Shripad Amrit Dange

Shripad Amritpant Dange was born in Marathi Deshastha Yajurvedi Brahman family[1] in 1899, in the village of Karanjgaon in Niphad Taluka of Nashik District, Maharashtra.

[3] Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a veteran leader of Indian National Congress from Maharashtra, the earliest proponent of swaraj (complete independence) greatly inspired young Dange.

[6] M. N. Roy, an ex-member of the Anushilan Samiti, perhaps the most important secret revolutionary organisation operating in East Bengal in the opening years of the 20th century, went to Moscow in by the end of April 1920.

On 17 March 1924, M. N. Roy, S.A. Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, Nalini Gupta, Shaukat Usmani, Singaravelu Chettiar, Ghulam Hussain and others were charged, in what was called the Cawnpore (now spelt Kanpur) Bolshevik Conspiracy case.

The masses at this period were being led by Lokmanya Tilak and his group, in which Lala Lajpat Rai from Punjab, Bepinchandra Pal from Bengal and others had a big place.

The linkages which were forged in this strike placed the communists firmly in control of the Girni Kamgar Mahamandal and enabled them to dominate trade union movement.

It is surmised that the dissolution came about as Stalin wished to calm his World War II Allies (particularly Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill) not to suspect that the Soviet Union was pursuing a policy of trying to foment revolution in other countries.

Dange to explain why the Congress managed to strengthen its authority.Comrade Dange opines that during the war the Congress, taking into account the anti-English sentiments of the wide masses, opposed the English and by this action acquired a semblance of a national organisation fighting for the national sovereignty.The Communist Party during the war supported the allies, including the English and by this action weakened its influence as a lot of people could not correctly understand the position of the Party.

A rebellion in the Telangana region in the northern part of what was to become Andhra Pradesh, a peasant struggle against the feudal regime of the Nizam was already happening when Calcutta thesis was adopted.

Jawaharlal Nehru, frankly put forward to the visiting Soviet leaders that the Communist Party of India was claiming to receive direction from the CPSU.

Khrushchev and Bulganin's visit paved way for forging of a strong relationship between the Government of India (and later Congress Party) and the USSR, independent of CPI.

[31][32] Dange was the leader of the Communist group in the House of the People (Lok Sabha), when the Sino-Indian border dispute broke out—an event that would sharpen the differences within the CPI.

The other half of the ICP (sic), fed up with the parliamentary experiment, argues that Kerala proved that the ruling class will never allow a people's Government to capture power democratically.

Mr. Dange, leader of the Party in Parliament, M. N. Govindan Nair, secretary of the Kerala unit, and Dr. Muzaffar Ahmed of Uttar Pradesh were the proponents of the nationalist cause.

The conflict came in the open when P. C. Joshi, who controlled the Party's weekly New Age, suppressed Mr. Dange's statement in Parliament that he sharply stood by the McMahon line, and also a resolution passed by Maharashtra State Committee supporting Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the border dispute.

He was quoted by a newspaper that he (Gopalan) was shocked by the 'Ladakh incident',[34] lamenting the loss of Indian lives, and stating that the country would support Nehru in his efforts to avoid any repetition of it.

This favourable development was probably accelerated by the attitude of studied neutrality adopted in Moscow, where the Soviet press printed both the Chinese and Indian accounts of the Ladakh skirmish, without appearing to take sides.

Though the conflict had a long history, it came out in open in 1959, Khrushchev sought to appease the West during a period of the Cold War known as 'The Thaw', by holding a summit meeting with US President Dwight Eisenhower.

In February 1963—with 48 of its 110 members absent, in detention or in hiding—the National Council voted to "administer the work of the West Bengal Party" through a Provincial Organising Committee acting on behalf of the Central Secretariat.

Namboodiripad and Jyoti Basu, walked out of a National Council meeting and proceeded to appeal to all Indian Communists to repudiate the Dange leadership.

After the short-lived coexistence between both the parties broke down in Kerala and also in West Bengal similar rupture happened, the trade union wing also split.

More immediate reason for clamping of emergency was that in a judgment dated 12 June 1975, Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court held that Mrs. Gandhi was guilty on the charge of misuse of government machinery for her election campaign.

Newly strewn up Bharatiya Lok Dal[50] – a medley of groups ranging from Congress rebels to Hindu party Jan Sangh – under the patronage of Jaiprakash Narayan, was able to garner 41.32% of the votes polled.

In spite of strong pro-Indira arguments presented by Dange, CPI in its eleventh party congress at Bhatinda, repudiated the support to emergency and opted for a new policy of left democratic unity.

The concept of the memorial approved in the meeting was that it would house a modern education center, a large library and facilities for research on various issues concerning the working class movement.

[62] On 10 December 2004, The Indian Parliament honoured Dange when Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India unveiled his statue along with other left leaders such as Acharya Narendra Deva and A.K.

Dange's name figured in the first excerpt is from a 17 January 1962 entry from the journal Benediktov describing a conversation with Bhupesh Gupta, the then Secretary of the National Council of CPI.Gupta reported that after the death of Ghosh at the present time in the party there is an acute insufficiency of means for the preelection campaign.

Gupta said that he cannot singlehandedly take on responsibility in questions of assistance, therefore he considers it necessary to consult with Nambudiripad, whom he characterized as a person of crystalline honesty and whom Ghosh trusted.

Gupta confidentially reported that A. Ghosh had not consulted on this problem with Akhmed or with [Shripad Amrit] Dange, who once proposed that he entrust to him alone all matters connected with the receipt of aid from abroad.

Dange's arrival in the political arena was through the pamphlet Gandhi vs. Lenin that got him two important contacts of his youth: M. N. Roy and Lotwala, the rich flour-mill owner from Bombay.

Portrait of 25 of the Meerut prisoners taken outside the jail. Back row (left to right): K. N. Sehgal, S. S. Josh , H. L. Hutchinson , Shaukat Usmani , B. F. Bradley , A. Prasad, P. Spratt , G. Adhikari . Middle row: R. R. Mitra , Gopen Chakravarti, Kishori Lal Ghosh, L. R. Kadam, D. R. Thengdi, Goura Shanker, S. Bannerjee , K. N. Joglekar , P. C. Joshi , Muzaffar Ahmad . Front row: M. G. Desai, D. Goswami, R. S. Nimbkar, S. S. Mirajkar , S. A. Dange, S. V. Ghate , Gopal Basak.
Shripad Amrit Dange representing the CPI at the fifth congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany , Berlin. 12 July 1958.