The Communist Party of India and its offshoots have long claimed the mantle of progressive, anti-colonial politics. But a closer examination of the historical record, drawn from CIA intelligence reports, mainstream newspaper archives, published academic scholarship, and the party’s own publications, reveals a far more troubling picture: one of consistent alignment with foreign powers and ideologies, often at direct cost to India’s national interest.
The Origins: A Party Born Of Foreign Ideology
The Communist Party of India (CPI) was established in 1925, in an era when the Soviet Communist International (Comintern) was actively funding and directing the formation of communist parties across the world. From its very inception, the CPI’s ideological allegiances were tied not to Indian soil, but to directives emanating from Moscow.
For nearly four decades, the CPI remained the sole communist formation in India. The split came in 1964, driven by the widening Sino-Soviet rift of the late 1950s and early 1960s. As the Soviet Union under Khrushchev moved towards “peaceful coexistence” and Mao’s China advocated armed revolution, the fault lines within Indian communism became irreconcilable. The 1962 Sino-Indian War served as the final trigger: a significant pro-China faction broke away to form the CPI(M) on 7 November 1964. In simple terms – the CPI followed the Soviet line, and the CPI(M) followed the Chinese line. Neither formation was rooted in Indian national interest.
The fracture deepened further in 1969, when the CPI (Marxist-Leninist), or CPI(ML), was formed specifically to oppose parliamentary politics and pursue armed revolution – a stated objective written into its own constitution. This is the direct ideological ancestor of India’s Maoist/Naxalite movement, which has claimed thousands of Indian lives.
WWII: Communists As British Collaborators Against Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose
Perhaps the most damning chapter in Indian communist history is their conduct during the Second World War. When Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was building the Indian National Army (INA) and forging international alliances to militarily defeat the British and liberate India, the CPI was doing the exact opposite, actively helping the British colonial government suppress the freedom movement.
The reason is straightforward: after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the CPI overnight switched from opposing British rule to supporting it. Moscow’s directive to protect the Allied war effort overrode any commitment to Indian independence. Protecting the USSR was the CPI’s true priority.
The CPI’s official mouthpiece, the magazine “People’s War”, published on 25 September 1943, ran two notorious cartoons:
- Netaji depicted as a midget being led by the hand by Japan’s General Tojo, portraying him as a puppet of Japanese imperialism
- Netaji being hurled into a circus ring by a figure wearing the Nazi Hakenkreuz, openly mocking his efforts
These were not isolated incidents. Between 1942 and 1945, People’s War ran a sustained campaign against Netaji, variously depicting him as:
- A “cur held up by Goebbels”
- The “running dog of General Tojo”
- A “donkey carrying Tojo”
- A pig with a human mask
The magazine even fabricated stories claiming Bose was “living a luxurious life in a Rangoon villa with corrupt Axis money” – pure colonial propaganda.
As the extract from K.K. Chaudhari’s landmark book “Quit India Revolution: The Ethos of Its Central Direction” documents, the sabotage went beyond cartoons. CPI General Secretary P.C. Joshi personally went to Sir Reginald Maxwell, the British Home Secretary, and pledged to help destroy the Quit India Movement of 1942. Joshi reportedly submitted 120-page performance reports to Maxwell boasting of the CPI’s work against the freedom movement.
The book quotes directly: “Joshi was so anxious to prove the CPI’s utility to the British rule that he claimed that he was doing a better job of stemming the Quit India Movement, of denouncing Subhas Babu and leaders of the Congress underground, than the government itself. The tone and contents of Joshi’s performance report reveal crystal clear what the CPI had done to sabotage the 1942 movement.”
As early as February 1941, the Communists had heaped abuse on Bose, dismissing his historic call of “Do or Die” as an “indication of bankruptcy of thought”. A party that actively collaborated with British colonisers, fabricated stories about the nation’s greatest freedom fighter, and sabotaged a mass independence movement has no moral authority to claim a freedom-fighting legacy.
Direct Action Day 1946: Hand-in-Glove with the Muslim League
The Direct Action Day of 16 August 1946 which triggered the Great Calcutta Killings and left thousands dead is another moment that exposes the CPI’s political choices during a moment of national crisis.
The Muslim League under Jinnah called for Direct Action to demand Pakistan. Rather than opposing the communal violence that followed, the CPI hailed Direct Action Day as “an anti-imperialist expression of the Muslim masses”. The party had long supported the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan as a “precondition for the transfer of power.” During the riots themselves, CPI workers were sheltered and protected by Muslim League supporters. Jyoti Basu, who would later serve as West Bengal’s longest-serving Chief Minister, openly defended the communist position during subsequent Assembly debates.
At a moment when India was bleeding, the CPI chose factional ideological solidarity over national unity.
1962: Punishing Patriots Within Their Own Ranks
The CIA Directorate of Intelligence report, from the CAESAR, ESAU, and POLO series, documents that left-faction members of the CPI Central Secretariat, particularly Basavapunniah, were actively promoting the Chinese line within the party as early as late 1959. The report records that Basavapunniah conveyed to party meetings Mao’s direct claims, passed through party chief Ghosh, that:
- Tibet, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, and the Northwest Frontier Agency were “provinces peopled by the same race” as China
- China had a “historic right” to these territories
- The McMahon Line was not valid
- India’s warnings about Chinese aggression were merely a “bogey”
This Chinese territorial propaganda was being internally circulated by CPI leaders three years before the 1962 war even broke out.
When the war did come, the party’s pro-China tilt was turned against its own cadre who dared to be patriotic. The Indian Express article documents how V.S. Achuthanandan, then a young Kerala CPI cadre, later to become Kerala Chief Minister, publicly called on people to donate blood for Indian jawans fighting on the frontlines. The party leadership punished him severely for this act of basic patriotism.
Senior Kerala CPM leader M.M. Lawrence was quoted in the Indian Express as saying: “Achuthanandan donated blood to the army without consulting the party. His move amounted to helping the government which then tried to wreck the communist party. Hence, that action was anti-party.”
Achuthanandan was formally declared an “anti-communist,” demoted from the Central Committee to the branch level, and exiled to the Alappuzha District Secretariat for one full year as punishment for wanting India to win its own war against a foreign invader.
A Legacy Without Nationalist Credentials
The historical record is unambiguous. Across every major national crisis from the 1940s to the 1960s – the independence movement, the Quit India uprising, Partition-era violence, and the Chinese invasion, the Communist Party of India consistently placed foreign ideological allegiances above Indian national interest. They attacked India’s greatest freedom fighter on behalf of their British colonial masters, sabotaged the Quit India Movement, aligned with the Muslim League during Partition bloodshed, circulated Chinese territorial propaganda against India, and punished their own members for the “crime” of supporting Indian soldiers at war.
When the CPI(M) today claims a legacy of nationalism and freedom struggle, it is making a claim that its own historical record, its own party publications, and independent intelligence assessments conclusively contradict.
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