SWATANTRA—JULY 26, 1947
THE latest Congress Bulletin contains the text of Sri
Shankarrao Deo’s circular to Provincial Congress Committees defining the
Congress attitude to Socialists. It says that “the Socialists collect funds for
their own party organization and not for the Congress” and “the Congress
therefore cannot and should not help in collecting funds for another political
organization.” It says further that “for similar reasons it is equally
undesirable for Congress Committees to present addresses and to otherwise take
part in welcoming Socialists.” The importance o f these directives consists in
the breach with precedent that they prescribe. From the high altitude of the
position that the Congress seeks nothing for itself, that it wants power not
for itself but for the whole country and its people, the Secretary of the
organization has pulled it down to the level of non-co-operation with all other
parties, of refraining from helping any of them with collection of funds or
even with a welcome.
* * *
From the language of Sri Deo’s
circular it would look as though Congressmen are to be taught that the separate
existence of a party apart from the Congress is a thing to be looked askance
at. Evidently the Congress bosses feel that the time has come and not merely
for a parting of the ways with the Socialists but for an actual fight with the
Socialist Party. They want to see the party put down. In their anxiety to put
the Socialists down, they appear to be drawing closer even to the Communists
who till the other day were the target of vehement attack by Congress leaders
and most of whom are even now held under detention in Congress administered
province. Sardar Patel is credited with confidence in his own ability to keep
the Communists in order under any circumstances. He is not so sure of the
Socialists, and Jai Prakash in particular seems to have become for him a
recurring headache.
* * *
Jai Prakash Narayan is the
glamour man of Indian politics at the present moment and the Socialist Party’s
biggest asset. A Bihar peasant’s son brought up in a village it is said he saw
a tramcar for the first time at the age of nineteen. Then the thirst for
western learning took possession of his soul and he went to America where he
stayed for eight years and studied in five universities earning his keep all
the time by working as a farm labourer. In the 1942 movement he was listed as
Public Danger Number One and rose to eminence with the concentrated attention
that the authorities then bestowed on him. He has high mettle and immense
popularity but the purpose of his striving is uncertain. It wavers between the
methods of the revolutionary and the dialectic excitements of the academic
intellectual. The Socialist’s service of labour is hampered by the party
leaders’ addiction to middle class modes. Socialist policy in any given crisis
is apt to resolve itself into a series of dilemmas left to be solved by the
drift and pressure of circumstances rather than the conscious exertion of a
directing will. Just now they seem to be torn between the lure of power and
office under the shadow of Congress patronage and the desire to play a heroic
role as the common man’s champion against the swiftly developing
Congress-capitalist alliance and authoritarianism.
* * *
In the early days of the
Socialist Party Jai Prakash Narayan lost his best workers to the Communist
Party. In South India, at any rate, the C.S.P. was almost bodily transformed
into the C.P. and the most energetic and prominent of Andhra, Tamil and Kerala
Communists happen to be erstwhile Congress Socialists. All the discontents in
the land and the disaffected of other parties have made their contribution to
the rank and file of the Communist Party which therefore holds the palm in the
whole country for energy, executive efficiency, propaganda drive,
organizational thoroughness and skill—and fanaticism. While misery stalks the
land, the fascination of Communism cannot but grow in India. Stamped as it is
with the lure of the worldwide vogue and immortal renown of Lenin’s great name,
it might have become the biggest of Indian political forces, but wrong
leadership on recent crucial occasions inspired by slavish clinging to the
coat-tails of Lenin’s administrative successors in Russia, has sadly impaired
the growth and prestige of Communism in our midst. It is however being swiftly
redeemed from the past blunders of its own leadership by the still worse
blunders of the Congress leaders now. When the passion of Communists is
released from thraldom to the gospel of text-book dogma emanating from Moscow
and is applied to the service and direction of popular urges, when its present
rigidity is replaced with a broad humanitarianism, the resulting power and
influence might well make Communism, in the wake of the coming adult suffrage,
the most formidable of India’s political forces, and not the least potent of
international influences with all the energy of Russia minus that military
expansiveness of the Soviet which is being dreaded so much elsewhere in the
world.—(SWATANTRA July 26, 1947 ) S A K
A.
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