Puran Chand Joshi Quotes

“ Rapidly marching events left no choice for Bengal Congress. In December we communists broke with the Forward Bloc. Bose wanted to give a call for national struggle for Swaraj and was against an immediate struggle for civil liberties and against a call for satyagraha for Swaraj either through the Forward Bloc or the Left. Bengal Congress under Left leadership had stomached more imperialist terror than the Congress had ever done under Right leadership. What was such Leftism worth ? Was it Leftism? Was it not just using Left slogans to escape struggle ?

Hitler’s aggression against the USSR immediately upset the balance of forces in the Allied camp; the isolation of the Soviet Union was replaced by the Anglo-Soviet and the American-Soviet alliance (p. 42).

He does not struggle against compromise ; he seeks to canalise the anti-compromise feeling towards himself. Instead of fighting against compromise he is only waiting to take advantage of it. On the basis of neo-Swarajyism, Bose cannot create a breach between the bourgeoisie and the existing bourgeois leadership, nor can he win the abiding loyalty of the masses. He can only shoot a racket and see it going up, in smoke.

We, therefore, quote from Joshi’s pamphlet. The Government circular stated: “ In the Party Congress held in Bombay from May 23 rd to June 1 st , 1943, there was an attack on the negative policy of the Congress and the resolution openly identified for the first time the Congress Socialists and Forward Bloc with the fifth-column elements who are accused of taking advantage of the Congress resolution of August 1942 to lead the country to the brink of disaster. Not only are the Communists almost the only Party which fought for victory; they alone have criticised the Congress defeatism from a political point of view as opposed, for instance, to the fundamentally communal criticism of the Congress policy by the Muslim League etc., and have openly attacked as traitors the off-shoots of Congress, the Forward Bloc and the Congress Socialists Party.

With the outbreak of the war, the world seems to have turned upside down, slogans changed sides, friends became foes and so on. Ours is a colonial slave country. The fundamental contradiction is between imperialism on the one hand and the entire nation on the other. The very outbreak of the war deepens this antagonism. National struggle becomes a practical proposal. But it is an explosive struggle with gloves off. The division between the Indian people becomes between those that stand for struggle and those that don’t. We do not have a national struggle because the bourgeoise is at the top of the national movement. The obvious course would be to free the national front from the influence of bourgeois reformism and develop the political strength of the proletariat within the common front so as to develop the forces of struggle in a manner so as to make a national struggle inevitable and overw’helm and isolate the cowardly bourgeoisie. ”

The defeat of Nazis at Stalingrad had made it clear that Hitler could not come to India. In May-June 1943, Subhash Chandra Bose left Berlin and came to Singapore (p. 158). We discussed the new situation. We called for fight against sabotage. We named the Congress Socialists, the Forward Bloc and the Trotskyites as groups that made the fifth-column, the agents of the Jap invader (p. 159).

‘We are the Indian Party of Lenin and Stalin, the great leaders of the people whose teaching and work finds living expression in the epic resistance of the Soviet people which the peoples of the world seek to emulate in their own lands’.

“ The national leadership did not pursue the path of struggle but of settlement. The Working Committee would not give a call for struggle. ‘Let us demand a national struggle from the national leadership’, said the Forward Bloc, ‘but we must be prepared to start a struggle on our own.’

“ There was surging atmosphere of struggle. Left had been campaigning for a nation-wide struggle, under the Congress, for achievement of national freedom. When war broke out, the question of national struggle became an immediate issue, a practical question.

Addressing the ‘patriots’ Joshi appealed : “ August 9 is coming again. Memory inevitably goes back to August 9 last year. Shame overwhelms one when one remembers that from that day the fifth-column spoke and acted in name of the Congress. To celebrate August 9 is to hand over the initiative to the fifth-column. Subhash Bose is already in Singapore, the Japs have made him Commander-in-Chief of their ‘Indian Independence Army.’ ‘Marshal’ Bose is looking to India to see what happens on August 9. It is for him a test of the mobilising capacities of his own gang and its links with the patriotic masses. If any widespread demonstrations take place or any serious disturbances start, ‘Marshal’ Bose will report to Tojo, his master, that India is rotten ripe for invasion. There is no time to lose. Last August Bose was in Berlin. This time he is much nearer, at Singapore. The traitor Bose will never touch the golden soil of Bengal if we make up our mind about August 9.”

“ Left nationalism, organised under the Forward Bloc, was born as an independent political force five months before the war. Five months of rapidly marching events after the outbreak have turned it into its very opposite and left it neither as genuine leftism nor good nationalism. It acts not as a progressive but as a retrogressive force. Its words are Left, its practice is anti-struggle, anti-unity, its aim remains settlement with imperialism.

“ We would whole-heartedly participate in any call for satyagraha given by the Congress. We would oppose, if it ever gave, the Forward Bloc call of satyagraha for Swaraj because it would be qualitatively a different thing. Workers, peasants, students have already adopted the proletarian technique of struggle—mass action. They have already come under the influence of Socialism. The effort of the Forward Bloc to win over these movements for its satyagraha or political policy has to be resisted as the infiltration of bourgeois influence over the masses. Before the working class, Kisan and student workers, the Forward Bloc has to be opposed not as being too Left but as being the disruptive agency of the bourgeoisie. In fact the Forward Bloc exactly does what the Right wants done—remove their fear of the growing unity of the working class and kisan movements with the Congress.

“ The situation in Bengal since the very outbreak of war had become intolerable. Huq through an ordinance of his own had sought to make Bengal proof against struggle. A province-wide mass struggle in Bengal would have transformed the situation. Bengal Congress was under Left leadership and a struggle through Bengal Congress would have shown the path of struggle to millions of Congressmen. A province-wide struggle in Bengal would have rendered a national struggle inevitable. These were the great possibilities. Their successful realisation depended particularly upon Bose. He was the unquestioned leader of Bengal Congress and the Forward Bloc was the strongest single group inside Bengal Congress. Bengal was the strongest sector of people’s front of struggle. Exactly for the same reason Bengal invited the wrath and special attention of the anti-struggle national leadership.

“ For a national struggle, Bose wants another Congress. In the name of struggle he disrupts the very organ of struggle and thereby renders struggle itself impossible. He only scatters to winds the achievements of the past struggles—the national unity they created and which is today embodied in the Congress. To raise the slogan of another Congress is not to be pro-struggle but just a disruptor, pure and simple. The slogan of another Congress is not only a cover for an anti-struggle policy, is not only disruptive of national unity but is an alternative road to compromise.

“ One can tear off the hair of one’s head looking for some scientific system in Bose’s politics. He is happy without it. Gandhi relies on his ‘inner’ voice—Bose goes by intuition. We get behind Messiahs who are prepared to lead provided we follow them in their blindness. Such is the debacle to which bourgeois leadership, whether Right or Left, is reduced.