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Role of communists in freedom fight ignored: Irfan Habib
Historian Irfan Habib emphasised the overlooked contributions of communists to India's freedom struggle during a lecture honouring Sitaram Yechury in Delhi.
Historian Irfan Habib on Monday said that communists made a vital contribution to India’s freedom struggle, though their role has often been marginalised in mainstream accounts of the national movement. Delivering the first Sitaram Yechury Memorial Lecture at HKS Surjeet Bhawan in Delhi, Habib underlined how communist critiques of colonialism drew from global as well as Indian traditions and argued that the movement’s interventions are still not adequately recognised in academic and political discourse.
The hall at Surjeet Bhawan was filled to capacity, with party members, historians, students, and activists attending the lecture held in memory of CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, who passed away last year. At the event, CPI(M) leaders also announced the establishment of a centre in memory of Yechury in Surjeet Bhawan, to be headed by economist Prabhat Patnaik, with the CPI(M) general secretary as ex-officio member. The Centre’s first project will be to create a digital archive of communist and working-class movements in the Asian region. It will also host annual thematic discussions in the form of seminars across the country.
Habib said the intellectual foundations of anti-colonial resistance included not only Indian leaders but also Marx and Engels. “It is very rarely mentioned in our universities that Marx and Engels had a long-standing critique of colonialism in India. This tradition was carried forward by Dadabhai Naoroji and R.P. Dutt, but their contributions are inadequately recognised in our curriculum,” he said.
He recalled that the Communist Party of India played a significant role in mobilising workers and peasants during the independence movement, and at times, its influence within the Congress was considerable. “There were periods when communists even secured a majority in Congress sessions with Nehru’s support, much to the consternation of Mahatma Gandhi himself,” Habib noted.
Drawing from his own family’s experience, Habib recounted the Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929. He said the case revealed the limits of colonial justice. “Shah Suleiman, who later became Chief Justice, once admitted to my father that he found the communists innocent but upheld the sentences because he wanted promotion. That was the kind of compromise justice suffered under colonial rule,” Habib said.
Habib also offered a candid critique of the Communist Party’s own policies. He said the decision to send Muslim communists into the Muslim League and Hindu communists into the Congress in the 1940s was “an enormous error,” as it reinforced communal divisions rather than challenged them. “A Pakistani politician once told me that had PC Joshi not pursued that policy, there might have been no Pakistan, only Marxism,” Habib said.
On the Quit India resolution of 1942, Habib questioned its timing, pointing out that Japan was advancing on India’s borders. “Even Nehru, though formally a supporter, confided to friends that he feared Japan more than Britain,” he said. He added that communists were right to caution that launching such a movement at that juncture could weaken the fight against fascism.
Habib also reminded the audience that the Indian freedom struggle had supporters abroad, citing the case of a British MP who was imprisoned for his advocacy of Indian independence. “His daughter did not even know he had gone to jail in India. At his funeral, his coffin was draped in the tricolour. This shows that the Indian national movement had its friends abroad as well,” he said.
The lecture was part of a series of events being organised in Yechury’s memory. Yechury, who became CPI(M) general secretary in 2015, was widely known for his interventions in Parliament and his role in shaping the party’s ideological and organisational positions. He was also a public face of the Left in India, frequently engaging in debates on secularism, federalism and the rights of workers and farmers.
Habib urged a more nuanced reading of India’s freedom struggle, one that fully acknowledges the role of communists and the working-class movement. “If we ignore these contributions, we not only diminish the history of our struggle but also weaken our understanding of how democratic rights were fought for and achieved,” he said.
