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  The “Quit India” movement proved to be immensely popular. Indians responded to Gandhi’s call by paralyzing the colonial administration. With the top leadership imprisoned, the initiative passed to the lower ranks, who radicalized the movement. The youth, in particular, took to the streets. The CPI stood isolated from this nationalist ferment. Following the Comintern line that the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 had suddenly turned the “Imperialist War” into a “People’s War” in defense of the socialist republic, the Communists found themselves running against the popular nationalist tide. Overnight, strikes were out, and in came full-throated calls for raising agricultural and industrial production in support of the war effort.33 The British rewarded them by legalizing the CPI, which had hitherto functioned as an underground organization. Operating openly, the party leaders were able to establish IPTA, their cultural organization, and carry out their trade union work without repression. But they paid a high price in terms of popular support, one from which they could never quite recover.

  An opportunity for partial redemption came during the mutiny by the naval ratings of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) in 1946. On February 18 the Indian sailors on HMIS Talwar, which was docked in Bombay, rose up in revolt against the bad food and racist treatment by their British officers.34 News of the naval mutiny spread to other ports on the subcontinent, sparking strikes by sailors stationed on ships and on shore. On February 19 the mutineers formed the Central Strike Committee, led by M. S. Khan, a Muslim, and Madan Singh, a Hindu. The naval barracks in Bombay joined the mutiny and unfurled the Congress tricolor, the Muslim League’s green, and the Communist red flags. The British were alarmed; the mutiny brought a frightful reminder of the 1857 revolt when their authority nearly collapsed in North India. The Congress and the Muslim League leaders were none too happy to see a spontaneous revolt in the armed services, particularly when they were getting close to a negotiated achievement of their goals.

  The Communists, however, wholeheartedly embraced the mutiny. They viewed it as a popular insurrection and a miraculous expression of Hindu-Muslim unity at a time when communal divisions were rife. Tara Reddy, then a young Communist, remembers that the CPI printed and distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets overnight, calling workers to strike in support of the naval ratings.35 From the early morning of February 20, workers from Girangaon and Byculla up to Naigaon began gathering on the streets. And not just mill workers; students and the middle classes from Dadar, small traders from Bhuleshwar and Kalbadevi, and Muslims from the Mohammad Ali Road, a broad swath of the city’s population, came out in support of the sailors. Reddy remembers it as a war, with British troops patrolling the city in trucks and tanks, their guns trained at the insurgent population. “February 22nd was the bloodiest day; nearly three hundred workers and comrades died in police firing.”36

  Any hope that the bloody confrontation sparked by the mutiny would escalate into a revolutionary insurrection quickly vanished when the nationalist leaders intervened and mediated a compromise between the sailors and the British government on February 22. The sailors withdrew their strike in return for a promise of improved conditions and leniency in the treatment of the mutineers. The Communists were not pleased with the Congress leaders’ mediation.

  Unhappiness turned to outright opposition after independence and the partition of India in 1947. The CPI moved sharply to the left in its Second Congress, held at Calcutta in February 1948. Jawaharlal Nehru, who had hitherto appeared as an anti-imperialist ally, now became a lackey of the imperialists, big business, and landlords. “What has come in the replacement of a British Viceroy and his councilors by an Indian President and his ministers, of white bureaucrats by brown bureaucrats,” declared the party election manifesto in 1951, is “a bigger share in the loot of Indian people for the Indian monopolists and collaborating with the imperialists.”37

  In the long, zigzagging Communist history of tortured ideological lines, the slogan “Yeh azaadi jhoothi hai (This freedom is a hoax) represented yet another new turn. The popular front line was out, and the goal now was to foment an armed insurrection, following the Bolshevik model. Leaders associated with the previous policy were forced to undergo “self-criticism,” and those promoting the new line assumed control. After the Chinese Revolution, the emphasis shifted from the Bolshevik to the Maoist model of peasant revolution. As the party jumped wholeheartedly into armed struggles in Telangana and Bengal, a new group of “left” leaders, advocating the “peasant thesis,” emerged.38

  It was one thing to lead workers in strikes and quite another to turn them into revolutionaries. Militant trade unionism kept the red flag fluttering in Girangaon, enabling the Communists to bend the complex neighborhood ties in favor of labor activism. But when it came to achieving their larger goal of ratcheting up militant trade unionism to revolutionary consciousness, they came up short. The blind devotion to the Soviet Union did not help. Nor did clinging dogmatically to the idea that class interests would naturally unite workers divided by religion, region, language, gender, and caste and forge them into a revolutionary force. This naive belief in the revolutionary proletariat ran up against the competing nationalist mobilization of the population as Indians. For this reason, the CPI always struggled with defining its relationship with the Gandhi and Nehru-led Congress. So long as the British ruled India, the conflict with the “bourgeois” Congress could be muted in the interests of anticolonialism. But once India won independence and the Congress assumed power, the clash with the ruling party took center stage. In the trade union field, the GKU had to contend with the Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh (RMMS), affiliated with the Congress-led Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC). In addition, the socialist trade union Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS) also emerged as a significant competitor.39

  The Communists remained important in Girangaon, but they no longer dominated. The slogan that national freedom was a hoax left them isolated, and the about-face to the left and the slogan of armed struggle invited government repression. As the left and right wings of the CPI became locked in disagreements, the Communist influence dwindled. Alarmed by the CPI’s “left adventurist” opposition to Nehru, whose foreign-policy pronouncements won Soviet appreciation, party leaders from both wings were summoned to Moscow in 1951. Stalin ruled that Mao’s revolutionary path held good for China alone; he warned the Indian Communists against following a radical path and counseled a patient and flexible approach toward Nehru. Heeding the “fraternal advice” of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the CPI line changed. The “left adventurist” leadership was dethroned in favor of a “centrist” one. Back in favor, Dange, sidelined previously as “right wing,” searched for ways to deploy the working class for a wider political cause. He found it in the struggle for the linguistic state of Maharashtra.

  DREAMING MARATHI

  Soo ché? Saru ché!

  Danda lé ké maru ché!

  How are you?—I am well!

  I will take a stick and thrash you to hell!

  The year is 1957.40 Bombay is rocked by linguistic regionalism. A political procession demanding the creation of the linguistic state of Maharashtra is passing by the neighborhood of Saleem Sinai, the protagonist in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. The neighborhood children are watching the procession from the top of a lane that slopes sharply down to Warden Road. But ten-year-old Saleem is not interested in slogan-shouting mill hands and shopkeepers carrying black flags; his attention is elsewhere. He is going around and around on his sister’s bicycle, trying to impress an American girl. The girl gives his bicycle a hard shove, sending Saleem hurtling down the slope. He lands smack in the middle of the procession. When the throng sarcastically asks him in Marathi to join them, he demurs. The crowd assumes that the upper-class boy is Gujarati and asks him to recite something in his tongue. All Saleem knows is a nonsense rhyme used in his school to torment Gujarati boys. The crowd is thrilled by the ridicule of the Gujarati language. They lose interest in the boy and
shout out the doggerel “Soo ché? Saru ché.”

  The political cauldron that Saleem unwittingly rode into had been simmering. The Congress had committed itself to redrawing state boundaries to correspond with linguistic divisions as early as 1921.41 After independence, demands grew for reorganizing the administrative divisions inherited from the British Raj. But the government wavered because Prime Minister Nehru viewed linguistic states as detrimental to national unity. Reluctantly responding to rising tensions, it created the state of Andhra in 1953 by separating the Telugu-speaking districts from the old Madras Presidency. This was the first linguistic state. In 1953 the government appointed the States Reorganization Commission (SRC) to study and recommend the redrawing of state boundaries in light of not just language but also economy and geography. One of the most contentious issues that the SRC had to deal with was the linguistic state of Maharashtra.

  In 1951 the Marathi-speaking population of about twenty-seven million was scattered among three states. Nearly sixteen million were in the Bombay State, and the rest were in Vidarbha and Hyderabad. The Bombay State, which emerged from the colonial Bombay Presidency and included Gujarat and the Deccan princely states, was multilingual. While Marathi speakers constituted 44 percent of the population, Gujarati and Kannada speakers accounted for 32 and 12 percent, respectively.42 Creating a single state for Marathi speakers, who had never been historically unified, meant dealing with both their scattered distribution and the multilingual nature of the Bombay State. As if this was not challenging enough, there was the added complication of the city of Bombay, which was also multilingual. While the Marathis formed nearly 45 percent of its population, the Gujaratis counted for 18 percent, followed by Hindi and Urdu speakers, who together also constituted 18 percent of the city’s population.43

  6.1. Bombay State in 1951. Courtesy: Tsering W. Shawa.

  In dealing with this complex linguistic geography, the SRC had to also take into account the growing demand for a unified state of Marathi speakers, or Samyukta Maharashtra. Animating Samyukta Maharashtra was a powerful belief in the Marathi-speaking people’s glorious past. Nationalist historians and leaders had fostered this belief by identifying impressive achievements and heroes in the region’s precolonial history. They projected Shivaji, the seventeenth-century Maratha chieftain, as the preeminent symbol of the region’s golden past. Thanks to leaders such as Tilak, Shivaji the historical figure became Shivaji the myth. He was no longer a Maratha chief locked in a battle with the Mughals to defend and extend his domain but a national hero. Never far from this image was also the suggestion that he was a Hindu champion against Muslim domination. A symbol of national and Hindu greatness, Shivaji became an emotive force in the movement for Samyukta Maharashtra.

  The SRC ran up against the Samyukta Maharashtra sentiment when it submitted its report in 1955. It recommended maintaining the existing composite character of the Bombay State with three exceptions: First, it would include Kutch and Saurashtra, the former princely states of Gujarat, and the Marathi-speaking districts of Hyderabad; second, Kannada districts would be separated to form the independent state of Karnataka; and third, Vidarbha would be constituted into a separate state.44 The Gujarati political leaders were pleased; not only would the Gujaratis retain their position in the state, but the addition of Kutch and Saurashtra would add to their strength. The Marathi activists, however, saw the recommendations as favoring the Gujaratis and planned to cut Marathi speakers down to size.

  The Communists immediately jumped into the fray. Viewing the Soviet Union as an exemplary multinational federation, they were ideologically committed to the formation of linguistic states. But their commitment was not only ideological. Dange, in particular, was deeply emotional about Samyukta Maharashtra.45 Thus, the day after the report was made public, the Communists held a mass meeting on October 11, 1955, on Chowpatty Beach, vowing to make a bonfire of the report.46 The secretary of the CPI’s Bombay branch warned darkly of the coming battle for the creation of Maharashtra. The unrest that the Communists whipped up put the Congress activists in a bind. They supported the demand for a unified state for Marathi speakers but had to heed the call for reason and discipline made by the leadership in New Delhi, which saw the desire for linguistic states as narrow-minded and divisive.

  Unburdened by any constraint, the Communists and Socialists fanned the flame of linguistic nationalism. Dange, the Socialists S. M. Joshi and M. R. Dandavate, and the noted Marathi writer and journalist Acharya Atre emerged as the principal leaders of the movement for Maharashtra. They formed the Samyukta Maharashtra Kriti Samiti (SMKS) to fight for the unified state of Maharashtra. The new organization drew into its fold prominent intellectuals such as Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, the father of Bal Thackeray, who later founded the Shiv Sena. The leftists also recruited Senapati Bapat, a legendary Gandhian nationalist, and announced plans for a demonstration on November 21, 1955. Not even Khrushchev and Bulganin’s impending visit to the city on November 23 deterred Dange. In response to SMKS’s call, six hundred thousand workers struck work on November 21. The city witnessed huge demonstrations. Violence and riots broke out. The police resorted to firing on the demonstrators, killing ten and injuring three hundred. Order was restored only when Joshi was allowed to hold a meeting on Chowpatty, reiterating the demand for Samyukta Maharashtra but asking for calm.

  Although the city was tense, the Soviet visit went off without incident two days later. Momentarily overlooking Moscow’s growing coziness with Nehru, the Communists cooperated with the government to ensure that their Soviet comrades were warmly welcomed. Once the visit was over, the hostilities resumed. The secretary of the CPI’s Bombay committee declared in December that the “final and decisive stage of the struggle for Samyukta Maharashtra is fast approaching.”47 Dange floated a new organization, the Samyukta Maharashtra Poorak Samiti (SMPS), to steer the movement in a more militant direction.48

  6.2. Communist leader Dange addresses a meeting for Samyukta Maharashtra. Courtesy: Taken from the collection of Com. Prakash Reddy.

  The Nehru government was unbending. On January 16, 1956, it announced the decision to form three states—Maharashtra, Gujarat, and the city of Bombay, which would be administered from New Delhi. Anticipating opposition, the government arrested the leftist leaders, including Dange. The workers went on strike, and violence gripped the city for the next several days. The police opened fire in several localities. According to an official report, seventy-five people were killed in the disturbances, whereas the pro–Samyukta Maharashtra writers claimed that more than a hundred had died of police bullets. The government alleged the Marathi-speaking rioters had committed widespread violence against the Gujaratis and their commercial establishments and molested Gujarati women, a charge hotly contested by the Samyukta Maharashtra leaders. But they did not deny that the Gujaratis were attacked and feared for their lives.49

  An alliance of opposition parties formed the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti (SMS) in February 1956 to oppose Nehru’s January decision. For the next nine months, while the SMS gathered strength by organizing satyagrahas and marches, the Congress was forced to play defense. Pressure from the Maharashtra Congress leaders mounted on Nehru. Ultimately, the central government announced a face-saving formula to create a bilingual state consisting of all the Marathi-and Gujarati-speaking areas and including Bombay City. This mollified the SMS but angered the Maha Gujarat Parishad.

  While protests convulsed Gujarat, the SMS, flush with a partial victory, prepared for the 1957 general elections. Despite bitter fights between the Communists and the Socialists, the SMS candidates did remarkably well in the Marathi-speaking areas of the state.50 The Congress was alarmed, particularly by what it saw as the threat of a Communist “takeover.” New Delhi realized that the only way to check the rising Communist influence was to cede the demand for linguistic states. Accordingly, the Congress Working Committee passed a resolution in 1959 recommending the formation of Maharashtra, including the city of Bombay, a
nd Gujarat. This took the wind out of the sails of the SMS, which was already buffeted by the bitter conflict between the Communists and the Socialists. Having achieved its goal of creating Maharashtra, the SMS collapsed.

  Maharashtra came into existence on May 1, 1960. The government accepted Dange’s suggestion that the new linguistic state come into existence on May Day.51 But this was small satisfaction. As a political party, the CPI saw its influence grow. But the same could not be said of its ideology of class struggle. Whatever strength it had gained during the agitation had come not from organizing the workers as a class but from mobilizing all Marathi speakers, regardless of their class, caste, gender, and religious and political divisions, as a community. Because the majority of workers were Marathi speaking and the capitalists were Gujaratis, the Communists portrayed the struggle for Maharashtra as a class issue.52 Dange saw the influence of big business at work in the SRC’s recommendations, which, according to him, were designed to deny the “legitimate national claim” of Maharashtrians. “It seems Maharashtra can exist only as a serf nation in the service of the Commerce of Bombay City or the Commerce of the Delhi Empire.”53 Rejecting the charge that the movement for a linguistic state was a “reactionary” regional outlook against a wider national one, he characterized the Samyukta Maharashtra movement as an expression of “democratic nationalism” of the “working class, the peasantry, and the toiling middle-classes.” The bilingual state, by contrast, was a form of “landlord-capitalist serfdom.”54