Emergence of Communists in India

The Russian Revolution of 1917 had a great impact on the minds of the Indian People. So naturally when the Non cooperation movement turned out to be a failure, they were dissatisfied. The image of Gandhi was also tarnished.

One of the members of the Anushilan –Manabendra Nath Roy was very much influenced by the communist thoughts. His original name was Narendra Nath Bhattacharya and in 1907, when he was a young man of 20 years had conducted a political dacoity, to raise money for Anushilan. He was arrested but was defended by J N Roy and was released.

Later he tried to get arm making techniques in Batvia, unsuccessfully. After that he reached California and then married a Californian girl and settled in New York. In New York he studied Marxism. But he was pursued by the British spies out there. So he fled to Mexico and from there he developed contacts with the Germans. In 1930 he came to Bombay and was arrested in 1931 and sent to jail for 6 years.

On 20 October 1920, he had been in Russia to attend the second congress of communist international. Here as per the sources of one faction of (PI with his wife Evelyn Trent Roy, Abani Mukherji, Rosa Fiting, Mohammad Ali , Mohammad Shafiq Siddiqui and MPST Acharya founded the Communist Party of India in Tashkent.

At the same time, an Berlin group was launched by Virendranath Chattophadhyaya, Bhupendra Dutt et al.

• Thus, the communist party of India was launched in Tashkent in October 1920.

  But this was only the primitive work done. For the next five years, various Communist groups were launched in various parts of India. It was in December 1925, when Satyabhakta organized these small organizations into one All India Conference of the Communists at Kanpur.

• The present of the All India Conference of Communists was Singarvelu Chettiar from the Madras Province.
• This conference is known as the “formal” beginning of communist party of India in 1925, from Kanpur.

  Another view of genesis of CPI Please note that in 1922-24, communist party faced a series of conspiracy cases such as Peshawar and Kanpur Bolshevik conspiracy case. In 1924, Satyabhakta announced the formation of CPI and he became the secretary. Most of these of groups came together at Kanpur in December 1925 and founded an all India organization under the name of Communist Party Of India in December 1925 S.V. Ghate became general secretary of CPI. In March 1929, government arrested 32 radical political and trade union activist, including Bradley and Lester Hutchinson in the Meerut conspiracy case, defense of the prisoners was to be taken by many nationalists including M.C. Chagla, M.A. Ansari, Jawaharlal Nehru , K.N. Katju, etc. in 1934, the communist party was declared illegal.