Communist Party of India memorandum on Kerala — students, prevention of hartals and prevention of looting

                                - 5 -

elastic tactics to see that prolonged and indefinite students' strikes were avoided, that students were kept at their posts within the High Schools and Colleges, that the educational institutions were kept running and not closed. The one-day protest strikes we conducted throughout Kerala immediately after the arrest of our national leaders were very successful in two ways. On the one hand we kept the flag of the students flying, we strengthened their morale, we gave their just indignation an organised form; and at the same time we kept them free from the clutches of the blinded Congressmen and the conscious Fifth-Columnists. As regards the latter, their influence has been almost entirely nil among the students. The vigorous campaign against the [struck-over word] Fifth Columnist and the saboteur that we have carried on among the students has had its effect.

        Communist students have always stood and fought for taking back the suspended students and releasing those who have been arrested. They fight for students' unity under a single [struck-over word] organisation, the Students' Federation. They knew always more politics than the others, they are better agitators, organisers, leaders. Hence they have succeeded in completely isolating the strugglewallas' organisations, the "National Students' Organisation", which to-day have become almost a cipher. Many N.S.O. students have now come over to us for the National Unity Campaign.

        3. PREVENTION OF HARTALS. Both immediately following August 9, as well as on 9th of every month, the strugglewallas have tried to organise hartals in the towns. But, thanks to our propaganda against hartals by means of handbills and posters, etc., none of these attempts have been a success anywhere in Kerala. We have opposed these hartals not because they are a form of protest against the Government's highhandedness but because in to-day's conditions they mean suspension of economic life in the towns and therefore would hit the people rather than the Government. And hitting the people to-day means aiding the Japs.

        4. PREVENTION OF LOOTING. But for the influence of the Communists and their organisation, hell would have been let loose in many of the bazaars, big and small, in the towns of Travancore, Cochin and Malabar. The rise in prices of rice, kerosene, sugar, etc. has been unheard of; the merchants have become objects of hatred among the people because of the profits they pile up; the worthlessness and the spinelessness of the Government's "price-control" is patent; the officials don't make the slightest attempt even to hide their corruption. Hunger is increasing, Food riots have been on the agenda for the last 3 or 4 [struck-over word] months. If [struck-over word] no looting or rioting has taken place so far anywhere, it has certainly been due to the political campaign of the Communists and also their organisation to make price control as effective as possible. It is the Communists that have posted volunteers in fronts of the shops to control distribution and to prevent lootings, it is they who have kept the people peaceful and not the police. If there had been no legally functioning Communist Party in Kerala, many of our shopkeepers and merchants might have been actually assaulted and their shops looted, and many of the local bureaucrats wouldn't have had their heads on their shoulders.

        Instances of how the Communists have been able to control and organise the people in their own interests, control and organise the distribution of food to the people, how they have been able to check profiteering on the one hand and check official corruption on the other by the creation of healthy public opinion and organisation against both - instances of all this can be had from almost every taluk and every town in Malabar and from many taluks and towns in Cochin and Travancore also.

        Because we have been tackling the food problem in this way, we have been able to isolate the Fifth Columnist completely among the people. His arguments that the "Japs would get us plenty of rice from Burma, plenty of kerosene also from Burma, and plenty of sugar from Java" haven't cut much ice among the people.

        The Japs and their agents have been isolated among the masses by the work of Communists. But the situation is dangerous. The habit of the police officials hitting at the Communists by way of paying off old scores means simply playing the game of the Fifth Column and nothing else.