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The struggle for the
independence of the country from the British has focused primarily on the
Congress and to a lesser extent the socialists and the communists. In contrast
the struggle of the masses has been treated only as an incidental aspect. The
role of the peasants, workers, students has been viewed as an extension of the
larger political groups. It is however necessary to go beyond the superficial
observations and see the essence of the roles played in the anti-imperialist
movement. While the Congress leadership were mere stooges of the British, even
the CPI had no consistent anti-imperialist role and trailed the Congress and
Gandhi.
Even today peasant
struggles are vilified and at best Naxalites portrayed as robinhoods. The CPI of
those days refused to learn from the historic Chinese revolution. It was
Sajanand Saraswati who for the first time spoke of learning from the Chinese
experience as early as 1940-41. While the communists (not to speak of the
Congress and Socialists) refused to lead the peasantry against the landlords and
in the anti-imperialist struggle, it was Sajanand who fought boldly against this
wrong line.
Sajanand Saraswati
pinned his hopes on the rural poor. In 1944, as president of the 8th all India
Kisan Sabha meeting, held in Vijayawada, he was more forthright when he said
" the more they are oppressed and distressed the nearer they are to the Kisan
Sabha and the Sabha is nearer to them…..It is they, the semi-proletariat, khet
mazdoor (agricultural proletariat), who have very little land or no land at
all,and the petty cultivator, who anyhow squeeze a most meager living out of the
land they cultivate and eke out their existence, who are the real kisans of our
thinking…..and who will make and must constitute the kisan sabha ultimately".
He wrote a book on the importance and role of the khet mazdoor in 1941-42,
describing and analyzing the rural scenario in detail.
He further added that
"the rural proletariat is becoming aware of its rights, duties and
responsibilities; when it becomes fully aware, then there will be the final
dance of destruction and then the present iniquitous agrarian system will start
crumbling."
Sajanand Saraswati
also fought against the CPI’s wrong line of allying with the Congress, where it
theorized the Congress as the national bourgeoisie, that the revolution be a
national democratic revolution, the need for a national front with the Congress
and Gandhi as the national leader of the national front. On the other hand
Sajanand Saraswati was for People’s Democracy, a united front, not with the
Congress but of the peasants and workers (he wrote a book in two volumes on his
understanding of the united front in India at that time). He was for a militant
peasant struggle. His book on "Revolution and United Front" was ignored
by the party.
The revisionist trend
in the party being so strong it continued to dominate the CPI and though he did
not have a comprehen-sive alternative line he was able to bring 18 left parties
into a united front before his death in 1950. He died on June 26 1950 at the age
of 61.
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