Discuss the formation of the communist party of India and its early history.

Narendranath Bhattacharya was the real name of Manabendra Nath Roy, M.N. Roy the founder of Communist Party of India in Tashkent was born on 6 February 1889 in a poor Brahmin family. He had done his studies from National University. He was extremist in nature and believed in armed revolt and for this he was getting support from Germany.

In order to achieve his aim he travelled through many countries such as, Malay, Indonesia, Indo-China, Philippines, Japan, Korea, China and U.S.A. here, he changed his name and kept M.N. Roy. While he was studying his Marxist literature in U.S.A, USA. Joined the World War I. Consequently, he left China and reached Mexico, here he met Michael Borodin, a Russian Communist and helped him in the formation of Mexico Communist Party. Then, in Moscow Prominent Russian Communist leader Lenin called him.

On the call of Lenin M.N. Roy went to Moscow in order to attend the meeting of Communist International. In this meeting the elected people were going to formulate the policy of communist international regarding the colonial countries.

The view of Lenin in this context was that the communist should help revolutionaries movement tarried on by middle class and intelligentsia, whereas, M.N. Roy modified this view as the communist should carry on their fight independently with the help of an alliance between workers and peasants, while supporting the revolutionary middle class in the fight against imperialism.

From Moscow, M.N. Ray went to Tashkent in Soviet Russia on October 1920. In order to organize armed revolt in India, here he ran a military training school, here only thousands of Muslim mujahir who were annoyed by British attitude toward Suitan of Turkey joined M.N. Roy and took military training.

Then here, he also formed the Communist Party of India which was affiliated to the Communist International. Then, these mujahir for further training Went to Moscow and when they returned to India they were caught by Britishers and brought to Peshawar for trial. This trial is known as the Peshawar Conspiracy case (1922-23).

Early Communist Groups.

Earlier the ideas of communism were limited to the number of people such as, Virendra Nath Chattopadhyay, Bhupendranath Das and Barkatullah who were the non-resident Indians and working from outside India. Some other communist were annoyed by non-cooperation such as Shripad Amrit Dange and Singaravelu Chattier.

The earlier one credited with the formation of communist group in Bombay and on 16 September 1924 formed the “Indian Socialist Labor Party”. While later credited with the foundation of “Labor Kisan party” in May 1923. Then, Muzaffar Alam in collaboration with Qazi Nazrul Islami formed the “Labor Swaraj Party: later renamed as ‘Peasant’s Worker’s Party’.

It was only Dange who was in contact with M.N. Roy. On the suggestion of M.N. Roy, Dange was trying to form dual organization of Communist Party of India, consisting public organization as well as secret group. In 1924, the leading communist such as Muzaffar Ahmed, S.A. Dange, Shaukat Usmani and Nalini Gupta were ousted and put to the trial on the charge of running a revolutionary organization with the aim of challenging British rule. This trial took place in Cawnpore, consequently, it is known as Cawnpore conspiracy case.

Formation of the Indian Communist Party.

With the aim of getting complete Independence and reorganization of Indian society on the basis of communist ideas of common ownership’s, Satya Bhakta a great communist leader announced the formation of Indian Communist Party in Sept. 1924.

The All India Conference of the communist was organized by Satyabhakta in December 1925, at Cawnpore. Under the presidency of Singaravelu Chettier all communist leader of India such as, Nalini Gupta, Muzaffar Ahmed etc. attended the conference. The conference also known as Cawnpore Conference regarded as the beginning the Communist Party of India.

The conference led foundation of central committee of a party. S.V. Ghate and J.P. Bergarhatta was its joint secretaries. Later in 1926, the constitution of the C.P.I was published and in 1930, the party formally affiliated to the Communist International.

However, when the idea of communism was on its nascent stage it had some drawbacks such as, lack of money, hostile attitude of British government in India, lack of cadres and faced opposition from the upper class of Indian society.