Communist Party of India memorandum — fighting sabotage, and being blamed for the collapse of the "struggle"

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uated as our country is. Repression has only succeeded in destroying
people's morale, spreading defeatism, which is fertile soil for Fifth Column-
ism. We stood between the police and the people, persuading honest patriots
not to get provoked, fighting Fifth Columnists on the spot, taking police
lathis on our shoulders, being sent to jail for speaking against repression.
How effective our propaganda and work was can be seen that a week to one
month after August 9, differing from Province to Province, the Congress
Socialist and Forward Bloc elements who had grabbed the Congress machine
after the arrest of the leaders, began, in all [struck-over word] illegal handbills
throughout the country, their main concentration of fire against us, held
us responsible for the collapse of the "struggle".

        We fought sabotage both politically and practically whether organised
by misguided patriots or open Fifth Columnists. We went all-out to con-
vince the honest patriots through every available means, that sabotage was
not the way to freedom but fascism and thus helped to isolate the Fifth
Columnist who was using them as dupes and who was being fed by repression.
Our propaganda was so effective that after the first month of the "struggle",
the main slogan of the Fifth Column for Congress and student workers became
"Don't listen to the Communists". As a Party of the people we knew more
than the police can ever know what is being done in the people's ranks and
our main practical activity has been to [struck-over word] sabotage the sabotage campaign.
Provincial reports chronicle only what we did in broad daylight among the
[struck-over word] masses. Our work was feared by the Fifth Column so much that it did
not stop at slander but went further, [struck: then] forged documents, stabbed and beat
up our comrades, broke our meetings, bombed our Press. If we have not
paid a heavier price that is not because of police protection (our Party
headquarters have been refused even license for firearms) but because of
our own vigilance, and better organisation.

        The police and the local officials classed our anti-repression {ms. insertion: campaign} as being
pro-struggle and have arrested our agitators and detained our organisers.
The local C.I.Ds. are now collecting names of all our members and sympath-
isers to arrest us if and when we are declared illegal again. The local
Fifth Column too is collecting our names to deal with us when the Japs come,
they [struck-over word] shadow our local leaders to stab them if they can get the chance
even before the Japs come.

        The same patriotic urge that moves us to denounce repression inspires
us with strength to fight the campaign of sabotage and its organisers. Even
The Statesman and The Times of India have not written so consistently and
strongly against sabotage as our weekly organs which are brought out in
eleven languages. If they did, they won't sell among their Indian readers
and lose their value as newspapers for their advertisers. We do so because
we are not dependent upon advertisers, (in fact, we publish no advert-
isements), but because we have earned the right by serving our nation to
talk in the name of patriotism, we carry conviction because we present a
composite objective picture of the situation as a whole. If our Party had
not conducted its propaganda drive, the country after the arrest of Congress
leaders and workers would have got split into 2 sections - the Government
and the Fifth Column and the Japs wanted nothing more. Through our politic-
al propaganda we saw that repression does not stabilise as a free gift
of leaderless, honest but misguided patriots to the Fifth Column. Rep-
ression could only demoralise the patriot make him feel utterly frustrated
but never disillusion him from Fifth Column slogans. Through our propag-
anda we have been able to isolate [struck-over word] to a large extent the honest patriot
from the real Fifth Column and make him see that the only two alternatives