Stalin'spersonal intervention in 1951 led to the replacement of C. Rajeshwar Rao by Ajoy Ghosh as General Secretary of the CPI. According to Mohit Sen ?Ajoy Ghosh was a staunch supporter of the Soviet Union. He looked upon it as the centre of and as the most powerful and experienced of the world communist movement.? (A Traveller and the Road. The journey of an Indian communist, Delhi 2003, p. 140). But he did not agree with the Soviet support to Nehru and his government. He considered Nehru'ssocialism a hoax (New Age Weekly, December 25, 1951, in Marxism and Indian Reality; Selected Speeches and Writings of Ajoy Ghosh, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 114-129). The leadership of the CPI was then divided between Soviet line and Mao line. Ajoy Ghosh was committed to the Soviet line. Mohit Sen knew that P.C. Joshi and S.A. Dange were also ardent supporters of the Soviet line of support to Nehru'spolicies, but a powerful section of the CPI was not prepared to adopt this line. He writes, ?It was a pity that apart from Joshi and Dange, others who were the decision-makers in the CPI did not understand this. Even the best among them like Ajoy Ghosh felt that Nehru'ssocialism was a hoax with which he wanted to fool the people. Most of the communist cadres including I went along with Ajoy Ghosh and the other decision-makers in the leadership of the CPI. The reason for this was a dogmatic and one sided understanding of Marxism and a refusal to start from existing reality.? (op. cit. p. 127)
In June 1951, perhaps, at the behest of the Soviet Union, P.C. Joshi'sexpulsion from the Party was revoked, but before that, in May 1951, Joshi had already launched his independent monthly paper India Today from Allahabad. Through India Today Joshi launched a powerful campaign in favour of the peace movement and Left-Nehruvian Congress collaboration. Thus his approach was very close to the Soviet line. But Joshi'scredibility was very low and he was facing stiff resistance within the party at that point of time. Joshi'srating in the party may be judged from the fact that in Madurai Congress (1953) in the election to the Central Committee, Joshi could poll only 107 votes while his arch-rival Ranadive got 147 votes. Mohit Sen, a very trusted lieutenant of Ajoy Ghosh till the latter'sdeath in 1962, has very candidly recorded the resistance and humiliations which Joshi had to undergo. He writes, ?Personal prejudices were also an impediment. Considering the broad affinity of their views, it was only such prejudices that were a stumbling block in his (Ajoy Ghosh) uniting with P.C. Joshi and S.A. Dange. Personal differences were the basis of expanding political differences till they became antagonistic. If these three leaders had come together, the entire subsequent history of the CPI could have been changed for the better.? (op. cit. p. 138).
At another place he writes, ?Ajoy Ghosh inclined towards the Joshi line but wanted a compromise that would preserve the unity of the party. And as mentioned earlier, he was prejudiced against Joshi. Dange took an independent stand closed to Ajoy Ghosh than to any body else but he did not exert himself too much.? (ibid, p. 150)
In face of resistance born out of such personal prejudices, P.C. Joshi had already charted out an independent line of action for himself. On one hand he had managed his entry in the Peace Council, on the other he was using the monthly India Today as a powerful vehicle to articulate his viewpoint. Joshi was convinced that ?he himself and other Indian communist leaders relied heavily throughout 1920s, 1930s and 1940s on Rajni Palme Dutt for theoretical understanding of India and Indian revolution and Rajni Palme Dutt had a totally negative understanding of Gandhiji. He described Gandhiji as a ?Mascot of bourgeoise? and as the ?evil genius of Indian politics.? (Bipan Chandra, P.C. Joshi: A Political Journey, P.C. Joshi Birth Centenary Memorial Lecture, 17 August, 2007, JNU p. 17). As stated in earlier article, in this series, R. Palme Dutt had a negative perception of the whole Indian freedom struggle starting from 1857 Revolt itself but his perception was rooted in Marx'sown perception as reflected in his signed articles on India published in the NYDT in June-July 1853.
In this background, Joshi must have thought that the change in the Indian communist mindset should begin from a correct presentation of the 1857 Revolt itself. That is why we find him taking unusual interest in 1857. India Today in its November 1951 issue carried an article by Mrs P.M. Kamp-Ashraf, the wife of the communist historian K.M. Ashraf, under the title ?Indian Revolt of 1857 and the Early British Labour Movement.? In this article she highlighted close affinity of ideas and politics between the Chartist leader Ernest Jones and Karl Marx. Again, in the February-March 1952 joint issue a well researched article by a young journalist Satinder Singh was published under the title ?The Indian Mutiny?, but with a clarificatory footnote by the author that ?I use the word ?mutiny? because of the currency it has gained. I do not characterise this event as mutiny.? Interestingly, the same Satinder Singh under a pseudonym ?Talmiz Khaldun? contributed a long research paper to the book Rebellion 1857 edited by P.C. Joshi and published by the PPH in July 1957.
Thus P.C. Joshi was trying to prepare a favourable ground for the receptivity of the 1857 Revolt. But he was clear in his mind that the communist mindset conditioned by Marx'sperception on India as reflected in his 1853 articles, would not accept any other interpretation of 1857 unless it was presented in the words of Marx himself. Out of this consideration, perhaps, Joshi chose to reproduce two unsigned articles on 1857 Revolt published in the NYDT dated August 4, 1857 and August 14, 1857. He directly attributed them to Marx by giving the title ?Marx on Revolt of 1857? prefixed by an intro ?Two hitherto undiscovered articles by the founder of Marxism?. In an editorial note he informed the readers, ?A few years back communist journalist Syed Sibte Hassan (now incarcerated in a Pakistan prison) discovered in the USA some hitherto unknown articles on India by Karl Marx. India Today is very proud to print two of them for the first time in English. We hope to print the rest of the articles in future issues.?
Surprisingly, Joshi did not throw any light on what grounds he attributed the authorship of these unsigned articles to Karl Marx and who did it?Joshi himself or Sibte Hassan? But, from the above note it is clear that the bunch of these unsigned articles on 1857 had reached him ?a few years back? and that he had more than two articles in his possession. However, the rest of the articles could not be published as ?he was asked by the party leadership to close down the Paper? (Gargi Chakravartty, op. cit. 2007,. p. 94). Consequently, September 1952 issue turned out to be the last issue of India Today.
Evidently this path breaking ?discovery? must have thrilled the hearts of all communist intellectuals and workers. But we get no evidence of their reactions to it. How could the communist intellectuals, who claim to have read and memorised every word of Marx, Engels, Lenin and even Stalin and who boast of their scientific and rational approach to history, swallow the arbitrary and sudden attribution of the authorship of these unsigned articles to Marx and that too, after a gap of almost a century, by an expelled and denigrated leader like P.C. Joshi? Though there is nothing on record, some indirect evidence suggests that Joshi must have received very adverse and inconvenient reactions to his discovery, because afterwards he never talked of the ?discovery? of these articles first published by him in the India Today. He might have realised that anything new to be published in the name of Marx must carry the stamp of the authority of Moscow also. This must have been at the back of his mind during his first visit to Moscow in December 1952.
(To be continued)
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