“ What would we say of a Congress leadership that attacks the Working Committee for being anti-struggle and does not itself launch a struggle ? Is it… - Puran Chand Joshi

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.

“ 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.