“ After the appointment of the Ad Hoc Committee the B.P.C.C. had to choose its course of action finally. The Forward Bloc sought an agreement with us… - Puran Chand Joshi

P. C. Joshi issues a statement on August 27, 1945, “ on the reported death of Subhash Chandra Bose. ” He said: “ It is the British overlordship of our country that creates a Bose. But much worse has happened. The severity of post-August repression and the continued denial of power to the people has to-day led a great majority of our political leaders and the press to glorify Bose as a patriot and martyr ; some, of course, qualify by stating that he was misguided. To think only of his motives and forget the pro-fascist policy that he pursued is to lose the confidence and respect of the democratic elements abroad for the Indian freedom movement. Our differences with Bose and his Forward Bloc have been political. But we are against a foreign Government keeping them in prison. We demand and support the campaign for the release of his followers. ” (Communist Reply to Congress Working Committee Charges, p. 298).

“ 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.

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. ”