History of the Communist Movement in India by Harkishan Singh Surjeet

But in the early 1960s the Sino-Soviet split in global communism triggered a crisis in the CPI. But Surjeet's idea was firmly quashed by Rajani Palme Dutt, the Communist party of Great Britain's chief ideologue, who for many years supervised the CPI on behalf of Stalin's Comintern.īy 1952 Surjeet was general secretary the Punjab CPI and was elected to the Punjab legislative assembly (1954-59). By 1944 Surjeet was propounding his own thesis for a Sikh homeland on the model of the Pakistan being proposed by the Muslim League. For Surjeet it proved to be an opportunity to study Marxism further.įollowing the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the CPI's line changed into support for what had now become the 'people's war' and CPI leaders, including Surjeet, were released in 1942. Leading CPI members were rounded up by the British, including Surjeet, who had gone underground, and detained in Deoli detention camp, Rajasthan. With the outbreak of the second world war, the CPI, following the Moscow line (Stalin had recently concluded his pact with Hitler) denounced the war as imperialist. It was while writing patriotic poetry, and working for Punjabi papers, that he acquired the nom de plume Surjeet (conqueror of the gods). In the mid-1930s he joined the Communist Party of India (CPI). The region was the epicentre of anti-colonial struggle and, inspired by the socialist revolutionary Bhagat Singh, hanged by the British in 1931, he hoisted the Indian tricolour at the Hoshiarpur district courts on the first anniversary of Bhagat's execution - and was imprisoned until 1934. He was born into a small peasant family in Rupowal, a village in eastern Punjab. Indeed, in the vote of confidence debate in the Indian parliament last month on the US-India nuclear deal, Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, thanked him for his support in defeating the BJP. Surjeet backed the current Congress coalition which came to power in 2004.

History of the Communist Movement in India by Harkishan Singh Surjeet