Communist involvement in the Indian independence movement

Following the Non-cooperation movement of 1919, Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) was formed by Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Jadugopal Mukherjee and Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee after a meeting in Cawnpore.

Afterwards it became Hindustan Socialist Republican Association by influence of Bhagat Singh and decided that the new organization would work in cooperation with the Communist International.

The outcome was that four leaders – Ashfaqullah Khan, Ram Prasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri – were hanged in December 1927 and a further 16 imprisoned for lengthy terms.

Following the death of Lala Lajpat Rai, who died due to lathicharge while leading a peaceful protest against the commission, they bombed the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi.

[2][3] On 12 May 1933, some of the prisoners of Cellular Jail gathered and started a hunger strike, causing the deaths of Mahavir Singh, Mohan Kishore Namadas, and Mohit Moitra.

The British colonial authorities had banned all communist activity, which made the task of building a united party very difficult.

In 1927 the Kuomintang had turned on the Chinese communists, which led to a review of the policy on forming alliances with the national bourgeoisie in the colonial countries.

[15] The congress did however differentiate between the character of the Chinese Kuomintang and the Indian Swarajist Party, considering the latter as neither a reliable ally nor a direct enemy.

[15] The League Against Gandhism, initially known as the Gandhi Boycott Committee, was a political organisation in Calcutta, founded by the underground Communist Party of India and others to launch militant anti-Imperialist activities.

At the 2nd congress of the CSP, held in Meerut in January 1936, a thesis was adopted which declared that there was a need to build 'a united Indian Socialist Party based on Marxism-Leninism'.

The association was banned in July 1929 during a period when the government had imposed Section 144 to control gatherings as public support burgeoned for the imprisoned Singh and his fellow hunger-strikers.

The WPP representatives together with Nehru were able to convince the AICC to make the Indian National Congress an associate member of the League against Imperialism.

[40][41] Notable leaders of this party were Nares Chandra Sen-Gupta, Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, Qutubuddin Ahmad, S.S. Mirajkar, Philip Spratt and many others.

Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1998. p. 25 Congress leader and famous poet Hasrat Mohani and Communist Party of India leader Swami Kumaranand were the first activists to demand complete independence (Purna Swaraj) from the British in 1921 resolution from an All-India Congress Forum at the Ahmedabad Session of AICC.

They looted only these bags (which were present in the guards' cabin and contained about ₹ 4600) which belonged to the Indians and were being transferred to the British government treasury.

The colonial government feared that the defendants were entering India with the purpose of spreading socialist and communist ideas and supporting the emerging independence movement.

[50] British government cased against 40 to 50 muhajirs, who had formed the CPI in 1920 in Tashkent of Soviet Union where they gained political and military training at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow.

[51] On 17 March 1924, S. A. Dange, M. N. Roy, Muzaffar Ahmed, Nalini Bhushan Dasgupta, Shaukat Usmani, Singaravelu Chettiar, Ghulam Hussain, Rafiq Ahmad and Shaukat Usmani and others were charged that they as communists were seeking "to deprive the King Emperor of his sovereignty of British India, by complete separation of India from imperialistic Britain by a violent revolution" in what was called the Cawnpore (now spelt Kanpur) Bolshevik Conspiracy case, which was initiated in 1924.

[65][66] Since the activities of the hunger strikers had gained popularity and attention amongst the people nationwide, the government decided to advance the start of the Saunders murder trial, which was henceforth called the Lahore Conspiracy Case.

Prem Dutt Verma, the youngest amongst the 27 accused, threw his slipper at Gopal when he turned and became a prosecution witness in court.

[71] To speed up the slow trial, the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, declared an emergency on 1 May 1930 and introduced an ordinance to set up a special tribunal composed of three high court judges for the case.

[62] On 2 July 1930, a habeas corpus petition was filed in the High Court challenging the ordinance on the grounds that it was ultra vires and, therefore, illegal; the Viceroy had no powers to shorten the customary process of determining justice.

[62] The petition argued that the Defence of India Act 1915 allowed the Viceroy to introduce an ordinance, and set up such a tribunal, only under conditions of a breakdown of law-and-order, which, it was claimed in this case, had not occurred.

He stated that he had filed the first information report against the accused under specific orders from the chief secretary to the governor of Punjab and that he was unaware of the details of the case.

The prosecution depended mainly on the evidence of P. N. Ghosh, Hans Raj Vohra, and Jai Gopal who had been Singh's associates in the HSRA.

On 7 October 1930, the tribunal delivered its 300-page judgement based on all the evidence and concluded that the participation of Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru in Saunder's murder was proven.

[62] Of the other accused, three were acquitted (Ajoy Ghosh, Jatindra Nath Sanyal and Des Raj), Kundan Lal received seven years' rigorous imprisonment, Prem Dutt received five years of the same, and the remaining seven (Kishori Lal, Mahabir Singh, Bijoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Verma, Gaya Prasad, Jai Dev and Kamalnath Tewari) were all sentenced to transportation for life.

HSRA member Durga Devi's husband, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, attempted to manufacture bombs for the purpose, but died when they exploded accidentally.

Dange, along with 32 other persons, was arrested on or about 20 March 1929 [79] and put on trial under Section 121A of the Indian Penal Code: Whoever within or without British India conspires to commit any of the offenses punishable by Section 121 or to deprive the King of the sovereignty of British India or any part thereof, or conspires to overawe, by means of criminal force or the show of criminal force, the Government of India or any local Government, shall be punished with transportation for life,[80] or any shorter term, or with imprisonment of either description which may extend to ten years.On 12 May 1933, some of the prisoners of Cellular Jail gathered and started a hunger strike, causing the deaths of Mahavir Singh, Mohan Kishore Namadas, and Mohit Moitra.

Bipin Chandra Pal and Bal Gangadhar Tilak were among the most prominent Indian freedom fighters who expressed their admiration for Vladimir Lenin.