Marxist, XXXVI, 1, January-March 2020
Communist Party of India
Draft Platform of Action, 1930
PART—I
MAIN TASKS OF THE INDIAN REVOLUTION
The Indian people is groaning under the yoke and the exploitation of British imperialism. Relying upon their political and economic supremacy, and squeezing billions of rupees year by year out of the miserable national income of India, the blood-thirsty imperialists have brought the toiling masses of the people to a state of famine, hopeless poverty, intolerable slavery and mass extinction as a people.
With all the power of the state in its hands, controlling the main branches of industry, railways, sea and river transport, banks and credit system, the greater part of the land, forests and the irrigation system, British imperialism has retarded and still obstructs the economic development of our country in every way, supporting and relying upon all that is backward and retrograde in town and country.
The supremacy of British imperialism is the basis of the backwardness, poverty and endless suffering of our people. Only by the merciless and violent destruction of the political economic supremacy of the British imperialists will the working masses of India succeed in rising to their feet, achieving their independence and creating conditions requisite for their further development and for the reconstruction of society in the interests of the workers and peasants, and with the purpose of developing further towards socialism.
In the enslavement of the Indian people British imperialism relies upon the native princes, the landlords, the moneylenders and the merchants, utilizing the assistance of the national bourgeoisie. The system of land ownership by the landlords, native princes and moneylenders, and the relics of serfdom in the land system of India (and consequently in all India’s social and political institutions) represent the main bulwark of British supremacy.
In order to destroy the slavery of the Indian people and emancipate the working class and the peasants from the poverty which is crushing them down, it is essential to win the independence of the country and to raise the banner of agrarian revolution, which would smash the system of landlordism surviving from the middle ages and would cleanse the whole of the land from all this medieval rubbish. An agrarian revolution against British capitalism and landlordism must be the basis for the revolutionary emancipation of India.
Linked up as it is with the system of landlordism and usury, and terrified at the thought of a revolutionary insurrection by the toiling masses, the capitalist class has long ago betrayed the struggle for the independence of the country and the radical solution of the agrarian problem. Its present ‘opposition’ represents merely manoeuvres with British imperialism, calculated to swindle the mass of the toilers and at the same time to secure the best possible terms of compromise with the British robbers. The assistance granted to British imperialism by the capitalist class and its political organization, the National Congress takes the shape at the present time of a consistent policy of compromise with British imperialism at the expense of the people, it takes the form of the disorganization of the revolutionary struggle of the masses and the preservation of the system of imperialism, including the native states, the system of landlordism and the reinforced exploitation, jointly with the imperialism, of the mass of the people, of the working class in particular. The greatest threat to the victory of the Indian revolution is the fact that great masses of our people still harbour illusions about the National Congress, and have not realized that it represents a class organization of the capitalists working against the fundamental interests of the toiling masses of our country.
The policy of Gandhism, on which the programme of the Congress is founded, uses the cloak of vague phrases about love, meekness, modest and hard-working existence, lightening the burden of the peasantry, the national unity, the special historic mission of spiritualism, etc. But under this cloak it preaches and defends the interests of Indian capitalists, the inevitability and wisdom of the division of society into rich and poor, eternal social inequality and exploitation. That is, it preaches the interests of the capitalist development of India on the bone and sweat of the working masses of the people, in alliance with world imperialism. The National Congress betrayed and disorganized the struggle of the toilers in 1919–21. The National Congress supported the manufacturers against the workers during the textile strike and in fact assisted in the passing of anti-labour legislation. The National Congress refused to support the fight of railwaymen against British imperialism, suggesting that they should ask Lord Irwin and MacDonald to arbitrate. The National Congress opposed the peasantry in their struggle against the moneylenders, big landlords and the native princes.
Jointly with the liberals, the landlords and the manufacturers, the National Congress has produced the anti-popular Nehru Constitution, in which it declared the necessity of preserving the landlords, the rajahs and the moneylenders, remaining as a junior partner in the British Empire and leaving supreme authority in the hands of the British viceroy and the governor-general.
The National Congress issued the Delhi Manifesto supporting Gandhi’s 11 points, which represented the moderate programme of the Chambers of Commerce, and similar associations. It carried on negotiations with the liberals in prison trying behind the scenes to come to an understanding with the British government; and so forth. The National Congress, and particularly its ‘Left’ wing, have done and are doing all in their power to restrain the struggle of the masses within the framework of the British imperialist constitution and legislation.
In this connection, world history and the lessons of the class struggle in India prove that only the leadership of the working class can ensure the fulfilment of the historic task of emancipating the Indian people, abolishing national slavery, sweeping aside all the fetters which check national development, confiscating the land and effecting far-reaching democratic reconstruction of revolutionary character. The working-class of India, organized by the industrial process itself and by the class struggle, will under the leadership of its communist vanguard, perform its historic tasks of organizing the scattered masses of peasantry and town poor for struggle against British domination and landlordism.
But in order to organize the mass of the workers, in order to rally the proletariat as a distinct class force, conscious of its distinct class interests and fighting for the leadership of the national movement of emancipation, in order to bring about the revolutionary alliance of the working class and the peasantry, in order to liberate the working class, the peasantry and the town poor, from the hands of national reformism, and direct their revolutionary struggles towards an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution, for all these purposes, the working class requires its own proletarian Communist Party.
The Communist Party of India is the party of the working class, the final aim of which is the achievement of socialism and ultimately of complete communism. The programme of the Communist Party of India is totally different in principle from the programmes and ideas of the other parties and groups, which are parties of the capitalist class and petty bourgeoisie, not excepting the national revolutionary parties. While the latter are striving for the development of capitalism in India, the Communist Party (CP) is consistently and firmly fighting for a socialist path of development. While the national revolutionary groups are fighting for bourgeois rule and a bourgeois form of government the CP of India is fighting for the democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry, a Workers and Peasants’ Soviet government in India.
The only form of government, which can safeguard the interests of the workers, peasants and toilers generally is the Soviets. The Soviets, set up in the course of the revolutionary revolt of the working masses, as insurrectionary bodies for the overthrow of British supremacy, will be the sole genuine seats of authority, elected directly in the factories, works, villages, etc., ensuring confiscation of the land and the satisfaction of the vital needs of the mass of the people. The Soviet Government alone will be capable of ensuring to national minorities their right to self-determination, including that of complete separation, and at the same time achieving the maximum unity in the ranks of the toilers of various nationalities, engaged in common revolutionary struggle against the enemies of the Indian revolution. The Soviet government alone will be able to effect an alliance with the world proletariat for the purpose of defending the liberty and the achievements of the Indian revolution against the attacks of world imperialism, and the Indian exploiters. Only such a government will be able to make an alliance with all other Soviet states against international imperialism and for the final victory of the world revolution.
Firmly and courageously, and notwithstanding any sacrifices the Communist Party will defeat the disorganizing and treacherous work of the national reformists, it will organize the masses of the workers and peasants and lead them to victory over imperialism and take the lead in the further march towards socialism.
Adopting these as its guiding principles, the Communist Party of India advances the following main objects for the present stage of the Indian revolution:
1. The complete independence of India by the violent overthrow of British rule. The cancellation of all debts. The confiscation and nationalization of all British factories, banks, railways, sea and river transport and plantations.
2. Establishment of a Soviet government. The realization of the right of national minorities to self-determination including separation. Abolition of the native states. The creation of an Indian Federal Workers’ and Peasants’ Soviet Republic.
3. The confiscation without compensation of all the lands, forests and other property of the landlords, ruling princes, churches, the British government officials and moneylenders, and handing over for use to the toiling peasantry. Cancellation of slave agreements and all the indebtedness of the peasantry to moneylenders and banks.
4. The 8-hour working day and the radical improvement of conditions of labour. Increase in wages and State maintenance for the unemployed.
The Communist Party of India will fight for these main demands, which express the interests of the mass of the people, and the achievement of which will create the conditions for and render possible further development in the direction of the building of a Socialist State of society in India. At the same time, with the object of developing the mass revolutionary struggle and revolutionary education of the mass of the toilers, the Communist Party of India puts forward partial demands, the struggle for which will facilitate the mobilization of the mass of the people in revolutionary insurrection for its emancipation.
PART—II
THE FIGHT FOR PARTIAL DEMANDS
OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
The CP of India considers that the sole and historically tested means of winning independence, carrying out the agrarian revolution and achieving democratic reconstruction, is the path of the revolutionary struggle of the widest possible mass of the people, developing into a general national armed insurrection against the British exploiters and all their allies in our country.
The propaganda of non-violence of Gandhi, Nehru and other leaders of the National Congress is intended to prevent a general national armed insurrection of the toiling masses against the British rule. By his own confession in his autobiography, Gandhi took part in the armed suppression of the rising of the Zulu peasants in Africa and assisted the British robbers in their fight against the German capitalists for the right to exploit colonial peoples. Gandhi recruited Indian peasants into the British army and sent to their deaths hundreds of thousands of Indian workers and peasants in the interests of the British robbers. And today Gandhi tells the peasants and workers of India that they have no right to and must not revolt against their exploiters. He tells them that at the very time when the British robbers are making open war on the Indian people in the North Western Frontier Province and throughout the country.
The toiling masses will understand this double game of the National Congress. The workers and peasants of India will not give up their right to smash the whole feudal and imperialist system of exploitation, and their right to bring about the violent overthrow of British rule.
This emancipation of India cannot be achieved by a terrorist movement. The supporters of the terrorist movement of our country do not see and do not believe in the struggle of the broad masses of the people, and do not understand the connection between the agrarian revolution, the struggle of the working class and the overthrow of British domination. They try by single-handed and brave terrorist acts to achieve victory over British imperialism.
While recognizing the self-sacrifice and devotion of the terrorists in the cause of the national emancipation of India, the Communist Party of India declares that the road to victory is not the method of individual terrorism but the struggle and armed insurrection of the widest possible masses of the working class, the peasantry, the poor of the towns and the Indian soldiers, around the banner and under the leadership of the Communist Party of India.
The most harmful and dangerous obstacle to the victory of the Indian revolution is the agitation carried on by the ‘Left’ elements of the National Congress, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, Bose and others. Under the cloak of revolutionary phraseology, they carry on the bourgeois policy of confusing and disorganizing the revolutionary struggle of the masses, and help the Congress to come to an understanding with British imperialism. Particularly backwardly [sic] and harmful is the part played by the national reformists in the labour movement, in which they try in every possible way to substitute the method of class collaboration for the method of class struggle, doing their best to bring the workers under the influence of the ideals and organizations of the Indian and British exploiters. The treacherous part played by the National Congress as regards the peasantry has once again shown itself in the appeal of the ‘Left’ Congress leaders to the British governor-general of Bengal to send troops to crush the peasant revolts at Kishoreganj. In these circumstances some of the ‘Left’ national reformists (supporters of Roy and others), who realize that the masses are becoming disillusioned with the Congress have cleverly put forward the advice to ‘win’ the National Congress from within. Nominally, their object is to revolutionize the Congress. In reality it is to restore the prestige of the Congress by replacing the new treacherous leaders who are no better than the old.
The exposure of the ‘Left’ Congress leaders, who may again undertake to set up a new party or organization like the former League for Independence, in order once again to bamboozle the mass of the workers, is the primary task of our Party. Ruthless war on the ‘Left’ national reformists is an essential condition if we are to isolate the latter from the workers and mass of the peasantry, and mobilize the latter under the banners of the Communist Party and the anti-imperialist agrarian revolution in India.
The Communist Party of India calls upon all the toilers to form a united front against the imperialists, the landlords, the moneylenders and the capitalists. The CP of India calls upon the Muslim and Hindu workers and peasants not to be tricked by the cunning provocative methods of the British imperialist government and the reactionary native exploiters, who set up the toilers of different nationalities and religious beliefs against one another, and provoke conflicts between them. The CP of India calls upon all the toilers including the untouchables (pariahs) not to permit successful disorganization and splitting of the united revolutionary front of the oppressed, who suffer equally at the hands of their own and British exploiters.
In its struggle to win the leadership of the masses, the CP of India calls upon its supporters to make resolute use of any legal and semi-legal opportunity for publication and mobilization of the masses around working-class slogans. On every occasion they must expose the treacherous part played by the National Congress. Against the bourgeois front of compromise established by the National reformism, they must create a united front of the toilers from below on the basis of definite proletarian revolutionary demands and activities.
As one of the practical means of explaining to the toiling masses the exploiting and treacherous policy of the Congress leaders, the CP of India recommends to its supporters to make use of their activity in the trade unions, municipal councils (Calcutta, Bombay, etc.) and similar institutions.
The CP of India calls upon its supporters and organizations to develop mass revolutionary activities and struggle of the working class for their political and economic demands, mass refusal by the peasants to pay taxes, levies, rent, debts particularly in districts where there are large landed estates—thereby mobilizing and preparing the mass of the toilers for revolutionary struggle against imperialism. The CP of India calls upon all the class-conscious workers and revolutionaries to assist in transforming individual strikes of the workers into a general political strike, as a resolute step in organizing the revolutionary struggle of the mass of the people for independence, land and a Workers’ and Peasants’ government under the guidance of the working class.
A. General Demands
In order to develop mass revolutionary struggle and political training of the people, the CP of India puts forward and fights for the following demands:
1. Expulsion of the British troops, abolition of the police and general arming of the toilers;
2. Immediate liberation of all political prisoners, including those who have committed acts of individual and mass violence;
3. Unlimited freedom of speech, conscience, press, meeting, strikes and association for the toilers and abolition of all anti-popular and anti-labour laws (Trade Disputes Act, the prohibition of picketing, the regulations for the deportation of revolutionary workers, press act, etc.);
4. The abolition of rank, castes, national and communal privilege, and the full equality of all citizens irrespective of sex, religion and race;
5. Complete separation of religion from the State, and the expulsion of the missionaries as direct agents of the imperialists, with confiscation of their property;
6. The election of judges and officials and their recall at any time on the demands of the majority of the electors.
B. Special Workers’ Demands
In order to organize the widest lot of the working class, defend the day-to-day interests of the workers and maintain the general revolutionary struggle of the toiling masses in our country, the CP of India calls upon all class-conscious workers to concentrate every effort on the creation of a revolutionary trade union movement. The CP of India deems it essential to organize a mass trade-union movement based on factory committees, with the leadership elected directly by the workers and consisting of advanced revolutionary workers. The trade unions must become regular functioning mass organizations, working in the spirit of class struggle, and all efforts must be made to expel and isolate reformists of all shades, from the open agents of British capitalism such as Joshi, Chamanlal, Giri, etc., to the sham ‘Left’ national reformists such as Bose, Ruikar, Ginwala and other agents of the Indian bourgeoisie, who constitute a reactionary bloc for joint struggle against the revolutionary trade-union movement. At the same time the CP of India works for the transformation of the All-India Trade Union Congress into a fighting all-India centre of the labour movement on a class basis.
I. The CP of India calls upon all its supporters and all class-conscious workers to help in organizing factory committees in all factories, railways, docks, etc., throughout the country. In cases where owing to the victimization of the employers or British authorities the factory committees have to work semi-legally, the CP advocates put forward the demand for recognition of the factory committees as one of the principal demands in strike movements. The CP of India calls for the country-wide organization of workers’ defence detachments, both to defend workers’ strikes and demonstrations and to take part in the general revolutionary struggle.
II. The CP of India calls upon all class-conscious workers to help the Party to organize the movement and the struggle of the unemployed for regular relief at the expense of the State and the employers. It calls for the country-wide organization of unemployed councils, demonstrations and joint struggle with the workers in industry for the partial demands of the unemployed—monthly unemployment benefit at the cost of living minimum, refusal to pay rent, free supply of fuel and foodstuffs by the municipal authorities, etc.
III. Taking note of the semi-slave conditions of plantation and agricultural workers, the CP of India calls upon class-conscious workers to take part and assist in the organization of trade unions of plantation and agricultural workers. The fight for complete abolition of all systems of serfdom, compulsory and contract labour, deprivation of rights and unprecedented expropriation of the agricultural proletariat is one of our main aims, linked up closely with the aim of mobilizing the broad masses of peasantry to fight imperialist and feudal exploitation, under the leadership of the proletariat.
IV. With the object of protecting the working class from physical and moral degeneration, and also in order to raise its capacity to fight for emancipation, the CP of India fights for:
1. Limitation of the working day to 8 hours for adults and 4 hours for youths: 16 to 20. Introduction of the 6-hour working day in all harmful industries, including coal mining and free supply of milk and butter to the workers in these industries;
2. Complete freedom of trade unions, demonstrations, picketing and strikes;
3. Equal pay for equal work for men, women and youth;
4. Complete abolition of compulsory contract labour and system of legal bondage of the workers;
5. A compulsory weekly rest period at full pay, and a paid annual holiday of 4 weeks for adults and 6 weeks for youths;
6. State insurance against unemployment, sickness, accidents, industrial diseases, old age, loss of working capacity, orphanage and compensation for disablement;
7. Establishment of a State minimum wage of 50 rupees a month, prohibition of the contract system and establishment by law of weekly payment of wages;
8. Prohibition of reductions from wages for any reason or purpose whatsoever (fines, bad work, etc.);
9. Introduction of properly organized factory inspection, workers’ elected members thereof to supervise labour conditions in all factories employing hired labour;
10. The abolition of the system of hiring workers through jobbers, sarangs, etc.; employment and dismissal of workers to take place through labour exchanges, controlled and supervised by the trade unions. The abolition of all caste and feudal customs and regulations within the factories.
In addition, the CP of India supports and fights for each and every demand intended to improve the conditions of the workers (building of new houses at government or employers’ expense, provision of proper lavatories, clean dining rooms, etc.).
The CP of India is definitely against the principle of arbitration and interference by capitalist arbitration courts. It emphasizes most definitely that the sole means for winning any serious concessions on the part of the exploiters is resolute class struggle by strikes and mass revolutionary activities.
C. Peasant Demands
I. The CP of India fights for the confiscation without compensation of all land and estates, forests and pastures of the native princes, landlords, moneylenders and British government, and the transference to peasant committees for use by the toiling masses of the peasantry. The CP of India fights for the complete wiping out of the medieval system of landholding, to cleanse the whole of the land of the rubbish of the middle ages.
II. The CP of India fights for the immediate confiscation of all plantations and their transference to revolutionary committees elected by the plantation workers. The allotments to which the planters assign their contract workers and also the land not in cultivation to be handed over to the labourers and poor peasants as their property. At the same time the CP of India is in favour of the nationalization of large-scale mechanically equipped plantations and workshops connected wherewith, for utilization in the interests of the whole Indian people.
III. The CP of India fights for the immediate nationalization of the whole system of irrigation, complete cancellation of all indebtedness and taxes, and the transference of the control and supervision of the work of irrigation to revolutionary peasant committees elected by the working peasantry.
IV. In order to disorganize British rule and maintain revolutionary pressure against it, the CP of India calls upon the peasantry and agricultural proletariat to engage in all kinds of political demonstrations and collective refusal to pay taxes and dues, or to carry out the orders and decisions of the government and its agents.
V. The CP of India calls for refusal to pay rents, irrigation charges and other extractions and refusal to carry out any labour services whatsoever (begar) for the landlords, native princes and their agents.
VI. The CP of India calls for refusal to pay debts and arrears to government, landlords and moneylenders in any form whatsoever.
VII. As a practical watchword for the campaign among the peasantry, and as a means of developing more political consciousness in the peasant movement, the CP of India calls for the immediate organization of revolutionary peasant committees in order to carry on a fight to achieve all the revolutionary democratic changes required in the interests of emancipating the peasantry from the yoke of British imperialism and its feudal allies.
VIII. The CP of India calls for the independent organization of the agricultural proletariat, particularly the plantation workers, and its amalgamation with the proletariat of the towns under the banner of the Communist Party, as well as its representation in the peasant committees.
The CP of India is firmly convinced that the complete thoroughgoing and permanent achievement of the above mentioned political and social changes is possible only by the overthrow of British domination and the creation of a Federal Workers’ and Peasants’ Soviet Republic.
D. Emancipation of the Pariahs and the Slaves
As a result of the rule of British imperialism in our country there are still in existence millions of slaves and tens of millions of socially outcast working pariahs, who are deprived of all rights. British rule, the system of landlordism, the reactionary caste system, religious deceptions and all the slave and serf conditions of the past throttle the Indian people and stand in the way of its emancipation. They have led to the result that in India, in the twentieth century, there are still pariahs who have no right to meet with all their fellow men, drink from common wells, study in common schools, etc.
Instead of putting an end once and for all to this shameful blot on the Indian people, Gandhi and the Congress leaders call for the maintenance of the caste system, which is the basis and justification for the existence of the socially outcast pariahs.
Only the ruthless abolition of the caste system in its reformed, Gandhist [sic] variety, only the agrarian revolution and the violent overthrow of British rule, will lead to the complete social, economic, cultural and legal emancipation of the working pariahs and slaves.
The CP of India calls upon all the pariahs to join in the united revolutionary front with all the workers of the country against British rule and landlordism.
The CP of India calls upon all the pariahs not to give way to the tricks of the British and reactionary agents who try to split and set one against the other the toilers of our country.
The CP of India fights for the complete abolition of slavery, the caste system and the caste inequality in all its forms (social, cultural, etc.). The CP of India fights for the complete and absolute equality of the working pariahs and all the toilers of our country.
E. The Struggle for the Interests
of the Town and Petty Bourgeoisie
The CP of India calls upon the working small producers in the towns to support the revolutionary struggle against British domination, the landlords, the princes, and the moneylenders.
The capitalist class and the National Congress in their search for a compromise with imperialism, are betraying the interests not only of the workers and peasants but also of the wide sections of the town petty bourgeoisie (craftsmen, street traders, etc.).
Only the complete abolition of British rule, bringing in its train the liberation of our country, the radical alteration of the whole policy of the government, and the abolition of landlordism and survivals of serfdom throughout the Indian social order, will create the conditions requisite for developing the economic life of the country and radically improve the standard of living of the broad sections of the town petty bourgeoisie, handicraft workers and town poor.
The CP of India fights for the cancellation of all usury which has enslaved the poor people of the towns. The CP of India fights for the cancellation of all direct and indirect taxes, excise and other forms of taxation of wages and small earnings, which are ruining the artisans, street traders, employees, etc. It stands for the replacement of such taxes by a progressive income-tax on the capitalists, bond holders, banks, and inheritance. The CP of India fights for all revolutionary measures which serve the interests of the proletariat and are intended to improve the conditions of the town poor.
F. Emancipation of the Toiling Women
The toiling women of India are in a semi-servile condition under a double burden of the survivals of feudalism, economic, cultural and legal inequalities. The toiling women have no right whatsoever to determinate their fate, and in many districts are forced to drag out their existence in purdah, under the veil, and without the right not only of participating in public affairs, but even of freely and openly meeting their fellow citizens and moving through the streets.
At the same time the exploitation and working conditions of the women workers are surely unheard-of in their brutality and sweated character. The semi-slave conditions of women in India are the result of the widespread survival of relics of feudalism throughout the social order of the country and its full careful preservation by British imperialism.
Noting that the present bourgeois national women’s organization, the ‘All-India Women’s Conference’ led by Sarojini Naidu, one of the leaders of the National Congress, is not carrying on a genuine struggle to emancipate women but in reality is cooperating with British imperialism, the CP of India calls upon the working women of India to join the common revolutionary struggle of the toiling masses, under the leadership of the Communist Party for the overthrow of the social order and social system which give rise to the slave conditions of Indian women.
The CP of India fights for the complete social, economic, and legal equality of women. It fights for the complete abolition of night work for women and the prohibition of underground work for women (in the coal mines) and in all branches harmful for females.
The CP of India fights for leave of absence from work at full rates of wages two months before and two months after child birth, with free medical aid, and for the establishment of creches in all factories and workshops employing women, at the expense of the employers, such creches to cover small children and infants-at-the-breast, with a special apartment for feeding. Nursing mothers to have their working day reduced to 6 hours.
G. Soldiers’ Demands
I. In the struggle for the emancipation of our country, the CP of India calls for the spreading of revolutionary propaganda among the soldiers and police, and the explanation of the necessity for their armed insurrection together with the toiling masses of the country, against British rule.
II. The Indian soldiers and police are socially in the main poor peasants, who have been forced to seek employment in the army by poverty, landlessness and hunger. The CP of India fights for the allotment of land to the soldiers equally with all the other toiling peasants. The CP of India calls upon its supporters to explain to the soldiers and ex-soldiers that the only means of acquiring land, abolishing indebtedness and getting work is the revolutionary overthrow of British and feudal supremacy.
III. The CP of India calls upon its organizations and class-conscious workers and revolutionaries to begin organizing revolutionary groups among the soldiers. The aim of the groups must be to persuade and prepare the soldiers to take action in support of a general armed insurrection of the people for liberty, land and a Workers’ and Peasants’ Soviet government. It is necessary to explain to the soldiers by concrete examples drawn from their daily lives (arbitrary actions by the officers, shooting down of demonstrations, workers’ strikes, etc., flagrant inequality of treatment of white and Indian soldiers—worse food, clothes, allowances, etc.) that Indian soldiers are only a blind tool in the hands of the British robbers, who use them to maintain the national and social oppression of the toiling masses of our country.
IV. The CP of India calls upon its supporters to organize the ex-soldiers, who have had practical proof of the swindling and exploiting character of British rule, and to build up revolutionary ex-soldiers’ organizations among them and wherever possible fighting detachments to prepare, aid, support the future national insurrection and agrarian movement under the leadership of the Party.
V. The CP of India calls upon the class-conscious workers to organize fraternization with Indian soldiers with the object of establishing closest friendship and explaining the solidarity of the interests of workers, peasants and the soldiers in the fight for freedom and the abolition of all sorts of exploitation.
H. Youth’s Demands
I. The CP of India calls upon the revolutionary working-class youth to build up the Young Communist League of India, being an illegal organization owing to the complete lack of rights and the prevailing terror, which has as its object to organize the widest possible masses of working class, peasants and revolutionary student youth around the banner of the Communist Party, doing so either directly or through the medium of auxiliary, legal and semi-legal mass organizations (youth sections in the trade unions etc.).
II. The YCL of India as the helper of the Party has the special task of organizing the working youth under the banner of communism. The YCL of India must come forward as a political organization which subordinates all forms of struggles and mass organization—economic, cultural, sports, etc.—to the interests of the political struggles, namely, the overthrow of the imperialist yoke and the winning of power by the working class and the peasantry.
III. The CP of India calls for the country-wide organization both of mixed and separate workers’, peasants and students’ detachments both to defend peoples’ demonstrations, strikes, etc., and in order to make systematic preparations for the armed struggle of the Indian people.
IV. The CP of India calls upon the honest revolutionary youth to help in spreading political propaganda among the soldiers and police. The CP of India considers that the call of the ‘Left’ nationalists to the soldiers to leave the army and take their discharge, in accordance with Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, is a mistake. The task of genuine revolutionaries is to persuade the soldiers, while staying in the army, to prepare and raise, when the time is ripe, the banner of armed insurrection and, shoulder to shoulder with the toiling people, to overthrow British rule.
V. With the object of protecting the toiling youth against physical and cultural degeneration, and in order to develop its revolutionary offensive for the national and social liberation of the toiling masses, the CP of India fights for:
1. Limitation of the working day to 4 hours for youths from 16 to 20. Prohibition of employment of children under 16;
2. Universal free and compulsory education up to 16 in the national language of the people. Free boarding, clothing and supply of text-books to children at the expense of the State. Introduction of vocational training for youths at the expense of the State and the employers;
3. Paid weekly and annual (6 weeks) holiday for youths;
4. State maintenance of unemployed youths at rates equivalent to the cost of living.
CONCLUSION
The Communist Party of India, putting forward its programme of demands of the Indian revolution, calls upon the toiling masses to rally under the revolutionary banner of the Party and carry on the struggle to the successful conquest of power and the establishment of the democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry in the form of Soviets.
The CP of India declares that the successful solution of the problems facing the revolution against feudalism and for emancipation will open up the possibility, with the help of the international proletariat and the class offensive of the exploited masses of our country of the revolution developing through a number of stages into a proletarian revolution, thereby creating the requisite conditions for the development of our country on socialist lines, avoiding the further stage of domination of the capitalist system.
In this struggle the Indian people are not alone. They have an ally in the revolutionary worker of all countries in the world. The workers of the whole world are fighting for the overthrow of international imperialism and the abolition of the whole system of capitalist exploitation, which is now going through a very profound crisis. The crisis of the feudal and capitalist systems of exploitation in India is at present being combined with the world crisis, which leads to the great sharpening of all antagonisms, the approach of wars, and the rise of a new wave of revolutionary struggles.
The growing crisis is producing the growth of stubborn resistance and counter-offensive on the part of the international proletariat and the colonial peoples. The strength of the international revolution is growing. In one of the countries of the world, Soviet Russia, the working class has long ago overthrown the power of the exploiters and is successfully building up a socialist state of society. The workers of the Soviet Union have created a firm bulwark of the international Communist movement and are showing in practice how the world ought to be reconstructed in the interests of the workers and peasants. The Soviet Union is a reliable ally of the colonial peoples, including the toilers of India. The toiling masses of India will receive the support of the revolutionary workers of all countries, particularly of the developing Chinese revolution. The toiling masses of India will also be supported by the revolutionary workers of Great Britain, led by the Communist Party of Great Britain, while the ruling Labour Party of MacDonald and Independent Labour Party of Maxton and Brockway, who are part and parcel, and agents of British imperialism will do everything in their power to tighten and maintain the noose of slavery and poverty round the neck of the Indian people. In spite of all the devices of the imperialists and their reformist agents, the revolutionary front of the world proletariat and the colonial peoples is growing stronger and wider every day.
But to ensure the victory of the Indian revolution, there is required a Communist Party of the proletariat, the leader and organizer of the toiling masses of our country. The building of a centralized, disciplined, united, mass, underground Communist Party is today the chief and basic task, long age overdue, of the revolutionary movement for the emancipation of our country.
The CP of India declares with pride, that it considers itself a part of the organized world Communist movement, a section of the Communist International. The CP of India calls upon all advanced workers and revolutionaries devoted to the cause of the working class to join the ranks of the Communist Party now being built, in order to fight to carry out the historic tasks of the Indian revolution. In the conditions of British supremacy and terrorism, the Communist Party can exist and develop only as an underground Party, applying and utilizing all forms of legal and illegal activities to develop its mass struggles and to win the toiling masses for the fight for the democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry. The Communist Party of India sets up its Party organizations and groups in all towns and in all factories and workshops throughout the country.
The Communist Party of India organizes the working class and the basic masses of the peasantry under the banner of the Indian revolution. In spite of all difficulties, sacrifices and partial defeats, in spite of all the attempts of the imperialists and the Indian bourgeoisie to separate the revolutionary movement of India from the international proletariat, the Communist Party will lead the struggle of the toiling masses to the complete overthrow of British rule and of the system of landlordism and serfdom in order thereafter together with the world proletariat, to march forward in the struggle to set up a Socialist system of society in our country and throughout the world.
Long Live the Independence of India!
Long Live the Working Class, the Leader of the Toiling Masses!
Long Live the Revolutionary Insurrection for Independence, Land and Bread!
Long Live the Workers’ and Peasants’ Soviet Government!
Long Live the World Revolution!