FROM THE EDITOR

The significance of the volume, Memoirs of 25 Communist Freedom Fighters, published by People’s Democracy on the occasion of the CPI(M)’s 18th Party Congress held in Delhi from April 6 to 11, 2005, is two-fold. First, recognising that official interpretations of the history of India’s freedom struggle often ignore many of the ideological streams that came together in that mighty movement, it sets right the record, as far as communists are concerned, by detailing some of their powerful contributions to that epic struggle. Second, it acts as a counter to the vilification of the role of communists in the freedom struggle from quarters such as the RSS, whose own contribution to the freedom movement has been either negligible or counterproductive.

Communists played an important role in galvanising peoples’ struggles against British colonialism. Such was the impact of their activities that the British launched three conspiracy cases against them: the Peshawar Conspiracy Case in 1922–24, the Kanpur Conspiracy Case in 1924 and the Meerut Conspiracy Case in 1929. Seeing the potential of the communists in organising and mobilising the Indian people in the struggle for freedom, the British unleashed unprecedented repression upon them.

Through the decades of the 1920s and 30s, the communists were also active within the Congress in an attempt to strengthen and enlarge the freedom movement. In fact, the resolution for complete independence was moved for the first time by two communist leaders – Maulana Hazrat Mohani and Swami Kumurananda – at the Ahmedabad Congress session in 1921. The Congress ultimately accepted the resolution for ‘poorna swaraj’ only at its Lahore session of 1929.

Some highlights of these glorious struggles of the communists will be found in this volume: in Jyoti Basu’s piece, with which it begins, and in the memoirs of 25 communists that follow. The volume does not contain, by any means, an exhaustive account or list of all Communist freedom fighters. This contains the memoirs that we had published in People’s Democracy on the occasion of 50th anniversary of Indian independence. We had at that time invited from our Party comrades write-ups about the contribution of the leading figures of the communist movement to the freedom struggle. We serialized during 1997-98 all that we received.

The volume Memoirs of 25 Communist Freedom Fighters has evoked a very positive response during the Party congress. A number of comrades pointed out how several leading comrades from different states have not been written about.

There are countless leaders of the CPI(M) today who were part of the freedom struggle, apart from the hundreds who sacrificed their lives in that struggle. This volume is a tribute to these communists. We also take this opportunity to appeal once again to comrades to send us material which may be serialised in People’s Democracy and later brought out as a sequel to the present volume.

We hope that this volume will be of particular use to generations of post-independent Indians who are continuously subjected to distortions of our history.