Communist Party of India memorandum — "Legality" and "Release our convicted comrades"

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LEGALITY.

        We are politically the most unified and practically the most disciplined
Party in the country. Anyone who has dealt with us at all without pre-
conceived notions knows and admits it. It is utterly wrong to think that
we have Party workers who don't accept and carry out Party policy; if it
were so, we won't be a Communist Party at all but like any other political
party. There is no sense in keeping them in jail, that can't make us change
our policy, it will never cow down our comrades behind bars, it only means
one worker less against the Fifth Column, one patriotic mobiliser of the
people being wasted.

        After August 9, a large number of our comrades have been arrested and
detained on the basis of false reports from the police for organising the
sabotage campaign. Our case is that the police is politically ignorant
and backward and lumps all patriots together and is traditionally our worst
enemy. Our demand is that let our comrades suspected of sabotage activit-
ies be tried, if they are detained, the legality of our Party becomes a
farce.

        I would request you to think over this phenomenon. After August 9,
the vast majority of patriots throught the final struggle for national
freedom [struck-over word] had begun; we alone had the courage and the understanding to
expose it as national suicide and go right down to the people to fight for
our slogans. Besides us, those who did not agree with "struggle", remained
passive, and they did not even dare hold a mass meeting. The whole country
was aflame with passions. Out of 4414 members, we lost 29 members, and
only a part of them expelled for being pro-struggle. The rest resigned or
were expelled for failing to be sufficiently active to retain their Party
membership. On the other hand, we gained 4448 new members, i.e. during the
last six months we have gained more members than we got in fifteen years.
No other Party except a Communist Party can have such unity inside its
ranks, no other patriots except the Communists are capable of such achieve-
ments against such odds.

        To detain our comrades on the ground of following a policy which is
not Party policy is patently fantastic.

2.      RELEASE OUR CONVICTED COMRADES.

        In the first communique legalising the Party the Government had promised
to take steps in this direction but almost nothing has been done. They fall
into three categories.

        A)  EX-TERRORISTS who came over to us. The Government seems to think
        that a terrorist never changes. I would request the following consider-
        ations being evaluated.

                - A terrorist when he comes to Marxism undergoes within himself an
                  intellectual struggle, it is not cowardice but patriotism that
                  changes his views. We don't accept an ex-terrorist in our ranks
                  without making doubly sure that he has changed his views and
                  agrees with us.

                - They came over to the Party long before the war broke out, inside
                  jails, through their own studies, by association with our comrade[s]

                - The insinuation that they [struck-over word] claim to be Communists just to get
                  released is an unworthy slander.

                - The Forward Bloc gangsters are part of their own old associates
                  and they will be an asset in fighting them and winning over midd[le]
                  class youth from falling into the [struck-over word] clutches of these gangster-
                  traitors.

        In Bengal there are a whole group of pre-reform prisoners (13);