Shift from Antagonistic Strategy to Constitutional Democracy

The communist movement remained localised in Hyderabad and West Bengal. The mass support was sporadic and conditional as people were not ready to reject the Congress so soon after Independence. The government also decided to take stern action; while in the Hyderabad region the Indian armed forces continued its ‘police action’, in West Bengal the CPI was banned in March 1948 and in January, a security act was passed to imprison the communist leaders without trial. Within the Communist leadership, there were divisions on the ‘Chinese line’ and the ‘Russian line’ which became wider after the failure of a proposed railway strike on May 9, 1949.

In September 1950, the prominent communist leaders like Ajoy Ghosh, S.A. Dange and S.V. Ghate criticised the organisation for its faulty strategies and its failure to take notice of the true picture of independent India. Consequently, in October 1951, at the Third Party Congress of the CPI, held in Calcutta, a significant shift in its policy was endorsed. It decided to withdraw the Telangana movement and forge an inclusive front of the peasants, workers and middle classes. Consequently, the ban was lifted by the government, and the Indian communists participated in the general election of 1951-52, thus moving from an insurrectionist path to the path of constitutional democracy.

Chapter 34

The Indian States

The princely states, also called the Indian states, which covered a total area of 7,12,508 square miles and numbered no fewer than 562, included tiny states such as Bilbari with a population of 27 persons only and some big ones like Hyderabad (as large as Italy) with a population of 14 million. The East India Company acquired, in the process of conquest, important coastal tracts, the valleys of the great navigable rivers and such tracts which were rich in agricultural products and densely populated by prosperous people, while, generally, the Indian states were “the inaccessible and less fertile tracts of the Indian peninsula”.

The making of Indian states was largely governed by the same circumstances which led to the growth of East India Company’s power in India. The evolution of relations between the British authority and states can be traced under the following broad stages.