Judgment on the Meerut Communist Conspiracy Case (Vol-1)

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The Meerut Communist Conspiracy Case which dragged on for four years from March 1929 to January 1933 first at the Magistrate's Court and then at the Sessions Court at Meerut conducted by R.L. Yorke, I.C.S., Additional Sessions Judge marks the culmination of the earlier attempts of the British imperialists to throttle the nascent Communist movement which began by implicating its leaders first in the Peshawar Conspiracy Case (1923) and then in the Cawnpore Bolshevik Conspiracy Case (1924). Indeed it has been gleefully noted in the secret report prepared by the Central Intelligence Bureau of the Home Department of the Government of India, 1935 under the head 'India and Communism' that the removal of the thirty leading Communist agitators from the political arena was immediately followed by a marked improvement in the industrial situation. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the arrests placed the authorities in a commanding position and created a vacuum in the leadership of the trade union movement which was filled by very inferior material. As a matter of fact, from the very nature of framing the charges and arguments thereon by the prosecution, it was crystal clear that the real motive of the British imperialist rulers was not to vindicate justice in the abstract and moral sense of the term but to manipulate it to suit their political objective of perpetuating British rule over India and destroying all potential threats to it. One also gets the impression that in delivering the judgement the honourable judge acted more as a super prosecution counsellor than an impartial arbiter of justice. The Honourable Mr. Justice R.L. Yorke in his judgement has pointed out that the offences for which the accused Communists were charged were frankly and often fully admitted and advocated by them time and again in their speeches and writings. But while in the eyes of the imperialist rulers, these made them palpably guilty of committing offences amounting to a conspiracy, to the Communists accused in this case, these constituted nothing but avowal of a faith for the simple profession of which and in the absence of evidence of perpetration of any actual criminal action, they could not be convicted. The judgement delivered was harsh but as pointed out by Muzaffar Ahmad in his Introduction to 'Communists Challenge Imperialism from the Dock" "the Conspiracy Case turned out to be a political defeat for the British Government in India and a victory for the Indian Communists". (p. xiv).

Indeed the judgement pronounced by Yorke has a permanent historical value. It contains sort of a text book account of the theory and practice of Communism with special reference to the Communist International and organizations affiliated or associated with it. What is more, it relates in some detail the debates and goings-on before the foundation of the All India Workers' and Peasants' Party and the Communist Party of India. A perusal of the documents and witnesses produced in this case bring out clearly the strategy, tactics and modus operandi of the Indian Communists inspired by the Great October Revolution in the formative period of their movement in the 1920s. On the other hand, these clearly indicate the counter-measures adopted by the British imperialist rulers to foil their design. Incidentally they throw much welcome light on the history of the trade union movement of the period. The mass of evidence compiled and marshalled with meticulous details by the prosecution therefore constitutes an invaluable source material for modern Indian history. The publication of the present volume, we believe, will be a natural supplement to the joint statement of the eighteen Communists accused in this case which was first published in 1966 under the title Communists Challenge Imperialism from the Dock with an Introduction by Muzaffar Ahmad, referred to above.

In this edition an editorial introduction and some notes and references have been added but the original printed confidential text has been least disturbed. The notes and references relating to the text have been arranged partwise and alphabetically. While the O.P.number of the original has been indicated, the numbering of lines in each page of the original printed text could not be maintained.

Except correction of very evident mistakes, little editing of the original printed text has been made and no attention also has been given to standardization. The corrigenda of the original printed text have been retained but this has really become irrelevant for the present edition, first because pagination of the present edition does not conform to that of the original and secondly the more evident mistakes have been corrected.

We feel particularly happy in dedicating this volume of the judgement containing all the material details of the case to the memory of Muzaffar Ahmad, the great revolutionary son of Bengal and one of the principal figures in the present case on the occasion of his birth centenary, though it could not be published within the centenary year for reasons beyond our control.

Since the first decade of the twentieth century the economic and political movements in India acquired a new dimension which ultimately paved the way for the emergence of a left-oriented militant nationalism in Indian politics. Indeed, the process of such transformation in the political pattern was accelerated by certain national and international factors.

In the national sphere the development of a few largescale industries since the mid-19th century was accompanied by a phenomenal growth in the number of the working-class people condemned to an abject animal existence in dingy slums in an appallingly distressful condition. It has been estimated that in 1894-95 there were 815 factories with a total labour force of 3,49,810. In 1914 the number of factories and workers employed therein rose to 2936 and 9,50,973 respectively. During the same period i.e. 1894-1914 the number of joint stock companies in the country increased from 2553 to 2789. 2 But at the same time there took place a marked deterioration in the mode of living and working condition of the labourers. It has indeed been observed that the condition of the workers "worsened with the rising prices and low wages". 3 The industrial workers were also becoming more and more class-conscious and organized. After World War I labour unrest and strikes "spread out like the waves of turbulent sea". 4 The Royal Commission on Labour also admitted this. It states: "The great outbreak of strike after the war had obvious economic causes, a rise in wage levels was overdue, and the workers awoke to the disabilities from which they suffered in respect of long hours and other matters".

The Russian Revolution of 1919 also had its direct impact on the national movement in India. It helped a section of the working class in India to understand the economic basis of colonialism and realize that economic emancipation as such was not possible without first liberating the country from the colonial yoke. The Russian Revolution added a new dimension in the struggle of the Indian people against British imperialism. Curiously enough, the "Workers' Welfare League of India" formed in 1917 in London "became a Communist vehicle for influencing trade union activities in India". British intelligence service held it as "the first foreign agency to introduce Bolshevik principles into the trade union movement in India".

However, in the twenties apart from the momentous non-Co-operation. Movement of the Indian National Congress, several political and economic events took place in India. In the first place, the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was formed under the presidentship of Lala Lajpat Rai in Bombay in October, 1920. But during the first few years the AITUC did not make much headway, though it cannot be denied that it was the first and foremost of all Indian organizations to mobilize and unite the workers for the common cause of promotion of class consciousness and collective bargaining. It was at about the same time, to be precise on October 17, 1920, that a Communist Party was established by the "Emigre Communists" of India in Tashkent. Among its members were (i) M.N. Roy, (ii) Md. Ali (Ahmad Hasan), (iii) Evelyn Trent Roy, (iv) Md. Shafiq Siddiqi, (v) Abani Mukherjee, (vi) Rosa Fitingof, and (vii) M. Prativadi Bayannar Acharya. In India the Communists assembled first in a conference at Cawnpore between December 26 and 28, 1925. The meeting was convened by Satyabhakta who was not a member of any of the recognized Communist groups. This conference became the instrument of bringing together all the "genuine Communist groups" in the country. Thus was created the first Central Committee of the Communist Party of India and it framed its first constitution.

The main activities of the Communist Party of India were (i) to propagate Marxist theories and activities among the workers, (ii) to make them aware of the importance of the class struggle and above all, (iii) to institute a conducive political organ through which the revolutionary activities could be spread over India. Definitely with the inception of the Communist Party, the Indian Trade Union movement got a new lease of life. In 1925 D.R. Thengdi, a Communist sympathizer, became the President of the AITUC who in his presidential address at the Bombay session of the organization stressed for the first time "the importance of class struggle by the workers."