The Sino-Indian Border Controversy and the Communist Party of India

Abstract

A MONG THOSE WHO have written about the Communist Party of llIndia (C.P.I.) there is general agreement that throughout its history, and frequently with disastrous consequences, the Party has responded more to what its leaders thought the Soviet Union wanted than to the Party's own perceptions of what was best for it in India.1 It may be, however, that this relationship of dependence between the C.P.I. and the Soviet Union is in the process of gradually being eroded by a number of political forces that have been at work in the world since the end of World War II. Among these forces four stand out as being particularly erosive. First, the establishment of India as an independent republic and the development among its major political spokesmen of a highly self-conscious nationalism have placed an implicit and, in times of stress, an explicit restriction on any group's being too obviously guided or inspired from abroad and at the same time retaining its status as patriotic, the sine qua non of political respectability. Second, growing Soviet friendship and support for the Nehru government has made it virtually impossible for Indian Communists to be revolutionaries and has left them with no alternative other than to be nationalists. Third, the rise to world prominence of China under Communism and its controversy with the Soviet Union has, on the one hand, introduced a division into the C. P. I.'s overseas loyalties and, on the other hand, it has threatened the Party with debility if this division develops into schism. Finally, the Sino-Indian conflict, has had the direct effect of seriously disturbing the C. P. I.'s international affiliations and has served to catalyze other erosive forces. The early stages of that conflict in 1959-1960 provide the background for this study.