Foundation of the Communist Party of India

However as the United Kingdom emerged as one of the victorious powers in the World War, this sector revised their position that independence would be achieved by external assistance.

The left-wing nationalists Raja Mahendra Pratap and Mohamed Barakatullah Bhopal would not join the Tashkent communist organization, but remained friendly with the group.

The Indian Sovinterprop section produced a single-issue Urdu publication called Zamindar and the pamphlets Bolshevism and the Islamic Nations (authored by M. Barkatullah) and What Soviet Power is Like.

[2] A political school was operating at the India House, a one-storey building on Lavmentev Road in Tashkent located on the border between the 'old' and 'new' part of the city.

The 'muhajirs' were a group Indian Muslims who had been attempting to reach Turkey to fight for the defense of the caliphate there, but en route they were taken prisoners by Central Asian rebels and branded as infidels.

Roy managed to enroll some 50 muhajirs into the Indian Military School in Tashkent, preparing them to take part in struggle against British colonial rule in India.

[9] After the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement in March 1921, which largely ended the Russian civil war, there were some 36–40 muhajirs who wished to receive further training and by mid-1921 they were shifted to the Communist University of the Toilers of the East at Moscow.

[8] The Communist International, through ECCI and the Turkestan Bureau, sought to resolve organizational and political issues of the Indian revolutionaries.

[2] In late 1922 and early 1923 Roy reached out to Dange, Singaravelu, Muzaffar Ahmad and Shaukat Usmani to organize a conference in Berlin to unite the different communist groups in India.

[5] Muzaffar Ahmad and Nazrul Islam issued a nationalist literary and political magazine Nabajug ('New Age') in Bengali language during the latter half of 1920.

Roy called on Dange to contact Singaravelu and Ghulam Hussain, to jointly organize a revolutionary mass party inside India.

The manifesto carried both the nationalist slogan roti, kapra aur makan ('food, clothes and house') and workers of the world, unite.

Before being brought in front of sessions court, Ghulam Hussain confessed, appealed for mercy and offered to help the British prosecutors in the Peshawar Conspiracy Case against Mohamed Shafiq.

[6][5] Satyabhakta was encouraged by a statement by the Public Prosecutor in the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case, that argued that they communists would not be persecuted due to their beliefs but only if they sought to overthrow the government by violence.

[16] The conference was attended by 300 delegates according to the February 1926 issue of Kirti (a communist-sponsored Punjabi magazine), though British intelligence sources put the figure at 500.

[6] The conference declaration articulates the aim of the party being the creation of "a workers' and peasants' republic based on the socialisation of the means of production and distribution by the liberation of India from British imperialist domination.

"[5] Shapurji Saklatvala, member of the British House of Commons belonging to the Communist Party of Great Britain, sent a short telegram to the conference.

[6][17] At the Third Session of the Kanpur conference held on 27 February a party constitution was adopted and a Central Executive Committee (CEC) was elected.

The meeting unanimously elected as party office bearers Satyabhakta, Azad Sobhani, Hasrat Mohani, and Baba Rana Choube from UP, Muzaffar Ahmad and Radha Mohan Gokulji from Calcutta, Kameswara Rao and Krishnaswamy Ayyangar from Madras, J. P. Bagerhatta, K. N. Joglekar, S. V. Ghate and R. S. Nimbkar from Bombay and S .D.

[5] The meeting resolved to set up the party headquarters in Bombay during the course of 1926, and it was decided that S. V. Ghate was to receive 60 rupees monthly to run the office.

[5] During 1926–1929 (i.e. until the Meerut Conspiracy Case arrests) the CEC played a key role in building the Workers and Peasants Party and trade unions.

[5] As of early 1927 the CPI Presidium consisted of Muzffar Ahmad (Calcutta), J. P. Bagerhatta (Rewari), Krishnaswamy Ayyangar (Madras), G .R.

[6][4] When the leaders jailed in the Meerut Conspiracy Case had completed their sentences, the CPI could established a functional all-India party centre by 1934.

Ranadive sent a letter to Review of Indonesia on behalf of the CPI Central Secretariat, which outlined that "[t]he Communist Party of India was founded in the month of December in the year 1925.

[6] During this period Roy worked hard to gather different heterogenous left-wing groups into a single party, but building effective communication lines was a difficult task.

[5] Mohit Sen (1970), who had sided with CPI in the 1964 split, stated that "[t]here is some dispute as to whether the foundation date of the party should be taken as October 1920 in Tashkent or as June 1925 in Kanpur.

It is true that the Comintern and in particular M. N. Roy played an important role in ideologically and politically guiding and aiding the communist groups in India.

But the coming together of these groups was also due to the strenuous efforts of communists within the country, particularly those working in Calcutta, Bombay, Lahore and Madras.

What is most important, the émigré revolutionaries had no roots in the masses of India and their subjective creation was never internalised in the society it sought to transform.

"[5] Gangadhar Adhikari argued that the formation of the émigré CPI in Tashkent was the initiative of the muhahijrs and other revolutionaries in exile like the Abdul Rab-Acharya group.