The Communist Party of India is one of the oldest political parties in India. However within the Indian communist movement, there is a controversy on what date to consider as the foundation date of the party. The early history of the Indian communist movement was tumultuous and complicated. An Indian communist group emerged in Tashkent in 1920, led by M. N. Roy. From 1921 onward small local communist groups began to emerge inside India. A national communist conference was held in Kanpur in 1925. The efforts to build a Communist Party organization inside India were hampered by arrests and court cases against leading party members.
Following the party split in 1964 the two main entities of the Indian communist movement, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) and the contemporary CPI would interpret the early party history differently. The CPI(M) maintains the party was founded in Tashkent in October 1920 whilst CPI argues that the party was founded in Kanpur in December 1925.
Background There were some influences of Marxism in the Indian national revolutionary movement prior to the 1917 October Revolution. The émigré revolutionary Lala Har Dayal wrote a biography on Karl Marx in March 1912. Swadeshabhimani Ramakrishna Pillai wrote a biography on Marx in Malayalam language. However, there doesn't appear to have existed any organized communist activity in India before 1921.
At the onset of World War I a sector of militant nationalists was pinning their hopes that a British defeat in the war would pave the path for Indian independence. However as the United Kingdom emerged as one of the victorious powers in the World War, this sector revised their position that independence would be achieved by external assistance. Among the militant nationalists there was also an increased rejection of sporadic terrorism. On 7 May 1919 a meeting between Lenin and a number of Indian revolutionaries was held. Attendants included Raja Mahendra Pratap (the President of the Provisional Government of India set up with German support in Kabul in 1915), Mohamed Barakatullah Bhopali (the Prime Minister of said Provisional Government), Abdul Rab and M. P. T. Acharya. Acharya would later take part in the formation of the émigré communist organization in Tashkent in October 1920. The left-wing nationalists Raja Mahendra Pratap and Mohamed Barakatullah Bhopal would not join the Tashkent communist organization, but remained friendly with the group.
Between January and April 1920 a small number of radical Indian nationalists shifted to Tashkent in Soviet Turkestan. On 17 April 1920 an Indian Communist Section of Sovinterprop was formed in Tashkent, among its seven members were Abdul Majid, Abdul Fazil, Mohammad Shafiq and Mohammad Ali (the latter two being sent to Tashkent by the Provisional Government of India). The Indian Sovinterprop section produced a single-issue Urdu publication called Zamindar and the pamphlets Bolshevism and the Islamic Nations (authored by M. Barkatullah) and What Soviet Power is Like. It issued an appeal titled To the Indian Brothers.
M.N. Roy arrived in Moscow before the beginning of the 2nd World Congress of the Communist International, which was held July–August 1920. He attended the congress as a delegate with voting rights, representing the Communist Party of Mexico. Abani Mukherji (classified as a 'left socialist' by the congress organizers, non-voting delegate), Evelyn Trent-Roy (non-voting delegate, M. N. Roy's wife), M. P. T. Acharya (representing the Indian Revolutionary Association in Tashkent, non-voting delegate) and Mohamad Shafiq (observer) also attended the congress. A document, General Plan and Programme of Work for the Indian Revolution, was drafted by Roy and others during the congress. The document called for the establishment of an All India Revolutionary Centre to prepare for a congress of revolutionaries, the immediate foundation of a Communist Party of India and the immediate setting up of a school for the political-military training for Indian revolutionaries.
Founding in Tashkent in October 1920 The Second Congress of the Communist International laid out the course for the formation of an émigré Communist Party of India. The Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) set up a Small Bureau which organized First Congress of the Peoples of the East at Baku in September 1920, and would oversee the preparations for the formation of the Indian Communist Party.
On 17 October 1920 a meeting was held in Tashkent, that constituted an Indian Communist Party on the basis of the principles of the Communist International. In attendance were seven individuals; Roy, Abani Mukherji, Acharya, Mohamed Shafiq Siddiqi, Mohamed Ali (Ahmed Hasan), Evelyn Trent-Roy and Rosa Fitingov. The meeting resolved that the party would articulate a programme for revolutionary struggle adapted to the Indian context. The meeting ended with the signing of The Internationale.Communist Party of India (Marxist). Formation of the Communist Party of India at Tashkent (1920) The party bureau remained in Tashkent for some time. The party conducted propaganda and ideological activities, and would seek to coordinate efforts of communist groups inside India. A political school was operating at the India House, a one-storey building on Lavmentev Road in Tashkent located on the border between the 'old' and 'new' part of the city. By late 1920 Mukherji shared a draft party programme, but this document was rejected by Roy and thus not adopted.
At the India House, a group of 'muhajirs' resided. The 'muhajirs' were a group Indian Muslims who had been attempting to reach Turkey to fight for the defense of the caliphate there, but en route they were taken prisoners by Central Asian rebels and branded as infidels. When the muhajirs were rescued by the Red Army, 36 of them joined the Bolshevik military detachments. For the muhajirs the Young Bukharans (who were forming a Communist Party in Tashkent) served as an example. Soviet land reforms also impacted the political views of the muhajirs. Roy managed to enroll some 50 muhajirs into the Indian Military School in Tashkent, preparing them to take part in struggle against British colonial rule in India. At the India House the pan-Islamist muhajir and Roy's communist group cohabited. The communists frequently held politically lectures, in which they emphasized building a revolutionary mass movement to confront British rule (notably the communist lectures avoided direct attacks on religion). Shaukat Usmani, one of the India House muhajirs, eventually joined the communist group.
The émigré Indian Communist Party held a party meeting in Tashkent on 15 December 1920. A three-member Executive Committee was elected, consisting of Acharya (chairman), Shafiq (secretary) and Roy. The meeting admitted three persons as candidate members of the party – Abdul Qadir Sehrai, Masood Ali Shah Kazi and Akbar Shah (Salim). Five days later the party sent a short message to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkestan and the Turkestan Bureau of the Communist International, affirming that the Communist Party of India had been founded per the principles of the Communist International and that the party was working under the political orientation of the Turkestan Bureau.
By early 1921 Roy shifted to Moscow, and took three students along (Usmani, Abdul Majid, Abdul Kadir Sehrai) with him for further political training in there. Mukherji was left in charge of the party bureau in Tashkent. After the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement in March 1921, which largely ended the Russian civil war, there were some 36–40 muhajirs who wished to receive further training and by mid-1921 they were shifted to the Communist University of the Toilers of the East at Moscow. Some of the muhajirs began returning from Soviet Russia, such as Usmani. A number of them were accused and convicted by the British authorities in the Peshawar Conspiracy Case.
The Communist International, through ECCI and the Turkestan Bureau, sought to resolve organizational and political issues of the Indian revolutionaries. Two groups sent delegations to Moscow in the first half of 1921. One of the delegations was sent by the Tashkent-based Indian Revolutionary Association led by Abdur Rab Barq. The other group visiting the Soviet capital came from Berlin, and included Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, G.A.K. Lohani, Bhupendranath Datta, Pandurang Sadashiv Khankhoje, Nalini Gupta and Agnes Smedley. The Eastern Commission and the India Commission of the Communist International sought to merge the Tashkent émigré CPI led by Roy, the Abdul Rab group and the Chattopadhyaya group, but these efforts did not achieve any organizational unity. Eventually the Commission opted to recognize the Tashkent CPI as the legitimate grouping. Whilst most of the 14 members from the Chattopadhyaya delegation left Moscow in disbelief, two individuals remained (one took up work at the Communist International headquarters whilst the other, Nalini Gupta, would become a key assistant to Roy).
Ahead of the 3rd World Congress of the Communist International the Small Bureau of ECCI listed 'Communist Groups' from India on the list of organizations invited to send delegations with consultative vote. Four delegates representing India took part in the proceedings, but only Roy was named in the congress documents.
Roy authored Manifesto to the 36th Indian National Congress, Ahmedabad, 1921. The text reached India secretly, and was distributed at the Ahmedabad Indian National Congress session in December 1921.
Emergence of communist groups inside India Looking at the period between the October Revolution and the emergence of the CPI, Ghosh (1996) identifies four groups of revolutionary nationalists; Exiled revolutionaries disillusioned with the programmes of the Non-cooperation movement and the Khilafat movement, who became influenced by the October Revolution – a group including Abani Mukherjee, M. N. Roy, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, Mohamed Barakatullah Bhopali and M. P. T. Acharya. Individuals such as Shaukat Usmani, Muhammad Ali Sepasi, Rahmat Ali Khan, Firozuddin Mansoor and Abdul Majid, who belonged to the Khilafat and Hijrat Pan-Islamic movements but who came to be inspired by the October Revolution. Punjabi/Sikh diaspora in North America, organized in the Ghadar Party. National revolutionaries inside India, including left-wing elements emerging from the Gandhian movements, Indian National Congress, the Khilfat movement, Akali movement (in particular the Babbar Akali movement). Among the Gandhians leftists, there was dissatisfaction over the withdrawal of the first Non-cooperation movement which prompted them to turn towards the communist movement.
From the latter category, communist groups emerged in Lahore (the Inquilab group), Bombay (led by S. A. Dange), Bengal (led by Muzaffar Ahmad) and Madras (led by Singaravelu M. Chettiar). Sen and Ghosh (1991) argues that the four groups emerged independently from each other, and only the Lahore group had any knowledge of Roy's organization abroad. These different communist groups in India would later gather at the December 1925 Kanpur conference convened by Satyabhakta.
In late 1922 and early 1923 Roy reached out to Dange, Singaravelu, Muzaffar Ahmad and Shaukat Usmani to organize a conference in Berlin to unite the different communist groups in India. Dange and Singaravelu both decline the invite and the Berlin conference didn't materialize.
Bombay group