Communist Party of India memorandum — categories of imprisoned comrades and "Why do we make these demands?"

                                8

        they have done their fourteen years and are not being released but
        detained under the Defence of India Rules.

                The statement of the Chittagong Armoury Raid comrades was good
        enough to be broadcast on a world scale but they are not safe enough
        to be with their people.

        B)  There are {ms. insertion: the Malabar} prisoners cases like the Mattanur and Morazha Riot cases
        convicted for being organisers of Kisan struggles, during the imperialist
        phase of the war. Most of them are very young and would be of inest-
        imable service in organising the Grow More Food Campaign.

        C)  There are individual cases like Jan Mohammed of Cawnpore who was
        awarded transportation for life for one single speech. The entire
        Cawnpore working class called him "uncle."

        D)  Then there are individual cases after August 9 in which our comrades
have been convicted on trumped up charges under the Defence of India Rules
As a general rule the Provincial Governments refuse to intervene or review
the cases because of the excitement of the present situation and under the
slogan "local authorities must be left to deal with the local situation".

3.      LET US ENJOY OUR LEGALITY IN PRACTICE, i.e.,

        - permission to hold meetings and bring out demonstrations.

        - right to carry on with our Press without the threat of closure
          hanging over our heads all the time.

WHY DO WE MAKE THESE DEMANDS?

        We ask for the above demands not merely on the basis of normal civil
liberties due to a legal Party which our Party finds it greatly [struck-over word] diffi-
cult to win because of old prejudices but primarily on political grounds, on
what our Party does in the ranks of the people and against the Fascist
aggressors.

        What do our activities boil down to during the last six months:

1.      We have kept Indian patriotism alive. If we were not there with our
policy, the country would have got divided into two camps: the loyalists
and the Fifth Column, just like Burma. Just because we stuck to our policy
despite the Government and the Fifth Column that honest patriots are finding
their way out of the arms of the Fifth Column. Through their own exper-
ience, in their own ways, different groups and parties are able to grope
their way towards our patriotic policy of National Unity for National Defence
and Freedom. If we were not there, {ms. insertion: the} honest patriot would have become a
fanatical Fifth Columnist or a demoralised creature. Hundreds of Congress-
men, inside and outside the jails, are coming towards us.

2.      We have saved the country from being enveloped in a wave of food riots
through our anti-food riot propaganda and by our constructive work in
industrial areas by helping in distribution and looking after the queues.
The Forward Bloc and the Congress Socialists had planned to celebrate
this year's Independence Day by organising an orgy of one week's food riots.
The Police Commissioner of Bombay would [struck-over word] bear witness to how effectively
and constructive our food work is.

3.      We have kept production going, with the biggest political organisation
in the country wanting a general strike for political reasons, with colonial
wage and living conditions for the workers, with Workers' Unions not even
recognised. We could do it because of the patriotic fervour of our pol-
itical policy, because we have organised and [struck-over word] led the working class,
because we are the Party of the working class.

4.      We have fought the Fifth Column politically and practically, and our
[work has] been so effective that the main theme of the Congress Socialist