INDIA

A Comradely Reply to Manoj Jha’s Letter to Communists

Amulya Anita , Aman Azad |

 07 Jan 2026

Communists are the only force who address the question of land distribution seriously, aware of its implications for caste and social justice.

Representational image.( File Image)

Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Manoj Jha’s “imaginary letter from Karl Marx to Indian Communist Parties”,

written in a spirit of solidarity and comradeship, however, carries significant elisions and misrepresentations. The letter, published in the form of an article in a national daily, reiterates criticisms that have traditionally been levied against communists, but merits a response given not just the commonality of this criticism but also because addressing such a critique can pave the way for a united and robust attack against the Hindutva forces that govern us today.

A historical and contemporaneous overview on communists and the caste question is hence critical in clarifying the theoretical weaknesses in Jha’s arguments, as it is in strengthening our praxis against the violence of caste.

Jha argues that Indian communists have failed to imbue their theory with “realities around it”. This marks the tone of the article, written in sweeping generalisations, peppered with strawman assertions, and alluding to debates and positions that have long been settled and thoroughly debunked.

Indian communists and their allied organisations have acted decisively against the social reality of caste, with the All India Democratic Women’s Association providing shelter to inter-caste couples in Haryana, under the threat of immediate physical violence; with communist parties in Tamil Nadu leading temple entry movements and with communist-led Kerala being the first state to utilise technology in cleaning manholes and sewers, signalling an end to the degrading practice of manual scavenging.

This praxis of communists is also a product of the democratic structure of communist parties themselves, which ensures that at all levels of the party structure, cadres are educated regarding the criticality of participating proactively in social movements against caste. Thus, communists view the annihilation of caste as axiomatic and antecedent to their project of emancipation.

Further, Jha argues that communists merely view caste as a “cultural residue” and he also points to the prevalence of caste since pre-capitalist society. To understand Jha's point, one must consider pre-capitalist societies, where labourers were bound to their lords through custom, law, and force.

In India, the Brahminical ideology functioned as such a custom, rationalising why specific occupations were assigned to particular castes, while Dalits were barred from owning land and confined to toiling in upper-caste fields. As Ambedkar described it, this created "caste as an enclosed class," where dominant castes profited from the labour of exploited ones, degrading them as second-class citizens under the guise of religion.

Karl Marx viewed capitalism as a relatively progressive mode of production, which in Europe emerged after overthrowing feudal forces and their ideology. Unlike pre-capitalist systems, capitalism exploited labourers directly, through paltry wages, without relying on customs or religious justifications. This is why Marx and Engels write in the Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations".

On similar lines, old-guard communists like S.A. Dange argued that machine-based industrial production would erode caste distinctions. Since capitalism exploits labour without needing feudal ideologies like Brahminism, they believed the advent of capitalism would naturally dissolve caste-based exploitation. These ideas ultimately imply that there is no need to fight the caste system separately, as capitalism alone would eradicate it.

Does this view represent mainstream Indian communist thought? To that one can only respond with a resounding no. Most Indian communists argue that capitalism's progression in India was neither organic nor revolutionary; it was superimposed by British colonialism.

Post-Independence, unlike the West—where capitalism overthrew feudalism—India's weak capitalist class allied with feudal landlords rather than dismantling them. Consequently, capitalists preserved semi-feudal relations that sustain caste and its ideology. This materialist lens rejects caste as mere cultural residue, instead rooting it in the bourgeoisie-landlord alliance.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) Party Programme captures this precisely: “The problem of caste oppression and discrimination has a long history and is deeply rooted in the pre-capitalist social system. The society under capitalist development has compromised with the existing caste system…To fight for the abolition of the caste system and all forms of social oppression through a social reform movement is an important part of the democratic revolution. The fight against caste oppression is interlinked with the struggle against class exploitation.”

The CPI(M) programme thus many years earlier captured exactly what Jha is arguing today. Jha’s deliberate elision of such literature then is also revelatory of how such critiques often stem from vested political interests that knowingly misrepresent communists to malign them.

The refrain that caste is consigned to a post-revolutionary future yet again constitutes a stale criticism levied on Indian communists that Jha merely regurgitates. While Indian communists are internally diverse, there is overwhelming unity in decoding the struggle against caste as immediate and enduring rather than as an afterthought.

Communists adhering to dialectical materialism, view change as constant, and hence understand it as imperative to address casteism in the here and now, through a concrete analysis of the concrete conditions.

Further, since caste does not gain significance only through culture and instead has a material base, communist assertions against capitalism, toward land reform and against feudal remnants and landed elites, also means a direct assault against the caste system. The praxis of parties replicates this theoretical framework, with one-third of the Tamil Nadu unit of the CPI(M) specifically belonging to Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe communities, and with the party regarding anti-caste struggle as key to class struggle with Indian characteristics.

In their struggle against caste, communists place at the centre the necessity of cultivating class consciousness in place of caste consciousness, given how the latter fragments and divides the working class, and thus plays into the interests of the ruling classes. This privileging of class consciousness does not mean a negation of caste, instead indicating a battle to eradicate it.

Jha lectures communists that “to defend constitutional rights is not to abandon class politics,” conveniently erasing the fact that those martyred in defence of democracy and the Constitution, have overwhelmingly been working-classes organised under the banner of the red flag. Before sermonising communist parties on the necessity of defending the Constitution, Jha should have acquainted himself with the rich history in defence of parliamentary democracy that communists have fought for across India.

Even before India had achieved Independence, communists remained the only force that fought without compromises for the demand of universal adult franchise, with political outfits, such as Congress, reconciling themselves to limited franchise. Moreover, in states such as Bihar, communists have led movements against village elites who have prevented, with force, working classes from casting their right to vote.

In realising the secular promise of the Preamble of our Constitution, the communists have the most spotless of records, with the Kerala government passing a resolution against the divisive Citizenship Amendment Act and with the Jyoti Basu’s government in West Bengal undertaking rallies for communal unity in the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Masjid. The Constitution’s truest allies have been none other than the communists.

Jha makes a compelling point: class formation in India bears the indelible imprint of caste hierarchy. Thus, the fight against caste cannot be confined to self-respect alone; it must target material bases like land, which underpins upper-caste power in the countryside.

Landlessness enforces dependence on upper-caste holdings, perpetuating subservience. However, RJD’s own history reveals a sketchy record on land reforms. Karpoori Thakur—a leader from an oppressed caste—ruled Bihar contemporaneously with Jyoti Basu, yet Thakur's contributions barely touched land redistribution. In stark contrast, Basu, a communist Chief Minister, spearheaded massive reforms in West Bengal.

The Ministry of Rural Development's 2006-07 Annual Report reveals that of 2.1 million SC beneficiaries nationwide had received land, out of which almost 50% SCs who obtained land were from West Bengal. Dalits in Left-governed Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura gained not just land but dignity—stripping upper castes of dominance. However, no comparable land struggle erupted in Bihar either under Karpoori Thakur or RJD’s Lalu Prasad, who positioned himself as an oppressed-caste champion. The record visibly reveals that communists are the only force who address the question of land distribution seriously, aware of its implications for caste and social justice.

We extend Jha our comradely greetings in the New Year, and agree that the evil of caste must be banished to the dustbin of history. In this struggle against caste, it is critical to transcend caste as merely an identity and also the utilisation of caste as merely a metric to toy with during elections. Instead, we hope to see Jha and his party further land struggles and struggles for dignity across Bihar.

Amulya Anita is a student of history and a graduate of law, interested in questions of labour, legality and people's movements.  Aman is a PhD scholar in history at the University of Delhi, with research interests in caste dynamics, agrarian relations, and social movements. The views are personal.

Efforts By India And Bangladesh To Patch Up Differences Suffers Setback – Analysis

January 7, 2026 
By P. K. Balachandran

India and Bangladesh were at odds for more than a year since the overthrow of the pro-India government led by Sheikh Hasina in August 2024. However, in December 2025, the two countries seemed to be on the way to patching up. New Delhi offered a hand of friendship to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), an emerging force in Bangladesh, using the passing away of its respected leader, Khaleda Zia, as an occasion to do so.

But the patch-up bid was short lived.

Come January 2026, the two countries have fallen out again because of events in each other’s domestic sphere. Both New Delhi and Dhaka have had to respond to pressures from domestic groups to take tough lines on certain issues. Though the two governments have not gone after each other in the same way as their populations did, there is tension in the air and further moves to strengthen ties have been put on hold.

Murder of Hindus

The serial murder of Hindus in Muslim-majority Bangladesh and harassment of Muslims and vile propaganda about illegal Bangladeshi migration to India are burning issues in the two countries.

According to The Statesman of Kolkata, since December 2025, at least four Hindus were killed in Bangladesh. Rana Pratap, who was the acting editor of a local newspaper, was killed in Kopalia Bazar in Manirampur in Jashore district. A group of men lured him out of an ice factory that he ran in addition to his work as a journalist and shot him in the head at close range.

On December 31, a Hindu businessman, Khokon Das, was set on fire by a mob. A medical shop owner in Shariatpur district was attacked by a mob with sharp weapons while returning home. A day earlier, a Hindu worker, Bajendra Biswas, was shot dead by his colleague in Bhaluka upazila of Mymensingh district.

Amrit Mondal, a known Hindu criminal, was lynched by a mob over allegations of extortion. A particularly gory incident involved Dipu Chandra Das, a garment factory worker in Mymensingh, who was lynched by a mob over allegations of blasphemy. His body was hung upside down and set on fire. Miscreants hacked to death a grocery shop owner at Charsindur Bazar in Palash upazila of Narsingdi. Local traders and the community protested against the murder.

India strongly condemned the attacks. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said – “The unremitting hostility against minorities in Bangladesh is a matter of great concern.” According to the MEA, there had been around 2,900 incidents of violence against minorities during the tenure of Bangladesh’s Interim Government led by Dr.Muhammad Yunus.

The MEA said India has consistently raised concerns over attacks on minorities and rejected what it called a “false narrative” being pushed by Bangladesh on such incidents. The Bangladesh government had said that there was no place for communal hatred or mob violence in what it termed the “New Bangladesh,” and promised strict action against those responsible.

Osama Hadi’s Killing

These incidents had taken place against the backdrop of widespread unrest in Bangladesh following the death of the Islamist political activist Sharif Osman Hadi at the hands of an assassin linked to the banned Awami League’s youth wing, Jubo league.

The killing of Hindus in Bangladesh led to anti-Bangladesh demonstrations in West Bengal and other pats of North India.

Illegal Infiltration

There were calls to identify and expel “Bangladeshi infiltrators” in West Bengal, Assam and other parts of North India. According to Bangladesh newspapers, the Indian border police have pushed into Bangladesh 1670 alleged infiltrators, many of whom were not even Bangladeshi nationals, but Bengali-speaking Indian Muslims.

The West Bengal government led by the Trinamool Congress alleged that the Odisha police had detained Bengali-speaking workers wrongly classifying then as Bangladeshi infiltrators simply because they spoke Bengali.

Meanwhile the Assam Chief Minister Hemanta Biswa Sarma, of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vowed to drive all Bangladeshi infiltrators out of the State. India’s Home Minister Amit Shah has pledged that if the BJP is elected again in Assam, it will clear the state of Bangladeshi infiltrators entirely.

Indian politicians and media have been putting the figure of illegal entrants from Bangladesh in millions though very few Bangladeshi infiltrators have been identified in government surveys conducted for citizenship enumeration and electoral roll purposes..

The description of Bangladesh as basket case from which people are fleeing to a prosperous India is deeply hurting to Bangladeshis, who were progressing economically under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasnia.

A statement issued by the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), a human rights organisation of West Bengal, on December 1, 2025 said- “The Indian government or the BJP has no moral right to say anything about the oppression of minorities in Bangladesh. Minority Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists are being persecuted continuously in India. Dalits and tribal people are also suffering. Just a few days ago, the Uttar Pradesh police shot dead six people of the minority community in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal. Many Muslim political leaders and social activists including Abu Bakr, Umar Khalid, Gulfisha Fatima, Sharjeel Imam have been put in jail. By taking away OBC reservation, bringing waqf bill, making uniform civil rules, and digging up temples under mosques, many rights of minorities have been or are being taken away. Thousands of minority families have been displaced by bulldozers in Uttar Pradesh and Assam.”

Removal of Bangladesh Cricketer

Attacks on minority Hindus in Bangladesh had sparked calls for the rejection of Bangladeshi pacer Muztafizur Rahman by the Sharukh Khan owned Knight Riders cricket team participating in the IPL tournament. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced its decision to ask KKR let go of Mustafizur Rahman.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor asked the board not to mix cricket with politics. The Janata Dal (United) leader K.C.Tyagi pointed out that Bangladesh had appointed a Hindu Litton Das as its cricket team’s skipper.

Bangladesh in its reaction banned broadcasts of IPL matches. Bangladesh also asked the ICC to change the T20 World Cup venue from India to a neutral place to ensure the security of its team. The ICCC is believed to have rejected the request. The Bangladesh Cricket Board then formally informed the International Cricket Council of its decision not to send the national team.

P. K. Balachandran is a senior Indian journalist working in Sri Lanka for local and international media and has been writing on South Asian issues for the past 21 years.

 

India 2025: Plight of Christian Minority

Ram Puniyani | 30 Dec 2025

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A compliant State machinery is a major cause for the gradual intensification of anti-Christian activity in diverse forms, including violence.

Image Courtesy: The Leaflet

Violence against the Muslim minority has been a regular phenomenon. Its form and intensity have been varying but the intimidation continues. The other substantial minority, the Christians are also not spared, though violence against them is not in the news most of the time. The major reason being its sub-radar nature. Though it's sub-radar most of the time, around Christmas time, its overt nature becomes more apparent.

One recalls that in the decade of the 1990s, the violence manifested in Orissa and Gujarat. And it is around that time that former Prime Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee commented that there was a need for national debate on the issue of conversion.

Conversion has been the major pretext for attacking various events related to the Christian community. The prayers, church meetings, and celebrations are occasions when these attacks are orchestrated more. This year again, it became manifest around Christmas celebrations.

The foot soldiers of Hindutva had a gala time attacking footpath vendors selling Christmas wares, such as caps, dresses and associated things. In some places, they attacked Santa Claus’s replicas, in other places, they vandalised churches and showrooms selling Christmas wares.

Columnist Tavleen Singh wrote in Indian Express, “The more intrepid of these Hindutva warriors stormed into churches and disturbed services with vandalism and violence. Videos of these ‘accomplishments’ were uploaded on social media. In one of them, I saw a BJP legislator enter a church in Jabalpur and harangue a blind woman, whom she accused menacingly of trying to convert Hindus to Christianity…there were nearly a hundred attempts to disrupt Christmas festivities and nearly all of them occurred in states ruled by the BJP. Nobody was punished and no chief minister openly deplored the violence.”

These events have been covered in the international media also. A few newspapers commented about the possibility of retaliatory violence against Hindus in those countries. The interesting aspect of the Indian states’ attitude on these events is their loud silence, and it is no coincidence that most of this violence took place in BJP-ruled states. Fortunately, we have a non-biological Prime Minister who, in the face of all this, visited a church and offered prayers! It was an interesting phenomenon that inside the church, the Hindutva top leader is creating the optics of respecting Christianity, while his followers are doing anti-Christian vandalism on the streets and in churches.

The Citizens for Justice and Peace (December 24, 2025) report very aptly summarises the tremendous rise in anti-Christian violence over the years. “Between 2014 and 2024, documented incidents of violence against Christians rose from 139 to 834, an increase of over 500%. In 2025 alone (January–November), more than 700 incidents have already been recorded, affecting families, churches, schools, hospitals, and service institutions. Dalit Christians, Adivasi Christians, and women are among the most affected.”

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom again recommended designating India as a Country of Particular Concern in its 2025 report, citing concerns over religious freedom. The Human Rights Watch and other bodies also documented issues affecting the minorities in India.

Christmas eve violence is not new. One Bishop reminded people of this while cautioning the churches in Raipur: “In Raipur, however, the Catholic archbishop, Victor Henry Thakur, was very worried. He sent a letter to local churches, schools and other institutions urging caution, “In the light of the call for Chhattisgarh Bandh tomorrow, I feel and suggest that all our churches, presbyteries, convents and institutions should seek protection in writing from the local police. Please consider my suggestion because it seems to have been planned just before Christmas, as was the case at Kandhamal in Odisha.”

This reminds one of violence around Christmas in Orissa in 2007 and 2008. The one which was orchestrated in 2008 took a massive proportion as nearly 70,000 Christians had to flee and nearly 400 churches were vandalised.

In the face of this, one could have expected the Church hierarchy to have expressed their concern about the attacks on Christians, but their silence on this serious matter shows either their lack of concern for their community, or some other hidden vested interest in keeping mum on the issue.

One has also witnessed state after state adopting anti-conversion laws, titled ‘Freedom of Religion Acts’. This is putting rigorous conditions on the religious conduct of the community. Pastors and priests are arrested on pretext of conversion activity and face the legal rigmarole for years.

The propaganda that Christians are converting needs to be visited yet again. Christianity is an old religion in India, having come here through St Thomas in AD 52 on the Malabar Coast. The social perception that it came with British rule has no basis. From AD 52 to 2011, when the last Census was held, the percentage of Christians rose to 2.3%. It is nobody's case to deny that some conscious conversion work might have taken place. Have a look at the figures of the Christian population from 1971 to 2011. In 1971-2.60%, 1981-2.44%, 1991-2.34% and 2001-2.30%. That tells an interesting tale.

Pastor Graham Staines was burnt alive with his two sons, Timothy and Phillip, on the pretext of his indulging in conversion work in Orissa. The Wadhwa Commission that went into this ghastly murder, in its report points out that there was no statistical increase in the number of Christians in Keonjhar, where Pastor Staines was working among leprosy patients.

There are many Christian mission education institutes and hospitals, which are very much sought after. The conversions that have taken place are more among Adivasi and Dalits, who have been thronging to the education and health facilities in the remote areas. It is true that major conversions might have taken place while seeking these facilities in remote areas where State facilities are sparse.

The hatred constructed around conversion is now widespread. The attacks on celebration-related events is a horrific phenomenon. The State in such cases is either mute or absent. The compliant State machinery is the major cause of gradual intensification of the anti-Christian activity in diverse forms.

This years’ attacks are a warning signal of the silence and doublespeak of the ruling dispensation. On one hand, going to pray in a church, and on the other, allow vandals to do their job. One hopes that international repercussions will be in the form of government to government, responding to appeals of religious freedom and conceding to those appeals.  

The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.

A Century of Red: The Indian Communist Movement

The Communist movement in India and the unfinished project of liberation

Atul Chandra
 17 December 2025 
0UTLOOK, INDIA

India Cuba: An elderly villager and member of indian communist party garlanding Che Guevara during his visit to a Community Project Area in Delhi, 1959

Summary of this article


The century of the Communist movement in India is a history of sacrifice, of ideological battles, of tremendous victories and painful defeats.


In April 1957, E. M. S. Namboodiripad took oath as Chief Minister of Kerala, leading the first democratically elected Communist government outside the Socialist Bloc.


The fundamental questions that animated Indian Communists remain urgent: Who controls the land? Who owns the factories? Who makes the decisions that shape our collective lives?


The Communist movement in India is now 100 years old. Whether one dates this from October, 1920, when Indian revolutionaries like M. N Roy, Abani Mukherjee and other Indian revolutionaries gathered in Tashkent to formally establish the Communist Party of India, or from December 1925, when Communist groups came together at the Kanpur conference in 1925 to constitute an all-India party, the fact remains that for over a hundred years, Communists have been an integral part of Indian political and social life. The Communists have fought colonial rule, built mass organisations of workers and peasants, governed states, resisted communal fascism and kept alive the dream of a society free from exploitation. The century of the Communist movement in India is a history of sacrifice, of ideological battles, of tremendous victories and painful defeats. It is also a history that speaks directly to our present moment, when the Right-wing Hindutva forces seek to shape India with their imagination and when the predations of global capital intensify the misery of the common people.


Any serious engagement with the history of Indian Communism must begin by acknowledging a historiographical debate that reflects the deeper questions about the nature of the movement itself. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), popularly known as the CPI (M), maintains that the party was founded on October 17, 1920, in Tashkent. This establishment was assisted by the Communist International. The Communist Party of India, popularly known as the CPI, on the other hand, considers the December 1925 conference in Kanpur as the authentic founding moment, when Communist groups already working inside India came together to establish an organised all-India party with a constitution and elected leadership.

This is not merely an archival dispute for historians to settle. The Tashkent formation represented the organic connection between Indian liberation and proletarian internationalism. It recognised that the struggle against British colonialism was inseparable from the worldwide movement against imperialism. The Kanpur conference, meanwhile, represented the rooting of the Communist organisation in Indian soil among workers and peasants of India. But one must understand that both these moments were necessary stages in the development of a movement that would eventually mobilise millions. The dialectical unity of these two currents, international solidarity and indigenous mass organisations, has defined Indian Communism throughout its existence.


Forged in the Colonial Fire

The British colonial administration understood, perhaps better than some nationalists of that era, the revolutionary potential of the Communist ideas among the India’s toiling masses. The colonial state responded with characteristic brutality. The Peshawar Conspiracy Cases, The Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy case and the most prominent, the Meerut Conspiracy case of 1929 to 1933, saw leading Communists prosecuted for seeking, in the words of the chargesheet ‘to deprive the King Emperor of his Sovereignty of British India, by complete separation of India from Britain by a violent revolution’.

Yet these trials, intended to crush the nascent movement, instead, provided a platform for the propagation of Marxist ideas across the country. In the Meerut courtroom, Communists spiritedly explained and defended their ideology, transforming their prosecution into a seminar on revolutionary theory. The photograph of the 25 accused, taken outside the Meerut Jail, remains an iconic image: S. A. Dange, Muzaffar Ahmad, P. C. Joshi and other revolutionaries who would shape the movement for decades. At the first party congress, held in 1943, the 138 delegates present had been collectively served 414 years in colonial prisons. This single fact testifies the death defying patriotism and sacrifices made by the Communists for Indian independence.


Muslim Women and the Left: Confronting New Realities

By the 1920s, Communists had established themselves as the most militant current within the anti-colonial movement. While the Congress often vacillated, Communists at the 1921 Ahmedabad session of the Indian National Congress moved a resolution demanding complete independence from the British rule, a demand that the Congress initially rejected. Along with the Workers and Peasants Party, the Communists organised industrial workers and peasants to form the All India Trade Union Congress and gather the All India Kisan Sabha into formidable mass organisations. In 1936, the All India Students’ Federation was founded, followed by the Progressive Writers’ Association and, in 1943, the Indian People’s Theatre Association. These organisations brought revolutionary consciousness to every section of Indian society. But it was the Telangana Armed Struggle of 1946-51 that demonstrated the revolutionary potential of Indian Communism most clearly. In the feudal hierarchical Nizam’s Hyderabad, where peasants were subjected to vetti (forced unpaid labour) and could be bought and sold, the Communists organised the most significant peasant movement since 1857. P. Sundarayya, who led the fight, documented the struggle in his monumental work titled ‘Telangana People’s Struggle and its Lessons’. Under the CPI’s leadership, the guerrillas armed with a few guns, lathis and slings and determination took on the Nizam’s forces and his Razakar militia. Women fought alongside men, shoulder to shoulder to defend their villages. At its peak, the rebellion established gram rajyams (village communes) across 4,000 villages controlling an area of 15,000 sq. miles with a population of four million. Approximately, one million acres were redistributed to landless peasants. The social transformation was revolutionary: caste distinctions were challenged, women’s participation in public life increased dramatically and feudal exactions were abolished. The rebellion led to 4,000 martyrs and more than 10,000 were imprisoned.


Forgotten By The Left — How Muslim Organisers Built Labour Movements And Were Written Out


Similarly, the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising in Kerala in 1946 saw Communist-led workers and peasants challenge the autocratic rule of the Travancore princely state. The Tebhaga movement in Bengal demanded that sharecropper’s share be increased to two-thirds of the harvest. Crucially, this movement maintained Hindu-Muslim unity based on class struggle at a time when communal riots were raging in other parts of Bengal. The areas where the Kisan Sabha had influence remained free of communal violence. This was a powerful demonstration of class consciousness as an antidote to communal poison, a lesson that remains relevant today.


Democratic Achievements and Imperial Subversion

In April 1957, E. M. S. Namboodiripad took oath as Chief Minister of Kerala, leading the first democratically elected Communist government outside the Socialist Bloc. The ministry’s 28 months in power, before its dismissal in July 1959, laid the foundations that continue to shape Kerala’s exceptional social indicators. The Agrarian Relations Bill threatened feudal landlordism; the Education Bill challenged the stranglehold of caste and religious organisations over schools. These were not socialist measures, but democratic reforms that the Congress had promised during the freedom struggle, but never delivered.


The response was ferocious. The so-called ‘Liberation Struggle’ (Vimochana Samaram) united the Catholic Church, the Nair Service Society, the Muslim League, and the Congress Party in a campaign of organised disruption. What was long suspected is now confirmed by declassified intelligence files: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British MI5/MI6 mounted covert operations to bring down the Namboodiripad government. According to historian Paul M. McGarr’s recent research in the British archives, Congress leaders and union organisers were brought to the UK for intensive anti-Communist training. The CIA funnelled money to Congress politicians and anti-Communist trade unions. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who later became USA’s ambassador to India, confirmed American involvement in his 1978 book A Dangerous Place, noting the objective was to prevent ‘additional Keralas’. On July 31, 1959, President Rajendra Prasad invoked Article 356, establishing a precedent for the abuse of constitutional provisions against non-Congress governments that would be repeated for decades.

Kerala After Bengal: Is the Left’s Shift Reinvention or a Neoliberal Turn?


Yet, Kerala’s Communist legacy proved resilient. The Left Democratic Front has governed the state for much of its history, producing India’s highest literacy rates, best health indicators, strong labour protections and eradicating extreme poverty through its multidimensional approach. In West Bengal, the Left Front's 34-year rule (1977-2011), the longest uninterrupted tenure of any democratically-elected Communist government globally, achieved significant land reforms and decentralised governance through panchayati raj. The Communist contribution to India’s constitutional framework, though often overlooked, includes the emphasis on workers’ rights, land reform provisions, and the vision of social and economic justice enshrined in the Directive Principles.

The Present Crisis and Future Possibilities

The Communist movement today confronts some serious challenges. The Left has electorally faced some setbacks. India’s top one per cent now owns over 40 per cent of national wealth. Unemployment, particularly among the youth, has reached crisis proportions. The Narendra Modi government’s economic policies have accelerate workers while enriching a handful of oligarchs. The Hindutva movement, born in the same year as the CPI, has captured state power and is systematically dismantling the secular, democratic republic that Communists helped build. Muslims face lynch mobs, Christians face bulldozers, and Dalits face renewed caste violence, all under the protection of the State machinery.

Yet, history rarely moves in straight lines. As Communists themselves would note, contradictions intensify before they resolve. The very success of neo-liberalism and Hindutva is immiserating the masses and creating conditions for a renewed resistance. The farmers’ movement of 2020-2021, which forced the Modi government to retreat on its agricultural laws, demonstrated that mass mobilisation is possible. The international situation―with the decline of US hegemony and the rise of a more multipolar world order―has opened new possibilities for the Global South that were unimaginable during the Cold War.

The Communist movement’s centenary is a moment to look back at what they have achieved for the masses and the Indian state and to take inspiration from it for their future struggles. It calls for what Marxists term as a concrete analysis of concrete conditions. The fundamental questions that animated Indian Communists remain urgent: Who controls the land? Who owns the factories? Who makes the decisions that shape our collective lives? How do we build a society where, in Marx’s famous phrase, the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all?

A hundred years ago, young Indians inspired by the October Revolution and determined to end colonial rule chose the path of Communism. Many gave their lives for this choice. Whatever the electoral map shows today, their dream of a liberated India, free from exploitation, oppression, and the degradation of caste and communalism, remains unfulfilled. Perhaps this is the most important lesson of the centenary: the struggle continues.

https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/

(The author is a researcher and the Co-Coordinator of the Asia Desk at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)


(Views expressed are personal)

Why The Left Matters: A Century of Struggle, Social Justice And The Road Ahead

The future of the Left in India will be decided by the ability of the movement to rebuild and deepen its links with the working people.

MA Baby
Updated on: 12 December 2025 

OUTLOOK, INDIA


A Historic Gathering: Delegates to the second congress of the Comintern at the Uritsky Palace in Petrograd, including M.N. Roy, Vladimir Lenin, Maxim Gorky and Nikolai Bukharin

Summary of this article


The Left in India has endured for a century because it is rooted in the struggles, dignity and aspirations of workers and peasants.


Left ideas in India were not foreign imports but emerged organically from indigenous egalitarian traditions and early radical thought.


Communists played a decisive role in the freedom movement through organised mass struggles, trade unions, peasant uprisings and cultural platforms.


A hundred years is long enough for political currents to appear and disappear. Parties have risen on slogans and vanished in silence. What has endured in India, despite repression, distortions and political headwinds, is the Left movement. It has endured because it has always belonged to the working people of this country; to their labour, their dignity, and their dreams of a society free from exploitation. From the earliest murmurings of radical thought during anti-colonial resistance to the mass struggles of peasants and workers, from the severe blows of state repression to the experience of forming governments that delivered transformative reforms, the Left has left an indelible mark on modern India. The history of the Left is not parallel to the history of the nation, but it is rather interwoven with it.

The popular misconception that Left ideas were imported from abroad collapses the moment we revisit our own history with honesty. For example, in 1836, even before Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels joined the ‘League of the Just’, Vaikunda Swamikal, a social reformer who lived near the present day Marthandam (part of the erstwhile Travancore) started a utopian socialist movement called ‘Samathwa Samajam’. This is just one example. In fact, an investigation into the history of most societies and civilisations will reveal many examples of historical, mythological or intertwined narratives of a just and egalitarian society.

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The 1905 Russian Revolution electrified the world, but India already had its own revolutionary impulses. The Anushilan Samiti in Bengal and the Ghadar Party in North America reflected an uncompromising resistance to colonial rule and a belief that freedom cannot be begged, it has to be seized. The Ghadarites, many of whom later became communists, carried the message that national liberation was inseparable from social liberation.

The October Revolution of 1917 provided inspiration, but not instruction. India’s young radicals were searching for tools to interpret the exploitation they experienced and witnessed in mills, plantations and villages. This search culminated in the formation of the Communist Party of India at Tashkent in 1920—five years before the party was organised publicly in Kanpur in 1925. The first Secretary of the Party, Mohammad Shafiq, symbolised a simple truth that the Left in India arose not from seminar rooms or drawing rooms, but from intense anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle.

Long before the Congress adopted the slogan of Poorna Swaraj in 1929, Hasrat Mohani, a communist, put forward the demand in 1921 at the Ahmedabad session of the AICC along with Swami Kumaranand, a peasant leader. The formation of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in 1920, and later organisations such as the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, the All India Kisan Sabha, the All India Students’ Federation and the Progressive Writers’ Association, turned radical thought into organised mass movements. Workers, peasants, women, students, youth, cultural activists and writers, all found in the Left a political home that combined the struggle for independence with the struggle for social transformation.

One of the final nails on the coffin of the morale of British rule in India was delivered by the sailors of the Royal Indian Navy uprising in 1946. It resulted in an insurrection by over 10,000 sailors and received massive support from the civilians and even police forces of the country. This mutiny was a loud message to the British that Indian soldiers will no longer aid or become a tool for the exploitation of their own people. It must not be forgotten that the sailors were proudly flying the Red Flag of the Communist Party on their ships (along with those of the Congress and the Muslim League flags) during the rebellion.


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Mass Struggles That Redefined India

What distinguishes the Left’s contribution to the freedom movement is not rhetoric but sacrifice. The communists led united struggles of workers and peasants that shook the pillars of colonial rule and feudal power. The Tebhaga movement in Bengal demanded two-thirds of the produce for the tiller. The Telangana struggle was carried forward by countless ordinary villagers, including women leaders like Mallu Swarajyam, and it confronted the nexus of feudal lords and the Nizam’s private militia. In the princely state of Travancore, the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising challenged autocratic rule. Each struggle was met with brutal repression. Yet each of them created a new political consciousness: that the land belongs to those who cultivate it, wealth belongs to those who produce it, and democracy means nothing without dignity.

Across the country, peasant movements asserted themselves in different contexts with shared aspirations. In Malabar, the struggles against Jenmi landlordism built the foundation of the Kisan Sabha. In Thane district, Adivasi struggles after 1947 challenged debt bondage and land dispossession under the leadership of the Sabha. P. Sundarayya, who would later lead the Communist Party of India (Marxist) as its General Secretary, dedicated his life organising poor peasants and farm workers, and towards the study of agrarian relations throughout undivided Andhra. In Tamil Nadu, G. Veeraiyan and others organised agricultural labourers against caste-linked exploitation and violence. The agrarian movement in Thanjavur was built by the CPI(M) and its mass/class organisations. This movement was intricately linked with the anti-caste struggle and over time, it gained so much strength that even the very idea of an agricultural union existing irked the landlords so much that they organised a gruesome massacre in the Keezhvenmani village, killing 44 Dalits, the majority of whom were women and children.

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Similarly, it was the CPI(M) and progressive class organisations that led a relentless struggle to get justice for the survivors of Vachathi state violence. These movements struck at the most deep-rooted structures of Indian society including but not limited to caste hierarchy, patriarchy and the culture of unpaid, invisible, unrecognised labour. In this sense, the Left did not wait for independence to begin fighting for social transformation. The battle for social equality was already underway in the fields and factories much before 1947. The Draft Platform for Action, 1930 was the first attempt towards preparing a programme for the party. This document recognised the ruthless abolition of the caste system along with agrarian revolution and overthrow of British rule as a necessity to achieve the complete social, economic, cultural and legal emancipation of all workers.

The years immediately after independence were marked by severe repression of the communists. The Telangana struggle was crushed with horrendous state repression. Leaders and cadres were jailed, forced to go underground, or killed in fake encounters. A distorted narrative was created to paint the Left as a threat to the nation precisely because the Left was demanding that land and power be returned to the people. Yet the repression did not erode the movement. Instead, it solidified the understanding that political democracy without economic democracy is hollow.

The turning point in parliamentary recognition came in 1957 when Kerala elected the first Communist government through the ballot. Land reforms, education reforms and democratic decentralisation fundamentally altered the social landscape of the state. The 1957 experiment proved that the Communists can govern, not just agitate; and govern in ways that expand people’s rights, not restrict them.

In later decades, Left governments deepened that legacy. In West Bengal, Operation Barga secured tenancy rights for millions of sharecroppers and laid the groundwork for rural poverty reduction. The panchayat system that empowered local democracy emerged in West Bengal and Kerala long before it was recognised in the Constitution in 1992. In Tripura, land redistribution ensured that two-thirds of land went to a tribal population that formed one-third of the state. These should be seen as parts of a coherent model of development in which human welfare is not an afterthought, but the starting point.

These experiences speak volumes about why Kerala continues to repose confidence in the Left, electing it twice in succession, something that has been unprecedented in the state’s political history. When governments deliver social justice in real terms, people do not forget.

Whenever India has been threatened by authoritarianism, the Left has taken an unmistakable stand. During the Emergency, when many parties compromised or justified excesses, we who opposed it paid a heavy price, but still refused to surrender constitutional and democratic rights. In the decades since, the Left has been the most consistent force against communal polarisation. It recognised much earlier than others that communal politics is inseparable from economic inequality, a divided society is easier to exploit.

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The crises India faces are the outcome of policies that prioritise private profit over public good and division over unity. A different future is possible—one based on secularism, equality, dignity of labour and democratic rights.

The CPI(M) warned in its 23rd Party Congress about the rise of the communal-corporate nexus which is an alliance of reactionary social forces and big capital. Today, as public assets are being handed over to private monopolies and dissent is being increasingly criminalised, that warning reads not like a precise description of current reality.

Whenever labour rights, public sector enterprises or natural resources have been threatened, the working class with the Left at the forefront has fought back , whether it is to prevent the sale of strategic Public Sector Units or to resist anti-worker labour codes. The one-year-long farmers’ movement on the borders of Delhi, which forced the repeal of three farm laws, saw active, consistent and disciplined participation from peasant organisations like the All India Kisan Sabha and other democratic and Left forces. The Kisan Long March in Maharashtra, where thousands of poor peasants walked peacefully with red flags, became a symbol of how democratic mobilisation can achieve what electoral arithmetic cannot.

Why the Left Matters Even More Today


There is a popular trend to judge political relevance solely by election results. But the Left’s history in India shows that the yardstick for us has always been larger: the strength of our links with working people, our ability to organise struggles, and our capacity to offer an alternative vision. Even in a period when the Left’s electoral strength is seeing unprecedented setbacks, its ideological and organisational presence continues to shape resistance movements across the country.

Today, India faces economic stagnation, record unemployment, nutritional crisis, collapse of public health funding, increasing numbers of suicides among peasants and agricultural labourers, rising caste violence, attacks on women, systematic communal polarisation that includes attacks on minorities, dalits, tribals and transgender people. In such a situation, the Left remains the only political force that speaks not of temporary relief but of structural change that includes public investment, universal welfare, labour rights, land reforms, public education, and a secular democratic republic rooted in equality.

The recent achievements of the Extreme Poverty Eradication Programme launched in Kerala show that it was a policy initiative grounded in the conviction that no human being should live without dignity. It does not mean that Kerala is free of poverty, but the achievements of this programme are a significant step in that direction.

It is this orientation that explains the renewed interest among young people in progressive politics worldwide. Against the rise of the far-Right forces, the youth are also marching behind the new faces of the Left and progressive forces in their countries to challenge inequality, corporate power and racism. The examples of Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Catherine Conolly, Zohran Mamdani, and countless other unnamed organisers and forces, speak volumes about this renewed interest. India is not an exception to this global churn.

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The Next 100 Years


The Left movement in India has completed more than a century, but its task is far from finished. It has fought for generations of workers, peasants, women, students and marginalised communities; not for the sake of abstract ideals, but for concrete improvements in their lives and in the society as a whole. The future of the Left will be decided by the ability of the movement to rebuild and deepen its living links with the working people and other toiling masses.

Applying the scientific understanding of Marxism-Leninism in the concrete conditions of India is pertinent to achieve the above. As Young Comrade Lenin once mentioned, “We do not regard Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life. We think that an independent elaboration of Marx’s theory is especially essential for Russian socialists; for this theory provides only general guiding principles, which, in particular, are applied in England differently than in France, in France differently than in Germany, and in Germany differently than in Russia. We shall therefore gladly afford space in our paper for articles on theoretical questions and we invite all comrades openly to discuss controversial points.” (Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. IV, pp. 211-212).

The crises India faces are the outcome of policies that prioritise private profit over public good and division over unity. A different future is possible—one based on secularism, equality, dignity of labour and democratic rights. For that to become a reality, the Left is not just relevant but indispensable. The struggles of the past 100-plus years have immensely contributed towards shaping the democratic foundations of India. The next 100 years must complete the unfinished task of revolutionary social transformation.


(Views expressed are personal)

https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/


M.A. Baby is General Secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist)

This article appeared as 'We Shall Overcome' in Outlook’s December 21, 2025, issue as 'What's Left of the Left' which explores the challenging crossroads the Left finds itself at and how they need to adapt. And perhaps it will do so.