P.C. Joshi, the Organiser, Communicator and Culturalist

P.C. Joshi: A Biography by Gargi Chakravartty; National Book Trust of India, New Delhi; 2007; Price: Rs 30.

Gargi Chakravartty has done a historic service to the cause that Joshiji held to his heart, namely, awaken the masses for social transformation within the national specifics and international generalities, and that too with a human face. In order to do this he organised with a human heart even when he was subjected to the most vitriolic attacks in the organisation that he had so painstakingly built from practically a scratch.

He was a great communicator, organiser and culturalist with the difference of also being a good human being, simple, considerate, humorous, gentle and quick to connect with the masses and the classes during and after the freedom struggle. Gargi very aptly brings this out about him. She quotes a peasant who said, during the Kisan Sabha Conference, “Joshi is a great man and how is it that he talks of things we can all understand? I had thought he would talk high politics which we peasants would not be able to understand. And tell me, he is not a Bengali, how is it that he knows all that is happening in our villages, every word of what he said about the hoarder is true? If only we could do what he asks us to do, our misery would really be a thing of the past.†(p. 45)

The author etches his political career from the early days of his life through Meerut Conspiracy case, his fame as the General Secretary of the CPI, as a mass leader rubbing shoulders with Gandhi, Nehru and Patel, his role as a coordinator between Nehru and Patel, on issues of the RSS inclinations of Patel, his expulsion from the CPI to his dismay, his frequent meetings with RPD and other leaders of the international communist movement and his work as a journalist and researcher in the JNU where he set up the archives.

Gargi brings out vividly how he painstakingly worked to form mass fronts and how he insisted to work with the Congress even when his own Party colleagues in decision-making bodies were playing the China card for personal vendetta. Gargi’s book reminded the reviewer of the kind of role that Dimitrov played in forging broad national democratic fronts in the context of the war and fascism in Europe. These included the Christian Democrats and not just the Socialists. Dimitrov and Joshi had one thing in common, namely, politics of the united front of the masses cutting across the sectarian chaff. Unfortunately after the war his Party made sectarian mistakes. He paid dearly for it and so did the Party. His foresight on the dangers of the Rightwing coming in were proved decades later when even the most anti-Congress part of the Left—the CP-M—joined up in the UPA to ward off the danger of the Right looming large on India’s horizon. It is ironic that repeatedly in India, the China card comes to have a player or two.

Apart from Joshi’s humane personal relations with Sen and Bannerjee and a lot more of them his humanity comes into bold relief. He did not only show this in the Party headquarters but in the villages of Bengal during the famine. Mind you, leaders during those days did not travel by aeroplanes or drive their own Honda city cars, nor did they have chunks of the state apparatus to help them. They travelled under the harsh condition of third class railway journeys.

JOSHI was a Gandhian as an organiser in the sense that he forged the links between the elites and the masses with a difference. Gandhi established links between the Congress and the peasants. Joshi did it between the peasant and the Communists without sacrificing the national question—be that in 1942, 1962 or later during Mrs Indira Gandhi’s time. The book reveals all this though not in the same manner of coordinates.

It is must read for all. It is also to be read as a primer into nationalist discourse and discourse of mobilisation. The reviewer feels that Gargi should produce another work of the period of 1936-39. This is the period so rich in political and organisational terms for India and the world communist movement. But if she focuses on the making of mass organisations and how they need to be handled and what was Joshi’s strategy in terms of their autonomy from the Party, it would be interesting in the wake of the way the trade union movement under Walesa raised the issue.

The second reason for making this extraordinary suggestion is that Joshi was a culturalist in the service of the poor and roped in the poor and he middle classes. In his Meena Bagh flat he used to organise Holi festivals and invite friends and comrades. On cultural issues as well he united the masses and classes as well as liberal and Marxist values. He had an open mind in these matters. Take, for instance, the incident that Gargi talks about in the Kisan Conference we mention above. That Conference was attended by both the poor women and from the well-to-do families. The latter were not interested in the speeches being made. When Joshi was told this he defended them by saying that the speeches should be interesting and see their reaction when the cultural programme begins. I would like to mention here that Marx mentions in one of his writings on the phenomenon of suicides that French social criticism was better than even the Marxist criticism of that time. The issue is simply that in united front politics there is no place for sectarianism and that this involves issues of culture and politics and the role of the elites and the masses therein. Today one notices that the Left suffers from it not being in touch with the reality. This is the admission of some of its own spokesmen.

The present author combines the quality of a historian and the culturalist since she also has worked on the feminist sufferings. This is a book that does require knowledge of the movement and not just about the role of Joshi in forming cultural fronts.