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What is not right with Left Kiran Maitra, an accredited member of the Communist Party of India, is one of the most authentic historians to narrate the ups and downs of the Communist movement. The socialist revolution in Russia came at a time when India was struggling against British rule, thus uplifting the morale of the freedom fighters. Yet they were not ready to accept socialism as an ideology. One of the finest examples is that of Lala Hardyal, who despite writing a life-sketch of Karl Marx, never agreed with the latter’s views.
Satya Bhakta launched the Communist Party of India on September 1, 1924. As India achieved its Independence, the communist party’s policy of “loyal opposition” was opposed by an insider BT Ranadive, whose call for a revolution against the Nehru government incited the comrades to bourgeois adventurism like “bank robberies; train robberies; attacks at public meetings with bombs”. PC Joshi, an expelled leader of the party, criticised this radicalism in his monthly paper India Today. Citing the failures of the Marxists, Maitra writes, “Age-old obscurantist ideas and innate faith in the Almighty stood in their way.”Opposing the Quit India Movement and contradicting the one-nation theory that resulted in the favour of Pakistan’s formation had proved to be political blunders. “They failed to comprehend that the politics of a country could not be divorced from the social system with which it was linked, both supplementing each other. Marxists in India ignored this basic fact,” says Maitra in the chapter “Dilemma of the Indian Marxists”. Political success came in the elections of 1957. The communists secured 60 seats in Kerala to form a government under EMS Namboodripad. The attack by China in 1962 put the communists in dilemma. Splits began in the party. The Communist Party of India (Marxists), got political power in West Bengal. Analysis of the failure of socialism, particularly in Russia, is on and Marxists are striving hard to revive the ideology in new terms. Marx’s claim of socialism being inevitable has been facing the test of space, along with test of time.
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Indian nationalists had lived on “past glories rather than looking forward”. Only a few young men with a small political influence embraced socialism initially. “Disillusioned and disheartened by the mode of struggle adopted by Gandhi, these youths thought of treading a new path,” writes Maitra. Among the Indians, who met Lenin for help against the British, only MN Roy could impress the Bolsheviks with his knowledge of Marxism. He was the only delegate from the East nation having a right to vote in the Third Communist International.
