The Boseites stood isolated as unscrupulous disruptors inside the national movement ; to-day they are coming back as ‘honest patriots’. The hidden Ja… - Puran Chand Joshi

In People’s War dated August 23, 1942 Joshi came out with an editorial appeal-Tsolate the Fifth Columnists : “ True to their black role, the Fifth-columnists suggest blows that help their masters. The Boseites who till yesterday with their ‘nation wide struggle’ and ‘non-compromise’ slogans were the objects of every Congressman’s contempt as national disruptors, find that the present situation means half their job done. How are we to isolate and nail down this black crewl For isolate and nail them down, we must. Keep the peace. Isolate the Fifth-columnist as the arch goonda that trades on people’s blood. ” Joshi was too thick-headed to understand that the one and only Fifth-column, the Communist Party of India, had already been isolated, though elsewhere in the same issue of the People’s War he had admitted: “ The Boseites stood isolated as unscrupulous disruptors inside the national movement ; to-day they are coming back as ‘honest patriots’. The hidden Jap agents dared not show their faces ; to-day they are active among the patriots !” Of course, the Russian agent could see nothing but agents all around himself !

“ 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 ?

“ 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.