Marxist Cultural Movement in India: 1936-1947

424 Pages·1979·6.446 MB·English

by  Sudhi Pradhan

MARXSI T CULTURAL MOVEMENT
; IN INDIA
CHRONICLES AND DOCUMENTS
(1936-47)
i J
Compiled and Edited by
SUDHI PRADHAN
MARXIST CULTURAL MOVEMENT
IN INDIA
CHRONICLES AND DOCUMENTS
( 1936-1947 )
Compiled and Edited by
SUDHI PRADHAN
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Copyright © July 1979 by
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Cover designed by :
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Price : Rs. 45.00 (Hard Cover)
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CONTENTS
Page
Foreward i—xxiv
On the Progressive Writers' IVIovement—
M. R. Anand, 1939 1
The Youth Cultural Institute-A. Mukherjee, 1953 23
The Y. C. Programme, 1941 30
iReminiscences—Sajjad Zaheer, 1940 33
Towards Progressive Literature, 1936
A note on the Progresive Writers' Association, 1936 48
The Nature and Purpose of Literature—Premchand 52
The Indian Renaissance at the parting of way—
R.S. Firaq 60
Progressive View of Art—Ahmed Ali 67
Intellectual and Cultural Reaction—Mamuduzzafar 84
Tendencies in Contemporary Bengali Literature—
S. Goswami 90
Constitution and a part of the manifesto— 96
More on the Youth Cultural movement, 1969-70 99
Bengal Progressive Writers getting together
frpm weekly P.W.—Hiren Mukherjee 15.11.1942 102
Bengal Writers and Artists—Do —Do 10.1/43 107
Singing they go in to battle—Do —Do 7.2.'43 112
The fourth All India Progressive
Writers'Conference—Do 6.6.'43 117
The first Bulletin of Indian People's Theatre
Association—July '43 124
The first All India Conference of IPTA 129
The draft resolution of the IPTA 130
All India Committee of the IPTA 132
Speech by Prof. Hiren Mukherjee 134
Programme 137
Bombay reports 143
Mysore and U.P. reports 149
Bengal reports 151
Malabar reports 153
Page
Panjab reports 155
Plays 160
Drama goes to War—Edgar Snow and Anna
Louise Strong 161
Re-organisation of the Bengal Committee IPTA
July'43 176
US- A people's symposium-H. Mukherjee
August '43
On Progressive Criticism—X.YZ. Do 180
People's Art—Monoranjan Bhattacharya „ 187
Notes on Progressive Writing in Bengal—Bishnu Dey 191
The Theatre and the People—S. K. Acharyya, Aug. '43 199
A report on Gujarati—Jaswant Thakore 209
The Constitution of the IPTA—September 1945 221
Annual report of the IPTA—1946 236
General Secretary's report—Anil D' Silva 238
Central Cultural troupe 242
"Children of the Earth" (film) 248
Bengal report 251
Bombay „ 259
Delhi „ 268
Andhra „ 272
Mangalor „ 279
Agra and Kanpur reports 281
Resolutions 283
Financial Statement 286
Activities from October '45 to August '46—Bombay 289
Delhi report 290
Agra „ 291
Delhi, Calcutta and New groups 292
Film and Central Troupe 293
Crisis in Bengal IPTA 18.8 1946 294
Second Bulletin of P.W.A. (1943-1947) 3C5
Bengal Progressive Writers' Association 309
A-idhra P.W.A. 312
Bombay P.W,A. 317
Progressive Writings in Gujarati Language 321
Page
Urdu Section of Bombay 323
Hindi section of tlie U.P. P.W.A. 327
Befiar P.W.A. 330
Karnataic P.W.A. 332
The Panjab P.W.A. 334
Hyderabad P.W.A. 335
Statement on Communal disturbances 1946 336
Addenda:
Haliet Circular-1936 344
Cultural Crusade (Andhra PWA) 1943 346
Manifesto (the 4th Conf. P.W.A.) May 1943 348
Carrying forward our rich heritage (CPI Conf) Do 351
Andhra Squad ,, 3 54
Bombay „ 359
Kerala „ „ 361
Bengal „ ' „ 364
Bengal Anti-Fascist Writers and Artists 1944 368
Behar Progressive Writers' Conference 372
Central India Writers' Conference 375
All Kerala P.W.A. 376
Two souvenirs of the Ballet Squad 1945-46 377
Impact on Udayshankar and Saigal 391
ILLUSTRATION 176
1. Photocopy of the letter by ^ nil D' Silva
2. The author with two eminent folk poets of Bengal
in 1945 (L. to R. Gumani Dewan, Sudhi Prodhan
and Ramesh Seal),
Acknowledgements
Abdulla Rasul, the veteran Marxist Kisan leader and
Benoy Ghose, my old colleague and now a well-known writer
were always reminding me to undertake this job. In the
course of the work Hirendranath Mukherjee, one of the
pioneers of this movement, came forward to help me.
The professors who used to send their research students
are Debipada Bhattacharya, Khetra Gupta, Darsan Chow-
dhury, Rabiidranath Banerjee and Gourishankar Bhattacharya.
Research workers like Dilip Majumdar, Somen Chatterjee,
A. N. Lahiri Majurndar, G. N. Das, Nitish Biswas and Miss
Kalpana Biswas helped me in the preparation of my
manuscript. Most of the typing was done by Eswaran, a
Keralian Marxist. Surajit Das Gupta, Partha Raha and
Parthasrathi Chaudhuri helped me in the preparation of my
foreword.
In the preparation of blocks Khaled Chowdhury, S. K.
Haider and Samarendra Sengupta helped and thus saved
me a lot of labour and expense. In respect of the proof
reading I am sorry I started very badly taking occasional
help from Surajit Das Gupta but in the later period my friend
and a very close relative Pabitra Roy whose contribution to
the cause of Anti-Imperialist and Marxist movement in India
hardly less than anyone of us,< came forward to help me
although he is a victim of a malignant disease.
Samarendra Bhattachary. Sanjoy Bhattacharya and
others associated with the Roopa Mudran were all very
helpful.
Foreword
It was some time in the middle of last year that I fiist
thought of publishing all the documents at my disposal and
that too at my earliest opportunity, relating to the Marxist
cultural movement in India. My reasons for presenting the
major documents in a book form were derived from two
trends I noticed. While on the one hand there is a growing
interest amongst students of Social History in the cultural
movements of the thirties, there has been, on the other hand,
a tendency on the part of some individuals having long
association with different aspects of ihe movement, to feist
on the unsuspecting reader distorted history, fiction in the
name of facts.
My original plan was to arrange the documents in a
chronological order. I could not do so because of various
reasons, An intent reader, however, can find out the
chronology if he refers to the dates of first publication of the
documents mentioned in the table of contents.'
All the documents, barring four, are taken Ircm the
bulletins of the All India Centre of the Progressive Writers'
Association and the Indian People's Theatre Association
(henceforth mentioned as P.W.A. and I.P.T.A. respectively)
and reports from 'People's War', a weekly organ of the
undivided Communist Party of India. The four documents,
mentioned above, are the Hallet Circular, a letter by Anil
D'Silva, the first General Secretary of the IPTA, a paper
containing her direction to the Bengal unit of the IPTA, and a
report by Charuprokash Ghosh on "Crisis in Bengal IPTA".
While the first was procured fi-om the National Archives
thrbugh Chinmohan Sehanobis, the rest are with me in
original. Most of the documents presented here are from
my personal collection, while sottie of them wei-e given to
me by Chinmohan Sehanobis, Sunil Bose and Shyamsundar
De, of which I have now with me Xerox copies. Making
allowance for printing errors documents have not been
(ii)
subjected to any revision or ciiange. Only in one instance
I liad to change a name. In the first All India conference
of the IPTA the role of the Professor in the play 'Laboratory'
was performed by Sambhu Mitra, and not by Benoy Ghose,
writer of the play. In the original document Ghose's name
was printed, a palpable mistake. Benoy Ghose had lent
his voice to many of the IPTA choruses, but never perfor­
med as an actor. Secondly let me point out that Prem
Chand'S Presidential address in the first conference of PWA
translated in English and printed in 'Towards Progressive
Literature' and reprinted in this book does not incorporate
fully the Hindi version to be found in his book'Kwuch
Bichar'(Things to ponder over).
From the writings of Mulk Raj Anand and Sajjad Zaheer,
two founder-members of the PWA, readers know that the
Marxist cultural movement in India received its first impetus
from Europe. But there is no reason to believe that the
movement was sponsored solely by the Communists.
Marxism today is faced with some serious problems, the
manifestation of which can be found in the Sino-Soviet
conflict, or in the question of Euro-communism. I do not
intend entering into these problems as they fall outside the
scope of this book. Away from polemics, in the ideological
history of social progress with the continued improvement
in the means of production without a corresponding
dc/v-opncnt towards equitable distribution, two distinct
tiendd have been noticed side by side. One is a sense of
human brotherhood, or universal fraternity, and the other a
growing demand for the right of national self-determina­
tion. Notwithstanding the revolutionary changes in the
communication system all over the world and subsequent
breaking-down of the geographical barriers between coun­
tries, the second trend has gained in such prominence that
the validity of the Marxist formulation, 'Workers of the World
Unite' are being increasingly challenged.
Throughout the 18th & 19th centuries when the Euro­
pean colonialists were out to loot the countries of Asia and
Africa and at the same time depriving their own workers of
their fruits of labour and using them .a» mercenaries in the
(ii!)
foreign lands, contradictions inherent in this state of affairs
gave birth to smug complacence on the one hand, and
ideas of a socialist Utopia on the other.
Rammohan Roy was a citizen of India under the British
East India Company, but he imbibed the concept of inter­
national fraternity from the 'Rights of Man' by Thomas Paine.
Paine wrote in his book, "My country is the world and my
religion is to do good". It was in fact an echo from Socrates
when, exiled from Athens, the Greek savant had uttered,
"i am no longer an Athenian or Greek, but a citizen of the
world". William Lloyd Garrison said in 1830 in a journal
entitled 'Liberator' championing the cause of the liberation
of slaves : "This world is our country,—people of whole
world is our countrymen'.
But Imperialists took advantage of this genuine feeling
of humanists to plunder and subjugate nations under the
pretext of carrying 'white man's burden'. Marx's slogan for
the workers of the world to unite was to be understood in
this context. The class war preached by Marx was meant
to prevent for all time to come the imperialist effort of
exploitation at home and slavery abroad. Thus the demand
for the right of national self-determination is the direct out­
come of and supplementary to the Marxist slogan, "workers
of the word unite".
But the imperialist rulers who could befool their own
people, led them—particularly men of Europe and subjuga­
ted nations into the devastation and carnage of World War I.
Before 1 come to describe the resistance against the war by
European intellectuals, let me recall what Rabindranath
Tagore thought about the first World War in an article in the
November-December 1914 issue of "Sabuj Patra" (Green
Leaf ). He wrote : "Domination of the Vaisyas has been
established in the world today. Trade and commerce are
no longer merely trade and commerce now—they have -been
wedded secretly to empire. There used to be a time when
the vaisyas owned only commodities, now they own other
men. The science of -militarism which is being preached
to-day by German theoreticians and which like heady wine
has intoxicated them and led the Germans on to on unjust