricate the CPSU from its Indian dilemma.  

_______________

Notes:

31. This report recurred several times; it seems to be the favorite wish-fantasy of the CPI left faction.  
32. It was just such a proposal by a minority right-wing West Bengal party leader that had been angrily shouted down at the January West Bengal provincial meeting Ghosh had addressed.
 
33. It had previously been reported that Indian diplomats in Peiping had frequently been humiliated and insulted, that members of the embassy staff had even been publicly attacked and beaten in the streets, and that protest notes about this had not been answered.  

34. While the USSR certainly did not want a direct attack on India included in any WPC resolution, this Soviet willingness to undertake a polemical defense of India at a front group meeting may have been specially influenced by the locale of the WPC session. At a subsequent meeting of the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization in Indonesia a few weeks later — where several much stronger Sino-Soviet clashes on a number of issues were reported — it was reported that the Chinese delegate launched a similar strong attack against India for having sent troops to the Congo, without contradiction from the Soviet representative.
 
35. Similarly, New Delhi has on occasion sought to prevent CPI extremists from making contact with CPSU leaders: thus in February 1959 it was reported that Ranadive, originally named to the CPI delegation to the 21st CPSU Congress, had been refused a passport, while more moderate CPI leaders had been given passports. In another step likely to have been intended at least in part to weaken the left faction of the CPI, the Indian government on 27 December 1961 was to withdraw the foreign exchange trading license of the Bank of China; this bank had reportedly been used as a base for CCP financing of its adherents within the Indian Communist party.

36. Not only did the CPI not protest the exclusion of the Chinese, but it seemed to go out of its way to avoid mentioning the fact. Thus on 23 April the article on the opening of the party Congress carried in New Age noted that "the fraternal delegates from the parties of France, German Democratic Republic and Israel were unfortunately refused visas and could not attend;" there was no allusion to Liu Ning-i or the Chinese party.

37. Moreover, the Indian government might not have felt free to refuse to extend the visa of a top Chinese leader.

38. The provisions summarized in this sentence were omitted from the TASS text of Suslov's speech, perhaps because they revealed too explicitly that the CPSU was attempting to set a line for the CPI. They appeared in the New Age version of the speech.

39. While Ghosh in this speech merely implied strongly several times that the national democratic front must include suitable elements of the national bourgeoisie, Pravda's 12 April report on his speech, in summarizing this portion of his remarks, took the liberty of saying so explicitly: another indication of the CPSU's position.  
 
40. This point was again emphasized in a short review of the CPI Congress in a fall issue of the Soviet journal Peoples of Asia and Africa.

41. Basavapunnaiah, for example, continuing his efforts to convince the CPI that the CPSU had given authority over the Indian party to Peiping, claimed privately that Suslov had strongly urged the CPI to "follow" the Chinese example of economic development and had emphasized that the Chinese method of "solving the agricultural crisis" was applicable to India. This claim was remarkable in view of the current Chinese economic situation and the many Soviet public and private allusions in 1961 to the mess the Chinese party had created.

42. Actually, one or two of the nine extra persons thus restored to the National Council were leftists from Maharashtra whom the rightist faction had also sought to purge.

43. Sundarayya's view of the nature of the resolution finally passed by the congress.

44. After going through several stages in his political evolution (like a number of other CPI leaders), Nair had now adopted a moderate position.

45. A seven-man delegation was supposed to go to Moscow, but it is not certain that two of the lesser CPI delegates actually went.

46. On 24 September, Ranadive had reportedly sent an intermediary to the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi to emphasize to the CCP that Dus Gupta was a reliable member of the leftist faction and should be taken into confidence by the Chinese at the 22nd CPSU Congress.
 
47. Subsequently, an unconfirmed Yugoslav press report on 10 January 1962 claimed that the secretariat of the West Bengal party had also adopted a resolution denouncing the Soviet attack on Albania at the 22nd Congress.

48. A number of other non-bloc Communist parties whose representatives did not attack Albania at the CPSU Congress nevertheless went on record against the Albanians subsequently; it is likely that this belated conformity (which has still not extended even to all European parties) was evoked by subsequent CPSU pressure, and it is possible that such pressure was applied also to Ghosh.

49. Khrushchev subsequently conceded, in another context, that he personally was not infallible.

50. It is particularly credible that the CPSU gave Ghosh such contingency authorization because this is exactly what had happened in October 1959, when the CPI made its strongest previous criticism of Peiping in connection with the Ladakh incidents. (See pages 71-72.)

51. The West Bengal secretariat resolution reported by the Yugoslav press in January 1962 is said to haze formally affirmed that Ghosh's anti-Chinese statement represented "the attitude of part of the party only."

52. One prominent West Bengal party leader privately acknowledged in November that the CPI had "now become almost a loose federation type" of party along the lines of the Indian bourgeois parties.
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