CRAFTE Notes from the field

The Communist Party of India (CPI)

During March and April 2024, Nico Putz had the opportunity to spend several weeks in Delhi and Kolkata to visit archives and institutions. In this field note he reports on his experiences at two seats of the original Communist Party of India (CPI)

Fig. 1: View of the CPI's main building "Ajoy Bhavan". 15, Kotla Marg, New Delhi 110002. Photo: Nico Putz.

Getting In

The first hurdle one has to overcome on the hunt for archival sources, is gaining access to the archive itself. Depending on an institution's position on transparency and the sensitivity of the material - be it controversial content or brittle paper - this can either be a surprisingly easy or extremely frustrating and time-consuming endeavour. I arrived at Ajoy Bhavan, the CPI's main building in Delhi, after just having made both kinds of experience in quick succession. My attempt at gaining access to the Indian National Archive had been frustrated by the requirement of a bona fide letter, issued by the German embassy, which was on its way, but due to a few holidays took longer than expected to arrive. Following that I had begun to visit the P.C. Joshi archive at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where I was only issued a guest access pass on the second day, simply because on the first day I had naively and (over)confidently walked into the building without anyone stopping me, and had been supplied with material without ever being questioned regarding my right to be there. So, when I took my first steps past Ajoy Bhavan's bright red gate with the yellow hammer and sickle, I knew this could go one of two ways.

At first, it seemed I had walked onto a path of substantial resistance, as the guard stopped my stride as soon as I traversed the threshold. He was a stern looking elderly Sikh gentleman who had just been enjoying his afternoon tea when he looked me up and down, asking me in Hindi to state my business. With the help of google translate and my own remedial linguistic abilities, I managed to communicate that I am a historian researching the student movement during the Cold War and that I'd been told that their archival collection and library might contain many interesting treasures.

Apparently, I managed to convince him that I knew where I was and that I am neither insane nor a threat, so he picked up the phone to ring someone inside, whom I could speak to in English. I'm not entirely sure who was on the other end of the line, but after I had explained the purpose of my visit again, I was invited inside the building to an office on the third floor. Alas, I never made it there since the guard had - before I could even venture towards the entrance of the building - already called someone else inside and handed me the phone again. This time I was talking to Mr. Anil Rajimwale of the CPI's education division, who also invited me to his office. Thankfully the guard was now fully satisfied and let me pass his sentry box and into Ajoy Bhawan.

Meeting Anil

On the other side of the main door, I found myself in a large, open staircase with the first half set of stairs opening up to the entrance area, where I was immediately greeted by a sizeable bust of Lenin, a small waiting area, as well as a shop counter surrounded by shelfs packed with books, brochures, and pamphlets. But more on that later. First, I hurried up the stairs to the first floor where I found an open door to a cosy office, through which I could see Anil sitting behind a large desk, surrounded by stacks of books, magazines, and newspapers. He greeted me with a warm handshake, before offering me a seat in front of his desk. I again explained what had brought me to him and when I mentioned my topic his already kind eyes seemed to light up even more. After I had rambled on for a bit, he revealed that on top of having been an activist in his student years already, he himself has been working on the history of the Indian student movement for a long time and that he was happy to grant me access to the archive and give me further suggestions on their holdings and secondary literature. I had hit the jackpot.

Needless to say, before going downstairs into the realm of dusty shelfs, I was in a way sized-up over a cup of tea by discussing current events and the state of the world. Since Anil is a very intelligent, passionate as well as compassionate man, whom I share a lot of core values with, I didn't have to hide my true throughts in order to agree with him on pretty much everything we covered. But I also didn't feel that this access would have been denied, if I'd have revealed myself as liberal or social democrat. Nonetheless, patience was the order of the day, since the woman in charge of the archive's keys had already locked up before taking a half day. To my delight, this did not mean that I had to wait two full days until Monday, but was invited back to return the following day. Excited to have found a much more supportive and knowledgeable connection than expected, I shook Anil's hand, before dropping in on the bookshop on my way out.

Fig. 2: Front page of Anil Rajimwale's publication All India Youth Federation - A brief history. Photo: Nico Putz

Fig. 3: The reception area with seating, the book shop, and Lenin. Photo: Nico Putz.

The Book Shop

As mentioned, behind the initial main staircase and up a few steps leading to the entrance area, one finds a beautiful wooden shop counter surrounded by shelfs, bursting with books, brochures, pamphlets and similar types of information and propaganda material, all sold at a very reasonable price. The sheer variety of material available here already most certainly warrants visiting Ajoy Bhavan. As most of the publications come through the party's own publishing house, of course one could argue that the literature on offer is at least ideologically biased - which certainly is a valid claim. But I personally have yet to find any text of more than a few paragraphs that is completely void of ideology or bias and in my view, when the ideology is as explicit (and often very self-reflexive) as it is here, it becomes much easier to discern the overall intention of the author(s) than in more subtle cases.

At least to me, the large stack of pamphlets, brochures, soft and hard cover books I purchased here, present such a unique and authentic vantage point and analysis of the world, that I happily added the substantial weight to my luggage, despite my vow to really not buy any books on this trip. But who could say no to gems like a detailed analysis of the influence of the October revolution on the Indian freedom struggle, a booklet denouncing the Modi government's infamous demonetisation campaign of 2016 as "the biggest scam", or even a slim science-fiction novel from the pen of comrade Vijaya Kumar Marla, an alumni of JNTU Kakinada’s engineering college and former employee of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, who is exploring and reflecting on the difference between the intelligence in a human eyes' sparkle and machine intelligence, the intricacies of our universe's physical reality or comparatively much simpler questions like the future of human society.***

Ajoy Bhavan

Every archive is unique not just because of the material it holds but also because of the built and human environment it is situated in. So before delving into the actual collection, I would like to describe some of the other features of Ajoy Bhavan I had come to appreciate in my time there.

The House

In the early 1960s the CPI commissioned Cyrus S. H. Jhabvala's architecture firm Anand, Aptay and Jhabvala with the construction of a new party headquarters. The final design was realised in a different site than the one originally envisaged a decade later. Ajoy Bhavan, named after the freedom fighter Ajoy Ghosh,* seems to have aged better than a lot of Delhi's buildings of similar age. Maybe it's timelessness stems from the unusual texture of the walls, maybe it's the few and exclusively hidden windows, or maybe it's the less tangible but nonetheless very particular and prominent aesthetic, which was designed "necessarily austere in deference to the security-conscious client".**

When comparing the affective reality I experienced in and around this building to my visits of other localities and complexes built with 'security-consciousness'', I certainly felt none of the sometimes subtle, sometimes roaring feeling of oppression or discomfort such localities can induce. Comparing Ajoy Bhavan with let's say a World War era POW or concentration camp or even a contemporary prison is of course comparing apples to Nazi oranges. But as someone who can get a mild feeling of Kafkaesque anxiety when renewing their driver's license and prefers their own or open and light space, I felt surprisingly comfortable in this impregnable quasi-fortress. It could be that the faded warm colours of the wall and the omnipresent thin layer of dust give it an air more akin to an old school house after the kids have left for the day, or the back-office section of a library, than a place representing the constant threat of violence that political activists (are willing to) face. A threat that is ever fluctuating with the ebbs and flows of the general political climate, the mechanisms of the attention economy, and the relative share of the populous their party, their movement, their utopia, or even just their short-lived and calculated coalition with a lesser enemy manages to convince.

* Ajoy Kumar Ghosh was instrumental in the genesis of the Indian pre- and post-independence Left, working with Bhagat Singh in the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association and serving as general secretary of the CPI from 1951 to his death in 1962.

** https://www.cshjhabvala.com/projects/ajoy-bhawan

*** Works referenced:
Mehta, Jaya (ed.) 2018. The Russian Revolution and the Indian Freedom Struggle. Delhi: Aakar Books.
Faizee, Shameem (ed.) 2016. Demonetization: The Biggest Scam. Delhi: People's Publishing House.
Kumar Marla, Vijaya. 2023. Memories of the Future. Delhi: People's Publishing House.

The Canteen

Regardless whether one is campaigning, discussing, researching, writing, or cleaning up behind everyone else, eventually everyone needs a break and something to eat. And while the nearest spot for a cheap, and delicious meal is never far away in India, the wholesome, satisfying and lovingly prepared veg- or non-veg-thalis served in Ajoy Bhavan's own canteen will turn the most disillusioned activist's frown upside down. In addition to the food, the beautifully simple atmosphere of the eating hall, the surrounding spirit of exchange and debate, of shared convictions and lives, as well as the fact that the canteen's chefs in lieu of knowing my name started calling me comrade after the second day while serving one of the best cups of chai I have ever had, all led to this eatery quickly becoming my new favourite place in town.

The People

The previous paragraphs already hinted at some of the characters and connections which shape the underlying web of human entanglements that begets, enlivens and transforms a physical locality's transcendental plain. But it should be said explicitly that considering this party, nay the entire global communist movement, had to face recurring periods of illegality and suppression, the constant threat, fear, and reality of infiltration and destabilisation through local, national or global adversaries, and countless instances of incarceration, execution or outright murder, I found everyone I met or passed at Ajoy Bhavan to be very friendly, welcoming, and genuinely happy about the exchange and possible opportunity to debate with someone new, a fresh face with a different perspective.

So here I was, sitting in what - if one utilises the jargon and frameworks commonly found in popular analyses of the German political landscape - would certainly qualify as a lion's den of left-wing extremism, the belly of the Bolshevik beast. Yet I was almost taken aback by the clear and convicted but certainly not polemical discourse, by the self-critical and anything but petrified attitude to the party's own history, former positions, and a diversifying theoretical canon, as well as by the realistic assessment of the long and arduous path that awaits everyone trying to build towards a more equal, more inclusive, more humane society, and won't settle for short-cuts. The passion and conviction that I felt from several conversation partners, had no tinge of a radical fury, no willingness to prioritise the ends over the means, but more a stoic, reasonable, patient, at worst slightly (self-)righteous conviction that a more just world is indeed possible, given enough time and attempts.

But my intention here is not to romanticise any particular (stream of) political philosophy. I have no illusions about the dangers that over-centralised party structures and grand political solutions can pose to individual and collective freedom in all senses of the term. Nor am I unaware of the presence of inhumane and anti-emancipatory positions and deciscions that can be found in the history of the communist movement or the CPI, like with any other heterogenous movement or party. But the discourse and the people I engaged with during my time at Ajoy Bhavan at least sent out substantially less (virtually none) of these warning signs, especially when compared to the increasingly noisy musings of many self-proclaimed liberals or similar steadfast democrats. The feeling that remained - in diametrical opposition to most other experiences I've made at a variety of different leftist spaces in different countries - was a little bit more hope, that with enough curiosity, compassion, and dedication humanity can face the challenges it created for itself.

Fig. 4: An example of the daily feast. Photo: Nico Putz.

Fig. 5: Ajoy Bhavan - A different view. Photo: Nico Putz.

Fig. 6: A stack of issues of the monthly Student Action, as found in the archive. Photo: Nico Putz.

The Collection

Like in many if not most archives in the world, the team preserving and supplying a substantial and important section of the party's written and printed history lacks the financial resources to fully unlock the collection’s potential. External researchers and party members alike contribute their time to individual and collective digitization spurts, building a growing database accessible at the archive, but most of the material can only be found with the help of the lovely core staff members, who seem to have an impressively accurate map of every piece of paper imprinted in their mind.

If a visitor is lucky enough to not just have one, but two staff members at hand, who are willing to help, they might be witness to a lively dialogue that might start in English, but quickly switches into a rapid Hindi which bounces back and forth the names of relevant publications and which shelf they must be located on. Having met Anil, fortune had indeed favoured me and very quickly I was shown a shelf said to contain a variety of relevant internal documents, pamphlets, and publications mostly stemming from the two organisations All India Students' Federation (AISF) and All India Youth Federation (AIYF), so the quasi-party affiliated students and youth organisations.

Naturally, for the next one and a half weeks, whenever the archive's opening hours and my other commitments permitted, I would walk back and forth between said shelf and the large square table at which visitors could read, scanning most pieces of paper that shelf contained with my phone's camera. Once I was done with that lot, the archivist guided me to another shelf containing large bound volumes of further publications; alas the schedule of my research trip allowed me to go through only one of these volumes. The rest, as well as the stacks of biographies, memoires, and scholarly works Anil kindly had put on the table for me as time progressed, will have to be acquired ideally from German libraries or sighted during a future visit.

Fig. 7: The table which had become my temporary work station. Photo: Nico Putz.

What I could collect thus far:

28 issues of the AIYF monthly New Generation, dated from 1961 to 1969
A complete annual run (24 issues) of the joint AIYF-AISF bi-weekly publication Youth Life, dated from February 1973 to January 1974
26 issues of the AISF monthly Student Action, dated from 1982 to 1987
39 pamphlets published between 1943 and 1999, many coming out of the AIYF or AISF, including reports from annual conferences, but also thematically specific one-off brochures, as well as a handful of publications of foreign organisations (i.e. the British Federation of Indian Student Societies, the East-German Freie Deutsche Jugend [Free German Youth / FDJ], or the World Federation of Democratic Youth [WFDY])
A range of publications related to the World Festivals of Youth and Students, ranging from pamphlets, to short-lived periodicals published in the run-up to festivals, and thick magazines full of reports and appraisals printed after the events had concluded.

Fig. 8: Different front pages of the publications New Generation and Student Action. Image: Nico Putz.

As anyone that has seen an archive in the tropics would know, the constant battle against humidity, heat, and parasitic infestation of wood and paper has to be fought much more drastically here, than anywhere further North or South. So, I am grateful for every page I could scan, since a fair bit of the material has aged poorly. That I, as a researcher financially backed through a research funding structure located in one of the wealthiest areas of the globe, offered to supply the cleaned-up and OCR-processed files back to the archive, should go without saying.

What else can be found there?

In relation to my research topic, I only came across few instances of correspondence or similarly internal or private communication. There might be more relating to other organisations, movements, and topics, as well as the internal communication of the local and national party structures, but I cannot estimate how much of this kind of material exists or in how far it is accessible to non-party members.

What I can guarantee, is a vast array of published material, originating out of academia and/or political movements and organisations, relating to trade-unionism, the communist movement, and the women's movement globally, locally and abroad; the Indian independence movement; local, regional, national, and global politics; historical, societal and economic developments; political and economic theory; and a myriad of publications from or about other political organisations and institutions in India and beyond. Additionally, the archive has subscriptions to many periodicals, including newspapers, trade-union publications, and publications of other communist organisations.

Another Archive- The CPI in Kolkata

In addition to invaluable insights and sources, my stint at Ajoy Bhavan came with a multitude of contacts. This included potential interlocuters for oral history interviews (i.e. party members, who had moved to one of the German states during the Cold War, or former members of youth or student organisations), but also a connection to the CPI in Kolkata, the next destination on my itinerary. A few weeks later, after I had flown Eastward and concluded the most pressing tasks awaiting me there, I arrived at Bhupesh Bhawan, the headquarters of West-Bengal's CPI.

In terms of unique aesthetics, the structure does not compare to its sister-building in Delhi, but its deep red colour, the opaque windows and design choices reminiscent of arrow slits and crenelations point at a similarly "security-conscious client". Once I had walked a few steps past the main gate and into the parking garage that forms the ground floor of the building, I got to witness this consciousness firsthand.

It came in the shape of a group of young to middle-aged men, some lying on the ground, some seated around a rudimentary reception desk, situated in the corner of the structure. But the guards had to be alerted first. I had immediately noticed, that the excruciatingly hot and humid weather had lulled the gentlemen on the ground and the one resting his head on the desk into a deep slumber. Perhaps I was too busy noticing that here one was also greeted by Lenin, only this time from a poster, but only once I had moved quite close, it became clear that every single one of them was fast asleep.

After I had gently cleared my throat, one of the seated men woke, only to wake up the one behind the desk. With a mix of rudimentary Bangla, English and google translate, I again communicated my identity and intention of visiting the library and archive, supplemented with the names I had learned in Delhi. But my luck had partially run out.

Fig. 9: Frontal view of "Bhupesh Bhawan". 162B, Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose Rd, Entally, Kolkata, West Bengal 700014, India. Photo: Nico Putz.

The guard phoned the key contact person I had been referred to and learned that they would only return several days later and that I could not be granted access beforehand. Sad as that was, what I did get was the contact of one of their former students, who had written their Master's thesis in history about the student movement in West Bengal. I coordinated with both of them and the three of us resolved to meet around two weeks later. Given that I had arrived shortly before the national elections were to be held in West Bengal and the people, I wanted to talk to, obviously had much more urgent tasks to manage, I felt really privileged they had found any time at all.

The meeting itself was again very informative and I even was presented with a published and signed copy of the MA thesis - another invaluable find since literature about the student movement in specific states of India is hard to come by, even harder if one wants to read in English. Additionally, another local author gifted me his two slim volumes on the lives and works of Rosa Luxemburg and Nikolai Bukharin - a wonderful read especially considering the long overdue reversal of the usual analysis of "Southern" or "Eastern" philosophers published in the "global North". Unfortunately, the archival collection at Bhupesh Bhawan cannot compete with Delhi, neither in size nor state of indexing. From what I have seen, the vast majority of the material - besides the substantial library - comes in the shape of pamphlets stemming from the party and its affiliated organisations (students', women's, trade-union, etc.). The archival team is very much aware of the urgency to catalogue and digitize, but here too human and material resources a scarce. For now, the mounds of grey literature remain basically inaccessible to outsiders.

Nonetheless, I left the local CPI's stronghold with a precious secondary source, a lot of information and contacts, and the memory of many interesting and interested exchanges over tea and biscuits. The feeling of hope was also present again, albeit not as strong. The local party members seemed well aware of their weak position compared to the one of their splinter-party Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)]. When the party split in 1964, many prominent CPI members in West Bengal changed ship, if they weren't directly proposing the schism itself. The 'old' CPI has never fully recovered from this development, and remains far behind the CPI(M) in the state elections, despite the 'new' party having also lost most of their support over developments in the mid to late 2000's. Yet I'm sure, the red flags steadfastly waving on top of the buildings of either of the parties or their affiliated organisations remains a little sign of relief, for anyone feeling uneasy in the omnipresent sea of orange, white, and blue.

Author: Nico Putz

Affiliation: Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (ZZF), Potsdam

Date: 20.08.2024

Please do not cite without the author’s permission!

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Fig. 10: A contemporary graffito photogaphed on campus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, in April 2024. With this message, (presumably student) activists attempted to tarnish the image of the All India Students' Association (AISA) by resolving the acronym as "All India Sexual Assaulters". Clearly, someone or another group of people who harbor greater sympathies for the association have tried to fight this claim with more paint. AISA ist the student union most closely affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, one of the many additional parties that have come into existence since the first split in 1964. Photo: Nico Putz.