“ Left nationalism, organised under the Forward Bloc, was born as an independent political force five months before the war. Five months of rapidly m… - Puran Chand Joshi

“As a part of their general drive against the Left, they imposed the three years ban on Bose. The first reaction of the Forward Bloc was to defy it. We counselled against it on the ground that a defiance of the Working Committee on the organisational issue would be playing into its hands. Then came the trouble over the Election Tribunal. Once again we took our stand against those who suggested a revolt. Blows from the right came raining in.

Joshi wrote editorially : “ The Army is the one instrument that stands between our unarmed nation and the Fascist invaders. Fraternal relationship between the Army and the people, in all threatened zones, is the need of the hour. To-morrow, when actual invasion begins, the army will have to reap the harvest ; it will find that the apathy of the kisan has turned to hostility, his patriotic will to resist broken by defeatist Gandhian phrase-mongers, the flames of his grievances fanned by the Fifth-Columnists, by the traitor Forward Blocists. ”

“ The Communists argued that a national struggle today was a practical possibility only through the Congress. The Congress had to be led into action. To think otherwise was to be blind. The course of action the communists suggested was an immediate organisation of local mass struggles against the economic and political effects of the war. The Congress must unify all these struggles as people’s united organisation for an immediate national struggle. Through struggles to a national struggle. This was our line.