Comrade Abdul Halim: Remembering A Communist Pioneer

B Prasant

THE birth centennial of comrade Abdul Halim was observed on December 10 at a crowded meeting organised at the Promode Dasgupta Bhavan in Kolkata.  The meeting was organised under the aegis of the Kolkata district unit of the CPI (M).

In his address to the meeting, co-worker and friend of comrade Halim, former Bengal chief minister, Jyoti Basu said that the best way to remember comrade Abdul Halim would be to complete the work that he had begun in the fulfilment of the task of building up a strong Communist Party.

Basu recalled how, during the two lengthy periods of time that he had shared the underground with comrade Halim, he was able to gain an insight into the working of the mind of the communist pioneer.  Leading a Communist Party that was in its fledgling, formative phase, comrade Abdul Halim showed rare acumen and presence of mind to apply the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism to the evolving reality of the Indian situation, recalled Basu.

Comrade Halim, Basu recalled, had vowed to never to let anything interfere with his deep-seated faith in Marxism-Leninism as he went about building the Party in what was the large province of undivided Bengal – and beyond.  Having to live with long jail sentences (some which Jyoti Basu shared with him) and what was public apathy to the communist cause, comrade Abdul Halim went on building the Party organisation while seeking to propagate Marxism-Leninism to the uninitiated relentlessly.

Basu said that while the CPI (M) “has come a long way since the time when comrade Halim saw a Party of a few thousand men and women coming into its own, it was not as yet as large and as organised as it should have been across the country.”  “We,” continued Basu, “are a small Party but we have established our credentials before the people for our principled political stand.”  That, however, was not enough, remarked Jyoti Basu who urged upon Party workers to remain deep amidst the masses and work towards raising their level of political consciousness.

If the hardy pioneers like comrades Muzaffar Ahmad and Abdul Halim, said Jyoti Basu, could make light of their immensity of difficulties and work towards the goal of Party building, the Party workers of today needed to take advantage of the prevailing situation to advance the cause of the Party further towards accomplishment of the tasks that lay ahead.

In his brief address, general secretary of the CPI (M), Harkishan Singh Surjeet said that the communist movement in India “has produced a host of dedicated pioneers like comrade Abdul Halim who worked side by side comrade Muzaffar Ahmad to set the Communist Party on a firm basis in the country.

The communist movement, said Surjeet, had been in some disarray when comrade Abdul Halim started to work as a communist activist, and he was able to put in a commendable amount of energy while being part of the 12-member committee that was set up for consolidation of the communist movement in the thirteen regions of India where the communist movement was coming up. 

In conclusion, Surjeet urged upon workers of the CPI (M) to follow the example of the pioneering spirit of comrade Halim while striving to build up the Party further across the country.

In his detailed enumeration of the life and activities of comrade Abdul Halim on the basis of printed and manuscript sources available, state secretary of the CPI (M), Anil Biswas pointed to the fact how comrade Halim who had joined the non-cooperation movement back in 1922, undertook the study of communism while in jail.  The moment he was freed, said Biswas, one of the first tasks of comrade Halim was to completely dissociate himself from the Gandhian movement.

Brought into contact with comrade Muzaffar Ahmad by another communist pioneer, comrade Abdul Rezzak Khan, comrade Halim started to work fulltime as a communist activist. One of his first tasks after his release was to laboriously transcribe a summary of the court proceedings of the Meerut conspiracy case and circulate the material as widely as possible, often using post cards to carry the message.

Heading the Kolkata committee of the then Communist Party of India, comrade Abdul Halim sent a document to the Communist International (ComIntern), which was well appreciated by the CPSU, the CPC, and the CPGB.  Comrade Halim was active in writing for and publishing a large number of communist newspapers, weeklies, and monthlies including the widely read Langal, Ganabani, and Ganashakti.

Comrade Abdul Halim who translated and published Bengali editions of the early edition of the History of the CPSU and of several other important documents of the international communist movement, fought against both the syndicalism of the ‘labour party’ line of the early deviationists, and also repudiated the ‘thesis’ that later sought to give a carte blanch to workers to become ipso facto leaders of the Communist Party.

The saga of the struggling life of the communist pioneer, concluded Biswas, would always inspire the present generation of the Party workers to dedicate more efforts into making the Party bigger and stronger in the days to come.