Communist Parties, India

Communist Parties, India A small Communist Party was formed clandestinely in India in the early 1920s, attracting support from anti-British intellectuals, and in the cities of Bombay and Calcutta. In contrast to the Communist movements in Indochina and China, it failed to win mass support from the peasantry. It affiliated to the Indian National Congress (INC), with which it had an ambiguous relationship, alternating between rejection and support. They united in their opposition to World War II, but in 1941, after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, the party became one of the few nationalist groups to support the war, against the INC. It further triggered the INC's enmity in 1947, when it supported the establishment of an independent Muslim state (Pakistan). Marginalized by the INC, the party attempted to gain more power through a campaign of violence (1948–51), most notably the unsuccessful agrarian revolt in Telengana in Andhra Pradesh, which was suppressed by the Indian army. It returned to legal politics in 1951. In 1957, it first formed a government at state level, in Kerala, where it governed until 1959. Elsewhere, however, it still failed to attract mass support. In 1964 it split, into the pro-Russian Communist Party of India (CPI), and the pro-Chinese Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM). The latter was the more powerful and militant wing, being strong in both West Bengal and Kerala. Since 1977 it has been the dominant partner of a coalition in West Bengal, while in Kerala an alliance, CPI and CPM, has alternated in power with the Congress Party. In 1999, at the national level the CPM became the largest of a number of parliamentary splinter groups, with 33 out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha (Lower House). While the CPI and the CPM have thus been integrated into the political process, more extreme splinter groups, e.g. the Naxalites, have been suppressed because of their continued terrorist campaigns.