Congress Socialist Party

The Congress Socialist Party ( CSP , Hindi कांग्रेस समाजवादी दल ) was a group within the Indian National Congress (INC). It was founded in 1934 at the time of British India and tried to enforce a more socialist policy within the INC. In addition, she refused to participate in elections and local self-government as long as they were held under the aegis of the British colonial rulers. After India's independence in 1947, the contradictions intensified, and in March 1948, organized in the CSP socialists split from the Congress party and formed their own political party, the Socialist Party of India ( Socialist Party of India ).

Party history

Beginning under the umbrella of the Congress Party

In the early 1930s, the Indian National Congress intensified its campaign against British colonial rule. On January 26, 1930, the Lahore Congress published the Purna Swaraj Declaration calling for India's independence. Gandhi's Salt March took place from March 12 to April 5, 1930 . This was followed by a mass movement of nonviolent resistance ( Satyagraha ) to which the British colonial administration reacted with mass arrests and police measures. The three round table conferences between November 1930 and December 1932 did not result in any lasting agreement between the British government, Congress and the other forces in British India. Numerous supporters and sympathizers of Gandhi and the Congress were imprisoned.

The Nasik prison in the Bombay presidency became the nucleus of the later Socialist Party . Several activists were imprisoned there at the same time from 1932–33 who had similar views on the role of Congress in the independence movement and its socio-political goals. These were Minoo Masani , Achyut Patwardhan , Asoka Mehta , Yusuf Desai and Jayaprakash Narayan . In July 1933, various socialists met in Pune and passed a preliminary program of a constitution for a future socialist party, the so-called "Pune draft" ( Poona draft ). The founding conference of the Congress Socialist Party finally took place on May 17, 1934 in Patna ( Bihar ). The first president of the CSP was Acharya Narendra Deva and the first general secretary Jayaprakash Narayan . The CSP made an appeal to all socialist groups in India to attend their conferences. The CSP gathered people who disagreed with the official policy of Congress to vote in provincial assembly elections even though India was still under British colonial rule. In addition, the CSP supporters strove for a Marxist- socialist orientation in congress politics, but at the same time also distinguished themselves from the Communist Party (CPI). The CSP was skeptical of the principle of absolute nonviolence advocated by Mohandas Gandhi and advocated a more active liberation struggle. Formally, however, the CSP did not form an independent party, but was one of several factions within the Congress. Some of their leaders, such as Deva, Narayan and Patwardhan, were part of the Working Committee , the central governing body of Congress. The CSP was not the only socialist faction within the Indian National Congress. Even Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose advocated socialist directions and the Congress had at its meeting in Karachi adopted 1931 inspired by socialist ideas economic program. Despite all ideological differences, the socialists saw the Indian National Congress as the only mass organization that could claim that it represented a large part of the Indian population. In addition, the great integrative power of Mohanda Gandhi was a decisive factor in keeping the socialists in the congress. Gandhi always endeavored to integrate as many social groups as possible into the Congress and not to delimit and often met the demands of the socialists.

After 1935, the communists in India pursued a Popular Front policy in accordance with the requirements of the Comintern and largely joined the CSP, with the result that the CSP was dominated by the communists in individual provinces such as Madras and Orissa. At their congress in Ramgarh in March 1940, the CSP officially excluded the communists from their ranks. The external reason was the different attitudes towards the outbreak of war in Europe, but also Narayan's realization that the policy of the CPI was largely controlled by the Comintern and that the common platform with the CSP only served as a political vehicle. The break resulted in large parts of the CSP organization in the southern provinces (especially Madras) being largely lost to the communists. During the World War , the CSP supported the politics of congress leadership, spoke out against India's participation in the war in the alliance of the British Empire and supported, for example, the "Quit India" movement in 1942, in which the socialists participated particularly actively because this was their ideal of active resistance came towards The socialists, like the rest of the Congress, also opposed the communalist policies of the Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah .

Break with the Congress Party

After the end of the war, the newly elected Labor government in Great Britain under Prime Minister Clement Attlee started new negotiations with the leadership of the Congress Party on India's future self-government. The CSP rejected the negotiations and instead wanted to create a mass movement to drive the British out of India. In the debate of the All India Congress Committee in June 1947 about the Mountbatten plan to partition British India into a Muslim-majority state Pakistan and a majority Hindu state India, the socialists voted against it. Ultimately, however, the plan was accepted and on 14./15. In August 1947 India and Pakistan were granted independence by the British. In India the leaders of the Congress Party took over political power.

A center of socialist activity was the city of Bombay , where the central office of the CSP was also located. The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) , which is dominated by communists, was particularly active there. Because of this communist dominance, the leadership of the Congress decided in 1947 to found a trade union federation of its own. The socialists, under their local leader Asoka Mehta, spoke out against this . Mehta would have preferred a democratization of the structures of the AITUC instead of a new establishment. Notwithstanding this, the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) was founded in May 1947 . The socialists also withdrew from the AITUC, but did not join the INTUC. The Congress party leadership , including Vallabhbhai Patel in particular, rejected economic-political socialist "experiments" and ultimately presented the socialists with the alternative of either giving up their own CSP specialist organization and integrating themselves completely, or leaving the Congress Party. At the request of the Congress leadership, the CSP renamed itself the Socialist Party at its conference in Kanpur from February 23 to March 1, 1947 , to make it clear that the goals it represented were not the goals of the entire Congress party. The party order of the Congress Party was changed so that separate groups with their own constitution were no longer allowed. Attempts to mediate between the Socialists and the Congress Party, especially on the part of Gandhi, failed. After Gandhi was assassinated, the socialists called on the Congress government, and in particular Interior Minister Patel, to resign because they had not been able to protect Gandhi sufficiently. An official break with the INC was irreversible and the socialists decided at their conference in Nasik from 19 to 21 March 1948 under their Secretary General Jayaprakash Narayan officially to sever ties with the Congress Party. This was the hour of birth of the Socialist Party of India.

Meetings of the Congress Socialist Party

The CSP held a total of six meetings between 1934 and 1948. Jayaprakash Narayan was the general secretary at all meetings.

No.	date	place
1.	21-22 October 1934	Bombay
2.	20-21 January 1934	Meerut
3.	24.-25. December 1937	Faizpur
4th	12-13 April 1938	Lahore
5.	February 23–1. March 1947	Kanpur
6th	19. – 21. March 1948	Nasik

literature

Myron Weiner: Party politics in India: The Development of a Multi-Party System. Princeton University Press 1957, Princeton, New Jersey, 3rd edition 1965

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Congress Socialist Party (CSP) at a glance and short profiles works of its leaders. (PDF) lohiatoday.com, accessed on April 16, 2016 (English).
^ ^A ^b ^c ^d ^e Myron Weiner: Party politics in India: The Development of a Multi-Party System. Princeton University Press 1957, Princeton, New Jersey, 3rd edition 1965, chapter The Socialist Break from Congress pp. 42-64
^ Gene D. Overstreet, Marshall Windmiller: Communism in India . University of California Press, Berkley and Los Angeles 1959, 9 The Imperialist War, pp. 179 ff . (English).

[CSP_at_a_glance-1] Congress Socialist Party (CSP) at a glance and short profiles works of its leaders. (PDF) lohiatoday.com, accessed on April 16, 2016 (English).

[Socialist_Break-2] A ^b ^c ^d ^e Myron Weiner: Party politics in India: The Development of a Multi-Party System. Princeton University Press 1957, Princeton, New Jersey, 3rd edition 1965, chapter The Socialist Break from Congress pp. 42-64

[3] Gene D. Overstreet, Marshall Windmiller: Communism in India . University of California Press, Berkley and Los Angeles 1959, 9 The Imperialist War, pp. 179 ff . (English).