'Did Moscow Play Fraud On Marx' by Professor Devendra Swarup

Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules160f.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
EXPOSE June 10, 2007
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Media Watch Page: 26/32
Thinking Aloud
Home > 2007 Issues > June 10, 2007
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
HISTORY Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??I
RETROSPECT Pre-1957 Left perspective on 1857
Kids Org. By Prof. Devendra Swarup
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Endorsing the Macaulayan policy in the field of education and employment, it says:
INTERESTING
PEOPLE
?The failure of the Mutiny proved conclusively that the people of India were not
PERSPECTIVE united by the old social institutions and religious traditions?that the future of India
Kerala Newsletter was to be secured not by the impossible revival of the old order of things but by the
birth of a new force arising upon the ruins of the old? (p. 161).
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011
?This objectively reactionary character was the reason of its failure. It could not
August 28, 2011 have been suppressed had it been a progressive national movement, led by the
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011
native bourgeoisie with advanced social ideas and political programme. But such a
August 07, 2011 movement was impossible in that epoch.?
July 31, 2011 People?s Democracy, the mouthpiece of the CPI (M), has brought out a special number (May 07-13) with the title
July 24, 2011 ?Understanding 1857: The Left Perspective?. This issue carries four new articles currently written by Irfan Habib, Prabhat
July 17, 2011 Patnaik, Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury. It also reproduces four old articles, two written by E.M.S. Namboodripad
July 10, 2011 and B.T. Ranadive in 1987 and two by Hiren Mukherjee and P.C. Joshi in the year 1957. The two articles published in
July 03, 2011 1857 in an American paper, New York Daily Tribune and attributed to Marx and Engels belong to a different genre which
we intend to discuss separately. Here our immediate question is why should the Left perspective stop at 1957? The
June 26, 2011 beginning of the Communist movement in India goes back to the year 1920. Why not this special number present us
June 19, 2011
some glimpse of the Left perspective on 1857 during its thirty-two years long pre-1957 journey? Do they want us to
June 12, 2011
believe that the Left intellectuals had not formulated and expressed any views on the 1857 revolt, in that long duration or
June 05, 2011
is it a case of deliberate omission and suppression to hide something?
Let me draw the readers attention to a book titled India in Transition written by M.N. Roy in collaboration with Abani
May 29, 2011
Mukherji and published in the year 1922 from Geneva. According to an official biography of Abani Mukherji, ?Both Roy
May 22, 2011
and Abani were already Marxists and they, together with Roy?s wife Evelyn (Shanti) drafted the first-ever policy
May 15, 2011
statement on behalf of Indian Communists. This was published under the title of ?The Indian Communist Manifesto? on
May 08, 2011
June 24, 1920, in the Glasgow Socialist.? (Gautam Chattopadhyay: Abani Mukherji, Peoples Publishing House, New
May 01, 2011
Delhi 1976, p.17.) ?Those days M.N. Roy was considered to be a blue-eyed boy of Lenin and was a member of the
Communist International. Roy and Abani both had attended the Second Congress of the Communist International in
April 24, 2011
Moscow and had jointly founded the first Communist Party of India at Tashkent on October 17, 1920?. Soon afterwards,
April 17, 2011
in 1921 an open manifesto in the name of the CPI was distributed at the Ahmedabad session of the Indian National
April 10, 2011
Congress, bearing at the end the joint signatures of Manbendra Nath Roy and Abani Mukherji ?? This was soon followed
April 03, 2011
by the much more serious book, India in Transition. Once again this bore the joint authorship seals of M.N. Roy and
Abani Mukherji? (ibid, pp. 22-23). According to M.N. Roy?s Memoirs (New Delhi, 1964), India in Transition was written
March 27, 2011
and published at the behest of the publication department of the Communist International (p. 553) and therefore, could be
March 20, 2011 termed as the first official Marxist interpretation of Indian history and contemporary Indian society. (See also, Documents
March 13, 2011 of the History of the Communist Party of India, Vol-I (Ed. Gangadhar Adhikari, New Delhi, 1971, pp 140-198, 357-510).
March 06, 2011
What is the Marxist view of 1857 Revolt presented in this first authoritative publication India in Transition? It says: ?The
February 27, 2011 Revolution of 1857 was nothing but the last effort of the dethroned feudal potentates to regain their power. It was a
February 20, 2011 struggle between the worn-out feudal system and the newly introduced commercial capitalism for political supremacy?
February 13, 2011 and therefore ?the last vestiges of feudal power were shattered by the failure of the Revolution of 1857, which is known
February 06, 2011 as the Sepoy Mutiny.? (Reprint, Bombay, 1971, p 20). To be more explicit, it says, ?The revolt of 1857 was the first
serious attempt to overthrow the British domination; but by no means could it be looked upon as a national movement. It
January 30, 2011 was nothing more than the last spasm of the dying feudalism? socially it was a reactionary movement because it wanted
January 23, 2011 to replace British rule by revived feudal imperialism, either of the Moghals or the Marathas. This objectively reactionary
January 16, 2011 character was the reason of its failure. It could not have been suppressed had it been a progressive national movement,
1 of 2 3/12/2015 5:52 PM
January 09, 2011 led by the native bourgeoisie with advanced social ideas and political programme. But such a movement was impossible
January 02, 2011 in that epoch.? (ibid, p.158 ).
December 26, 2010 Significantly the two Marxist intellectuals find themselves in agreement with the opinion of the imperialist historian Seeley
December 19, 2010 and quote him approvingly (p. 158-159). They go a step further and pronounce: ?The revolt of 1857 was predominantly a
December 12, 2010 military mutiny brought about by the intrigues of the deposed and discontented feudal chiefs. The people at large had
December 05, 2010 very little to do with it; the majority of them remained passive or helped the British government. The only powerful Indian
November 28, 2010 community with some sense of national solidarity, rendered valuable service to the British. The English system of
November 21, 2010 education introduced in the 30?s, had brought into existence a small class of modern intellectuals who could be looked
November 14, 2010 upon as the forerunners of the national movement of the subsequent epoch. The mutiny found all these intellectuals with
November 7, 2010 modern and progressive thoughts on the side of the British government.? (ibid, p.159).
October 31, 2010 Further it says ?The failure of the mutiny proved that the intrigues of a backward social force, doomed to death by history,
October 24, 2010 could not realise a national unity in opposition to a foreign domination, which nevertheless, objectively embodied an
October 17, 2010 advanced political thought.? (ibid, p159) The Marxist duo concludes, ?The failure of the Mutiny proved conclusively that
October 10, 2010 the people of India were not united by the old social institutions and religious traditions?that the future of India was to be
October 03, 2010
secured not by the impossible revival of the old order of things but by the birth of a new force arising upon the ruins of the
old (p. 161). Endorsing the Macaulayan policy in the field of education and employment, the authors say, ?The object
2010 Issues
was to foment the growth of a native element which would consciously support the British government as the most
2009 Issues
beneficial institution?. The wisdom of this policy was demonstrated by the part played by the modern intelligentsia during
the revolt of 1857? (p.164).
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
(To be continued)
2006 Issues
Organiser
About us
Advertisement Previous Page (25/32) - Next Page (27/32)
Circulation
Contact us
Content ©
Subscribe
June 10, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
Realpolitik
Column
News Analysis
The Moving Finger
Writes
Media Watch
Worldwatch
Kids’ Org
Health Watch
Bookmark
Readers’ Forum
Think it Over
copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved
Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd
2 of 2 3/12/2015 5:52 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules7f57.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
HISTORY SPECIAL ON 150 YEARS OF 1857
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Pre-1957 Left perspective on 1857?II
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: 1857: Reactionary and feudal outburst
INTERESTING By Prof. Devendra Swarup
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE ?No Indian nationalist who stands for the social progress of his people and who
Kerala Newsletter struggles for political independence as a step towards that goal, would be treading
the right path by clanging to the sentiments that lay behind the revolt of 1857.?
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 ?M.N. Roy
August 28, 2011 Who among the Left intellectuals and Communist leaders dare question the
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011
authority of R.P. Dutt as a Marxist? What is the Left perspective on 1857 presented
August 07, 2011 by Rajni Palme Dutt in his classic India Today? (First published in 1940)
July 31, 2011
July 24, 2011
Why should Prof Habib use Nehru as the whipping boy and keep silent on M.N. Roy
July 17, 2011 and Rajni Palme Dutt?
July 10, 2011
July 03, 2011
Obviously these Communist intellectuals considered the 1857 Revolt a reactionary movement without any popular
support and national character. In their view, those who supported the British government represented the progressive
June 26, 2011
forerunners of nationalism. This view is the very antithesis of the present-day Left perspective on 1857. They
June 19, 2011
emphatically state, ?Orthodox nationalists of a later period looked upon and interpreted the rebellion of 1857 as a great
struggle for Independence. This tendency betrays the grave danger of reaction which is contained in the nationalism built
June 12, 2011
on religious basis. No Indian nationalist who stands for the social progress of his people and who struggles for political
June 05, 2011
independence as a step towards that goal, would be treading the right path by clinging to the sentiments that lay behind
the revolt of 1857, which was not merely a military effort to overthrow the foreign domination. It was provoked by a fierce
May 29, 2011
spirit of social reaction, being a revolt not against the British government in particular, but against the advance social and
May 22, 2011
political ideas it embodied?the ideas, which were hailed by the intellectual middle class of India?.? (M.N.Roy and Abani
May 15, 2011
Mukherji, India in Transition p.p159-160).
May 08, 2011
May 01, 2011
In the light of these observations coming from the two pioneers of the Communist movement in India how do we describe
the present-day Left perspective articulated by Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury, A.B. Bardhan and Dipankar
April 24, 2011
Bhattacharya (CPI-ML)etc. ? if not as rabidly ?reactionary? ?anti-progressive? and to say the least, ?anti-national?? In
April 17, 2011
self-defence they could say who cares for the views of a man like M.N. Roy who drifted away, became a renegade and
April 10, 2011
revisionist and lost his credibility as a Marxist?
April 03, 2011
Leave aside M.N.Roy, but what about the celebrated Left intellectual Rajni Palme Dutt (1896-1974) popularly known as
March 27, 2011 R.P.D. in the Communist circles? Who among the Left intellectuals and Communist leaders dare question the authority of
March 20, 2011 R.P. Dutt as a Marxist? Born, educated and settled in England R.P.D., as founder of the Communist Party of Britain, and
March 13, 2011 as Editor of The Labour Monthly, was seen as the foremost Marxist intellectual of his time. For many decades he acted
March 06, 2011 as the guide and philosopher of the Indian Communist Party as well as a bridge between the CPI and the CPSU. His
magnum opus India Today published in 1940 was regarded as a reference work for an authentic Marxist interpretation of
February 27, 2011 Indian history and politics. Gangadhar Adhekari, a top Left theoretician acknowledged that India Today ?inspired and
February 20, 2011 reared a whole generation of early Marxists.? (Marx and India, PPH, 1968, p.17)
February 13, 2011
February 06, 2011 What is the Left perspective on 1857 presented by Rajni Palme Dutt in his classic India Today? (First published in 1940)
Unlike the present-day ?Left perspective?, Rajni Palme Dutt doesn?t see in 1857 a peasant revolt. He writes, ?It was the
January 30, 2011 decaying reactionary elements, the discontented princes and feudal forces, which led the opposition, whose leadership
January 23, 2011 culminated and floundered in the revolt of 1857. No force was then capable of leading and voicing the exploited and
January 16, 2011 oppressed peasantry; and the revolt could only end in defeat.? (India Today, Manisha, Calcutta, 1997, p.195)
1 of 2 3/12/2015 5:56 PM
January 09, 2011

January 02, 2011 Elaborating it further Rajni Palme Dutt says, ?The rising of 1857 was in its essential character and dominant leadership
the revolt of the old conservative and feudal forces and dethroned potentates for their rights and privileges which they
December 26, 2010 saw in process of destruction. This reactionary character of the rising prevented any wide measure of popular support
December 19, 2010 and doomed it to failure.? (ibid, p.306)
December 12, 2010
December 05, 2010 He reiterates, ?The Revolt of 1857 was the last attempt of the decaying feudal forces, of the former rulers of the country,
November 28, 2010 to turn back the tide of foreign domination.? As has been already pointed out, the progressive forces of the time, of the
November 21, 2010 educated class representing the nascent bourgeoisie supported British rule against the Revolt. The Revolt was crushed,
November 14, 2010 but the lesson was learned. From this point the feudal forces no longer represented the main potential menace and rival
November 7, 2010 to British rule. (ibid, p.440)
October 31, 2010 Obviously Rajni Palme Dutt?s views on 1857 are in no way different from the views held by M.N. Roy and Abani Mukherji
October 24, 2010 in 1922. He also considers 1857 a feudal outburst without any peasant participation and popular support. He also holds it
October 17, 2010 reactionary and anti-progressive and therefore doomed to failure. In his view also, the section which supported the British
October 10, 2010 government against the Revolt represented the progressive patriots in Indian society.
October 03, 2010
Quite naturally, Jawaharlal Nehru was swayed away by the powerful propaganda and the first glimpse of the Soviet
2010 Issues
Union in 1927. According to EMS Namboodiripad (Nehru: Ideology and Practice, Delhi, 1988 pp. 20-24), he returned to
2009 Issues
India as fellow traveller and was very fond of using Marxist jargon. Nehru chose to depict the 1857 Revolt in his Glimpses
of World History (first published in 1934-35), as ?The last flicker of feudal India against a modern kind of industrialised
2008 Issues
capitalist state? Penguin Edition 2004, pp. 479-482), and later in his The Discovery of India (first published in 1946) he
2007 Issues
reiterated: ?Essentially it was a feudal outburst, headed by feudal chiefs and their followers and aided by the widespread
2006 Issues
anti-foreign sentiment.? (Edition 1983, p. 323). Although he had moved away from his earlier position and opined that ?it
was much more than a military mutiny and it spread rapidly and assumed the character of a popular rebellion and a war
Organiser
of Indian independence.? (ibid, p. 323). Echoing the pre-1957 Marxist perception, Nehru wrote: ?There was hardly any
About us
rational and unifying sentiment among the leaders?. It is clear however that there was a lack of nationalist feeling which
Advertisement
might have bound the people of India together. (ibid, p. 324). Here we find a close similarity in the views of M.N.Roy and
Circulation
R.P. Dutt on one hand and Nehru on the other.
Contact us
But why should Prof. Irfan Habib, who with his AMU team after the desertion of disillusioned Bengali intellectuals, seems
Subscribe
to have assumed the role of the official historian of the CPI(M) use Nehru as a whipping boy for his earlier views on 1857
as a ?feudal outburst?? Interestingly Prof. Habib is maintaining a studied silence about the very detailed and explicit
views of the official Marxist intellectuals like M.N. Roy and R. Palme Dutt quoted above, whom Nehru was simply
echoing.
After having presented here two authoritative intellectual samples of pre-1957 Left perspective on 1857 we are faced with
the questions, ?Where are the roots of this earlier Left perspective, what brought about an abrupt reversal in this
perspective and when??
(To be continued)
June 17, 2007
Organiser Home
Editorial
RESPONSE /
CONTROVERSY Previous Page (28/33) - Next Page (30/33)
REGIONAL
ROUND-UP
The Moving Finger Content ©
Writes
Think It Over
A West Bengal
Newsletter
Kids’ Org
Bookmark
News Analysis
Readers’ Forum
Controversy
Agenda
2 of 2 3/12/2015 5:56 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesbdbe.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Pre-1957 Left perspective on 1857?III
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Marx?s perception of India in 1853
INTERESTING By Prof. Devendra Swarup
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE ?This passive sort of existence evoked the other part, in contradistinction wild,
Kerala Newsletter aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite
in Hindostan.?
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 ?Karl Marx
August 28, 2011 ?I share not the opinion of those who believe in a golden age of Hindustan.?
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011
?Karl Marx
August 07, 2011
Marx is to Indian Leftists what Jesus and Muhammad are to their devotees. Marx
July 31, 2011
July 24, 2011
has moulded the minds of Indian Leftists in the same way as the Bible or the Koran
July 17, 2011 has moulded the minds of their faithfuls.
July 10, 2011
July 03, 2011
The early Left perspective on 1857, as articulated by M.N. Roy, Abani Mukherji and Rajni Palme Dutt may be summed up
as follows:-
June 26, 2011
1857 was a feudal outburst to regain their lost potentates and privileges.
June 19, 2011
June 12, 2011 It was reactionary in nature as it aimed at the restoration of the old retrogressive social and religious order.
June 05, 2011
It lacked popular support and could not be called national in any sense of the term.
May 29, 2011
May 22, 2011 It was anti-progressive, because the future of the country lay in the process of modernisation introduced by the
May 15, 2011 British government, which it opposed.
May 08, 2011
Therefore, the educated, enlightened, progressive elements of the society, who were the forerunners of
May 01, 2011
nationalism in India, were opposed to it and supported the British government.
April 24, 2011 It was doomed to failure.
April 17, 2011
April 10, 2011 Where can one look for the origin of this Left perception if not in the life and teachings of Karl Marx? If you read any
April 03, 2011 article, book or research paper written by any Indian Left intellectual you will find it overloaded with references to Marx?s
writings and correspondence. If you happen to overhear any debate between different shades (because there are so
March 27, 2011 many) of Indian Communists, you will be amused to find each side quoting Marx or Engels to support its own contention.
March 20, 2011 In fact, Marx is to Indian Leftists what Jesus or Muhammad are to their devotees. Marx has moulded the minds of Indian
March 13, 2011 Leftists in the same way as the Bible or the Koran has moulded the minds of their faithfuls. During the last one and a half
March 06, 2011 century, world Communism has passed through many vicissitudes, many prophesies and experiments of Marxism have
failed, big powerful Communist countries have crossed over to the Capitalist mode of market economy, science has
February 27, 2011 opened new frontiers in our knowledge of the nature and origin of man and universe, but for Indian Communists, Marx
February 20, 2011 still continues to be the only reference point. For them Marx?s every quote is an infallible gospel. Therefore if we want to
February 13, 2011 reach the roots of the pre-1957 Leftist perspective on 1857, we must try to examine Marx?s perception of India. How did
February 06, 2011 he look at the economic, social and religious institutions of India? How did he compare Indian civilisation with western or
European civilisation? How did he view India?s journey in history? How did he react to the British conquest of India?
January 30, 2011 What role did he visualise for British imperialism in India?
January 23, 2011
January 16, 2011 Answers to all these questions can be found in Marx?s two signed articles published in an American daily paper New
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:00 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesbdbe.html?name...
January 09, 2011 York Daily Tribune (henceforth NYDT) in the year 1853, i.e., only four years before the 1857 Revolt. First of these
January 02, 2011 articles, ?The British Rule in India? carrying the London dateline, June 10, 1853 was published in NYDT on June 25,
1853 and the second article ?The Future Results of the British Rule in India? with London dateline, July 22, 1853 was
December 26, 2010 published on August 8, 1853. Those days British Parliament was debating the renewal of the Charter to E.I.C. for 20
December 19, 2010 years beyond 1853. Marx, the London-based paid correspondent of the NYDT, wrote a series of eight newsletters
December 12, 2010 between May 7 and July 22, 1853. Out of these eight letters the two articles, mentioned above have been accorded
December 05, 2010 special importance in all the anthologies of Marx?s sporadic references to India. The first official collection of Karl Marx?s
November 28, 2010 historical writings prepared by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Moscow (founded in 1919) and published in the year
November 21, 2010 1933 had included only two articles on India. All subsequent anthologies of Marx on India such as, edited and published
November 14, 2010 by BPL Bedi (Lahore 1937), Mulk Raj Anand (Allahabad, 1938), CPI (Bombay 1943), On Britain (Moscow, 1953), On
November 7, 2010 Colonialism (Moscow 1959), First Indian War of Independence (Moscow 1960) and lastly, Iqbal Hussain?s Karl Marx on
India (Delhi, 2006) carry them. Only these articles present a comprehensive historical view of Marx on Indian society,
October 31, 2010 civilisation and history.
October 24, 2010
October 17, 2010 These articles show that Marx had a very adverse opinion of Indian economic, social and religious institutions. At the
October 10, 2010 outset he declared, ?I share not the opinion of those who believe in a golden age of Hindustan?. (Karl Marx?s Historical
October 03, 2010
Writings. Moscow 1933, Indian reprint, PPH Bombay 1944, p. 591). He says, ?That religion is at once a religion of
sensual exuberance, and a religion of self-torturing asceticism, a religion of the Lingam and of the juggernaut, the religion
2010 Issues
of the Monk and bayadare.? (Historical Writings Vol. I, Bombay 1944, p. 591).
2009 Issues
Similarly, Marx was very critical of the village community system prevalent in India from times immemorial. Unlike other
2008 Issues
foreign observers Marx did not consider these village communities as bedrock of grassroot democracy or republicanism,
2007 Issues
rather he dubbed them ?solid foundation of oriental despotism.? He wrote, ?Since the remotest times, a social system of
2006 Issues
particular features?the so-called village system, which gave to each of these small unions their independent organisation
and distinct life. (ibid, p. 594)... These idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been
Organiser
the solid foundation of oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass,
About us
making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules depriving it of all grandeur and historical
Advertisement
energies.? (ibid, p. 596). Marx saw an organic relation between the village system and religion. He says, ?We must not
Circulation
forget that this undignified, stagnatory and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked the other part, in
Contact us
contradistinction wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindostan?.
(ibid, p. 596).
Subscribe
Denigrating further the Indian social system and religion he continues. ?We must not forget that these little communities
were contaminated by distinction of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances, instead of
elevating man the sovereign of circumstances, that they were transformed a self-developing social state into never
changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalising worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation is the fact that
man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow.? (ibid
p. 596-597).
(To be continued)
June 24, 2007

Organiser Home
Special Report
Editorial Previous Page (24/28) - Next Page (26/28)
A Report
Health Watch
Content ©
Readers’ Forum
Media Watch
The Moving Finger
Writes
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Agenda
News Analysis
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:00 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules8682.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
EXPOSE July 01, 2007
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Home > 2007 Issues > July 01, 2007
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??IV
Kids Org.
Marx welcomed British conquest of India
News Round-up
By Devendra Swarup
Readers’ Forum:
INTERESTING QUITE naturally, with this adverse view of India?s social and religious systems, Marx was ready to welcome any effort to
PEOPLE overthrow them and he saw the British conquest of India in that light. In his view England was ?causing a social
PERSPECTIVE revolution in Hindustan, ?..Whatever may have been the crime of England she was the unconscious tool of history in
Kerala Newsletter bringing about that revolution? (Historical Writings, p. 597). He was happy that ?these small stereotype form of social
organism have been to the greater part dissolved?? and in his view the dissolution of ?these small semi-barbarian,
Previous Issues semi-civilised communities, by blowing up their economic basis? has ?produced the greatest, and, to speak the truth, the
September 04, 2011 only social revolution ever heard of in Asia.? (ibid, p. 596). He was overjoyed to see that ?England has broken down the
entire framework of Indian society, without any symptoms of reconstruction yet appearing. This loss of his old world, with
August 28, 2011 no gain of a new one, imparts of particular kind of melancholy to the present misery of the Hindu and separates
August 21, 2011 Hindustan ruled by Britain from all its earlier traditions, and from the whole of its past history.? (ibid, pp. 592-93).
August 14, 2011
August 07, 2011 Quoting a poem of German poet Goethe, Marx expresses his conviction that any crumbling of an ancient world must be
accompanied by some torture and bloodshed. (p. 597).
July 31, 2011
July 24, 2011 Marx does not see in the British conquest of India a catastrophe or an act of imperialist exploitation, rather he welcomes
July 17, 2011 it for two reasons. One, it is India?s destiny to be invaded and conquered. Marx is convinced that ??the whole of her past
July 10, 2011 history, if it be anything, is the history of successive conquests she has undergone. Indian society has no history at all, at
July 03, 2011 least, no known history. What we call its history is but the history of successive intruders, who founded their empires on
the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society, (ibid, p. 598). And for these foreign invasions and
June 26, 2011 conquests, India has to blame herself not the invaders because, Marx believes, ?A country not only, divided between the
June 19, 2011 Mohammedan and Hindu, but between tribe and tribe, between caste and caste, a society whose framework was based
June 12, 2011 on a sort of equilibrium, resulting from a general repulsion and constitutional exclusiveness between all its members.
June 05, 2011 Such a country and such a society, were they not the predestined prey of conquest?? (ibid, p. 598).
May 29, 2011 For Marx, ?the question, therefore, is not whether the English had a right to conquer India but whether we are to prefer
May 22, 2011 India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Britain.? (p. 598). And, of course,
May 15, 2011 Marx stands for conquest by Britain, because, he says, ?Arabs, Turks, Tartars, Moghuls, who had successively overrun
May 08, 2011 India, soon became Hinduised, the barbarian conquerors being, by an eternal law of history, conquered themselves by
May 01, 2011 the superior civilization of their subjects.? (ibid, p. 599) (Here Marx is contradicting himself because earlier he had
painted a very degenerate, stagnant picture of the Hindu society.) Exhibiting his Euro-centric approach Marx says: ?The
April 24, 2011 British were the first conquerors superior, and therefore, inaccessible to the Hindu civilization. They destroyed it by
April 17, 2011 breaking up the native communities, by uprooting the native industry, and by levelling all that was great and elevated in
April 10, 2011 the native society.? (ibid, p. 599).
April 03, 2011
In fact, in Marx?s view, ?England has to fulfill a double mission in India, one destructive, and the other regenerating?the
March 27, 2011 annihilation of old Asiatic society and laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia.? (ibid, p. 599). For him,
March 20, 2011 the introduction of steam had brought India into regular and rapid communication with Europe? and ?the day is not far
March 13, 2011 distant when ? that once fabulous country will thus be actually annexed to the Western world.? (p. 600)
March 06, 2011
Marx gives us a list of works of regeneration begun by the British rulers in India. They are:
February 27, 2011
a. political unity??Unity imposed by the British sword, will now be strengthened and perpetuated by the electric
February 20, 2011
telegraph.? (p. 599)
February 13, 2011
February 06, 2011
b. creation of the native army
January 30, 2011
c. the free press
January 23, 2011
January 16, 2011
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:04 PM
January 09, 2011 d. introduction of steam and railway, and above all,
January 02, 2011
e. emergence of an English educated class of Indians.
December 26, 2010
December 19, 2010 Describing this class, Marx writes: ?From the Indian natives, reluctantly and sparingly, educated at Calcutta, under
December 12, 2010 English superintendence, a fresh class is springing up endowed with the requirements for government and imbued with
December 05, 2010 European science (p. 600). Here, Macaulay is speaking through Marx. Sometimes it is difficult to separate an Europhile
November 28, 2010 imperialist from a ?revolutionary? Marx. When Marx says: ?The introduction of rail roads? will afford the means of
November 21, 2010 diminishing the amount and the cost of the military establishments.? (ibid, p. 601) is he not supporting the military rule of
November 14, 2010 Britain?
November 7, 2010
Perhaps, out of his intense hatred for Indian civilization and pride for Western civilisation, we find Marx?the ?rational?
October 31, 2010 and ?revolutionary??speaking the language of a Christian missionary. Castigating the British government for not
October 24, 2010 propagating Christianity in India, Marx says: ?While they combated the French Revolution under the pretext of defending
October 17, 2010 ?our holy religion?, did they not forbid, at the same time, Christianity to be propagated in India and did they not, in order
October 10, 2010 to make money out of the pilgrims streaming into the temples of Orissa and Bengal, take up the trade in the murder and
October 03, 2010
prostitution perpetrated in the temple of Juggernaut? These are the men of Property, Order, Family and Religion!? (ibid,
p. 604).
2010 Issues
2009 Issues
Marx believed that ?the railway system will? become in India, truly, the fore runner of modern industry. (ibid, p. 602) and
?Modern industry resulting from the railway system, will dissolve the hereditary divisions of labour, upon which rests the
2008 Issues
Indian castes, those decisive impediments to Indian progress and Indian power? (p. 602). Again, time has proved Marx a
2007 Issues
false prophet, because expansion of railway network all over the country during the last one-and-a-half century, has
2006 Issues
instead of obliterating the institution of caste, only strengthened it.
Organiser
To sum up, Marx?s perception of India in 1853, just before the 1857 Revolt, was:
About us
Advertisement
* India?s social, economic and religious institutions based on village communities and caste are stagnant, semi-barbaric
Circulation
and decadent. They ought to be destroyed completely.
Contact us
* India?s economic system resting on agriculture and cottage industry should be dissolved and give way to modern
Subscribe
large-side industrialization.
* Inferior Asiatic civilization must be supplanted with the superior Western civilization. India should be annexed to the
Western world.
* British conquest of India is a blessing for India. Britain has double mission to fulfill, one, to destroy the old and second,
to build new.
* Britain has started the process of regeneration by giving India (a) political unity (b) free press (c) introducing steam,
electric telegraph and railway (d) building a native army, and finally (e) by creating a new English educated class imbued
July 01, 2007 with Western science and administrative acumen. The process of regeneration has just begun, it should be carried
Organiser Home further and not reversed.
Editorial
Regional Round-up (To be continued)
Realpolitik
News Analysis ?Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its
Kids’ Org
history is but the history of successive intruders, who founded their empires on the
Infotainment
World of Women passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society.??Karl Marx
Bookmark
Agenda ?England has to fulfil a double mission in India, one destructive, and the other
INTERVIEW OF THE regenerating?the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and laying the material
WEEK
An essay on 1857-II
foundations of Western society in Asia.? ? Marx
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Readers’ Forum
Media Watch
Previous Page (36/42) - Next Page (38/42)
Think it Over
Content ©
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:04 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulese6d2-2.html?nam...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??V
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Intellectual servility of Indian Marxists
INTERESTING By Devendra Swarup
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE With this blind faith in the knowledge and vision of Marx, the image of 1857 Revolt
Kerala Newsletter could not be different from what was presented by Rajni Palme Dutt and other early
Left intellectuals.
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011
Instead of probing the sources of Marx?s knowledge about India and questioning
August 28, 2011 his sweeping pronouncements, the Leftists started lauding them as ?historic?,
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011
?prophetic?, ?original? and ?insightful?. What a pathetic example of blind
August 07, 2011 hero-worship and intellectual servility!
July 31, 2011 Any patriotic Indian would be shocked to read such a narrow Eurocentric, derogatory and insulting evaluation of his
July 24, 2011 country and civilisation, but not the Indian leftists. Instead of probing the sources of Marx?s knowledge about India and
July 17, 2011 questioning his sweeping pronouncements, they started lauding them as ?historic?, ?prophetic?, ?original? and
July 10, 2011 ?insightful?. That great litterateur Mulk Raj Anand in the preface to his edited work Marx and Engels on India (Allahabad,
July 03, 2011 1938) showered phrases like ?The insight with which Marx analyses the changes in the form of Indian society brought
about by the British conquest of India?, ?the uncanny foresight with which in 1853 he prophesied? and ?with the
June 26, 2011 perspicacity of genius Marx describes how the coming of Britain to India broke up this slow-moving antiquated social
June 19, 2011
order? (p. 5).
June 12, 2011
June 05, 2011
Rajni Palme Dutt in his India Today (written during the years 1936-1939 but published in 1940) devoted full thirteen
pages (pp. 83-95) to discuss these articles of 1853 and some sporadic references to India in Marx?s Capital and
Correspondence. For R.P.D. these few references were sufficient to prove that ?Marx had continuously devoted some of
May 29, 2011
his leading thought and work to India? (p. 83). An ecstatic R.P.D. wrote: ?In fact, the well known articles of Marx on India,
May 22, 2011
written as a series in 1853, are among the most fertile of his writings and the starting point of modern thought on the
May 15, 2011
questions covered? (ibid).
May 08, 2011
May 01, 2011
Further he says, ?These taken in conjunction with Capital and the references in the Correspondence, give the kernel of
Marx?s thought on India.? (ibid p. 84). R.P.D. is in full agreement with every statement made by Marx. Posing the
April 24, 2011
question, ?Does Marx shed tears over fall of the village system and the destruction of the old basis of Indian society??
April 17, 2011
R.P.D. gives a readymade answer, ?But he saw also the deeply reactionary character of that village system, and the
April 10, 2011
indispensable necessity of its destruction if mankind is to advance?. (p. 91). Very approvingly, R.P.D. recounts the
April 03, 2011
?regenerating? role of the British rule in India, as presented by Marx. (pp. 92-94). Paying encomiums to the prophetic
vision of Marx, R.P.D. writes, ?More than ninety years have passed since Marx wrote on India. Far-reaching changes
March 27, 2011
have taken place. The main outlines of Marx?s historical analysis still stand, and his vision into the future of India (to
March 20, 2011 which no parallel can be found in any nineteenth century writer on India.)? (ibid, p. 94)
March 13, 2011
March 06, 2011 What a pathetic example of blind hero-worship and intellectual servility!
February 27, 2011 With this blind faith in the knowledge and vision of Marx, the image of 1857 Revolt could not be different from what was
February 20, 2011 presented by R.P.D. and other early Left intellectuals. If, according to Marx, the British conquest of India was to be seen
February 13, 2011 as the victory of a superior civilisation over an inferior one and if England had a double mission to fulfill in India: (1) The
February 06, 2011 destruction of the old stagnated, semi-barbarous social and economic order and (2) To initiate a process of regeneration
by introducing steam, electric telegraph and railways, modern industrialisation, as well as the western education system,
January 30, 2011 then, any sudden violent uprooting of the British rule, which the 1857 Revolt really aimed at, could be termed, nothing but
January 23, 2011 ?reactionary?, anti-progress and ?anti-people?. The success of such a violent outburst would have meant the disruption
January 16, 2011 of the process of regeneration leading to the restoration of the old order. Therefore, the pre-1957 Left perspective of the
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:09 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulese6d2-2.html?nam...
January 09, 2011 1857 Revolt reflected truly Marx?s perception of India in 1853.
January 02, 2011
Here it may be useful to examine the sources of Marx?s knowledge and perception of India. Interestingly, Marx?s views
December 26, 2010 on India were not known in India and Europe till 1930s. Rajni Palme Dutt was shocked when in 1927 the leading English
December 19, 2010 Socialist leader Harold Laski put out the view, ?The effort to read the problem of India in the set terms of Marxism is
December 12, 2010 rather an exercise in ingenuity than a serious intellectual contribution to socialist advance.? (Communism, London 1927,
December 05, 2010 p. 124, cf. R.P. Dutt, India Today 1940/1997, p. 83). Soon after, the archives of Marx-Engels, set up in 1919 at Moscow
November 28, 2010 by D. Ryazanov, started compilation and publication of the collected works of Marx and Engels. After the sudden
November 21, 2010 demotion and exile of Ryazanov by Stalin, this work was carried further by V. Adaratsky, who in 1933 published in two
November 14, 2010 volumes the Historical Writings of Marx and Engels wherein the two signed articles by Marx, discussed above, were
November 7, 2010 included. But, much before that a section of Indian intellectuals and activists, swayed away by the powerful propaganda
unleashed by the Russian Bolshevik Party and the 1919 Communist International led by Vladimir Lenin, under the
October 31, 2010 slogan, ?Way to London goes via Peking and Calcutta? had come to believe that the coup which brought Lenin to power
October 24, 2010 in October 1917 was a great ideological revolution and its driving ideology was Marxism. They had become Marxists
October 17, 2010 without having read Marx. Prof D.P. Mukherji of Lucknow University could pronounce in 1945 that ?Karl Marx?s place as
October 10, 2010 a historian is of the highest order.? (On Indian History: A Study in Method, Chap. 2, Indian History and the Marxist
October 03, 2010
Method; pp. 9-48; Bombay, 1945, p. 18). Defending Lenin?s coup, Mukherji wrote: ? Recent researches have demolished
the dishonest conclusion that according to Marx, Russia should have been the last country to achieve a revolution and it
2010 Issues
was all Lenin?s doing without reference to the Marxian methodology? (ibid, p. 42). He fervently pleaded that ?the Marxist
2009 Issues
approach may be given a trial by our historians.? (ibid. 47)
2008 Issues
(To be continued...)
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Organiser
About us Previous Page (35/37) - Next Page (37/37)
Advertisement
Circulation
Contact us Content ©
Subscribe
July 08, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
New Analysis
Essay
Regional Round-up
Kerala Newsletter
Insight
NEIGHBOUR WATCH
Kids’ Org
Neighbour Watch
Bookmark
India’s Scientific
Heritage-XIV
Readers’ Forum
Agenda
The Moving Finger
Writes
Think It Over
Media Watch
Opinion
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:09 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules4bc0.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??VI
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Marx had inadequate knowledge about India
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE Kosambi was of the view that: ?The adoption of Marx?s thesis does not mean blind
Kerala Newsletter repetition of all his conclusions (and even less, those of the official party line.
'Marxists' at all times).?
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011
Referring to Marx?s chronological notes on Indian history Prof. Sarkar laments,
August 28, 2011 ?The most serious omission here is the passing over of the entire Hindu epoch of
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011
our history, though it was being recovered by the European scholars of Marx?s
August 07, 2011 days?.
July 31, 2011 When serious scholars like D.D. Kosambi tried to apply Marxian approach to Indian history, they found themselves in
July 24, 2011 great difficulty. In 1951, Kosambi tried to examine Marxist approach to Indian chronology (Annals of Bhandarkar Oriental
July 17, 2011 Research Institute, Vol. 31 pp. 258-66) as presented by a Russian scholar D.A. Suleiken in 1949 and found it
July 10, 2011 ?dangerously misleading? (Kosambi?s Omnibus, OUP 2005, p. 49). In his seminal work, An Introduction to the Study of
July 03, 2011 Indian History (first published in 1956, sixth reprint 1993) Kosambi rejected many of Marx?s statements about India.
Kosambi wrote: ?India had never a classical slave economy in the same sense as Greece or Rome? (p. 11). Kosambi
June 26, 2011 was at a loss what to make of Marx?s famous theory of the ?Asiatic Mode of Production?. He says, ?What Marx himself
June 19, 2011
said about India cannot be taken as it stands.? Kosambi, who is considered to be the father of Marxist historiography on
June 12, 2011
India, emphatically rejects Marx?s view of Indian history. He writes: ?We cannot let pass without challenge Marx?s
June 05, 2011
statement, ?Indian society has no history at all? unchanging (village) society.? Kosambi says, ?In fact, the greatest
periods of Indian history, the Mauryans, the Satavahanas, the Guptas owed nothing to intruders, they mark precisely the
formation and spread of the basic village society, or the development of new trade centers? (ibid, pp 11-12). Kosambi
May 29, 2011
was of firm view, that: ?The adoption of Marx?s thesis does not mean blind repetition of all his conclusions (and even
May 22, 2011
less, those of the official party line Marxists at all times)? (p. 10). That is why Kosambi wrote a ruthlessly critical review of
May 15, 2011
S.A. Dange?s India from Primitive Communism to Slavery, People?s Publishing House (PPH), Bombay 1949).
May 08, 2011
May 01, 2011
Irfan Habib in his well documented essay, Marx?s Perception of India, [written on the occasion of Marx?s death
centenary in the year 1983 and published in the inaugural issue of The Marxist, an official journal of the CPI(M), reprinted
April 24, 2011
in his ?Essays in Indian History, Tulika, Delhi, 1995), reproduced again in Iqbal Hussan (ed); Karl Marx on India, (Tulika,
April 17, 2011
2006)] holds the view that ?In 1853 he seems to have taken up his starting point the (1830) descriptive elements in
April 10, 2011
Hegel?s interpretation of Indian civilization? (ibid, p. 58). Marx almost echoes Hegel?s words: ?The Hindoos have no
April 03, 2011
history, no growth expanding into a veritable political condition?. Marx blindly repeated Hegel?s view that the admitted
diffusion of Indian culture has been ?a dumb, deedless expansion? and ?the people of India have achieved no foreign
March 27, 2011
conquests but on every occasion were vanquished themselves.? Similarly, he repeated Hegel?s description of Indian
March 20, 2011 village community. Habib points out that Marx?s knowledge of India in 1853 was mostly confined to Bernier, Fifth Report
March 13, 2011 and current British Parliamentary debates. He says that after 1867, references to India became relatively infrequent in
March 06, 2011 Marx?s published writings.
February 27, 2011 In fact, Marx?s much advertised ?Notes on Indian History?, (posthumously published from Moscow in 1947 on the basis
February 20, 2011 of some handwritten manuscripts found among Marx?s papers,) were prepared in the last years of his life about the year
February 13, 2011 1880. These Notes are based on two books?one, Elphinstone?s History of India first published in 1841, but Marx got its
February 06, 2011 reprint of 1874 and the second one was Robert Sewell?s The Analytical History of the British Conquest of India. (London,
1870). The notes begin at the year 664 AD, i.e. coming of the Muslims and close at Queen Victoria?s Proclamation of
January 30, 2011 August 1858. There is no evidence that Marx was ever able to use these notes. Marxist historian, Prof Sushobhan Sarkar
January 23, 2011 in an article ?Marx on Indian History?, (written on the occasion of Marx?s 150th birth anniversary in the year 1968) was
January 16, 2011 constrained to admit that ?Marx did not leave behind any systematic presentation of the history of India, that was never
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:11 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules4bc0.html?name...
January 09, 2011 his main preoccupation. He set down his observations on certain current Indian questions, which attracted public
January 02, 2011 attention.? (P.C. Joshi (ed), Homage to Karl Marx, (PPH 1968, p. 93).
December 26, 2010 Referring to Marx?s chronological notes on Indian history Prof. Sarkar laments, ?The most serious omission here is the
December 19, 2010 passing over of the entire Hindu epoch of our history, though it was being recovered by the European scholars of Marx?s
December 12, 2010 days? (ibid p. 98). Gangadhar Adhikari, one of the top theoreticians of the CPI, in his essay ?Marx and India? (A
December 05, 2010 Communist Party Publication, 1968) says, ?Writing to Engels in those days (1853-59) Marx had somewhere said that his
November 28, 2010 knowledge of India was inadequate.? (p. 17). Adhikari may be referring to a letter from Marx to Engels dated August 8,
November 21, 2010 1858, where Marx writes: ?I have written a lot for the Tribune of late so as to replenish my account a bit but I am getting
November 14, 2010 damnably short of material. India isn?t my department.? (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works Vol. 40 Progress
November 7, 2010 Publishers Moscow, 1983 p. 335). This letter shows that Marx had no interest in India and whatever he wrote was written
not out of conviction but in a mercenary spirit to meet his financial needs. Therefore, one is inclined to agree with the
October 31, 2010 opinion of the noted historian A.K. Warder that ?Marx here is embedded in the ordinary European outlook of his day
October 24, 2010 which had been codified by Hegel? according to which ?Asians are barbarians and the ancient Greeks miraculously
October 17, 2010 created civilization, inherited by the later peoples of Europe?, that ?the real history and social progress, along with the
October 10, 2010 philosophy, art, etc, begin with the Greeks and is essentially the history of Europe.? (R.S. Sharma and Vivekananda Jha
October 03, 2010
(eds) Indian Society Historical Probings: Essays in Memory of D.D. Kosambi, ICHR, New Delhi, 1974, p. 159).
2010 Issues
In the light of the above, is it not pathetic that Indian Leftists should still place their blind faith in Marx?s inadequate,
2009 Issues
borrowed and now outdated knowledge about India?
2008 Issues
(To be continued)
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Organiser
Advertisement
Circulation
Subscribe
July 15, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
Opinion
Worldwatch
Media Watch
The Moving Finger
Writes
Kids’ Org
Special Report
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Bookmark
Think It Over
AGENDA
Readers’ Forum
Sangh Samachar
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:11 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules5aaa.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??VII
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: 1957: Left turns Right
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE ?The past anti-Hindu record of the Muslim rulers and the anti-feudal maturation of
Kerala Newsletter society which expressed itself in the form of an opposition to the existing Muslim
regime, spread apathy about the rebellion among the Hindus.?
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 ?Baren Ray
August 28, 2011 ?Far too long had our national revolution been denied the status of a revolution. It
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011
had become fashionable to deride it, especially by Marxist historians who followed
August 07, 2011 the lead of M.N. Roy and Rajni Palme Dutt.?
?Mohit Sen
July 31, 2011
July 24, 2011 1957, the centenary year of the Great Revolt, became a turning point for the Indian Communists. The popular sentiment
July 17, 2011 and enthusiasm displayed during the centenary celebrations all over the country was an eye opener to them. Eminent
July 10, 2011 historians like R.C. Majumdar, S.N. Sen, S.B. Chowdhury and others brought out well-researched works on 1857. New
July 03, 2011 documentary material was dug out from the state archives. S.A.A. Rizvi and M.L. Bhargava, at the behest of UP
government, brought out a multi-volume compilation of rare documents on 1857. Thus, fifty years after Savarkar?s
June 26, 2011 path-breaking work on 1857 titled Indian War of Independence, 1857 was once again presented from Indian point of view
June 19, 2011 in its myriad colours.
June 12, 2011
June 05, 2011 Inaugurating the centenary celebrations on May 10, 1957, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru delivered a long inspiring
speech at the Ramlila Maidan. All this made the Communists re-examine their own perspective on 1857. Mohit Sen, a
May 29, 2011 prominent Communist intellectual and activist, lamented, ?Far too long had our national revolution been denied the status
May 22, 2011 of a revolution. It had become fashionable to deride it, especially by Marxist historians who followed the lead of M.N. Roy
May 15, 2011 and Rajni Palme Dutt.? (Mohit Sen, A Traveller and the Road: The Journey of an Indian Communist, Delhi, 2003 p. 154).
May 08, 2011
May 01, 2011 The CPI took out the August 1957 special issue of its political monthly New Age, edited by its General Secretary, Ajoy
Ghosh with Mohit Sen and P. Govind Pillai as his editorial assistants. At the same time veteran Communist leader P.C.
April 24, 2011 Joshi, who after having led the party as its General Secretary for 13 years (1935-1948) was disgraced and expelled from
April 17, 2011 the party but was rehabilitated in 1956, was requested to organise a collection of articles reflecting various approaches to
April 10, 2011 all the facets of the 1857 Revolt. This collection was officially published by the People?s Publishing House in July 1957
April 03, 2011 and was titled Rebellion 1857: A Symposium which showed lack of unanimity in the party. Joshi in his preface admitted,
?It remains, unfortunately enough, one of the unresolved controversies of Indian history. This volume, therefore, is in the
March 27, 2011 nature of a symposium and the views of each contributor are his own.? (Preface, p. vii)
March 20, 2011
March 13, 2011 A perusal of these two official publications of the CPI is enough to show that Left intellectuals were still divided about the
March 06, 2011
nature of 1857 Revolt or Rebellion. In the New Age special Hiren Mukherji and Baren Ray take positions, which if not
directly opposed, radically differ from each other. Prof Mukherji rejecting the earlier Left perspective on 1857, though
presenting it under the garb of British views, says, ?This is a view which is wrong and perverse and an unmerited slur on
February 27, 2011
our people.? (ibid p. 2) Further, he says, ?A proposition has been mooted even in quarters known as progressives,
February 20, 2011
namely, that the Indian intelligentsia especially in Bengal? disapproved of and kept deliberately away from the mutiny as
February 13, 2011
a feudal and reactionary phenomenon.? (ibid p. 13)
February 06, 2011
Baran Ray?s article ?Economic Transformation and the Revolt?, couched in abstruse Marxist jargon, sees the Revolt as
January 30, 2011
a handiwork of the Muslims, and justifies the apathy, rather opposition by the Hindu middle class, ?which had received a
January 23, 2011
new education, the benefits of a rule of law as against the former insecurity and employment opportunities to a certain
January 16, 2011
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:13 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules5aaa.html?name...
January 09, 2011 extent (p. 48) and ?it had no inclination to accept a Muslim feudal leadership for opposing the foreigners.? (p.50)
January 02, 2011 Reiterating this view Ray further writes, ?Even achievement of Hindu-Muslim unity was not easy, the past anti-Hindu
record of the Muslim rulers and the anti-feudal maturation of society which expressed itself in the form of an opposition to
December 26, 2010 the existing Muslim regime, spread apathy about the rebellion among the Hindus.? (p. 52)
December 19, 2010
December 12, 2010 Prof. Sushobhan Sarkar, who under the pseudonym Amit Sen, contributed a review article on S.N. Sen?s Eighteen Fifty
December 05, 2010 Seven and R.C. Majumdar?s Sepoy Mutiny. He also underlines the fact of Hindu-Muslim divide. Criticising the foreword
November 28, 2010 by the then Education Minister, Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad in S.N. Sen?s Eighteen Fifty Seven, for its lack of
November 21, 2010 ?objectivity?, Prof Sarkar writes, ?It proclaims that in 1857 he cannot find a single instance when there was a clash on a
November 14, 2010 communal basis.? This is, of course, belied by the communal fracas at Bijnore, Moradabad, Sirsa etc. (Majumdar, pp. 60,
November 7, 2010 65)? (New Age Special. p. 69)
October 31, 2010 P.C. Joshi in his article, ?1857 Heritage?, in unequivocal words presents it as ?the first chapter of the history of Indian
October 24, 2010 national movement against British imperialism? (p. 55) and calls it ?national uprising? (p. 57). Quoting London Times
October 17, 2010 Joshi underlines the all India unity reflected in this uprising. Praising the role of mutinous sepoys, he writes, ?Indian army
October 10, 2010 went against the ?British salt? and proved their loyalty to the ?Indian soil? from which they had risen.? (p. 59)
October 03, 2010
The other publication Rebellion 1857: A Symposium carries a 103-page-long article with 213 references under the title
2010 Issues
?1857 in Our History?, which speaks high of the author P.C. Joshi?s erudition. Similarly, a Leftist journalist Satinder
2009 Issues
Singh, under the pseudonym Talmiz Khaldun, contributed 70-page-long research article based upon his archival studies.
2008 Issues
A very seminal article in this volume was contributed by the late Dr K.M. Ashraf, a Leftist historian known for his
2007 Issues
ideological commitment, under the title ?Muslim Revivalists and the Revolt of 1857?, wherein Dr Ashraf has underlined
2006 Issues
the active role of Wahabi ideology and organisational network in the 1857 Revolt. Recently, William Dalrymple in his Last
Mughal has also marshalled enough contemporary evidence in support of this opinion. But this view is not palatable to
Organiser
Prof Irfan Habib, who seems to have emerged these days as the main spokesman of the CPI(M) on matters of history. In
About us
his foreword to the second edition of the Rebellion 1857 (published by the National Book Trust, New Delhi, 2007) Prof.
Advertisement
Habib, in a way, rejecting Ashraf?s view says, ?It seems to me that the identification of mujahids or non-sepoy Muslim
Circulation
volunteers, exclusively with Wahabis, lacks convincing substantiation, so also do such statements as that the sepoy
Contact us
general, Bakht Khan, was a conformed and fanatical Wahabi.? (Foreword, p. x). Evidently, Prof Habib and his AMU team
are trying on one hand to highlight the Muslim contribution in 1857 as on the other, to delink it with the Wahabi ideology.
Subscribe
This approach of Prof. Habib calls for a critical examination.
(To be concluded)
July 22, 2007

Organiser Home Content ©
Editorial
Obituary
Realpolitik
Agri View
The Moving Finger
Writes
Media Watch
Kids’ Org
Health Watch
Bookmark
India’s Scientific
Heritage-XVI
Readers’ Forum
Sangh Samachar
Think It Over
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Feedback
Agenda
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:13 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesfee2.html?name=...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??VIII
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum:
INTERESTING Marx of 1857, discovered in 1957
PEOPLE By Devendra Swarup
PERSPECTIVE
Kerala Newsletter The most startling feature of the two official publications of the CPI on 1857 Revolt,
happened to be that there, for the first time after a gap of one century, the
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 authorship of nine unsigned articles or newsletters, which were published in a
largely-circulated American newspaper the New York Daily Tribune (1841-1924) were
August 28, 2011 attributed to Karl Marx.
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011 The most startling feature of the two official publications of the CPI on 1857 Revolt, happened to be that there, for the first
August 07, 2011 time after a gap of one century, the authorship of nine unsigned articles or newsletters, which were published in a largely-
circulated American newspaper the New York Daily Tribune (1841-1924) (henceforth NYDT) was attributed to Karl Marx.
July 31, 2011 New Age, the political monthly of the CPI edited by its General Secretary Ajoy Ghosh, in its Centenary Special (August
July 24, 2011 1957) published four articles dated June 15, 1858; June 26, 1858; July 21, 1858 and October 18, 1858 under a neutral
July 17, 2011 heading ?Articles on 1857 Revolt? and attributed their authorship to Karl Marx. At the end of the articles a note said,
July 10, 2011 ?Four of a number of unassigned articles by Marx published in the New York Daily Tribune. Photostat copies were sent
July 03, 2011 by the Marx-Lenin Institute, Berlin? (pp. 23-27).
June 26, 2011 In the same issue of New Age, senior Marxist historian Prof. Sushobhan Sarkar in his review article, written under the
June 19, 2011 pseudonym Amit Sen, accepting the authorship of Marx as a settled fact, writes, ?Unconsciously, Dr Majumdar?s chapter
June 12, 2011 thoroughly vindicates Marx?s celebrated letter on the ?mutiny? atrocities written as early as September 4, 1857.? He was
June 05, 2011 so overwhelmed by this ?new discovery? of Marx?s authorship for the unsigned articles in NYDT, that he rushed to
record his unhappiness about S.N. Sen and R.C. Majumdar for not having included in their bibliographies ?even the
May 29, 2011 published notes and letters of Marx bearing on the subject?. (p. 67).
May 22, 2011
May 15, 2011 In the second publication Rebellion-1857: A Symposium its editor P.C. Joshi in his long article ?1857 in Our History? (pp.
May 08, 2011 119-222) refers to another set of four unsigned articles from the NYDT attributing their authorship to Marx. The article
May 01, 2011 dated July 15, 1857 is referred to four times (fn. 23, 129, 149, 210); dated August 14, 1857 two times (fn. 3 & 20); articles
dated September 10, 1857 and fn. July 25, 1858 only once (fn. 91 and 25 respectively). Joshi also claims to have
April 24, 2011 received the photocopies of these articles from the Institute for Marxism-Leninism, Berlin. (henceforth IML). He is aware
April 17, 2011 that these articles were published unsigned in the NYDT.
April 10, 2011
April 03, 2011 Joshi does not care to throw any light on how the unsigned articles published a century ago, had been suddenly
attributed to Karl Marx.
March 27, 2011
March 20, 2011 Interestingly, in his article ?1857 Heritage? included in the Special Number of the New Age, Joshi does not make any
March 13, 2011 mention of these 1857-58 articles, rather refers, at least eight times, to the 1853 signed articles by Marx published in the
March 06, 2011 NYDT.
February 27, 2011

Prima facie, one gets an impression that, perhaps, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Berlin had embarked upon the
February 20, 2011
discovery of the authorship of the unsigned articles on 1857 Revolt, published in the NYDT independently on its own. But
a little investigation would show that this process of ?discovery? was started in Moscow itself. In the year 1953, Moscow
February 13, 2011
published a collection of articles by Marx and Engels under the title ?On Britain?. This compilation for the first time,
February 06, 2011
included articles on 1857 Revolt published in the NYDT on September 16, 1857, attributing its authorship to Karl Marx
and even fixed the date of its writing as September 4, 1857. The editors of this volume nowhere explain how they could
January 30, 2011
determine Marx as its author after a gap of almost a century. Before 1953, nobody in the world was aware that Marx had
January 23, 2011
written any article on the 1857 Revolt. In the vast Marxian literature including biographies, reminiscences,
January 16, 2011
1 of 3 3/12/2015 6:17 PM
January 09, 2011 correspondence and collection of articles etc., published before 1957, no mention is found of Marx?s writings on the 1857
January 02, 2011 Revolt.
December 26, 2010 But, our Indian Marxists were so thrilled by this new discovery that P.C. Joshi in his monthly paper India Today (started in
December 19, 2010 May 1951) published this novel discovery under the title, ?Marx on Revolt of 1857? (India Today, Vol. II no. 3, p. 23 c.f.
December 12, 2010 ?Rebellion 1857? (ed. P.C. Joshi, 1957, fn. 351). This was followed by its inclusion in the offical publication of the CPI,
December 05, 2010 ?Marx on India? which was originally published in November 1943 as Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Series No. 16 by the
November 28, 2010 Peoples Publishing House, Bombay. That edition did not carry this article of September 4, 1857; which was included in
November 21, 2010 the reprint of January 1954, Hindi translation April 1954.
November 14, 2010
November 7, 2010 Any alert critical mind would have raised many questions about this new ?discovery? but for Indian Marxists anything
dished out by Moscow in the name of Marx was highly sacrosanct and final. Emboldened by this intellectual docility and
October 31, 2010 lack of critical inquiry on the part of Indian Marxists, the spinmasters in Moscow and Berlin centres of the IML rushed to
October 24, 2010 appropriate many unsigned articles on 1857 Revolt published in the NYDT and to attribute their authorship to Marx and
October 17, 2010 Engels. To put a stamp of official sanction this material was first included in the multivolume Russian second edition of
October 10, 2010 The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, which was launched in 1955 at Moscow.
October 03, 2010
As the next step Moscow published in 1959 an English edition of a collection of the articles by Marx and Engels under the
2010 Issues
title ?On Colonialism?. In this official publication as many as thirteen articles from the NYDT on 1857 Indian Revolt were
2009 Issues
included with Marx and Engels as their authors.
2008 Issues
Again, the publishers of this anthology don?t bother to explain how the authorship of these unsigned articles was
2007 Issues
determined. The Publishers?s Note simply says, ?When a national revolt against British rule broke out in India in 1857,
2006 Issues
Marx and Engels ... came out with a series of articles in the NYDT. Some of these articles have also been included in this
collection ?It further says, ?The articles from the NYDT are reproduced in this collection in accordance with the
Organiser
newspaper texts... Articles which appeared in the NYDT without a heading have been supplied titles by the ILM of the CC
About us
of CPSU. In all cases where the NYDT editors inserted their own passages into the text of Marx and Engels articles,
Advertisement
these were deleted since they do not belong to the authors.?
Circulation
Contact us
On what basis did the editors identify the interpolated passages? Did they have the original texts written by Marx and
Engels with them? If so, where was the need of reproducing the articles. ?in accordance with the newspaper texts?? No
Subscribe
Marxist intellectual cared to raise such questions. So the process of ?discovery? galloped further.
In 1959, a separate collection of Marx and Engel?s writings on India was published from Moscow in Russian, and was
immediately followed by an English edition under the attractive title ?The First Indian War of Independence, 1857-59.
While the earlier title ?On Colonialism, carried only 13 articles on 1857 from the NYDT, this number in this new
publication got inflated to 28 articles published in the NYDT between July 15, 1857 and October 1, 1858. In addition to
these articles six letters exchanged between Marx and Engels are also included in this anthology. Here also the
Publishers? Note asserts, ?Certain sentences inserted by the edtiors of the daily Tribune and obvious misprints have
been eliminated?. How was it done? No answer. Interestingly, this book gives the date of publication of every article in
the NYDT as well as the date on which that articles was written by Marx or Engels in England e.g. the article published
July 29, 2007 on July 15, 1857 was written as June 30, the one published on August 4, 1857 was written on July 17, 1857. Obviously, it
Organiser Home was easy to get the date of publication from the NYDT files but from where did they find the dates of the writting of the
Editorial articles?
Opinion
The Moving Finger The process of discovery does not stop here. In 1968, Shlomo Avineri, a communist of Jew origin, edited and published
Writes in America, a new anthology under the title, ?Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization (Doubleday and Company,
News Analysis New York 1968). He added two more unsigned articles from the NYDT (dated April 5 and 26, 1858) to the list of articles
Media Watch attributed to Marx. Avineri claims in his Preface, ?all the material included in this volume has been printed accordingly to
Bookmark the photostats of Marx?s original articles as published.? (p. ii) Did he have the photostats of Marx?s original articles or
Sangh Samachar did he strictly follow the next printed in the NYDT? We leave it so be discussed later.
Readers’ Forum
SPECIAL ON 150 As the next step in this journey of ?discovery? we need to consider a recent publication ?Karl Marx on India? edited by
YEARS OF 1857 Iqbal Hussain of Aligarh Muslim University and financed by the ICHR with a hefty publication grant of Rs. 75000 received
Think it over by Prof. Irfan Habib himself. It conceive to introduction by Irfan Habib a 23 years old article by Prof Habib titled ?Marx?s
Agenda Perception India? an Appreciation by Prabhat Patnaik the two of prominent CPM intellectuals.
Kids’ Org
Its copyright is with Aligarh Historians Society, a creation of Irfan Habib and is published by Tulika Books Delhi, 2006) a
commercial venture run by the same nexus. Its high priced Rs 495 in the light of a liberal grant of Rs 75000 from the
ICHR, is clear courageous. What a curious mix of ideology and communication. According to the Editor, Iqbal Hussain,
?Prof. Irfan Habib suggested the project and has vetted the entire final text. The Indo-US Education Foundation (with the
collaboration of the UGC) made possible a trip to the US in 1990 and so enabled me to use the NYDT files.?
(Acknowledgement, p. xi). In preparing this compilation, the editor has made use of the latest enlarged edition of the
Collected Works of Marx and English (Moscow 1975-2005). In the Appendices, (pp. 235-253) he reproduces four new
unsigned articles published in the NYDT as leading articles?one in 1853 and three in 1857-58. Though the editor
suppresses his temptation of attributing them also to Marx, but who knows about the future? This only suggests that
there still remains much unsigned material on the 1857 Revolt published in the NYDT waiting to be appropriated by future
communist spinmasters. What a leap forward from article in 1953, to 9 in 1957, to 13 in 1959, to 28 in 1968, to 30 in
1969, 34 in 2006 and possibly to many more in the coming years.
2 of 3 3/12/2015 6:17 PM
Content ©
3 of 3 3/12/2015 6:17 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules73a6.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
EXPOSE August 05, 2007
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Home > 2007 Issues > August 05, 2007
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??IX
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: SPIN MASTERS AT WORK
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE There still remains much unsigned material on the 1857 Revolt published in the
Kerala Newsletter NYDT waiting to be appropriated by future communist spin masters. What a leap
forward from one article in 1953, to nine in 1957, to 13 in 1959, to 28 in 1960, to 30 in
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 1969 and to 34 in 2006 and possibly to many more in the coming years.
August 28, 2011

After that publication, as the next step Moscow published in 1959 an English edition of a collection of the articles by Marx
and Engels under the title On Colonialism. In this official publication as many as 13 articles from the NYDT on 1857
August 21, 2011
Revolt were included with Marx and Engels as their authors.
August 14, 2011
August 07, 2011
Again, the publishers of this anthology didn?t bother to explain how the authorship of these unsigned articles was
determined. The publishers? note simply says, ?When a national revolt against British rule broke out in India in 1857,
July 31, 2011
Marx and Engels came out with a series of articles in the NYDT. Some of these articles have also been included in this
July 24, 2011
collection.? It further says, ?The articles from the NYDT are reproduced in this collection in accordance with the
July 17, 2011
newspaper texts... Articles which appeared in the NYDT without a heading have been supplied titles by the Institute of
July 10, 2011
Marxism Leninism (IML) of the CC of CPSU. In all cases where the NYDT editors inserted their own passages into the
July 03, 2011
text of Marx and Engels articles, these were deleted since they do not belong to the authors.?
June 26, 2011
On what basis did the editors identify the interpolated passages? Did they have the original texts written by Marx and
June 19, 2011
Engels with them? If so, where was the need of reproducing the article. ?in accordance with the newspaper texts?? No
June 12, 2011 Marxist intellectual cared to raise such questions. So the process of ?discovery? galloped further.
June 05, 2011
In 1959, a separate collection of Marx and Engel?s writings on India was published from Moscow in Russian, and was
May 29, 2011 immediately followed by an English edition under the attractive title The First Indian War of Independence, 1857-59.
May 22, 2011 While the earlier title, On Colonialism, carried only 13 articles on 1857 from the NYDT, this number in this new publication
May 15, 2011 got inflated to 28 articles published in the NYDT between July 15, 1857 and October 1, 1858. In addition to these articles,
May 08, 2011 six letters exchanged between Marx and Engels are also included in this anthology. Here also the publishers? note
May 01, 2011 asserts, ?Certain sentences inserted by the editors of the daily Tribune and obvious misprints have been eliminated.?
How was it done? No answer. Interestingly, this book gives the date of publication of every article in the NYDT as well as
April 24, 2011 the date on which that article was written by Marx or Engels in England e.g. the article published on July 15, 1857 was
April 17, 2011 written on June 30, the one published on August 4, 1857 was written on July 17, 1857. Obviously, it was easy to get the
April 10, 2011 date of publication from the NYDT files but from where did they find the dates of the writing of the articles?
April 03, 2011
The process of discovery did not stop here. In 1968, Shlomo Avineri, a communist of Jew origin, edited and published in
March 27, 2011 America, a new anthology under the title, Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization (Doubleday and Company, New
March 20, 2011 York 1968). He added two more unsigned articles from the NYDT (dated April 5 and 26, 1858) to the list of articles
March 13, 2011 attributed to Marx. Avineri claims in his preface, ?All the material included in this volume has been printed accordingly to
March 06, 2011 the photostats of Marx?s original articles as published.? (p. ii) Did he have the photostats of Marx?s original articles or
did he strictly follow the text printed in the NYDT? We leave it to be discussed later.
February 27, 2011
February 20, 2011 As a next step in this journey of ?discovery? we need to consider a recent publication Karl Marx on India edited by Iqbal
February 13, 2011 Hussain of Aligarh Muslim University and financed by the ICHR with a hefty publication grant of Rs. 75,000 received by
February 06, 2011 Prof. Irfan Habib himself. It carries an introduction by Irfan Habib which is a 23-year-old article titled ?Marx?s Perception
of India? first published in the inaugural issue of the CPM journal The Marxist in the year 1983. This book also carries an
January 30, 2011 appreciation by Prabhat Patnaik, a prominent CPM intellectual.
January 23, 2011
January 16, 2011 Its copyright is with Aligarh Historians Society, a creation of Irfan Habib and is published by Tulika Books Delhi, 2006, a
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:21 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules73a6.html?name...
January 09, 2011 commercial venture run by the same nexus. Its high price of Rs 495 in the light of a liberal grant of Rs 75,000 from the
January 02, 2011 ICHR, is clearly incongruous. What a curious mix of ideology and commercialism! According to the Editor, Iqbal Hussain,
?Prof. Irfan Habib suggested the project and has vetted the entire final text. The Indo-US Education Foundation (with the
December 26, 2010 collaboration of the UGC) made possible a trip to the US in 1990 and so enabled me to use the NYDT files.? (Karl Marx
December 19, 2010 and India, Acknowledgement, p. xi). In preparing this compilation, the editor has made use of the latest enlarged edition
December 12, 2010 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Moscow 1975-2005). In the appendices, (pp. 235-253) he reproduces four
December 05, 2010 new unsigned articles published in the NYDT as leading articles?one in 1853 and three in 1857-58. Though the editor
November 28, 2010 seems to have suppressed his temptation of attributing them also to Marx, who knows about the future? This only
November 21, 2010 suggests that there still remains much unsigned material on the 1857 Revolt published in the NYDT waiting to be
November 14, 2010 appropriated by future communist spin masters. What a leap forward from one article in 1953, to nine in 1957, to 13 in
November 7, 2010 1959, to 28 in 1960, to 30 in 1969 and to 34 in 2006 and possibly to many more in the coming years.
October 31, 2010 .....(To be continued)

October 24, 2010
October 17, 2010
October 10, 2010
October 03, 2010
2010 Issues
2009 Issues Content ©
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Organiser
About us
Advertisement
Circulation
Contact us
Subscribe
August 05, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
Kokatta Newsletter
World Watch
The Moving Finger
Writes
World of Women
Book Reviews
Readers’ Forum
Sangh Samachar
News Analysis
Media Watch
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Think It Over
Essay
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:21 PM
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??X
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Marx, NYDT and 1857
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE Dana invited Marx to become London correspondent of the NYDT and to contribute
Kerala Newsletter two articles a week at the rate of two pounds per article. Thus Marx was assured of
an annual income of about ?200, sufficient to meet his family expenses. But since
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 Marx could not write in English, he requested his friend Engels to write a series of
articles on the revolution and counter revolution in Germany. Marx was proud of his
August 28, 2011 association with the NYDT. It gave him wide readership, influence and financial
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011
sustenance.
August 07, 2011
All the articles on the 1857 Revolt, attributed to Marx and Engels, were published in a largely-circulated American daily
paper the New York Daily Tribune (henceforth NYDT) between 1857 and 1859. There is no denying the fact that Karl
July 31, 2011
Marx served as its regular correspondent from 1851 to 1862, reporting on non-American events especially pertaining to
July 24, 2011
Europe. In 1853 Marx contributed eight articles on Indian affairs, which were published in the NYDT under his name. It,
July 17, 2011
therefore, remains a puzzle that why should the same NYDT have chosen to publish over 30 articles on 1857 Revolt
July 10, 2011
purportedly written by Marx and Engels without giving their names as authors? Further, why should the NYDT have
July 03, 2011 appropriated many of these articles as its own editorial or lead articles? What is more puzzling is that why should Marx
have tolerated this usurpation of his intellectual labour by some one else?
June 26, 2011
June 19, 2011 According to the official publication of the Soviet Union First Indian War of Independence 1857-1859, (henceforth FIWI)
June 12, 2011 (Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow 1959), ?In some cases the NYDT editors took considerable liberties with
June 05, 2011 the articles contributed by Marx and Engels, publishing many of them unsigned in the form of editorials. There were also
cases when they tempered with the text and dated the articles at will. Marx repeatedly objected against this. The FIWI
May 29, 2011 continues, ?Some articles written by Marx and Engels during the period covered by this collection are omitted owing to
May 22, 2011 excessive alterations by the editor of the NYDT.? (FIWI annotation no. 1, pp. 217-18). Iqbal Hussain, who during his stay
May 15, 2011 in America from 1990 to 1992, carried out detailed investigation into Marx?s relations with the NYDT, has this to say,
May 08, 2011 ?Much of the material that Marx and, at his request, Engels contributed, are printed in the Tribune without their names.
May 01, 2011 The Tribune editors at first let Marx?s articles appear in his name, but then began to print them as unsigned leading
articles, allowing Marx?s name to appear only on what Marx considered to be lightweight reports. When he protested at
April 24, 2011 this practice, they banished his name altogether.? (Karl Marx on India, Delhi 2006, prefatory note p. xv). An American
April 17, 2011 writer Charles Blitzer writes: ?Marx was not happy about this practice, and between June and September of 1854, he and
April 10, 2011 Dana exchanged several letters about it. Marx repeatedly insisted that either all or none of the articles he sent should be
April 03, 2011 signed with his name, and be finally had his way. From April 1855 all Marx?s and Engels? articles were printed
anonymously.? (Henry M. Christman (ed) The American Journalism of Marx and Engels, New York 1966, Introduction p,.
March 27, 2011 xx)
March 20, 2011
March 13, 2011 Such explanations do not match with the image of Marx as an uncompromising revolutionary. And, therefore, it becomes
March 06, 2011 imperative to examine Marx?s relations with the NYDT and his compulsions to tolerate such humiliations.
February 27, 2011 After the failure of 1848-49 revolution in Europe Marx took shelter in London and lived the life of an exile for 34 years till
February 20, 2011 his death in 1883. With a big family to maintain, and with no means of livelihood, Marx was facing acute financial
February 13, 2011 difficulties. It was at this stage that he received in August 1851 a surprise offer from Charles Dana, who was a
February 06, 2011 sympathiser of Fourier?s utopian socialism and was one of the editors of the one of the most influential American
newspapers the NYDT (started in 1841 and stopped publication in 1924) came forward to help Marx.
January 30, 2011
January 23, 2011 Dana invited Marx to become London correspondent of the NYDT and to contribute two articles a week at the rate of two
January 16, 2011 pounds per article. Thus Marx was assured of an annual income of about ?200, sufficient to meet his family expenses.
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:24 PM
January 09, 2011 But since Marx could not write in English, he requested his friend Engels to write a series of articles on the revolution and
January 02, 2011 counter revolution in Germany and thus a series of 19 articles, written by Engels in the name of Karl Marx was published
by the NYDT, between October 1851 and October 1852. It was in February 1853 only that Marx was able to write directly
December 26, 2010 in English language. Marx was proud of his association with the NYDT. It gave him wide readership, influence and
December 19, 2010 financial sustenance.
December 12, 2010
December 05, 2010 But his correspondence with Engels shows that Marx worked for the NYDT not out of ideological affinity but out of his
November 28, 2010 financial compulsions. Marx was aware of the NYDT?s bourgeoisie character. He wrote to Engels on June 14, 1853.
November 21, 2010 ?The Tribune is naturally blowing up Carey?s book (The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign, London 1853) like a
November 14, 2010 trumpet. Indeed, both have this in common, that under the guise of Sismondian?philanthropic?socialistic
November 7, 2010 anti-industrialism, they represent the Protectionist, that is, the industrial bourgeoisie of America. This also explains the
secret of why the Tribune, despite all its ?isms? and socialistic humbug, can be the ?leading journal in the United
October 31, 2010 States.? (Saul K. Padover, Karl Marx: An Intimate Biography, New York, 1978, p. 302)
October 24, 2010
October 17, 2010 His main interest in the NYDT was financial. On April 20, 1854 he wrote to Engels, ?The fellow must pay at least ? three
October 10, 2010 per article. ... With ? three per article, I would at least get out of the Dreck? (ibid p. 308).
October 03, 2010
(To be continued)
2010 Issues
2009 Issues
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Organiser Content ©
About us
Advertisement
Circulation
Contact us
Subscribe
August 12, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
Kokatta Newsletter
Media Watch
The Moving Finger
Writes
World of Women
Book Reviews
Readers’ Forum
Sangh Samachar
News Analysis
Media Watch
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Think It Over
Essay
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:24 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules9a4b.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XI
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: The mystery of Marx?s yearly ?notebooks?
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE The first systematic and concerted effort to dig out and reconstruct Marx?s and
Kerala Newsletter Engel?s contribution to the NYDT was made by a Russian Socialist D. Ryazanov
around 1917 when he was living in Germany as an exile. D. Ryazanov after the
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 so-called Russian Revolution, at the invitation of Lenin, returned to Russia and in
1919 founded the Marx-Engels Archives at Moscow.
August 28, 2011
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011
?As you know, I took your advice and sent Dana a second list. So what excuse can I
August 07, 2011 offer the man? I cannot plead illness, for if I do, I shall have to interrupt my writing
for the Tribune altogether and to reduce to nothing my already exiguous income. At
July 31, 2011
July 24, 2011
a pinch Dana could have recourse to the man who already provides him with some
July 17, 2011 of the military articles. In which case I shall be elbowed out. To obviate this I shall
July 10, 2011 have to write, on Friday. But the difficulty is, what??
July 03, 2011 ?A letter from Marx to Engels
June 26, 2011
June 19, 2011 If these yearly notebooks of Marx really existed, why is no mention of these
June 12, 2011 notebooks, found in the volume entitled Marx and Engels: Through the Eyes of Their
June 05, 2011
Contemporaries, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow?
May 29, 2011
Due to financial crisis in 1857 the NYDT dismissed all its foreign correspondents except with Marx and Bayard Taylor and
May 22, 2011
informed Marx that Tribune would henceforth take only one article a week. This cut Marx?s earnings in half. ?Desperate,
May 15, 2011
Marx threatened to look for another paper and, beginning in 1857, Dana agreed to pay Marx for one article per week,
May 08, 2011 whether published or not.? (Jerrod Seigel, Marx?s Fate. The Shape of a Life, Princeton University Press, New Jersey,
May 01, 2011 1978 p. 257)
April 24, 2011 Sympathetic Dana, in order to help Marx out of his financial difficulties, invited him to contribute entries in his newly
April 17, 2011 planned New American Cyclopaedia, and asked him to send immediately a list of the entries to be supplied by him. Here
April 10, 2011 is a very interesting letter written by Marx to Engels on July 6, 1857, ?As you know, I took your advice and sent Dana a
April 03, 2011 second list. So what excuse can I offer the man? I cannot plead illness, for if I do I shall have to interrupt my writing for
the Tribune altogether and to reduce to nothing my already exiguous income. At a pinch Dana could have recourse to the
March 27, 2011 man who already provides him with some of the military articles. In which case I shall be elbowed out. To obviate this I
March 20, 2011 shall have to write, on Friday. But the difficulty is, what?? (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 40, Moscow 1983, P.
March 13, 2011 142). After this for many months we find Marx and Engels busy preparing entries for Dana?s Cyclopaedia.
March 06, 2011
On October 31, 1857 Marx wrote to Engels ?I have received two letters from Dana. Says first, that, ?Army? arrived in
February 27, 2011 good time. Secondly that, because of the commercial crisis notice has been given to all European correspondents except
February 20, 2011 for myself and Bayard Taylor. I, however, am to confine myself strictly to one article per week... lately, I have been trying
February 13, 2011 to break through this limitation....? (ibid, pp. 197-198). On August 8, 1858 he wrote candidly to Engels: ?I have written a
February 06, 2011 lot for the Tribune of late so as to replenish my account a bit, but I am getting damnably short of material. India isn?t my
department.? (ibid p. 334).
January 30, 2011
January 23, 2011 On April 9, 1859 he informed Engels, ?Have written to Dana telling him he can have the articles if he pays better.? (ibid,
January 16, 2011 p. 413).
1 of 3 3/12/2015 6:25 PM
January 09, 2011

January 02, 2011 There are many more letters in this refrain. Sometimes Marx and Engels are seen using harsh and abusive language for
Dana in particular and Americans in general. Yet Dana was always seen very considerate and helpful to Marx.
December 26, 2010
December 19, 2010 These letters show clearly that Marx was working for the NYDT not for ideology but for material considerations.
December 12, 2010 Therefore, it is possible that Marx allowed his articles to be published without his byline or to be appropriated by the
December 05, 2010 NYDT as its own editorial articles. In 1862, after Dana?s departure from the NYDT, Marx?s 11 years long association with
November 28, 2010 this paper also came to an end.
November 21, 2010
November 14, 2010 Quite naturally the editors of the NYDT seem to have fully exploited the compromising attitude of Marx, born out of his
November 7, 2010 financial compulsions. Franz Mehring, a junior contemporary of Marx and Engels and a prominent German, socialist, in
his biography of Karl Marx, which is considered to be one of the earliest comprehensive and authentic biographies
October 31, 2010 (original in German, printed in 1919, English translation in 1936,) vividly describes the predicament of Marx?s articles in
October 24, 2010 the NYDT, ?Most of these treasures from his pen are still buried and it will cost a certain amount of trouble to bring them
October 17, 2010 to the surface again. Owing to the fact that the NYDT treated his contribution more or less as raw material, flung them
October 10, 2010 into the waste paper basket at its discretion, published them under its own flag and often, as Marx complained bitterly,
October 03, 2010
published ?rubbish? under his name, it will never be possible to reconstruct the whole of his work for the paper, and very
careful examination will be necessary to determine its limits with any degree of accuracy.? (Franz Mehring, Karl Marx:
2010 Issues
The story of his life, trans. Edward Fitzegerald, London 1936, p. 238)
2009 Issues
Although some articles on Marx and Engels published in the NYDT were brought out in pamphlet form in the ninteenth
2008 Issues
century itself by Marx?s youngest daughter Eleanor Marx-Aveling, whom Marx before his death had nominated his
2007 Issues
?literary executor? jointly with Engels. But ?it took a long time for Marx?s articles in the Tribune to obtain the recognition
2006 Issues
and appreciation they deserved,? for ?when the great debate took place around the theme of imperialism before and
during World War I, neither Rosa Luxemburg in her Accumulation of Capital (1913) nor Lenin in his Imperalism: The
Organiser
Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917) showed any awareness of Marx?s Tribune articles.? (Iqbal Hussain (ed), Karl Marx
About us
on India, Delhi, 2006, p. xiv).
Advertisement
Circulation
The first systematic and concerted effort to dig out and reconstruct Marx?s and Engel?s contribution to the NYDT was
Contact us
made by a Russian Socialist D. Ryazanov around 1917 when he was living in Germany as an exile. D. Ryazanov after
the so-called Russian Revolution, at the invitation of Lenin, returned to Russia and in 1919 founded the Marx-Engels
Subscribe
Archives at Moscow. Until his disgracement and exile by Stalin in 1931, Ryazanov was considered to be the greatest
authority on the documentary treasures of Marx and Engels. In 1917 he edited the articles contributed by Marx and
Engels to the NYDT, the People?s Paper, (London) and the Neue Oder Zeitung. (D. Ryazanov (ed), Gesammelte
Schriften von Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 1852-1862, 2 Vols, Dietz Stuttgart, 1917). While identifying their articles in
the NYDT Ryazanov discovered that ?These articles raise a number of problems... he soon learned when he began to
study them, it is not always easy to discover exactly how much of an article was written by Marx even when it is signed
by him. The editorial board was at work and the NYDT office was not always in entire agreement with the correspondent.
Changes were made, the articles were sometimes rearranged, shortened, or tempered with in other ways.? (Robert
Payne, Marx, London, 1968, p. 270).
August 19, 2007 Iqbal Husain during his research in USA about Marx?s writings on India concluded that the ?changes by the editors,
Organiser Home including even insertions... which in many cases cannot be located, for the original drafts (of Marx) have disappeared.?
Editorial (ibid, p. xiv) Further he says that ?the Tribune archives being no longer extant, it is the only surviving papers
Special on 150 Years (correspondence and notebooks) of Marx and Engels that can tell us which of the Tribune?s leading articles and reports
of 1857 from unnamed correspondents are from Marx?s pen (or from Engels, in certain cases). The necessary research into
these documents was carried out by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (later designated ?Institute of Marxism-Leninism?
(IML) in Moscow, USSR, during the 1920s and 1930s? (ibid, p. xv).
But our main concern is to find out the methodology which was adopted by the spin masters working in the Institute of
Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for attributing unsigned articles
and editorials on 1857 Revolt to Marx and Engels. For that we will have to trace the journey of Marx-Engels papers from
London to Moscow.
IML with its changing nomenclature, was in existence since 1919 but how is it that it started attributing the authorship of
unsigned articles or ediitorials on the 1857 Revolt published in the NYDT to Marx and Engels, as late as the year 1953.
Starting with one article in 1953, its labours culminated in the official publication First War of Indian Independence
(Moscow, 1959) wherein the total number of these articles was inflated to 28. According to the Publishers? Note ?this
English edition of the FIWI is based on the Russian edition prepared by the IML of the C.C. (CPSU) in 1959?. It is
puzzling why the English edition of the original English articles should have been based on the Russian edition. But
strange were the ways of the Soviet Union. Out of these 28 articles the IML gave titles to 14 articles and out of the
remaining 14, the titles of six articles are claimed to be ?in accordance with the notebooks of Marx for the years 1857 and
1858? (Annotation No. 28, 36, 46, 80, 86, 97 in FIWI). Annotation No. 46 on page 228 shows that the ?notebooks?
carried also the dates of writing of the articles. If that was so, why the four articles published in the 1857 special of the
monthly New Age (August 1957) were earlier attributed to Karl Marx but were latter attributed to Engels in the FIWI?
Were Marx?s notebooks not available in the year 1957?
The references to Marx?s notebooks for the years 1857 and 1858 raise some very disturbing questions. If Marx was
really maintaining yearly notebooks wherein he was recording the title and date of each article written by him, where was
the need to wait for almost a century to salvage his writings from the NYDT files? Why these notebooks are not
mentioned by early biographers like Franz Mehring and D. Ryazanov? Where were these notebooks hidden all these
2 of 3 3/12/2015 6:25 PM
years?
If these yearly notebooks of Marx really existed, why is no mention of these notebooks found in the volume entitled Marx
and Engels: Through the Eyes of Their Contemporaries, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow? This official
publication carries reminiscences of Marx and Engels by Marx?s wife Jenny Marx, his daughter Eleanor Marx Aveling.
They both lived with Marx and shared his intellectual burden. Jenny used to prepare fair copy of the handwritten articles
of Marx. But Jenny in his memoirs or letters nowhere makes any reference to Marx?s notebooks or his articles on 1857
Revolt. Marx?s daughter Eleanor, as already mentioned, was his ?Literary executor? and helped Engels in giving order to
heap of papers left by Marx. Before she committed suicide in 1897 Eleanor devoted all her time and energies to the
publication of Marx?s scattered writings. F. Engels, a co-traveller in Marx?s intellectual journey, lived for twelve years
after Marx?s death in 1883, and he intended to write an authentic biography of Marx, but Engels also nowhere gives any
inkling about the existence of Marx?s yearly notebooks.
If these notebooks really existed, then it is very puzzling that why the vast Marxian literature (correspondence, articles,
biographies, anthologies and bibliographies etc.) published before 1959 do not make any mention of such valuable and
authentic source on Marx?s intellectual labours.
Unfortunately, the IML is completely silent on their discovery of these notebooks. When, where and how did they stumble
upon such a valuable source of Marx?s writings. Neither do the IML explain that, if Marx?s notebooks for the years 1857
and 1858 were available to them then why did it take a period of 7-8 years to identify his articles on 1857 Revolt and why
were they required to give titles to 14 articles on their own? Were these articles not recorded in the notebooks?
(The author is a renowned historian and former editor of Panchjanya and can be contacted at 178, Sahyog Apts. Mayur
Vihar-1, New Delhi-110 091.)
Content ©
3 of 3 3/12/2015 6:25 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules28b5.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XII
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: The ?discovery? of Marx-Engels correspondence
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE When was the Marx-Engels correspondence first discovered, when was it first
Kerala Newsletter edited and published, in how many editions and in how many languages had its
publication gone through before the year 1953, when the first and the only article on
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 1857 Revolt was attributed to Marx in an official publication Marx and Engels:
Articles on Britain (Moscow 1953)?
August 28, 2011
August 21, 2011 After having examined the mystery of Marx?s yearly ?notebooks?, let us turn our attention to the second set of sources
August 14, 2011 used by the IML, for determining the authorship of the unsigned articles published in the NYDT on 1857 Revolt. These
August 07, 2011 sources, we are told happen to be the well-known Marx-Engels Correspondence. The official publication First Indian War
of Independence 1857-59 (Moscow, 1959) (henceforth FIWI) lists six letters (three from Marx to Engels and three from
July 31, 2011 Engels to Marx) (pp. 206-216) to prove the authorship of Marx and Engels of the 28 articles on 1857 Revolt, included in
July 24, 2011 that publication. The latest enlarged edition of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (henceforth CWME
July 17, 2011 published in 50 volumes from Moscow during the period 1975 to 2005, in its 40th volume (Progress Publishers, Moscow
July 10, 2011 1983) covers their correspondence between 1856-1859. This is the period we are concerned with. In this volume no less
July 03, 2011 than seventeen letters deal with the ?Indian uprising of 1857-59.? Some of these letters are extended to over three
printed pages and therefore, could not have escaped the attention even of a casual reader of the Marx-Engels
June 26, 2011 correspondence (henceforth MEC). Iqbal Hussain after painstaking research in the USA itself and after having
June 19, 2011 discovered that ?the original drafts of these articles in the NYDT have disappeard? and that ?the archives of the NYDT
June 12, 2011 do not exist?, has chosen to give extracts from 16 letters from the above mentioned volume 40. (Iqbal Hussain, Delhi
June 05, 2011 2006, p.p. 270-279.) As the spin masters in the IML as late as the year 1953, had attributed the authorship of only one
article on 1857 to Marx, we are confronted with some basic questions with regard to this set of sources i.e. the MEC.
May 29, 2011
When was the Marx-Engels correspondence first discovered, when was it first edited and published, in how many
May 22, 2011
editions and in how many languages, had its publication gone through before the year 1953, when the first and the only
article on 1857 Revolt was attributed to Marx in an official publication Marx and Engels: Articles on Britain (Moscow
May 15, 2011
1953)? All these questions lead us to trace the discovery and journey of the Marx-Engels papers from London to
May 08, 2011
Moscow.
May 01, 2011
Karl Marx after the failure of the 1848 Revolution in Europe shifted to London in 1849 and spent the rest of his life till his
April 24, 2011
death on March 14, 1883 in London only. His fast friend and intellectual partner Friedrich Engels soon after followed him
April 17, 2011
and after having spent a few years in Manchester, came back to London and died there on August 10, 1895. Thus Engels
April 10, 2011
was there for more than twelve years to discover, organise and publish the literary treasures left by his dear friend.
April 03, 2011
Interestingly, Marx and Engels were in continuous correspondence with each other since the beginning of their
comradeship in 1844 upto the last days of Marx in 1883. Both of them corresponded in their mother tongue, the German
March 27, 2011
language. Naturally, in this background all the letters written by Engels to Marx were with Marx in his London house, and
March 20, 2011
the letters from Marx to Engels were with Engels who had also spent his last years in London itself. Engels is on record
March 13, 2011
to say that Marx before his death had conveyed to his youngest daughter Eleanor Marx (lovingly called Tussy) that she
March 06, 2011 and Engels would jointly be his "literary executors". Though this information created some ill will between Eleanor and
her elder sister Laura, who was living at Paris with her husband Lafargue.
February 27, 2011
February 20, 2011 Without entering into the details of this tussle between the two sisters over the literary inheritance of their father, let us go
February 13, 2011 straight to the discovery and nature of Marx's papers. According to the official biography of Karl Marx published from
February 06, 2011 Moscow in 1973 "During Marx's illness, Engels had gradually taken over the leadership of the working class movement
and together with Eleanor he became Marx's literary executor, in accordance with his friend's wish he expressed verbally
January 30, 2011 before his death". (p. 601). The official bigoraphy of Engels (Progress Publishers, Moscow 1974) carries the story further:
January 23, 2011
January 16, 2011 ?For several weeks after Marx's funeral, Engels occupied himself with his friend?s papers and library. Apart from many
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:28 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules28b5.html?name...
January 09, 2011 economic manuscripts he discovered a great many abstracts, fragments, letters and documents of the working class
January 02, 2011 movement. ?Almost everything dating to before 1848 has been saved,? Engels wrote to Sorge at the end of June 1883,
?Not only his and my manuscripts of that period are almost complete but also the correspondence. Naturally, everything
December 26, 2010 since 1849 complete, and since 1867 even in more or less good order.? (cf Marx Engels, Werke, Bd. 36, S. 46). The
December 19, 2010 book further says, ?It took a long time to put Marx's papers in order. Not until the end of 1884 was the job finished,
December 12, 2010 though odds and ends still remained. Now, the flat in which Marx had lived the last years of his life could be vacated.
December 05, 2010 Engels transferred all the manuscripts and correspondence to his own house. Helene Demuth (alias Nim, Marx's maid
November 28, 2010 servant) also moved in with Engels and became his house-keeper.? (F. Engels: A Biography, Progress Publishers,
November 21, 2010 Moscow 1974, p. 368)
November 14, 2010
November 7, 2010 (To be continued)
October 31, 2010

October 24, 2010
October 17, 2010
October 10, 2010
October 03, 2010
Content ©
2010 Issues
2009 Issues
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Organiser
About us
Advertisement
Circulation
Contact us
Subscribe
August 26, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
The Moving Finger
Writes
Art Corner
Debate
A REPORT
Youth Folio
Bookmark
Readers’ Forum
Feedback
Media Watch
Opinion
Think it Over
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:28 PM
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
EXPOSE September 02, 2007
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Home > 2007 Issues > September 02, 2007
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XIII
Kids Org.
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Marx-Engels Correspondence
INTERESTING Journey from London to Germany
PERSPECTIVE
Kerala Newsletter Elenaor later wrote, once the letters had been transferred to his house, Engels,
burnt lot of letters referring to himself. Does this suggest that the tempering of
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 Marx-Engels correspondence had begun with Engels himself?
August 28, 2011

Thus we find that by 1884, Marx?s papers had been dusted, sorted arranged and then shifted to the house of Engels.
Marx?s daughter Eleanor alias Tussy fully shared the burden of this tiresome process of discovery. Her biographer
August 21, 2011
Yvonnf Kapp, giving a vivid description of the process, writes, ?It became clear that there would be at least six month?s
August 14, 2011
work to do in the house. The reams of manuscripts Marx had left, the multitude of letters that came to light?dating back to
August 07, 2011
correspondence with his father in 1837?and the garret full of boxes, parcels and books had to be sorted out and
examined. At first, as the house was gradually cleared, the papers assembled and dusted by Nim, more and more letters
July 31, 2011
appeared.? (Yvonnf Kapp; Eleanor Marx, 2 Vols, London, 1972, p. 277).
July 24, 2011
July 17, 2011
On May 22, 1883, Engels in a letter to Marx?s second daughter Laura Lafargue at Paris, reported, ?Lately I have been
July 10, 2011
occupied with sorting the correspondence. There is a large box full of most important letters (from 1841, nay 1837 from
July 03, 2011
your grandfather Marx) to 1862. It is nearly sorted, but it will take me some hours more to complete it.... Nim helps me...
awful lot of dusting required... The correspondence since 1862 he (Karl Marx) had sorted, in a possible way, himself. But
June 26, 2011
before we fathom all the mysteries of that garret full of boxes, packets, parcels, books etc., some time must elapse?
June 19, 2011
(Marx-Engels: Collected Works, Vol. 47, 1883-1886, Moscow 1995 p. 29).
June 12, 2011
June 05, 2011 On the same day (May 22, 1883) Engels, in a letter to Johann Phillip Becker (in Geneva) makes an intriguing statement,
?For the past few days I have been sorting letters from 1842-1862. This is in confidence, mind you, don?t let a word of it
May 29, 2011 get into the papers. Such information as is ripe for imparting will be published by me from time to time in Sozial-
May 22, 2011 demokrat? (ibid, p. 26).
May 15, 2011
May 08, 2011 In the same letter Engels says, ?What surprises is that Marx has actually saved papers, letters and manuscripts from the
May 01, 2011 period prior to 1848, splendid material for the biography, which I shall, of course, be writing...? (ibid, p. 26).
April 24, 2011 In a letter dated June 12, 1883 to his trusted comrade Eduard Bernstein (Zurich) whom he nominated one of the
April 17, 2011 executors of his Will, Engels gave this specific information, ?Unfortunately, I only have the letters Marx wrote after 1849,
April 10, 2011 but these are complete.? (ibid, p. 33).
April 03, 2011
The information contained in the above letters of Engels makes it clear that Marx-Engels correspondence during the
March 27, 2011 period 1857-59, the period of our immediate concern, was preserved intact in the houses of Marx and Engels.
March 20, 2011
March 13, 2011 But Kapp, on the authority of Eleanor, makes a startling revelation. He writes, ?As Elenaor later wrote, once the letters
March 06, 2011 had been transferred to his house, Engels, as Nim had told her (Eleanor), burnt lot of letters referring to himself? (ibid, p.
278). Fritz J. Raddatz, the editor of Marx-Engels Correspondence: A Selection (originally in German 1980, English
February 27, 2011 translation, London 1981), in his Introduction corroborates this fact with a slightly different version. He writes, ?It (MEC)
February 20, 2011 has been preserved almost in its entirety; Engels, before his death merely destroyed a few excessively intimate letters
February 13, 2011 from his friends.? Does this suggest that the tempering of Marx-Engels correspondence had begun with Engels himself?
February 06, 2011
For almost a decade till his death in 1895, Engels was fully busy in giving final touches to Marx?s serious ideological
January 30, 2011 writings such as Capital, (Vol two in 1885 and Vol three in 1894) and therefore could not undertake his desired project of
January 23, 2011 Marx?s biography. But before his death on August 5, 1895, Engels had, in a Will on July 29, 1893, made all the
January 16, 2011 arrangements of his material as well as literary heritage. On November 14, 1894, in a letter to the executors of his
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:30 PM
January 09, 2011 Will?Samuel Moore, Eduard Bernstein and Luise Kautsky?Engels gave specific details of the distribution of his property
January 02, 2011 as well as literary heritage. He left all his property to Laura Lafargue, Eleanor-Marx-Aveling and Luise Kautsky. From the
literary heritage, all Marx?s manuscripts and letters (save those to and from Engels) were to go to Eleanor, as the lawful
December 26, 2010 representative of Marx?s heirs. His own manuscripts and correspondence with Marx, Engels willed to August Babel and
December 19, 2010 Eduard Bernstein, the two stalwarts of the German Social Democratic Party. This did not apply to the letters of Lafargues,
December 12, 2010 Avelings, Frey-bergers and his relatives, which he wanted to be returned to their writers. His books, copyrights,
December 05, 2010 forthcoming royalties and ? 1000 in cash, Engels left to the German Social Democratic Party in the trust of Babel and
November 28, 2010 Singer (Frederick Engels: A Biography, Moscow, 1974, pp. 496)
November 21, 2010
November 14, 2010 As Willed by Engels, Eleanor took charge of her father?s papers and shifted them from Engel?s house. According to her
November 7, 2010 biographer Kapp, after Engel?s death, she herself tried to order the correspondence for a projected biography of her
father, (but in Eleanor?s words) it proved ?rather difficult work... because I find all the letters are higgledy-piggledy. I
October 31, 2010 mean that the parcels, the dear old General (Engels) made up are quite unsorted, not merely as to date, but that the
October 24, 2010 letters of various writers are mixed up, and different portions of letters are occasionally in different parcels.? (Kapp,
October 17, 2010 Eleanor Marx: Biography, London 1972 p. 278).
October 10, 2010
October 03, 2010
(To be continued)
2010 Issues
2009 Issues
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Content ©
Organiser
About us
Advertisement
Circulation
Contact us
Subscribe
September 02, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
Pravasi Bharatiya
The Moving Finger
Writes
Realpolitik
Interview of the
Week
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Art Corner
Kids. Org
Bookmark
Readers’ Forum
Sangh Samachar
Media Watch
Agenda
Open Forum
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:30 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules44ed-2.html?nam...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XIV
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: 1913 German edition
INTERESTING First publication of Marx-Engels correspondence
PERSPECTIVE
Kerala Newsletter Marx-Engels correspondence was available to both these scholars (Mehring and
Ryazanov) but nowhere they mention anything written by Marx and Engels on 1857
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 Revolt. Could we term it as a conspiracy of silence on their part?
August 28, 2011

Eleanor did not live long and under mysterious circumstances she committed suicide in 1898. Therefore, like Engels, she
also could not undertake the writing of Marx?s biography. Further, as per the terms of Engel?s Will, perhaps,
August 21, 2011
Marx-Engels correspondence was also not available to her. This could be surmised from the fact that in 1896 Eleanor
August 14, 2011
published in a book form the series of articles on Revolution and counter revolution in Germany 1848, which were
August 07, 2011
originally published in the NYDT (during 1851-52) under the authorship of Karl Marx. For, these articles were actually
written by Engels. It was not until 1913, when Marx-Engels correspondence edited by Babel and Bernstein was published
July 31, 2011
in Germany, that Engels? authorship became known.
July 24, 2011
July 17, 2011
Here, we must trace the journey of Marx-Engels correspondence from London to Germany. As mentioned above, Engels
July 10, 2011
had willed his correspondence with Marx to Babel and Bernstein, the leaders of the German Social Democrate Party.
July 03, 2011
Franz Mehring, a junior contemporary of Marx and Engels, and had joined the Social Democratic Party in 1880 was
destined to be the first biographer of Karl Marx. The German edition of his Karl Marx: The Story of His Life gives the
June 26, 2011
following valuable information,
June 19, 2011
June 12, 2011 ?When a proposal was made to publish the correspondence which had passed between Marx and Engels, Marx?s
June 05, 2011 daughter Madame Laura Lafargue, made it a condition of her agreement that I should take part in the editorial work as
her representative. In a letter from Draveil dated November 10, 1910 she authorised me to make what notes,
May 29, 2011 explanations or deletions I might consider necessary...
May 22, 2011
May 15, 2011 ?However, during the long work I did in connection with the publication of the correspondence, the knowledge which I
May 08, 2011 had gained of Karl Marx during many years of study was rounded off, and involuntarily I felt the wish to give it a
May 01, 2011 biographical frame, particularly as I knew that Madame Lafargue would be delighted at the idea.... Unfortunately this
noble woman died long before the correspondence between her father and Engels could be published. A few hours
April 24, 2011 before she voluntarily took leave of life she sent me a last, warm message of friendship.? (Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The
April 17, 2011 Story of his life, original German edition, first published in 1918, English translation of its 1933 edition by Edward
April 10, 2011 Fitzgerald, London 1936, Author?s Introduction, p. XI)
April 03, 2011
The German edition of Marx-Engels Correspondence edited by Babel and Bernstein was published in 4 volumes from
March 27, 2011 Dietz, Stuttgart in the year 1913, two years after Laura Lafargue had died in 1911. Here, the mention of Laura and her
March 20, 2011 signing an agreement for the publication of the MEC is very significant. It shows that she had acquired some legal
March 13, 2011 authority in the literary heritage of her father, Karl Marx. It could have been possible only after the death of her younger
March 06, 2011 sister Eleanor in 1898. Being the sole surviving heir to Karl Marx, she had taken possession of all the Marx papers and
shifted them from London to Europe where she lived. Engels papers had already been shifted to Germany as per his Will.
February 27, 2011 Thus by the beginning of the twentieth century Marx-Engels papers had travelled from London to Germany. According to
February 20, 2011 one source the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam was the final resting place of Marx?s letters and
February 13, 2011 manuscripts as well as many other socialist archives of the period. (Francis Wheen, Karl Marx, London 1999.)
February 06, 2011
Before the so-called Russian Revolution of November 1917, Germany had emerged as the main playground of a
January 30, 2011 vigorous and vibrant socialist movement. Towering socialist intellectuals as August Babel (1840-1913), Edward Bernstein
January 23, 2011 (1850-1932), Karl Kautsky (1854-1936), Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), Franz Mehring (1846-1919), F.A. Sorge
January 16, 2011 (1828-1908), Conrad Schimdt (1863-1932) and many other German intellectuals were the key players in this movement.
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:31 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules44ed-2.html?nam...
January 09, 2011 They were involved in intense polemical debates about the philosophy and practice of socialism, about the methology
January 02, 2011 and organisation of revolution. Marxism had gradually occupied the centre stage in this debate. Formulations by
Marx-Engels were put to microscopic screening. Their unpublished writings were dug out, their authenticity was
December 26, 2010 challenged or proved. Besides the German socialists, Russian emigrant revolutionaries as George Plekhanov
December 19, 2010 (1816-1918), Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), D.B. Ryazanov (1870-1937), also played an important role in this intellectual
December 12, 2010 movement. To prove one?s bonafide as a true Marxist, the opponent was dubbed as a ?revisionist? or a ?reformist?.
December 05, 2010 Periodicals like Dei Sozialdemokrat edited by Bernstein, Die Neue Zeit, edited by Kautsky, Lenin and Plakhonov?s Iskra
November 28, 2010 (started in December 1900 from Munich) and Bor?ba, an independent intellectual group headed by Ryazanov were the
November 21, 2010 main vehicles of this debate.
November 14, 2010
November 7, 2010 The publication of Marx-Engels Correspondence by Babel and Bernstein in 1913 and of the first comprehensive
biography of Karl Marx by Franz Mehring in March 1918 were the fruits of this quest to know Marxism. Almost at the
October 31, 2010 same time in 1917 D. Ryazanov edited and published in two volumes the articles contributed by Marx and Engels
October 24, 2010 between 1852 and 1867 in the New York Daily, Tribune, The People?s Paper (London) and Neue Oderzesitung
October 17, 2010 (Germany). Marx-Engels correspondence was available to both these scholars (Mehring and Ryazanov) but nowhere
October 10, 2010 they mention anything written by Marx and Engels on 1857 Revolt. Their writings on German revolution, French politics,
October 03, 2010
Eastern Question, Crimean War, Spanish problem, Slavic question are mentioned and discussed but not a word about
1857. Should we believe that Marx and Engels? letters on 1857, some of them two-three pages long had escaped their
2010 Issues
attention? Could we term it as a conspiracy of silence on their part? Significantly Mehring and Ryazanov were often
2009 Issues
critics of each other. Ryazanov in a sixty page long article in Kautsky?s Die Neue Zeit had dubbed Mehring as a betrayer
of Marx.
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
Marx and Engels journalistic contribution was not confined to NYDT only. They were simultaneously contributing to many
2006 Issues
other papers. Amongst them, The Peoples Paper (London) edited the Chartist leader Ernest Jones during 1857 Revolt
stood boldly on India?s side and published a lot of sympathetic material on it. This paper since it birth had Marx?s
Organiser
patronage also, although some differences had cropped up later around 1857. But how could it be that being a staunch
About us
supporter of India, Jones did not invite Marx to write on 1857 or reproduced his published articles from the NYDT?
Advertisement
Circulation
(To be continued)
Contact us
Subscribe
Content ©
September 09, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
West Bengal
Newsletter
PRAVASI BHARATIYA
SPECIAL REPORT
The Moving Finger
Writes
Think it over
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Art Corner
Kids’ Org
Bookmark
Media Watch
First Person
Readers’ Forum
Sangh Samachar
Agenda
Open Forum
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:31 PM
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XV
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: How Moscow became the Mecca of Marxists
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE With the help of a state-sponsored powerful propaganda machinery, Lenin was
Kerala Newsletter successful in creating an impression all over the world that a new state determined
to translate Marxian theory into a practical reality had come into being.
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 The capture of power by Lenin?s Bolshevik Party in Russia in October/November 1917 was an important turning point in
the history of Marxism. The credit goes to the genius of Lenin for projecting this military coup as an ideological revolution
August 28, 2011 committed to Marx?s theory of scientific socialism. With the help of a state sponsored powerful propaganda machinery,
August 21, 2011 Lenin was successful in creating an impression all over the world that a new state determined to translate Marxian theory
August 14, 2011 into a practical reality had come into being and for the first time the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established in
August 07, 2011 any country. In 1918, at its seventh Congress, the Bolshevik Party changed its name to the Communist Party; in 1919
under Lenin?s leadership the Communist International came into being and in 1922 the vast Russian empire created by
July 31, 2011 the Czars was renamed as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). An impression was sought to be created that
July 24, 2011 a new power centre controlled by the proletariat, for the proletariat had emerged as a challenge to the western
July 17, 2011 imperialism and capitalism.
July 10, 2011
July 03, 2011 Lenin decided to make Moscow the holy Mecca for the Marxists world over and for that purpose it was necessary to
create a repository of all the correspondence, writings and other documents related to Marx and Engels at Moscow. Who
June 26, 2011 could be a better person than D.B. Ryazanov (1870-1938) to do it and fortunately he was readily available to Lenin.
June 19, 2011 Though born in the same year 1870, Ryazanov as a Marxist was senior to Lenin. During a long period of exile, Ryazanov
June 12, 2011 had established intimate relations with German socialists. Devoting himself mainly to academic work, he became the
June 05, 2011 foremost Russian authority on the lives and works of Marx and Engels. Lunacharsky hardly exaggerated when in 1919 he
described Ryazanov as ?incontestably, the most learned man in the party.? (John Barber, Soviet Historians in Crisis,
May 29, 2011 1928-1936, Macmillan, 1981 p. 271). Ryazanov had an inborn archival interest. While in Germany, he had dug deep into
May 22, 2011 the signed and unsigned articles contributed by Marx and Engels to various journals including NYDT, (USA) The
May 15, 2011 People?s Paper (UK) etc. and had published them from Dietz, Stuttgart Germany in 1917, before he had returned to
May 08, 2011 Russia on the eve of Lenin?s coup. Ryazanov willingly undertook the job of establishing an archive of Marx-Engels in
May 01, 2011 1919 at Moscow, and became its founder-director. Lenin?s two letters to Ryazanov written around February 2, 1921 and
on September 23, 1921 show that he was very keen to collect all the correspondence of Marx-Engels in the archives.
April 24, 2011 Lenin wrote, ?It is important to collect all the letters of Marx and Engels, and no one will do this better than you.? (Lenin,
April 17, 2011 Collected Works, Vol 45, p. 80 and 309). Consequently Ryazanov visited Germany to collect all the published letters of
April 10, 2011 Marx and Engels and sent them to Russia. The collection was published in 1922 under the title Pisma-Teoria i politika, v
April 03, 2011 perepiske Marx and Engels (ibid, note 340, p. 674). During the 1920s he acquired numerous library collections from
abroad, including the documents related to Marx and Engels from the German Social Democratic Archives.
March 27, 2011
March 20, 2011 Marx-Engels Institute, under the direction of Ryazanov, amassed one of the richest collections of socialist literature in the
March 13, 2011 world. By 1930 the Institute?s archives contained 15,000 manuscripts and 176,000 photocopies of documents, 55,000 of
March 06, 2011 them by Marx and Engels alone. Its total holding of books and journals numbered 400,000. (John Barber, op. cit, p. 15).
February 27, 2011 Ryazanov initiated the selection and editing of important historical writings as well as of the collected works of Marx and
February 20, 2011 Engels. But his academic work could not escape the lengthening shadow of the personal power-politics of Stalin. In
February 13, 2011
order, to prove himself the only true and the best disciple of Lenin, Stalin ?two months after Lenin?s death? started
February 06, 2011
lecturing on the foundation of Leninism and a month later he published a plan for seminars on Leninism. In January 1925,
the Central Committee Secretariat instructed all the ?big pedagogical and social economic universities to establish chairs
January 30, 2011
of party history and Leninism?, (Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia,
Cornell University Press, 1992. p. 49).
January 23, 2011
January 16, 2011
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:32 PM
January 09, 2011 This politics of personality cult was reflected also in the changing nomenclature of the Marx-Engels Institute. Stalin was
January 02, 2011 very keen to have his own name added to the Institute. He insisted for the addition of Lenin?s name to the Institute to be
followed by his own name. But how to persuade Ryazanov to agree to these changes? Ryazanov?s prestige and
December 26, 2010 influence was at its peak. As the most knowledgeable Marxist, he was seen as a father figure by the intellectuals as well
December 19, 2010 as party cadres. His 60th birthday in March 1930 was marked by tributes of every kind. Kalinin, the head of state, came in
December 12, 2010 person to a special ?jubilee? meeting to decorate Ryzanov with the ?Order of the Red Banner of Labour?. The Central
December 05, 2010 Committee in a congratulatory message wrote, ?The CC is sure that for many years longer your work will serve the work
November 28, 2010 of the world proletariat?s struggle for the victory of communism? (Barber, of cit p. 121-122)
November 21, 2010
November 14, 2010 (To be continued)...
November 7, 2010
October 31, 2010

October 24, 2010
October 17, 2010
October 10, 2010
October 03, 2010 Content ©
2010 Issues
2009 Issues
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Organiser
About us
Advertisement
Circulation
Contact us
Subscribe
September 16, 2007

Organiser Home
Interview of the
Week
London Post
Mediawatch
Pravasi Bharatiya
The Moving Finger
Writes
Think It Over
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
ArT CorneR
Kids’ Org
Youth Folio
Bookmark
Sangh Samachar
Readers’ Forum
Media Watch
Feedback
Agenda
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:32 PM
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XVI
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Stalin pushed the great Marxist scholar to gallows
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE Ryazanov, the founder-director of the Institute of Marx-Engels was honoured by the
Kerala Newsletter USSR President himself in 1930, but was arrested and exiled in 1931 and executed
by a firing squad in 1938.
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 Such are the ways of communists that ?barely a year separated highest honour from deepest disgrace?. Ryazanov was
implicated in the Menshevik trial of February 1931. He was charged of being a Menshevik at heart. He protested
August 28, 2011 vehemently and cried out one of his old outbursts in 1924??I am not a Bolshevik, I am not a Menshevik, and not a
August 21, 2011 Leninist, I am only a Marxist and as a Marxist I am a Communist.? But Stalin?s regime did not go by logic or facts.
August 14, 2011 Ryazanov was arrested and exiled to Saratov. In 1937 he was arrested again and charged with involving in a ?right
August 07, 2011 opportunist Trotskyist organisation.? On January 21, 1938, the Military Collegium of USSR Supreme Court condemned
him to death by firing squad. The sentence was carried out the same day.
July 31, 2011
July 24, 2011 During Khruschev era he was posthomously rehabilitated in 1958 and in political terms by the CPSU in 1989 just before
July 17, 2011 the collapse of communism and disintegration of the USSR. The Institute of Marx-Engels was purged and in November
July 10, 2011 1931 was merged with the Lenin Institute. Adoratsky, a Stalin loyalist who declared Stalin to be ?the best disciple of
July 03, 2011 Lenin was installed as its director.? The Institute was given a new nomenclature, ?Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute?.
This nomenclature continued until Stalin?s death in March 1953 because the preface of the 1953 Russian edition of
June 26, 2011 Marx-Engels: Selected Correspondence, ?Gospolitizdat? proudly claims its production by the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin
June 19, 2011 Institute of the C.C., CPSU (p. 17). In 1956 its nomenclature was changed to Institute of Marxism-Leninism (henceforth
June 12, 2011 IML).
June 05, 2011
Significantly, this anthology published from Moscow in 1953, does not include in full or in extract any letter exchanged
May 29, 2011 between Marx and Engels on 1857 Indian Revolt, while it reproduces in full the four letters exchanged by them in June
May 22, 2011 1853 concerning social and economic institutions in India and Orient (pp 95-104). This correspondence is reflected in the
May 15, 2011 two signed articles of Marx published in the NYDT under the titles, ?The British Rule in India? (June 10, 1853) and ?The
May 08, 2011 future Results of British Rule in India? (July 22, 1853).
May 01, 2011
The 1953 edition of the Selected Correspondence informs us that ?the anthology of letters appeared over twenty years
April 24, 2011 ago in 1933 before IMELS was rechristened and before there was a Russian edition of the works of Marx and Engels?
April 17, 2011 (ibid, Preface, p. 18). It was in 1933 that a collection of Marx and Engels? historical writings, though begun earlier by
April 10, 2011 Ryazanov, was published in two volumes with a preface dated February 6, 1933 signed by V. Adoratsky. (First Indian
April 03, 2011 edition printed by the People?s Publishing House, Bombay in November 1944 as Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Series, Nos.
26 and 27).
March 27, 2011
March 20, 2011 In these volumes also are included only the above mentioned two signed articles by Marx on India (dated June 10 and
March 13, 2011 July 22, 1853). Here also not a single article from the series of 28 articles on 1857 Revolt published from Moscow in 1959
March 06, 2011 find a place. Adoratsky in his preface, makes special mention of the 1853 articles ?as an example of his (Marx?s)
judgement on the social order in the oriental agrarian countries and his altitude to British colonial policy? (Indian edition,
February 27, 2011 Bombay 1944, Vol I p. xiii). Why no left scholar raised the question that there is no mention of 1857 articles which present
February 20, 2011 just an opposite view?
February 13, 2011
February 06, 2011
The latest edition of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels published in 50 volumes between 1975 and 2005 from
Moscow, London and New York informs us that ?in 1927, the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow launched the publication
January 30, 2011
in the original languages of Marx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe, initially under the general editorship of D. Ryazanov and later
under the editorship of V. Adoratsky, a project that was never completed. A Russian edition was commenced and
January 23, 2011
published between the years 1928 and 1947 under the comulative title ?Werke? (General Introduction to Marx and
January 16, 2011
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:33 PM
January 09, 2011 Engels: Collected Works: Vol I, Moscow 1975, p. xviii). The Marx-Engels Correspondence covered nine volumes in this
January 02, 2011 first edition and the correspondence for the period 1857-58 was covered in the volume xxii published in the year 1929.
Elsewhere we are told that this first edition of the Collected Works edited by Ryazanov ?complies completely with all
December 26, 2010 scientific demands. Each volume contains a detailed index, and voluminous critical annotations and notes... Almost every
December 19, 2010 volume contains previously unpublished material or material never before published at all.? (Franz Mehring, Karl Marx:
December 12, 2010 The Story of his life, 1918/1936 Bibliography p. 557). Naturally, this edition of the collected works was prepared under the
December 05, 2010 guidance of Ryazanov, who had full command over all the available Marxian literature of his times.
November 28, 2010
November 21, 2010 In 1927, much before his arrest and exile Ryazanov had intended to publish a biography of Karl Marx. It had emerged out
November 14, 2010 of a series of lectures delivered by Ryazanov to the Soviet working class. The biography carries a stamp of authenticity
November 7, 2010 because of Ryzanov?s deep studies and understanding into the lives and thought of Marx and Engels. But this was not
allowed to be published in the USSR and could be published abroad in 1937. After being long out of print it has now been
October 31, 2010 reprinted by the Monthly Review Press in USA and is available on internet also. This biography written by an authority
October 24, 2010 like Ryazanov also does not refer to any article written by Marx or Engels on 1857 Revolt.
October 17, 2010
October 10, 2010 It is really puzzling that in face of the testimony of Franz Mehring and D.B. Ryazanov, the two authortative biographers of
October 03, 2010
Marx and who had delved thoroughly into the Marx-Engels correspondence and all other papers in Moscow dare to
attribute the authorship of unsigned articles on 1857 Revolt published in the NYDT to Marx and Engels almost after a
2010 Issues
century in the year 1953? How could these spin masters use Marx-Engels correspondence and some mysterious
2009 Issues
notebooks of Marx in support of their claim?
2008 Issues
(To be continued)
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Organiser
Advertisement
Circulation
Subscribe
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:33 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesf866.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XVII
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: P.C. Joshi?The originator
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE Maybe, on P.C. Joshi?s suggestion Syed Sibte Hassan, who had been a close
Kerala Newsletter comrade of P.C. Joshi before Independence might have collected all the unsigned
material published in the NYDT on the 1857 Revolt, which would not have been very
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 difficult in USA and chosen to arbitrarily attribute its authorship to Karl Marx.
August 28, 2011

Relying on Iqbal Hussain?s Karl Marx on India (Delhi, 2006), based on his research in USA and following the public
pronouncements of Prof. Irfan Habib, I was also led to believe that the process of attributing the authorship to Marx and
August 21, 2011
Engels of the unsigned articles published in the NYDT on the 1857 Revolt must have started in the year 1953. Prof. Iqbal
August 14, 2011
Hussain wrote, ?The volume on Britain by Marx and Engels, published from Moscow in 1953, included the article ?The
August 07, 2011
Indian Revolt?, published in the Tribune (NYDT) on September 16, 1857, thus bringing to the notice of Indian readers for
the first time the fact that Marx had also written on the 1857 Rebellion, the article concerned had been printed in the
July 31, 2011
Tribune without Marx?s name.? (Iqbal Hussain, Karl Marx on India, Delhi, 2006 p. XV).
July 24, 2011
July 17, 2011
However, only last week, in the course of my independent investigation, I discovered that the process of attributing these
July 10, 2011
unsigned articles to Marx had begun much earlier and that too, in India itself. In fact, a monthly magazine India Today,
July 03, 2011
started by the former CPI General Secretary P.C. Joshi in May 1951 from Allahabad, had reproduced two unsigned
articles on 1857 Revolt from the NYDT and attributed them to Karl Marx in its September 1952 issue, under the title
June 26, 2011
?Marx on Revolt of 1857?. Highlighting the importance of these articles, a caption was printed at the top, Two hitherto
June 19, 2011
undiscovered articles by the founder of Marxism. One of these articles carrying the date line Wednesday, July 15, 1857
June 12, 2011 was published in the NYDT under the title ?Indian Mutiny? on August 4, 1857 and the other one with a dateline London,
June 05, 2011 July 17, 1857 was published on August 14, 1857 under the title, ?The Revolt in India.?
May 29, 2011 Revealing the source of this important discovery, India Today wrote, ?A few years back a communist journalist Syed
May 22, 2011 Sibte Hassan (now incarcerated in a Pakistan prison) discovered in USA, some hitherto unknown articles on India by Karl
May 15, 2011 Marx. India Today is very proud to print two of them for the first time in English. We hope to print the rest of the articles in
May 08, 2011 future issues?Ed.?
May 01, 2011
This promise of publishing the rest of the articles could not be fulfilled because Joshi under strict orders of the Party
April 24, 2011 leadership, had to close down the publication of India Today and the issue of September 1952 turned out to be the last
April 17, 2011 issue. Significantly, this editorial note admits that Syed Sibte Hassan had sent a larger bunch of articles on 1857 Revolt
April 10, 2011 published by the NYDT but nowhere it is mentioned that all these articles were unsigned and many of them were printed
April 03, 2011 as the leading articles without carrying the names of Marx and Engels as their writers. Similarly, it is also not explained as
to how Sibte Hassan was able to attribute their authorship to Marx and Engels or was it done by him or by Joshi.
March 27, 2011
March 20, 2011 A perusal of the file of total eleven issues of India Today, which P.C. Joshi was able to bring out, testifies to his keen
March 13, 2011 interest in the 1857 Revolt. In the November 1951 issue he published an article written by P.M. Kemp-Ashraf (wife of the
March 06, 2011 Communist leader Dr K.M. Ashraf), under the title ?Indian Revolt of 1857 and the Early British Labour Movement.? (pp.
25-30). In this article Smt. Ashraf underlined the influence of the Chartist leader Ernest Jones on Karl Marx?s
February 27, 2011 understanding of India. The article says, ?Most important of all, in these years he (Jones) had come into direct personal
February 20, 2011 contact with Karl Marx... The articles written by Marx between May and July 1853, published in the NYDT, cover much
February 13, 2011 the same ground and use much the same material as a series of articles published by Jones, partly about the same time
February 06, 2011 and partly earlier. The probable explanation is that Jones, ...may have handed over notes or suggested sources to Marx?
(India Today, November 1951, p. 27.)
January 30, 2011
January 23, 2011 Carrying it further, Joshi in the February-March 1952 issue of India Today, published an article under the title ?The Indian
January 16, 2011 Mutiny? written by Satinder Singh, who has been introduced as a young journalist working for the Akali paper
1 of 2 3/12/2015 6:35 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesf866.html?name...
January 09, 2011 Spokesman in Delhi (India Today, February-March 1952, pp. 48-56). The same Satinder Singh, under the pseudonym of
January 02, 2011 Talmiz Khaldun had contributed an elaborated version of the above mentioned article under the title ?The Great
Rebellion" (pp. 1-70) in the Rebellion-1857: A Symposium edited by P.C. Joshi and published by the CPI?s official
December 26, 2010 publication outfit ?People?s Publishing House? in July 1857. Satinder Singh explaining this shift in the titles of the two
December 19, 2010 articles from ?The Indian Mutiny? in 1952 to ?The Great Rebellion? in 1957 says in a footnote to the 1952 article, ?I use
December 12, 2010 the word ?Mutiny? because of the currency it has gained. I do not characterise this event as Mutiny.? (India Today, op.cit.
December 05, 2010 p. 48).
November 28, 2010
November 21, 2010 It is evident that P.C. Joshi had an unsual interest in the 1857 uprising and unlike the earlier Communist intellectuals like
November 14, 2010 M.N. Roy and Rajni Palme Dutt, he was keen to project it as a national rebellion or revolt and not as a feudal outburst.
November 7, 2010
Maybe, on P.C. Joshi?s suggestion Syed Sibte Hassan, who had been a close comrade of P.C. Joshi before
October 31, 2010 Independence, might have collected all the unsigned material published in the NYDT on the 1857 Revolt which would
October 24, 2010 have not been very difficult in USA and chosen to arbitrarily attribute its authorship to Karl Marx.
October 17, 2010
October 10, 2010 Curiously, P.C. Joshi in his 1957 publication Rebellion 1857 as well as in the August 1957 special issue of the New Age
October 03, 2010
monthly on 1857, does not refer at all to the articles on 1857 published earlier in his own magazine India Today and also
does not mention the name of Syed Sibte Hassan, who had for the first time supplied the unsigned articles on 1857
2010 Issues
Revolt published in the NYDT to him. Was it just a loss of memory or could it be a case of a deliberate suppression?
2009 Issues
(To be continued)
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Organiser Previous Page (16/37) - Next Page (18/37)

About us
Advertisement
Circulation Content ©
Contact us
Subscribe
September 30, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
London Post
Agenda
Interview of the
Week
Opinion
Think it over
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
ArT CorneR
SPECIAL ON RAM
SETHU
Bookmark
Kids’ Org
Readers’ Forum
A Report
The Moving Finger
Writes
Media Watch
2 of 2 3/12/2015 6:35 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesd57b.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
EXPOSE October 07, 2007
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Home > 2007 Issues > October 07, 2007
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XVIII
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Inner party struggle of the CPI
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE ?The course of our struggle is, and will be, basically on the lines of the Chinese
Kerala Newsletter struggle, i.e., establishment of liberated bases through prolonged guerrilla warfare
and nourish the liberation army to completely liberate the country from the
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 imperialist big business feudal clutches.??CPI in April 1950
August 28, 2011

Here, Moscow was following P.C. Joshi, and not leading him. Joshi published and attributed two NYDT articles on 1857
Revolt to Marx in the September 1952 issue of India Today while Moscow included only one NYDT article on 1857 in its
August 21, 2011
publication, On Britain in 1953. But it remains a puzzle why Moscow did not choose to include the two earlier articles
August 14, 2011
published by Joshi in this anthology? Similarly, why did the CPI immediately rush to include the only article on 1857
August 07, 2011
published by Moscow in the subsequent edition of its publication Karl Marx on India (PPH, Bombay, 1953), Hindi
translation, Bombay, 1954. Why did the CPI choose to ignore the two articles published earlier by its own former General
July 31, 2011
Secretary? Similarly, why did P.C. Joshi in his long article ?1857 in our history? published in Rebellion-1857 (PPH, Delhi,
July 24, 2011
1957, pp 199-212), while referring to the four NYDT articles on 1857, choose to give the credit of sending the
July 17, 2011
photocopies of these articles to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Berlin and did not make any mention of the bunch of
July 10, 2011
these articles sent to him by Syed Sibte Hassan in 1952? Joshi adopted the same strategy for the set of another four
July 03, 2011
NYDT articles attributed to Karl Marx published in the August 1957 special number of the New Age monthly, an official
organ of the CPI.
June 26, 2011
June 19, 2011
The statement that ?Joshi had the advantage of access to Berlin to the writings of Marx on the rebellion that had
June 12, 2011 appeared anonymously in the NYDT, and his (Marx?s) perception of it as a ?national revolt? noticeably influenced Joshi?
June 05, 2011 (Irfan Habib, Foreword in Rebellion 1857), NBT edition 2007, p. ix), does not reveal the true story. Similarly to say that,
?to ordinary readers those writings of Marx became available only in 1959 when a collection containing them was
May 29, 2011 published from Moscow under the title The First Indian War of Independence (FIWI) (ibid, p. IX), is not factually correct,
May 22, 2011 because these articles were already available in India in at least four publications mentioned above.
May 15, 2011
May 08, 2011 To solve this puzzle, we need to probe the inner party struggle going on in the CPI as well as changing policy of the
May 01, 2011 USSR vis-a-vis India and the CPI in those days. The inner party struggle in CPI began with the coming of Indian
Independence on August 15, 1947. Indian communists, fed upon anti-Gandhism and anti-Congressism, were faced with
April 24, 2011 a dilemma whether to welcome it or to reject it. They were made to believe that only a party of the proletariat and not a
April 17, 2011 party like Congress-led by the bourgeoise, could win the war of liberation against imperialism and lead to national
April 10, 2011 independence. Similarly, they were convinced that violence was necessary for the success of any revolution. But for
April 03, 2011 them, deciding upon any line of action, the final word lay with the CPSU or Comintern (now christened Cominform) in
Moscow. The CPI was entirely subservient to Moscow for all its decisions and activities. Moscow had chosen to guide the
March 27, 2011 CPI through the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) represented by Rajni Palme Dutt, Bradley and Harry Pollit etc.
March 20, 2011
March 13, 2011 Moscow those days was involved in a Cold War against the Western block led by USA and U.K. In September 1947,
March 06, 2011 immediately after India?s Independence Soviet Union spokesman A. Zhadanov gave an open call to all Communist
parties to wage a violent civil war against their governments which were nothing but stooges of imperial powers. P.C.
February 27, 2011 Joshi, the then General Secretary of the CPI who during his stewardship of 12 years had built it into a powerful
February 20, 2011 organisation, did not agree with this view and line of action. But he found himself completely isolated in the second Party
February 13, 2011 Congress held at Calcutta on February 28, 1948. The CPI Congress, reiterating Zhadanov?s thesis, dethroned P.C. Joshi
February 06, 2011 and elected B.T. Ranadive, the hard liner as its General Secretary. The CPI declared Nehru ?the Chiang Kai-shek of
India and ?an Imperialist stooge?. It decided to establish the rule of the proletariat through a violent struggle and selected
January 30, 2011 Telangana as its field of operation. Russian propaganda machine also declared India as its enemy No. three, next only to
January 23, 2011 USA and Britian. Indian Government was declared an agent of Anglo-American imperialism.
January 16, 2011
1 of 2 3/12/2015 7:10 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesd57b.html?name...
January 09, 2011 The Communists can never tolerate any difference of opinion or open debate within the party. It is dubbed as
January 02, 2011 ?revisionism?. True to this Communist character the dominant B.T. Ranadive faction first suspended the dissenter P.C.
Joshi from the party in January 1949 and finally expelled him in December 1949. But, by now the establishment of the
December 26, 2010 Communist Republic of China under the leadership of Mao-tse Tung on October 1, 1949 had introduced a new power
December 19, 2010 centre in the international communism. CPI was now faced with a problem of divided loyalty between USSR and
December 12, 2010 Communist China.
December 05, 2010
November 28, 2010 So far it was dependent entirely upon the CPSU for its guidance as well as sustenance. Earlier, in December 1948, the
November 21, 2010 CPI displaying its loyalty to the CPSU, had taken the position that, ?we must state emphatically that the CPI has
November 14, 2010 accepted Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as authoritative sources of Marxism. It had not discovered new sources of
November 7, 2010 Marxism beyond these.? (Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India, (DHCPI), Vol VII (1948-1950), Ed.
M.B. Rao, PPH New Delhi, 1976 p. 293). Sometime in the middle of 1949, Ranadive criticising Mao-tse Tung wrote,
October 31, 2010 ?Some of Mao?s formulations are such that no Communist can accept them. They are in contradiction to the world
October 24, 2010 understanding of the Communist parties... why do the Chinese have to go through a protracted civil war?? (M.R. Masani,
October 17, 2010 The Communist Party of India: A Short History, Bombay, 1967). But, the same Ranadive-led CPI in April 1950 took just
October 10, 2010 the opposite stand saying, ?The course of our struggle is, and will be, basically on the lines of the Chinese struggle, i.e.,
October 03, 2010
establishment of liberated bases through prolonged guerrilla warfare and nourish the liberation army to completely
liberate the country from the imperialist big business feudal clutches? (DHCPI, VII, p. 889). Those days CPI slogans used
2010 Issues
to be ?Yeh Azadi Jhooti Hai?, ?China?s line is our line?, ?Telangana is the Yanan of India?.
2009 Issues
But by now there appeared a radical change in the USSR policy towards India. It was reflected in an editorial of the
2008 Issues
Cominform?s mouthpiece, For a Lasting Peace, For a People?s Democracy (FLPFPD), dated January 27, 1950.
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
(To be continued)
Organiser
About us
Advertisement
Circulation Previous Page (16/41) - Next Page (18/41)
Contact us
Subscribe Content ©
October 07, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
London Post
Agenda
Interview of the
Week
Open Forum
Think it over
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Pravasi Bharatiya
Bookmark
Kids’ Org
Readers’ Forum
J&K Newsletter
The Moving Finger
Writes
Media Watch
2 of 2 3/12/2015 7:10 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules10d2.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XIX
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Slaves of foreign dictates
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE ?Day after day, he (Ajoy Ghosh) would ring our door bell at ten in the morning, and
Kerala Newsletter settle down with Romesh in the study and start, Romesh what do you think they
mean by ?all the peasantry?... He struck on what he considered a bright idea. He
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 turned to me and said, ?Why don?t you go to London and get us a confirmation
from RPD??
August 28, 2011 ?Raj Thapar in All These Years
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011 The editorial in the For a Lasting Peace, For a People?s Democracy, (DHCPI, Vol VII, pp. 609-613) reflected a change in
August 07, 2011 the USSR policy towards India. Now USSR wanted to use India?s non-aligned foreign policy to keep it out of Anglo-
Amercian Bloc and bring indirectly into the Russian orbit. The editorial was, in fact, drafted by Rajni Palme Dutt of the
July 31, 2011 CPGB in reaction to Ranadive group?s lengthy document ?Strategy and Tactics?, which denied India?s Independence,
July 24, 2011 declared Nehru an imperialist stooge and pleaded for a Telangana type violent revolution. This document at the same
July 17, 2011 time, perhaps to win Moscow?s favour, carried an extraordinarily slanderous attack on Mao-tse Tung, which Moscow at
July 10, 2011 that stage could not approve openly. The editorial in a way rejected the Ranadive line and his leadership. Ranadive was
July 03, 2011 soon replaced with C. Rajeshwar Rao as a caretaker General Secretary. Ajoy Ghosh, after his release from jail was
emerging as the new theoritician of the party and was ?allegedly the apple of Stalin?s eye?. (Raj Thapar, All These
June 26, 2011 Years: A Memoir, Penguin Books 1991 p. 91). Raj Thapar presents a first hand account of the pathetic subservience of
June 19, 2011 Indian Communist leadership to Moscow. She writes, ?He (Ajoy Ghosh) was then obsessed with the latest Cominform
June 12, 2011 editorial on India, which had appeared in, A Lasting Peace for a People?s Democracy (dated January 27, 1950)... There
June 05, 2011 was a tangential departure from the earlier line. You had, of course, to be a communist to see it, or to realise what havoc
was concealed in the seemingly innocuous line, ?the party must align with all the peasantry?... before it appeared, the
May 29, 2011 party was only allowed to align with the poor peasantry. In fact, rich peasantry was a term of choice abuse, the equivalent
May 22, 2011 of ?Kulak?. In any case, the peasants in communist thought were backward and reactionary. So this rather sleepy
May 15, 2011 sentence had sent shock waves among the theorisers, for after all the Soviets were omniscient and this editorial must
May 08, 2011 surely have been written by RPD, as it was. So, who knew better? Certainly not the comrades working at the grassroots.
May 01, 2011 Ajoy Ghosh was in the process of formulating a more acceptable line than Ranadive?s, and was so shaken by those few
words that his thinking had come to a grinding halt. Day after day, he (Ajoy Ghosh) would ring our door bell at ten in the
April 24, 2011 morning, and settle down with Romesh in the study and start, Romesh what do you think they mean by ?all the
April 17, 2011 peasantry?? It well near drove me mad with rage. This leader of the revolution, looking like an emaciated owl with his
April 10, 2011 high receding forehead and his funny ears, intoning those words in his modulated voice as a kind of regular punctuation
April 03, 2011 mark, for me it was the mantra of dillusion in a way... I was now beginning to react unfavourably to what I considered was
the abysmal incapacity of communist ?leaders?. I kept questioning this business of receiving orders from abroad,
March 27, 2011 formulations from abroad, all related to the very remote Indian village, while those who were supposedly in the ?vanguard
March 20, 2011 of the working class? had no say in the matter.? (ibid p. 91-93)
March 13, 2011
March 06, 2011 Dilating on the funniest part of the story, Raj says, ?Ajoy kept shaking his head from side to side and saying, ?But how
can I be sure??... None of this, it was said, could be verified through the postal and telephone services because they
February 27, 2011
were all tempered with... so while cogitating upon the whole situation, he struck on what he considered a bright idea. He
February 20, 2011
turned to me and said, ?Why don?t you go to London and get us a confirmation from RPD?? I was caught off guard and
bewildered and protested. ...I felt sick to my stomach at the impotency of the man... I had no choice though. Between
February 13, 2011
Romesh and Ajoy, they worked it all out in a most ingenuous way.? (ibid p. 93) And lo! Raj had to travel all the way to
February 06, 2011
London to seek clarification of only one sentence.
January 30, 2011
Indian communist leaders used to analyse Indian situation in the most peculiar manner. According to M.B. Rao, editor of
January 23, 2011
the official publication, Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India, volume VII 1948-50, PPH, Delhi 1975),
January 16, 2011
1 of 2 3/12/2015 7:11 PM
January 09, 2011 the communist leaders thought. ?Not on the basis of a concrete study of the concrete situation but on the basis of
January 02, 2011 quotations from Lenin and Stalin and later from Mao and Chinese leaders ... Our leaders did not understand Lenin?s
method but desperately hung on to his words.? (Introduction p. IX) Rao elucidates, ?Problems were solved with historic
December 26, 2010 parallels. In the first period Nehru was Kerensky, August 15th was February revolution, insurrection maturing, hey presto!
December 19, 2010 We march to socialism. After the Lasting peace editorial Nehru was Chiang Kai-shek, August 15 was China?s 1927, the
December 12, 2010 peasant army was marching with steady steps to liberate the cities and establish a new democracy. (ibid p. X) Mohit Sen,
December 05, 2010 in his memoirs, A Traveller and the Road: The Journey of an Indian Communist (Delhi, 2003), had the same experience.
November 28, 2010 He writes, ?Discussion were not only animated but heated. Much of it was not on what was the reality but on how
November 21, 2010 Marxist-Leninist texts were to be understood and interpreted. For example, the question whether India was independent
November 14, 2010 or not, was not examined so much by an analysis of how the Indian state functioned, as by quotations from Lenin and
November 7, 2010 Comintern documents to prove that India could not be independent since its freedom struggle had not been led by the
working class. This was a classical Stalinist method of confronting your opponent not with your arguments but your
October 31, 2010 superiority in the knowledge of the texts of the masters. In that way your opponent could be shown to be combating not
October 24, 2010 you but Lenin or the Comintern? (p. 150) As an example of this blind love for quotations, Mohit Sen, pointing to Ajoy
October 17, 2010 Ghosh, writes, ?Strange it may seem, though he (Ajoy) opposed Ranadive politically, he was at ease in his company and
October 10, 2010 admired the latter?s capacity to quote Lenin, on any subject under the sun.? (ibid p. 170)
October 03, 2010
It was because of this unrealistic bookish approach and blind faith in borrowed wisdom that, the Indian Communists, to
2010 Issues
quote M.B. Rao, went on discussing, ?What happened on August 15? Was it independence? This was a vexed question
2009 Issues
until 1955 when we agreed that it was independence. Meanwhile, different interpretations were given not only by our
party but also by international communist circles.? (op. cit. Introduction p. viii).
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
(To be continued)
2006 Issues
Organiser
About us
Advertisement Previous Page (16/35) - Next Page (18/35)
Circulation
Contact us
Content ©
Subscribe
October 14, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
Obituary
Interview of the
Week
PRAVASI BHARATIYA
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
West Bengal
Newsletter
Bookmark
Readers’ Forum
Kids’ Org
News Analysis
Kerala Newsletter
The Moving Finger
Writes
Think it over
Agenda
2 of 2 3/12/2015 7:11 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules7ec9.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
HISTORY Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XX
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
SPECIAL ON 150 YEARS OF 1857
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: What Stalin told Indian communists
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE ?Do you have a safe hinterland which the Chinese had? Remember the snow clad
Kerala Newsletter Himalayas. Have you seen carefully your road, rail road and communication map?
Compare it with the Chinese map in the thirties and forties.?
Previous Issues
?Stalin to a secret delegation,1951
September 04, 2011
Moscow was equally, if not more, guilty in moulding the mindset of Indian communists. But, now the compulsions of her
August 28, 2011 own foreign policy wanted the CPI to renounce the path of confrontation with the Indian government as well as its
August 21, 2011 Telangana line of armed revolution.
August 14, 2011
August 07, 2011 The emergence of communist China as a successful culmination of the long peasant revolution led by Mao tse Tung had
strengthened the commitment of a large section of Indian communist leadership to the path of armed struggle. The
July 31, 2011 leadership was divided and it was not possible to create unanimity by remote control. Therefore, Stalin had to intervene
July 24, 2011 directly in Indian affairs.
July 17, 2011
July 10, 2011 At his call, a high powered delegation consisting of C. Rajeshwar Rao, Ajoy Ghosh, S.A. Dange and M. Basavpunniah
July 03, 2011 paid a secret visit to Moscow at the end of 1950 and came back in early 1951. There they were presented face to face
with Stalin and his lieutenant Molotov. What transpired in Moscow, it is better to read in Dange?s own words. In an
June 26, 2011 interview, Dange told Ganesh Shukla, ?Thanks to B.T. Ranadive, I was a member of the delegation that managed to
June 19, 2011 reach Moscow underground and met Stalin. You know what he told us? ?Your people?s war policy was wrong. In August
June 12, 2011 (1942), the Red Army had already seized the initiative and was throwing back Nazi hordes. How many bullets did the
June 05, 2011 British supply us? Who advised you to cut yourself off from the freedom movement??
May 29, 2011 Dange continued, ?BTR?s goose was already cooked. His problem was?Liberate the countryside and surround the
May 22, 2011 cities. The Chinese path. Stalin made a far precise observations. He asked us: Do you have a safe hinterland which the
May 15, 2011 Chinese had? Remember the snow clad Himalayas. Have you seen carefully your road, rail road and communication
May 08, 2011 map? Compare it with the Chinese map in the thirties and forties. Don?t forget you have a nationalist bourgeoisie
May 01, 2011 government. You should base yourself in the united front of workers, peasants, intelligentsia and the national
bourgeosie.? The Chinese path was over. Our necks were saved from the noose.? (Ganesh Shukla, A Dialogue with
April 24, 2011 Dange, in Mohit Sen (ed.), Indian communism: Life and work of S.A. Dange, Patriot Publishers, New Delhi, 1992, pp.
April 17, 2011 137-138.)
April 10, 2011
April 03, 2011 The delegation returned with an important document, termed as ?The Tactical Line? which carried the stamp of the
authority of Stalin and Molotov. It was kept secret, presented to the Politbureau and some selected members of the
March 27, 2011 Central Committee. In May 1951, a Policy Statement was published by the Central Committee. It was a clever rehash of
March 20, 2011 the Tactical Line document, brought from Moscow. After this meeting Rajeshwar Rao was replaced by Ajoy Ghosh as
March 13, 2011 General Secretary. The policy statement was formally adopted at the All India Conference held at Calcutta in October
March 06, 2011 1951. Telangana struggle was also finally withdrawn.
February 27, 2011 The new line adopted by the CPI was the one which P.C. Joshi had been advocating since the advent of Independence in
February 20, 2011 1947. Even after his suspension and expulsion from the Party, Joshi had been carrying on an incessant written campaign
February 13, 2011
against Ranadive and later C. Rajeshwar Rao line. But his arguments cut no ice with the Party. If, ultimately, his line had
February 06, 2011
to be admitted, it was done only under the Soviet dictates in the shape of an intervention by Stalin himself. Naturally, the
Central Committee as a face-saving gesture readmitted Joshi in the party on June 1, 1951 with the statement that the
January 30, 2011
?expulsion of Comrade P.C. Joshi from the party was wrong and unjustified? (Gargi Chakravarty; P.C. Joshi : A
Biography, Delhi 2007, p. 91.)
January 23, 2011
January 16, 2011
1 of 2 3/12/2015 7:12 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules7ec9.html?name...
January 09, 2011 Meanwhile CPI had advice from Rajni Palme Dutt (RPD), in London. RPD in an editorial strongly pleaded for CPI?s
January 02, 2011 participation in the coming General Elections, the first to be held on the basis adult franchise. Joshi was in regular touch
with RPD. Already through J.D. Bernal, a British scientist, who had come to attend the Indian Science Congress in1950,
December 26, 2010 Joshi had sent in writing a detailed analysis of the Indian situation to RPD. By early 1951, it was clear that the
December 19, 2010 international communist leadership regarded the peace movement as a matter of primary importance and disapproved of
December 12, 2010 the sectarian manner in which it had been managed by Ranadive and Rajeshwar Rao groups. The Soviet leadership had
December 05, 2010 planned to use the peace movement as a cover to rope in independent liberal intellectuals, artists, social workers and
November 28, 2010 politicians belonging to different parties. It was here that P.C. Joshi could play a very effective role. But the then CPI
November 21, 2010 leadership was not inclined to allow him a leading role.
November 14, 2010
November 7, 2010 Even after a direct intervention by Stalin leading to the emergence of pro-Soviet leaders as Ajoy Ghosh and S.A. Dange
in dominant position, the CPI was internally divided between Soviet loyalists and China loyalists. Joshi was all along
October 31, 2010 inclined in favour of the new Soviet line of reconciliation with Nehruvian Congress and adoption of constitutional method
October 24, 2010 rather than the Chinese line of armed struggle. Joshi had interpreted the directives of the Cominform more correctly than
October 17, 2010 had the official leadership. He immediately appreciated the importance which the international communist leadership
October 10, 2010 attached to the peace movement, (Overstreet and Windmiller. Communism in India, California, USA, 1959, p. 417).
October 03, 2010
Perhaps, all these factors led to the induction of Joshi in the peace movement before his rehabilitation in the Party itself.
And, therefore, we find that when the Preparatory Committee for the second All India Peace Congress met in New Delhi
2010 Issues
on March 3 and 4, 1951, P.C. Joshi was already its member. The Preparatory Committee meeting in Delhi revealed that
2009 Issues
although the peace movement was now functioning more in line with Cominform policy, the radical CPI leadership, under
General Secretary Rajeshwar Rao was still reluctant to go along with the new peace policy. (ibid p. 416-17).
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
Faced with this reality, P.C. Joshi decided to play his role independently. On May 1, 1951 he launched from Allahabad a
2006 Issues
monthly magazine India Today and devoted its first issue to peace movement, containing a long analysis by him of
Nehru?s foreign policy, highlighting a ?series of initiatives for peace by the Indian government in the recent past?. Joshi
Organiser
pleaded for a reconciliation between the ?progressives? and Nehruvians. The same issue of India Today carried an
About us
article by Krishan Chander, the Secretary of the Preparatory Committee. In communist party culture it was a very bold
Advertisement
gesture to get published in the paper run by an expelled Communist leader. This could not have been possible without
Circulation
invisible blessings of the Soviet leadership.
Contact us
(To be continued)
Subscribe
Content ©
October 21, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
Worldwatch
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Kids’ Org
Bookmark
Readers’ Forum
Open Forum
Obituary
The Moving Finger
Writes
Think it Over
Agenda
2 of 2 3/12/2015 7:12 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules8ad2.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XXI
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Anti-Gandhians hijack Gandhi
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE Gandhi, in particular, was derided as a compromiser, conservative, superstitious
Kerala Newsletter leader who put brakes on the revolutionisation of the masses, thereby ultimately
helping the British colonialists. Nehru was assessed as his faithful lieutenant who
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 deceived the masses, especially the youth.
August 28, 2011

By the middle of 1951 Stalin in Moscow, Rajni Palme Dutt in London and a section of CPI led by Ajoy Ghosh and Dange
had arrived at a common conclusion that the CPI must renounce the path of armed insurrection and must try the
August 21, 2011
constitutional method to capture power. But that was possible unless the CPI was able to break its isolation and to
August 14, 2011
change its image in the public mind. It was seen as an anti-national, violent, blood-thirsty insurrectionist party with extra-
August 07, 2011
territorial loyalties.
July 31, 2011
It was rabidly anti-Gandhi and even anti-Nehru anti-national movement at that point of time. Every year it was observing
July 24, 2011
August 15 as a Black Day with slogans like yeh azadi jhoothi hai. In fact, the whole CPI cadre had imbibed their
July 17, 2011
perception from the early writings of M.N. Roy and Rajni Palme Dutt. P.C. Joshi once admitted, ?To my generation of
July 10, 2011
Indian communists, and we come immediately after the founder members, RPD became our teacher and guide. His
July 03, 2011
Modern India (1928) become our text, and his Labour Monthly notes of the month?the commentary that kept us going.?
(P.C Joshi, Rajni Palme Dutt and Indian communists in New Thinking Communist, March 2001 Vol. 12, No. 2).
June 26, 2011
June 19, 2011
Similarly, Raj Thapar, the wife of Romesh Thapar, editor of CPI?s mouthpiece Cross Roads and later of Seminar, in her
June 12, 2011 autobiography, All these years: A Memoir (Penguin Books, 1992) writes, ?Rajni Palme Dutt was a legendary dependary
June 05, 2011 figure in the communist firmament. Even though his book India Today (a rehashed version of Modern India published in
1940) remained the only text book for revolutionaries here, he himself had never set foot on Indian soil. So finally, in
May 29, 2011 1946, at the age of fifty, he decided to cross the ocean between the two cultures and came.? (p. 19)
May 22, 2011
May 15, 2011 Mohit Sen, the well known communist intellectual and leader ruefully remembers, ?For far too long had our national
May 08, 2011 revolution been denied the status of a revolution. It had become fashionable to deride, especially by Marxist historians
May 01, 2011 who followed the lead of M.N. Roy and RPD. Gandhi, in particular, was derided as a compromiser, conservative,
superstitious leader who put brakes on the revolutionisation of the masses, thereby ultimately helping the British
April 24, 2011 colonialists. He was assessed as being at best, the representative of the Indian capitalists. Nehru was assessed as his
April 17, 2011 faithful lieutenant who deceived the masses, especially the youth, by his radical speeches and writings. (The Traveller
April 10, 2011 and the Road; The journey of an Indian Communist, Rupa, New Delhi, 2003, p. 154)
April 03, 2011
Soviet leadership was very keen to cultivate Indian government led by Nehru. There was keen competition between
March 27, 2011 Soviet Union and communist China to build state-level contacts with Nehru government. Communist China felt very much
March 20, 2011 beholden to Nehru, who was the first to extend diplomatic recognition to the communist regime in China in October 1949.
March 13, 2011 Soviet Russia had launched the peace movement in India as a cover to entice liberal intellectuals and Gandhians.
March 06, 2011
M.R. Masani writes, ?Closely linked with the Peace Front was the attempt to infiltrate into the ranks of Gandhi?s followers
February 27, 2011 and to capture Gandhi, Public Enemy No. 1 throughout his life. An attempt was now to commence to claim that the
February 20, 2011 communists were Gandhi?s real heirs,? (Masani, The Communist Party of India (A Short History), Bharatiya Vidya
February 13, 2011 Bhawan?s Book University Series, Bombay, March 1967, p. 151). In October 1951, the All India Peace Council requested
February 06, 2011 the World Peace Council for permission to observe the death anniversary of Gandhi.
January 30, 2011 The politburo?s review report presented to the Third Congress of the CPI held in December 1953, admitted the hold of
January 23, 2011 Gandhi on public mind in these words, ?Far more serious than the direct organisational hold of the Congress or Nehru,
January 16, 2011 however, is the hold of Gandhian ideology, who it is still powerful among the mass of the people... It should be particularly
1 of 2 3/12/2015 7:13 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules8ad2.html?name...
January 09, 2011 borne in mind that more than three decades of Gandhian leadership in the national democratic movement has created a
January 02, 2011 tradition of particular forms of struggle which has affected large masses of workers, peasants and middle classes,? (cf
Masani, op-cit., p. 151)
December 26, 2010
December 19, 2010 Overawed by the hold of Gandhi on Indian mind the communists used the peace movement to win over Gandhians like
December 12, 2010 J.C. Kumarappa by sponsoring his repeated visits to Moscow and Peking and succeeded in creating a rift between top
December 05, 2010 Gandhians with J.C. Kumarappa on one side and Acharya Vinoba Bhave, K.G. Mashruwala and Shriman Narayan
November 28, 2010 Agrawal on the other.
November 21, 2010
November 14, 2010 In 1951, the CPI, for the first time, celebrated August 15 as Independence Day. But all these moves were dictated from
November 7, 2010 the top rather from abroad and did not carry any conviction with the Party cadres. They did not have their hearts in them
and therefore were just mechanically carried out. Mohit Sen records, ?Pravda published an editorial on Republic Day
October 31, 2010 hailing the birth and progress of the Indian republic that had consolidated its independence, carried out significant socio-
October 24, 2010 economic reforms and played a progressive role globally. This stunned the CPI leadership that could neither accept nor
October 17, 2010 disown the article. I remember Sundarayya shouting at Ajoy Ghosh to denounce the editorial but he refused to do so. But
October 10, 2010 he also did not accept P.C. Joshi?s request to open an inner-party discussion on the editorial,? (op-cit. pp 148-149.)
October 03, 2010
Moderate communist leadership was faced with the problem ?how to change the mindset of communist cadres fed upon
2010 Issues
anti-Gandhi and anti-national movement rhetorics of early ideologues like M.N. Roy and R.P.D.? Their writings painted
2009 Issues
the whole freedom movement right from 1857 Revolt to the latter armed struggle as well as the Gandhian satyagraha as
anti-revolutionary and reactionary. But the perception of these early communists ideologues was derived from the articles
2008 Issues
on India written by Marx himself and published in the New York Daily Tribune (NYDT) in the year 1853.
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Unless this Marxian perception was changed, nothing would come out. Ajoy Ghosh who had been a colleague of
Shaheed Bhagat Singh in the revolutionary movement and was a co-accused in the Lahore conspiracy case, after his
Organiser
acquittal and release wrote in 1945 his reminiscences of Bhagat Singh and his comrades. Therein he explicitly described
About us
the differences which the revolutionaries had with the communists, and he concluded that, ?It will be an exaggeration to
Advertisement
say that Bhagat Singh had become a Marxist?. But after he became the general secretary of the CPI in 1951, he became
Circulation
anxious to appropriate the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh for the communist movement. But this he did it surreptitiously.
Contact us
According to Mohit Sen, ?He (Ghosh) discussed Bhagat Singh at length with G.M. Telang and guided him in the writing of
Subscribe
Bhagat Singh?The Man and His Ideas, published under the pseudonym of Gopal Thakur.? (op. cit. p. 138). The book was
officially published by the People?s Publishing House in the year 1953.
(To be continued)
October 28, 2007

Organiser Home Content ©
Editorial
London Post
Pravasi Bharatiya
Regional Round-up
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Kids’ Org
Bookmark
Readers’ Forum
Open Forum
The Moving Finger
Writes
Think it Over
Agenda
Media Watch
2 of 2 3/12/2015 7:13 PM
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
EXPOSE November 04, 2007
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Home > 2007 Issues > November 04, 2007
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XXII
News Round-up
By Devendra Swarup
Readers’ Forum:
INTERESTING
PEOPLE
How could the communist intellectuals, who claim to have read and memorised
PERSPECTIVE every word of Marx, Engels, Lenin and even Stalin and who boast of their scientific
Kerala Newsletter and rational approach to history, swallow the arbitrary and sudden attribution of the
authorship of these unsigned articles to Marx and that too, after a gap of almost a
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 century.
August 28, 2011

Stalin?s personal intervention in 1951 led to the replacement of C. Rajeshwar Rao by Ajoy Ghosh as General Secretary
of the CPI. According to Mohit Sen ?Ajoy Ghosh was a staunch supporter of the Soviet Union. He looked upon it as the
August 21, 2011
centre of and as the most powerful and experienced of the world communist movement.? (A Traveller and the Road. The
August 14, 2011
journey of an Indian communist, Delhi 2003, p. 140). But he did not agree with the Soviet support to Nehru and his
August 07, 2011
government. He considered Nehru?s socialism a hoax (New Age Weekly, December 25, 1951, in Marxism and Indian
Reality; Selected Speeches and Writings of Ajoy Ghosh, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 114-129). The leadership of the CPI was
July 31, 2011
then divided between Soviet line and Mao line. Ajoy Ghosh was committed to the Soviet line. Mohit Sen knew that P.C.
July 24, 2011
Joshi and S.A. Dange were also ardent supporters of the Soviet line of support to Nehru?s policies, but a powerful
July 17, 2011
section of the CPI was not prepared to adopt this line. He writes, ?It was a pity that apart from Joshi and Dange, others
July 10, 2011
who were the decision-makers in the CPI did not understand this. Even the best among them like Ajoy Ghosh felt that
July 03, 2011
Nehru?s socialism was a hoax with which he wanted to fool the people. Most of the communist cadres including I went
along with Ajoy Ghosh and the other decision-makers in the leadership of the CPI. The reason for this was a dogmatic
June 26, 2011
and one sided understanding of Marxism and a refusal to start from existing reality.? (op. cit. p. 127)
June 19, 2011
June 12, 2011 In June 1951, perhaps, at the behest of the Soviet Union, P.C. Joshi?s expulsion from the Party was revoked, but before
June 05, 2011 that, in May 1951, Joshi had already launched his independent monthly paper India Today from Allahabad. Through India
Today Joshi launched a powerful campaign in favour of the peace movement and Left-Nehruvian Congress collaboration.
May 29, 2011 Thus his approach was very close to the Soviet line. But Joshi?s credibility was very low and he was facing stiff
May 22, 2011 resistance within the party at that point of time. Joshi?s rating in the party may be judged from the fact that in Madurai
May 15, 2011 Congress (1953) in the election to the Central Committee, Joshi could poll only 107 votes while his arch-rival Ranadive
May 08, 2011 got 147 votes. Mohit Sen, a very trusted lieutenant of Ajoy Ghosh till the latter?s death in 1962, has very candidly
May 01, 2011 recorded the resistance and humiliations which Joshi had to undergo. He writes, ?Personal prejudices were also an
impediment. Considering the broad affinity of their views, it was only such prejudices that were a stumbling block in his
April 24, 2011 (Ajoy Ghosh) uniting with P.C. Joshi and S.A. Dange. Personal differences were the basis of expanding political
April 17, 2011 differences till they became antagonistic. If these three leaders had come together, the entire subsequent history of the
April 10, 2011 CPI could have been changed for the better.? (op. cit. p. 138).
April 03, 2011
At another place he writes, ?Ajoy Ghosh inclined towards the Joshi line but wanted a compromise that would preserve
March 27, 2011 the unity of the party. And as mentioned earlier, he was prejudiced against Joshi. Dange took an independent stand
March 20, 2011 closed to Ajoy Ghosh than to any body else but he did not exert himself too much.? (ibid, p. 150)
March 13, 2011
March 06, 2011 In face of resistance born out of such personal prejudices, P.C. Joshi had already charted out an independent line of
action for himself. On one hand he had managed his entry in the Peace Council, on the other he was using the monthly
February 27, 2011 India Today as a powerful vehicle to articulate his viewpoint. Joshi was convinced that ?he himself and other Indian
February 20, 2011 communist leaders relied heavily throughout 1920s, 1930s and 1940s on Rajni Palme Dutt for theoretical understanding
February 13, 2011 of India and Indian revolution and Rajni Palme Dutt had a totally negative understanding of Gandhiji. He described
February 06, 2011 Gandhiji as a ?Mascot of bourgeoise? and as the ?evil genius of Indian politics.? (Bipan Chandra, P.C. Joshi: A Political
Journey, P.C. Joshi Birth Centenary Memorial Lecture, 17 August, 2007, JNU p. 17). As stated in earlier article, in this
January 30, 2011 series, R. Palme Dutt had a negative perception of the whole Indian freedom struggle starting from 1857 Revolt itself but
January 23, 2011 his perception was rooted in Marx?s own perception as reflected in his signed articles on India published in the NYDT in
January 16, 2011 June-July 1853.
1 of 2 3/12/2015 7:13 PM
January 09, 2011

January 02, 2011 In this background, Joshi must have thought that the change in the Indian communist mindset should begin from a
correct presentation of the 1857 Revolt itself. That is why we find him taking unusual interest in 1857. India Today in its
December 26, 2010 November 1951 issue carried an article by Mrs P.M. Kamp-Ashraf, the wife of the communist historian K.M. Ashraf, under
December 19, 2010 the title ?Indian Revolt of 1857 and the Early British Labour Movement.? In this article she highlighted close affinity of
December 12, 2010 ideas and politics between the Chartist leader Ernest Jones and Karl Marx. Again, in the February-March 1952 joint issue
December 05, 2010 a well researched article by a young journalist Satinder Singh was published under the title ?The Indian Mutiny?, but with
November 28, 2010 a clarificatory footnote by the author that ?I use the word ?mutiny? because of the currency it has gained. I do not
November 21, 2010 characterise this event as mutiny.? Interestingly, the same Satinder Singh under a pseudonym ?Talmiz Khaldun?
November 14, 2010 contributed a long research paper to the book Rebellion 1857 edited by P.C. Joshi and published by the PPH in July
November 7, 2010 1957.
October 31, 2010 Thus P.C. Joshi was trying to prepare a favourable ground for the receptivity of the 1857 Revolt. But he was clear in his
October 24, 2010 mind that the communist mindset conditioned by Marx?s perception on India as reflected in his 1853 articles, would not
October 17, 2010 accept any other interpretation of 1857 unless it was presented in the words of Marx himself. Out of this consideration,
October 10, 2010 perhaps, Joshi chose to reproduce two unsigned articles on 1857 Revolt published in the NYDT dated August 4, 1857
October 03, 2010
and August 14, 1857. He directly attributed them to Marx by giving the title ?Marx on Revolt of 1857? prefixed by an intro
?Two hitherto undiscovered articles by the founder of Marxism?. In an editorial note he informed the readers, ?A few
2010 Issues
years back communist journalist Syed Sibte Hassan (now incarcerated in a Pakistan prison) discovered in the USA some
2009 Issues
hitherto unknown articles on India by Karl Marx. India Today is very proud to print two of them for the first time in English.
We hope to print the rest of the articles in future issues.?
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
Surprisingly, Joshi did not throw any light on what grounds he attributed the authorship of these unsigned articles to Karl
2006 Issues
Marx and who did it?Joshi himself or Sibte Hassan? But, from the above note it is clear that the bunch of these unsigned
articles on 1857 had reached him ?a few years back? and that he had more than two articles in his possession. However,
Organiser
the rest of the articles could not be published as ?he was asked by the party leadership to close down the Paper? (Gargi
About us
Chakravartty, op. cit. 2007,. p. 94). Consequently, September 1952 issue turned out to be the last issue of India Today.
Advertisement
Circulation
Evidently this path breaking ?discovery? must have thrilled the hearts of all communist intellectuals and workers. But we
Contact us
get no evidence of their reactions to it. How could the communist intellectuals, who claim to have read and memorised
every word of Marx, Engels, Lenin and even Stalin and who boast of their scientific and rational approach to history,
Subscribe
swallow the arbitrary and sudden attribution of the authorship of these unsigned articles to Marx and that too, after a gap
of almost a century, by an expelled and denigrated leader like P.C. Joshi? Though there is nothing on record, some
indirect evidence suggests that Joshi must have received very adverse and inconvenient reactions to his discovery,
because afterwards he never talked of the ?discovery? of these articles first published by him in the India Today. He
might have realised that anything new to be published in the name of Marx must carry the stamp of the authority of
Moscow also. This must have been at the back of his mind during his first visit to Moscow in December 1952.
(To be continued)
November 04, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial Previous Page (9/33) - Next Page (11/33)
London Post
SPECIAL ON 150
Content ©
YEARS OF 1857
Think it over
Kids’ Org
Health Watch
Obituary
Bookmark
Readers’ Forum
The Moving Finger
Writes
Debate
Media Watch
2 of 2 3/12/2015 7:13 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesc196.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XXIII
Kids Org.
Where P.C. Joshi fails, Moscow succeeds
News Round-up
By Devendra Swarup
Readers’ Forum:
INTERESTING P.C. Joshi?s visit to Moscow in December 1952 turned out to be historic in many senses. It happened to be his first visit
PEOPLE to Moscow, the Mecca of Marxism, although he had the unique distinction of becoming the General Secretary of the
PERSPECTIVE Communist Party of India in 1935 at the young age of 28 years and shouldered this responsibility for a long period of
Kerala Newsletter thirteen years upto 1948 very successfully. But he was getting this much coveted opportunity of visit to Moscow, when his
stars were down in the Party and to quote Overstreet and Windmiller, his ?status the party was still vague.? (Communism
Previous Issues in India, 1958 p. 52.) This could happen, because P.C. Joshi, as a member of the Peace Council of India, was included in
September 04, 2011 the thirty members Indian delegation which was to attend the Congress of Peoples for Peace to be held at Vienna during
Decemebr 12-19, 1952. Moreover, he was one of the twenty six Indian delegates, who, immediately following the Vienna
August 28, 2011 meeting, journeyed to Mosocw where Dr Saifuddin Kitchew, the leader of the Indian delegation to Vienna was awarded a
August 21, 2011 Stalin Peace Prize (ibid, p. 422-23). Its importance may be judged from the fact that among those 26 Indian delegates
August 14, 2011 only five-Romesh Chandra, his wife Perrin Chandra, Hajrah Begum, S.K. Acharya and P.C. Joshi could be identified as
August 07, 2011 rightists in the CPI. Interestingly, two of them?S.K. Archarya and P.C. Joshi had suffered expulsion from the Party by the
Ranadive leadership. With this stigma of expulsion, their visit to Moscow was sufficient indication of changing equations
July 31, 2011 in the CPI as well as a change in Moscow's attitude towards India.
July 24, 2011
July 17, 2011 Secondly, soon after this visit, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, brought out in 1953 a collection of articles
July 10, 2011 by Marx and Engles, under the title ?On Britain?. Curiously, for the first time it included an unsigned article on 1857
July 03, 2011 Indian Revolt which was published in the NYDT on September 16, 1857, (pp. 449-453) attributing it to Marx. The
Publishers's Note claimed that ?In contents this miscellary correspondes to the Russian edition prepared by the
June 26, 2011 Marx-Engles-Lenin-Stalin Institute of the Central Committee, CPSU (published by the Gospolitizdat, Moscow, 1953)? and
June 19, 2011 also that ?The texts of all works included are taken from the originals kept at the Institute?. At the end of the above article
June 12, 2011 we are told ?Printed according to the text of the newspaper (NYDT) which was ?unsigned?. But nowhere we are
June 05, 2011 informed as to how the MELS Institute attributed the authorship of this ?unsigned? article to Karl Marx. Similarly, we are
not told if the MELS Institute had only one article on the 1857 Indian Revolt by Marx in its stock. Could it be really
May 29, 2011 possible that the Institute was not aware of the two articles published by P.C. Joshi in his India Today in September
May 22, 2011 1952? P.C. Joshi with his historical sense and archival interest must have definitely got in touch with the MELS Institute,
May 15, 2011 during his visit to Moscow and drawn their attention to his discovery of the NYDT articles on 1857 India Revolt. In all
May 08, 2011 probability he must have been sending every issue of his India Today to the Institute in order to draw the attention of the
May 01, 2011 CPSU to the close affinity that existed between his views and theirs on Indian affairs. If it was so, why did the Institute not
include the two articles which were published in the NYDT on 4 and August 14, 1857, and were already reproduced in
April 24, 2011 the India Today in September 1952? Was it out of ignorance or an inadvertantsslip or a calculated move to create an
April 17, 2011 impression of independent research having no link with P.C. Joshi? Perhaps, this was considered necessary to ensure its
April 10, 2011 acceptability by the CPI leadership at official level. If it was so, the move was successful as the CPI immediately adopted
April 03, 2011 this article in its publication Karl Marx on India and took no time in bringing out its revised edition in 1953 itself. Thus, for
Indian Communists it was officialy established that Karl Marx wrote for the NYDT, besides other European affairs, on the
March 27, 2011 1857 Indian Revolt also.
March 20, 2011
March 13, 2011 The next leap in this journey of discovery came to light in 1957, the Centenary year of the Great Revolt. Much had
March 06, 2011
changed in the Communist world between 1953 and 1957. After the death of Stalin in march 1953 a new leadership had
come up in the Soviet Union and this leadership looked at the Stalin era critically. During the Twentieth Congress of the
CPSU held in February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, in a secret session, stunned the whole Congress by revealing the
February 27, 2011
heinous acts of genocide of innocent Russia intellectual, cadres and farmers committed at the orders of Stalin himself.
February 20, 2011
Ajoy Ghosh, The General Secretary of the CPI was also present in this secret session. Despite best efforts of censorship,
February 13, 2011
Khrushchev's shocking revelations about the barbarous face of Soviet Communism during Stalin era were published all
February 06, 2011
over the world and although Ajoy Ghosh tried to keep it a closed secret, it leaked out in India media also. A speedy
process of destalinisation was started in the Soviet Union. The name of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Stalin Institute was
January 30, 2011
changed to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. A vigorous race for the leadership fo international communist movement
January 23, 2011
started between the Soviet Union and Mao's China. Both Communist giants were trying to woo Nehru?s Indian
January 16, 2011
1 of 2 3/12/2015 7:15 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesc196.html?name...
January 09, 2011 government to their respective sides. Chinese Premier Chou-en-lai visited India in 1954, raised the slogan ?Hindi-Chini
January 02, 2011 Bhai-Bhai? and signed the notorious Panchsheel Treaty. It was followed by the visit of the Soviet leaders-Bulganin and
Khruschev in 1955. The CPI leadership got sharply divided between pro Soviet and pro China, as well as anti-Stalin and
December 26, 2010 pro-Stalin lines.
December 19, 2010
December 12, 2010 Pro-Soviet elements led by P.C. Joshi, S.A. Dange and Ajoy Ghosh and RPD in London were keen in India to make full
December 05, 2010 use of the centenary of the Great Revolt for projecting a changed perception of the freedom movement in India. It was
November 28, 2010 not merely a coincidence that in England the June 1957 issue of the Labour Monthly, edited by Rajni Palme Dutt (RPD),
November 21, 2010 who happened to be the worst critic of the 1857 Revolt in his India Today, chose to publish an article entitled ?The Indian
November 14, 2010 Revolt of 1857? written by W.S. Adams. Here, it may be mentioned that, P.C. Joshi during his December 1952 visit to
November 7, 2010 Vienna and Moscow, had gone to London also to have an intimate discussion with RPD. During this discussion they must
have exchanged notes on their perceptions of 1857 Great Revolt also. Unfortunately, according to Joshi himself, ?My
October 31, 2010 notes of these valuable meetings got burnt along with the rest of the Party Archives under the Ranadive leadership.?
October 24, 2010 (P.C. Joshi?s ?Rajni Palme Dutt and Indian Communists? in New Thinking Communist, March 2001, Vol. 12, No. 2 p.
October 17, 2010 14). The sad story of this archival vandalism we leave to be discussed later.
October 10, 2010
October 03, 2010
(To be continued)
2010 Issues
2009 Issues
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
2006 Issues
Content ©
Organiser
About us
Advertisement
Circulation
Contact us
Subscribe
November 18, 2007

Organiser Home
Editorial
News Analysis
Regional Round-up
INTERVIEWS OF THE
WEEK
The Moving Finger
Writes
Media Watch
Open Forum
Think it over
Readers’ Forum
Kids’ Org
2 of 2 3/12/2015 7:15 PM
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XXIV
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: Moscow?s Great Leap Forward
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE Shockingly, Indian Marxists were not at all burdened with any of such doubt. They
Kerala Newsletter had convinced themselves that if something was coming from Moscow or Berlin in
the name of Marx or Engels, it must be accepted as a gospel truth.
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 In India Ajoy Ghosh decided to make full use of P.C. Joshi?s archival interest and enthusiasm for the 1857 Great Revolt.
Joshi was commissioned to organise research articles reflecting different perceptions on 1857. This volume was officially
August 28, 2011 published by the Peoples Publishing House in July 1957 under the title ?Rebellion-1857 : A Symposium?. In this volume
August 21, 2011 we find, besides a long research paper contributed by Satinder Singh under the pseudonym Talmiz Khaldun, a 103 pages
August 14, 2011 long well documented article by P.C. Joshi himself under the title ?1857 in Our History?. In this article Joshi referred to
August 07, 2011 four articles published unsigned in the NYDT on July 15, August 14, September 10, 1857 and July 25, 1858 (fn. 3, 20, 25,
91, 129, 149, 210) and attributed them to Karl Marx. Interesting, in the footnotes Joshi claims to have received the
July 31, 2011 photocopy of every article from the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Berlin. Did he really forget that he himself had
July 24, 2011 reproduced one article dated August 14, 1857 in India Today of September 1952. At that time he had claimed that he had
July 17, 2011 received its copy, along with many others, from Syed Sibte Hassan. He was able to publish only two of them in India
July 10, 2011 Today and had kept the rest of them with himself. Joshi was known for his sharp intellect and strong memory. It could not
July 03, 2011 have been possible to forget those articles. Was he deliberately trying to conceal his association with this discovery of the
so-called ?Marx articles? on 1857? Similarly, by keeping out Mosocw and bringing in the Berlin Institute of Marxism-
June 26, 2011 Leninism was he trying to convey a message to the Indian Left intellectuals and Party cadres that the discovery of these
June 19, 2011 ?hitherto undiscovered articles on 1857 Indian Revolt by the founder of Marxism? after a gap of almost a century was the
June 12, 2011 result of parallel and independent research done by the Institutes situated outside India in Berlin and Moscow? But a
June 05, 2011 footnote on page 351 in the article ?China and India in the mid-19th century? by Yu-Sheng-Wu and Chang Chen-Kun
included in this book goes to prove the two articles reproduced in India Today in September 1952 under the title ?Marx on
May 29, 2011 Revolt of 1857? had not completely been lost in oblivion. (P.C. Joshi (ed), Rebellion 1857, PPH, July 1957 p. 351).
May 22, 2011
May 15, 2011 In August 1957, a special number of New Age, the political monthly of the CPI with Ajoy Ghosh, the general secretary as
May 08, 2011 its editor and assisted by Mohit Sen, was brought out. This special number also reproduced four articles on 1857
May 01, 2011 originally published unsigned in the NYDT on June 15, 1858, June 26, 1858; July 21, 1858; and Octoebr 1858. The name
of Karl Marx was printed as their author. The endnote said, ?Four of a number of unsigned articles by Marx published in
April 24, 2011 the NYDT...? (New Age, August 1957, p. 37) It also claimed, ?Photostat copies were kindly sent by the Marx-Lenin
April 17, 2011 Institute, Berlin?. (ibid, p. 37) How ridiculous that the above four unsigned articles which were attributed in 1957 to Marx
April 10, 2011 by the IML of Berlin were attributed to Engels in 1959 by the IML of Moscow in the (First Indian War of Independence,
April 03, 2011 Moscow 1959)! By what methodology were they assigned to Marx and on what basis were they transferred to the
account of Engels is not explained anywhere by both of them. Shockingly, Indian Marxists were not at all burdened with
March 27, 2011 any of such doubt. They had convinced themselves that if something was coming from Moscow or Berlin in the name of
March 20, 2011 Marx or Engels, it must be accepted as a gospel truth. That is why one of the tallest Marxist historians?Sushobhan
March 13, 2011 Sarkar writing under the pseudonym Amit Sen in the New Age Special Number (August 1957), instead of raising such
March 06, 2011 questions, pointed it out as an omission in the bibliography given in S.N. Sen?s Eighteen Fifty Seven (Publication
Division, Government of India, 1957) and complained that ?Even the published notes and letters of Marx bearing on the
February 27, 2011 subject have been left unnoticed? (New Age, Special Number, on 1857, August 1957 p. 68), Perhaps, the ?eminent?
February 20, 2011 historian did not remember that the ?notes? were prepared by Marx at the fag end of his life on the basis of a book
February 13, 2011
written by Robert Sewell in 1877 and were published posthumously in 1947. Therefore it did not reflect Marx?s own
February 06, 2011
views or his own writing. Similarly, the authenticity of the letters was open to question. But it showed his blind faith in any
thing attributed to Marx coming via Moscow or Berlin.
January 30, 2011
Emboldened by the unquestioned acceptance by the Indian Marxist intellectuals of the attribution of the authorship of
January 23, 2011
these unsigned articles to Marx and Engels after more than a century of their publication in the NYDT, Moscow dared to
January 16, 2011
1 of 2 3/12/2015 7:16 PM
January 09, 2011 publish in 1959 a collection of articles by Marx and Engels on India under the title ?First Indian War of Independence,?
January 02, 2011 henceforth FIWI). This collection included 28 articles on 1857 and also some letters exchanged between Marx and
Engels referring to 1857 Indian Revolt. All these articles were published either as ?unsigned? or as ?leading articles? in
December 26, 2010 the NYDT during the years 1857 and 1858.
December 19, 2010
December 12, 2010 The very title of the book smacks of a political motive, because nowhere in the articles included in this book such a
December 05, 2010 nomenclature was used to describe the 1857 uprising and even in India there was no unanimity on this question. A
November 28, 2010 debate was still going on whether to call it a ?Sepoy Mutiny? or ?a Rebellion? or a ?Revolt? or a ?War of
November 21, 2010 Independence?. Moscow by declaring it the ?First Indian War of Independence?, tried to win over the Indian national
November 14, 2010 sentiment to its side, which appeared to be the need of the Russian foreign policy. Chinese occupation of Tibet had
November 7, 2010 compelled the Dalai Lama with his large following to take refuge in India. Consequently, Indian masses were seething
with rage against China. Nehru Government had dismissed the first Communist ministry in Kerala. The CPI was badly
October 31, 2010 fractured internally between pro-Soviet and pro-China factions. In this situation Soviet Union wanted to send a friendly
October 24, 2010 message to the Indian government and also to strenghten the pro Soviet faction in the CPI. The national fervour which
October 17, 2010 the centenary of the 1857 Revolt had aroused all over the country did not go unnoticed and most probably influenced
October 10, 2010 Moscow to believe that if Marx and Engels could be presented as great supporters of 1857 uprising and if Moscow went
October 03, 2010
a step ahead by calling it the ?First Indian War of Independence?, it would serve the purpose of Moscow very well.
2010 Issues
The introduction written on behalf of the IML, in a way, reflects this thinking. It says, ?The people of India marked the
2009 Issues
centennial of the 1857-58 revolt in circumstances when the prophecy of the great proletarian leader (Marx) about India?s
liberation from colonialism had come true.? (FIWI, Moscow 1959 p. 13). But the seven pages long introduction nowhere
2008 Issues
spells out the methodology which led the IML to attribute the authorship of unsigned articles to Marx and Engels and that
2007 Issues
too after the gap of a century.
2006 Issues
The Publishers? Note in the beginning makes an interesting statement that ?This English edition of the First Indian War
Organiser
of Independence is based on the Russian edition prepared by the IML of the CC of the CPSU in 1959.? Are we to believe
About us
that the original articles in English were first translated into Russian and then again into English?
Advertisement
Circulation
Further, it claims that while ?The text of the articles which were printed in the NYDT has been reproduced from that
Contact us
newspaper...? certain sentences inserted by the editors of the Daily Tribune... have been eliminated?. Further, in
annotation no. 1 (p. 217) we are told, ?In some cases: The NYDT editors took considerable liberties with the articles
Subscribe
contributed by Marx and Engels, publishing many of them unsigned in the form of editorials. There were also cases,
when they tempered with the text and dated the articles at will.? But nowhere in the book any case of tempering has
been pointed out nor we are able to find which sentences were eliminated, where and on what basis.
(To be continued)

November 25, 2007
Organiser Home
Content ©
Editorial
Insight
Statescan
Defence Watch
SPECIAL ON 150
YEARS OF 1857
Think it over
Kids’ Org
Health Watch
Bookmark
Readers’ Forum
Regional Round-up
The Moving Finger
Writes
Media Watch
Agenda
2 of 2 3/12/2015 7:16 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules7f4c.html?name=...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
EXPOSE December 02, 2007
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Home > 2007 Issues > December 02, 2007
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XXV
Kids Org. By Devendra Swarup
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: IN the First Indian War of Independence (FIWI), first published in 1959, Moscow picked up 28 unsigned articles which
INTERESTING were published in the NYDT between July 17, 1857 and October 1, 1858 either as reports or its leading articles. Moscow
PEOPLE arbitrarily distributed the authorship of these unsigned articles between Marx and Engels. In volume 15 (Moscow, 1986)
PERSPECTIVE of the latest edition of the 50 volumes Collected Works of Marx and Engels (CWME) Moscow added three more articles
Kerala Newsletter raising it to 31. The newly added articles are: 1. ?The siege and storming of Lucknow? (NYDT, January 30, 1858), 2.
?The relief of Lucknow? (NYDT, February 1, 1858) and ?Transport of troops to India? (NYDT August 3, 1858). All the
Previous Issues three articles have been attributed to Engels. (CWME, Vol. 15, Moscow 1986) The very titles of these articles are so
September 04, 2011 eloquent about their contents that one fails to understand how could they have missed the attention of the wisemen in the
IML Moscow in the year 1959 and had to wait for 27 years more for their salvation in 1986.
August 28, 2011
August 21, 2011 However, both these publications nowhere describe the research methodology which led them to attribute the authorship
August 14, 2011 of these unsigned ?reports? and ?leading articles? to Marx and Engels. A perusal of the endnotes in the FIWI, No. 25 p
August 07, 2011 223; No. 36 p 226; No. 77 p. 232; No. 80 p. 232; No. 86 p. 233, No. 97 p. 234, indicates that the titles of the concerned
articles are adopted in accordance with the yearly ?notebooks? maintained by Marx for the years 1857 and 1858.
July 31, 2011 Endtnote No. 46, p. 228 for the article ?Investigation of Tortures in India? which was published in the NYDT as a leading
July 24, 2011 article on September 17, 1857 informs us that ?according to an entry in Marx?s notebook for 1857 the article was written
July 17, 2011 by him on August 28, but for unknown reasons, the editors of the NYDT published it after the article ?The Indian Revolt?
July 10, 2011 (pp 94-98) which was written by Marx on September 4.?
July 03, 2011
Interestingly, Vol. 15 of the CWME changes the title of the article NYDT August 14, 1857 from ?Despatches from India?
June 26, 2011 in the FIWI to ?Indian News? in the CWME (pp. 314-318) It also claims that ?The title is given according to the entry in
June 19, 2011
Marx?s notebook for 1857? (CWME, Vol 15, Moscow, 1986 fn 370 p. 676). How could the same ?notebook? convey two
June 12, 2011
different titles for the same article to two editors in the same IML? Similarly the title ?The Capture of Lucknow? (NYDT
June 05, 2011
April 30, 1858) is changed to ?The Fall of Lucknow? in the CWME, but both claim to rely upon Marx?s notebook for
1858. For the title ?The Annexation of Oude? (NYDT, May 28, 1858) CWME claims to be quoting the exact wordings
from the notebook??India (Politics) (Annexation of Oude.)? (fn 544 p. 692).
May 29, 2011
May 22, 2011
In short, FIWI and CWME both claim to have consulted Marx?s ?notebooks? for the years 1857 and 1858, but they give
May 15, 2011
different titles for the same articles quoting the same ?source?. The volume 16 of the CWME covering the period
May 08, 2011
1858-1860 but published earlier in the year 1980 gives us information about the nature and contents of the notebooks.
May 01, 2011
Endnote No. 1 on page 641 in this volume informs us:
April 24, 2011
?From mid-1855 onwards, most of Marx?s articles were published as editorials, without giving his signature. For this
April 17, 2011
reason their authorship and date of writing have been determined mainly by means of Marx?s notebooks for 1858-60 and
April 10, 2011
the letters of Marx and Engels to each other and to third persons. Additional information was obtained from study of the
April 03, 2011
sources used by Marx and Engels for their reports, from the schedules of transatlantic ships by which Marx sent his
reports during this period, and from other indirect data.?
March 27, 2011
March 20, 2011 It further says, ?Marx?s wife, Jenny, and sometimes Marx himself entered in the Notebook the dates on which the articles
March 13, 2011 were written before dispatching them from London to New York. This was necessary above all for the accounts with the
March 06, 2011 Tribune. Apart from the dates, these entries often contained remarks disclosing the contents of the articles.? (CWME, Vol
16, Moscow 1980, p. 641). The volume provides some specimen also of Marx?s notings in his notebooks, e.g. ?6, Friday
February 27, 2011 Bankact?, for the article titled ?The English Bank Act of 1844? (NYDT August 23, 1858) which according to the notebook
February 20, 2011 was written by Marx on August 6.
February 13, 2011
February 06, 2011 So the digit 6 denotes the date of writing, Friday the day of posting and ?Bankact? the title of the article. Many entires
such as ?10 Tuesday, Bankact? fn no. 4, p. 642, 3 Tuesday History of the Opium Trade fn. 5 p. 643, have been quoted in
January 30, 2011 the footnotes of this volume. We do not find such exact information in the volume 15 which covers the period 1856-1858.
January 23, 2011 Significantly, in the FIWI, notebook entries are referred for 8 articles only, while for 14 articles marked by an asterisk, the
January 16, 2011 titles were given by the IML itself and for the rest 6 articles no source is given.
1 of 2 3/12/2015 7:17 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules7f4c.html?name=...
January 09, 2011

January 02, 2011 The referrence to Marx?s yearwise notebooks, which he was maintaining after mid-1855, raises some important
questions:
December 26, 2010
December 19, 2010 (a) If Marx was maintaining such notebooks and was recording the date of writing, the day of dispatch, the title of every
December 12, 2010 article and sometimes even the contents of the article, these notebooks must have been part of his ?literary treasure?
December 05, 2010 kept in his house. We know that, immediately after his death in 1883, the charge of his literary heritage was taken by his
November 28, 2010 friend Engels and his youngest daughter Eleanor Marx Aveling. Then where was the need of waiting for a period of
November 21, 2010 almost a century to discover his NYDT articles on 1857 Indian Revolt?
November 14, 2010
November 7, 2010 (b) Why was P.C. Joshi in September 1952 required to mention ?hitherto undiscovered articles by the founder of
Marxism?? Why did the IML, Moscow publish only one article in 1953 in the book On Britain, only 9 articles in the On
October 31, 2010 Colonialism published in 1959, 28 articles in the FIWI in 1959 and 31 articles in the CWME published in 1986?
October 24, 2010
October 17, 2010 (c) Were these notebooks not known to Marx?s closest friend Engels (d. 1895) and his two daughters?Eleanor (d. 1898)
October 10, 2010 and Laura Lafargue (d. 1911)? Their desperate search for Marx?s writings is well known.
October 03, 2010
(d) If Marx?s wife Jenny was making enteries in the notebooks, why did she not mention this fact in her reminiscences of
2010 Issues
Marx or in her many letters to his friends? Of course, she records at several places that she was required to prepare the
2009 Issues
fair copies of the articles written in Marx?s illegible handwriting.
2008 Issues
(e) How is it so that the book Marx and Engels Through the Eyes of Their Contemporaries (Progress Publishers, Moscow
2007 Issues
1972) containing firsthand reminiscenses of Marx and Engels by their family members and closest associates nowhere
2006 Issues
mentions the existence of any such notebooks?
Organiser
(f) Why D. Riazanov the founder of Marx-Engels Archives at Moscow in 1919 after the so-called October Revolution, and
About us
who organised the publication in 1929 of the first edition of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels could not lay hands
Advertisement
upon these notebooks, because no article on 1857 Indian Revolt was included in these volumes.
Circulation
Contact us
(g) Earlier the same Ryzanov, after much research had published two volumes in 1917 from Germany in which there was
a collection of Marx?s articles published in the NYDT, The People?s Paper (London) and the Order Neu Zeit. Had these
Subscribe
notebooks been available to him he would have definitely retrieved all the unsigned articles from the NYDT and attributed
them to Marx and Engels.
(h) Even after the establishment of the Marx-Engels Archives at Moscow in 1919 why did the IML wait till 1953 for
attributing only one article on 1857 to Marx? Were the notebooks not available to them till 1959?
(To be continued)
If Marx after mid-1855 was really maintaining yearly ?notebooks? wherein he was
December 02, 2007
recording the date of writing and posting as well as the title of every article, where
Organiser Home was the need for Moscow to wait for a century to discover these articles? When, and
Editorial how these ?notebooks? travelled from London to Moscow?
Interview of the
week
Insight
A reminiscence
The Moving Finger Previous Page (16/36) - Next Page (18/36)
Writes
Think It over
SPECIAL ON 150 Content ©
YEARS OF 1857
Media Watch
Kids’ org
Readers’ Forum
News Analysis
Open Forum
Perspective
Special Report
2 of 2 3/12/2015 7:17 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/moduleseb4e.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XXVI
News Round-up
By Devendra Swarup
Readers’ Forum:
INTERESTING
PEOPLE
If Rajimwale is so much convinced about the authenticity of this ?evidence? or
PERSPECTIVE ?proof?, I shall be highly grateful to him if he could produce any reference to the
Kerala Newsletter existence of these ?Notebooks? anywhere in the vast pre-1952 Marxian literature.
Previous Issues
September 04, 2011 ?B.T. Ranadive destroyed not all the old archives but also all the old literature of the
Comintern, the CPI and other Left Parties, the entire Party library and Archives from
August 28, 2011 the earliest days to 1950. It took seven days (in night shift) in a factory chimney to
August 21, 2011
August 14, 2011
burn them.?
August 07, 2011
?P.C. Joshi in 1968
July 31, 2011
July 24, 2011 Only last week I came across the first response to this series, which was started more than six months ago on June 10,
July 17, 2011 2007, from a Marxist intellectual Anil Rajimwale in New Age (November 18-24, 2007, p. 10), the weekly organ of the
July 10, 2011 Communist Party of India (CPI). I felt happy as the series was meant to open a serious academic dialogue with Marxist
July 03, 2011 intellectuals who almost dominate the academic discourse in our country. I believe that Marxism had attracted in the
twenties of the last century superior intellect of our society, who out of patriotism were attracted to Soviet Russia, which
June 26, 2011 projected itself as an anti-imperialist power committed to provide help to anti-colonial struggles and which had laid down
June 19, 2011 the foundations of a classless society, free of exploitation and inequality. Swept away by the powerful propaganda
June 12, 2011 unleashed by Lenin and Stalin, the Indian Marxists put their blind faith in Soviet Russia and the Comintern. Lenin, under
June 05, 2011 the cover of high sounding ?democratic centralism? had converted the idea of ?the dictatorship of the proletariat?, into
the ?dictatorship of the Communist party? and in turn ?the dictatorship of its general secretary?. Complete surrender to
May 29, 2011 the communist party and its discipline became an article of faith with Indian communists. Because of this blind faith in the
May 22, 2011 Party, Comintern and Soviet Russia, they were inclined to swallow anything coming from Moscow in the name of Marx.
May 15, 2011
May 08, 2011 As the very title of this series ?Did Moscow play fraud on Marx?? shows that it was not meant to ?attribute to the Indian
May 01, 2011 communists fraudulent intentions? rather to shake them out of their blind acceptance of the intellectual frauds perpetrated
by the Communist Party of Soviet Union. I must admit, I was much disappointed to read Rajimwale?s response to my
April 24, 2011 well intentioned efforts.
April 17, 2011
April 10, 2011 Rajimwale should have concentrated on the central issue raised by me that ?how could the authorship of unsigned
April 03, 2011 articles on 1857 Indian revolt published in the New York Daily Times (NYDT) in 1857-59 either as reports or as its leading
articles be attributed to Marx or Engels after the gap of almost a century in September 1952 by P.C. Joshi or in 1959 by
March 27, 2011 Moscow. But his long article is full of polemical rhetorics only. He devotes much space to the exposition of Marx?s
March 20, 2011 perception of India in his 1853 signed articles. That perception I had tried to analyse in two articles of this series
March 13, 2011 published in the issues of Organiser dated June 24 and July 1, 2007 carrying titles ?Marx?s perception of India in 1853?
March 06, 2011
and ?Marx welcomed British conquest of India? and quoting Marx profusely.
Rajimwale says, ?There are any number of books and articles of communist leaders and authors, and by Marxist
February 27, 2011
scholars, who have gone into detailed socio-economic, political and theoretical research of 1857?. Elsewhere he writes,
February 20, 2011
?The Indian communists have carried on their own independent evaluation of 1857 besides, developing Marx?s
February 13, 2011
analyses. Besides P.C. Joshi, leaders and authors like RPD, Dange, Hiren Mukerji, Bipin Chandra etc. and a host of
February 06, 2011
Marxist historians have done seminal work.? I may differ with their ideological bias, but I do admire their intellectual
contribution. In this series I have confined myself to the study of Marxian writings on 1857 Revolt. The first two articles in
January 30, 2011
this series published in the issues dated June 10 and June 17, 2007, titled as ?Pre-1957 Left Perspective on 1857? and
January 23, 2011
?1857: Reactionary and feudal outburst? present the views of RPD written in 1928 to 1940 and M.N. Roy written in 1923
January 16, 2011
1 of 3 3/12/2015 7:18 PM
January 09, 2011 (when he was a blue eyed boy of Lenin) on 1857 Revolt which they had presented in very negative terms. Obviously,
January 02, 2011 their perception of 1857 was based upon Marx?s perception of India available in his 1853 signed articles. Obviously by
that time, i.e. 1940 the NYDT unsigned articles on 1857 Revolt had not been attributed to Marx and Engels.
December 26, 2010
December 19, 2010 After the attribution process started in 1952-53, all the Marxist politicians and scholars, without raising any questions
December 12, 2010 about the research methodology which led to this attribution, started singing a different tune about 1857 Revolt. This
December 05, 2010 perceptual change is most welcome to us. Why should we not be happy if our Marxist friends also, following the footsteps
November 28, 2010 of V.D. Savarkar, accept its characterisation as the ?First Indian War of Independence?, though late by fifty years. It is
November 21, 2010 unfair to say that ?The Organiser and Panchjanya do not seem to digest the appreciation of 1857 by the Indian
November 14, 2010 communists?. The basic question is when did this ?appreciation? begin and why? Rajimwale does not try to answer this
November 7, 2010 question. Rather, he resorts to semantics in defence of the attribution of unsigned NYDT articles to Marx by P.C. Joshi in
September 1952 and by Moscow between 1953 and 1959. It is simply ridiculous to pretend that P.C. Joshi ?did not say
October 31, 2010 they were unsigned?; the introduction (also reproduced by Organiser) said they were ?two hitherto undiscovered?
October 24, 2010 articles by Marx?undiscovered not unsigned! ...how could Devendra Swarup transform them into ?unsigned? articles?? Is
October 17, 2010 Rajimwale really not aware that all the articles on 1857 Revolt, now attributed to Marx and Engels, were published
October 10, 2010 ?unsigned? in the NYDT?a fact admitted by Moscow as well? If it was not so, where was the need for P.C. Joshi to
October 03, 2010
introduce them in 1952 as ?hitherto undiscovered articles?? Marx?s association with the NYDT from 1841 to 1862 was
recorded by every biographer and was known to every Marxist long before 1952. All the unsigned articles were also
2010 Issues
available in the NYDT files.
2009 Issues
All the more ridiculous is the ?proof? that Rajimwale adduces in support of the attribution of the authorship of these
2008 Issues
unsigned articles to Marx. He says, ?As far as the question of the authorship of the ?unsigned? articles, attributed to
2007 Issues
Marx is concerned, let it be pointed out that they were included not only by P.C. Joshi but also by other publishers. Kindly
2006 Issues
refer to the volume called The First Indian War of Independence 1857-1859, by Marx and Engels published by Progress
Publishers, Moscow in 1959? and most interestingly, quotes its note no. 25 to prove that ?Karl Marx maintained a
Organiser
notebook for the events of 1857-59, with titles etc. So, where is the question of faking or inserting the articles?? This is
About us
exactly the ?proof? which we have tried to question in the instalments no XI published on August 19 and No. XXV
Advertisement
published on December 2. If Rajimwale is so much convinced about the authenticity of this ?evidence? or ?proof?, I shall
Circulation
be highly grateful to him if he could produce any reference to the existence of these ?Notebooks? anywhere in the vast
Contact us
pre-1952 Marxian literature comprising of letters, articles, reminiscences, and biographies etc.
Subscribe
But Rajimwale seems to be a prisoner of blind faith in Moscow and Marx, which is evident from his eulogical reference to
Marx, ?It goes to the credit of Marx?s genius and great scientific foresight that sitting so far away in England, he and
Engels could describe India of 1857-59 with almost pinpoint accuracy and insight, almost as if they were in the thick of
the battles and events of the First War of Independence.? Could he have written this eulogy before the publication of
FIWI by Moscow in 1959? He has only confirmed my impression that ?the communist mindset was conditioned by
Marx?s perception of India, that ?they would not accept any interpretation of 1857 unless it was presented in words of
Marx himself? and that ?they would accept anything dished out by Moscow in the name of Marx as gospel truth.?
It is a well-known fact that history-writing in the Soviet Union was always the handmaid of power politics. With every
change of power centre, history books were rewritten. Well researched works, such as Soviet historians in crisis
December 09, 2007 1928-1932 by John Barber (London, 1981), Politics and History in Soviet Union by Nancy Heer (Cambridge, 1970) and
Organiser Home Rewriting History in Soviet Russia 1956-1974 by Roger D. Marwick (Palgrave, 2001) and many others throw enough light
Editorial on the politicisation of history writing in Soviet Russia and other Communist states. After the collapse of the Soviet Union
SPECIAL ON 150 in 1992, the Russian archives have revealed enough evidence to prove that how documents were suppressed and
YEARS OF 1857 fabricated to distort history writing. A historian Robert Payne in his biography of Marx (London, 1968) had lamented:
Bookmark
Readers’ Forum ?Today nearly all the original documents connected with the life of Marx are in the Russian hands. His letters and
Open Forum manuscripts are to be found in the Marx-Engels Institute, Moscow, and from time to time new editions appear with
YOUTH FOLIO suitable emendations. The author of a life of Marx must move warily among the official texts, never knowing for sure what
The Moving Finger documents have been suppressed or distorted.? (p. 13)
Writes
Think it over Following the footsteps of their Soviet mentors, the Communist movement in India has also not lagged behind in
Kids Org falsification of history. Every splinter communist party has chosen to publish its own set of documents on the history of
the communist movement in India, forgetting that upto 1964 there was only one communist party and there could be only
one set of documents for that period. P.C. Joshi, the General Secretary of the CPI from 1935 to 1948, was shocked to
find in 1968, when he wanted to write a well-documented history of the communist movement in India, that ?The worst
tragedy is that B.T. Ranadive destroyed not all the old archives but also all the old literature of the Comintern, the CPI
and other Left Parties, the entire Party library and Archives from the earliest days to 1950. It took seven days (in night
shift) in a factory chimney to burn them and comrades incharge did it loyally, crying all the while, under orders and as part
of Party discipline. Thus my task of collecting material was unimaginably difficult.? (Auto biographical Note dated
November 7, 1968).
Elsewhere, referring to important Politbureau meetings and individual discussions during Rajni Palme Dutt?s (RPD) first
India visit in 1946, Joshi writes, ?My notes of these valuable meetings got burnt along with the rest of the Party Archives
under the Ranadive leadership. I can only write from memory? (Rajni Palme Dutt, and Indian Communists in New
thinking Communist Vol 12, No. 2 March, 2001, p. 14)
In such a situation, it becomes the responsibility of historians in general and Marxist historians in particular to critically
apply the scientific research methodology to determine the authorship of the unsigned articles after a century of their
publication. I have not come across any such attempt on the part of any Marxist or non-Marxist historian so far. True to
2 of 3 3/12/2015 7:18 PM
his communist culture, Rajimwale, instead of facing facts and meeting argument with argument charges Organiser and
Devendra Swarup of ?Poverty of knowledge?. What a welcome to ?healthy, well-researched and contructive criticism?!
(To be concluded)
Content ©
3 of 3 3/12/2015 7:18 PM
Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules5b3d.html?name...
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XXVII
Kids Org.
?Eminent? Marxist historians and NYDT articles
News Round-up
By Devendra Swarup
Readers’ Forum:
INTERESTING THE Marxist camp in India has got a large battery of ?eminent? historians, who dominate the university system and
PEOPLE control all the apex financing as well as academic institutions in this country. They are proud of their intellectual
PERSPECTIVE superiority and claim to pursue an open minded, scientific methodology in historical research. But I was shocked to find
Kerala Newsletter that none of the Marxist historian bothered to raise any question when Moscow, after the gap of a century, in 1959
published a book entitled First Indian War of Independence (FIWI) attributing the authorship to Marx and Engels of 28
Previous Issues unsigned articles published in the New York Daily Tribune (NYDT) during 1857-58 either as reports or as leading articles.
September 04, 2011 There was no questioning about the methodology and ?sources? used by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism (IML),
Moscow in determining their authorship. Later three more articles were added to this list in Vol. 15 of the Collected Works
August 28, 2011 of Marx and Engels (CWME), published from Moscow in 1986. No Marxist scholar bothered to inquire why IML took 27
August 21, 2011 years more to attribute the authorship of those three articles to Engels.
August 14, 2011
August 07, 2011 I have yet to come across any attempt on the part of any Indian Marxist historian to delve into the mystery of the
so-called Marx?s notebooks or into the journey of Marx-Engels? literary treasure from London to Moscow and
July 31, 2011 subsequent emendations in their correspondence. I am not aware of any independent full research paper by any Indian
July 24, 2011 Marxist historian, except Prof. Irfan Habib whom I shall be discussing later in this article, on the so-called Marx-Engels?
July 17, 2011 writings on 1857 Revolt. They have been simply quoting few paragraphs from here and there in the NYDT articles to
July 10, 2011 project Marx and Engels as great admirers of India and the 1857 Revolt, which Moscow, echoing V.D. Savarkar, chose to
July 03, 2011 term it ?First Indian War of Independence?.
June 26, 2011 No comparative study of Marx?s signed articles of 1853 and the unsigned NYDT articles on India in 1857-58 was ever
June 19, 2011 done, to analyse the perceptual similarity and dissimilarity found in these two sets of articles. I do not know if Rajni Palme
June 12, 2011 Dutt (RPD), who in India Today (published in 1940, nineteen years before the publication of the FIWI from Moscow in
June 05, 2011 1959) had presented a very negative image of the 1857 Revolt. Obviously Marxist thinkers those days were conditioned
by Marx?s 1853 articles.
May 29, 2011
May 22, 2011 The great Marxist idealogue EMS Namboodripad in his bulky book on the freedom struggle of India, which was originally
May 15, 2011 written in Malayalam language in 1977 and was first serialised in CPM?s Malayalam organ Deshabhimani and its English
May 08, 2011 translation saw light in 1986, devotes no less than 30 printed pages to 1857 Revolt. In the introductory chapter he
May 01, 2011 mentions the FIWI (1959) but in the main chapter on 1857 Revolt he does not refer even once to the NYDT articles on
1857 attributed to Marx and Engels. Only once he quotes from the FIWI (fn no 16) but that is out of a signed article
April 24, 2011 written in 1853 and not in 1857.
April 17, 2011
April 10, 2011 While discussing the character of the 1857 uprising he refers to the views of Malleson, Kaye, Charles Ball, Alaxender
April 03, 2011 Duff, V.D. Savarkar, Tarachand and R.C. Majumdar and S.N. Sen, but does not feel it necessary to evaluate it in the light
of the so-called Marx and Engels writings.
March 27, 2011
March 20, 2011 So far I have not come across any study of the 1857 Revolt by Prof. Bipan Chandra or Prof. Sumit Sarkar. In the book
March 13, 2011 India?s Struggle for Independence by Bipan Chandra and four others, the chapter on 1857 is written by Prof. K.N.
March 06, 2011
Panikkar and it nowhere mentions Marx either as a theoretician or as a contemporary source. In the Volume X of the
Comprehensive History of India, considered to be a Marxist venture, the chapter on 1857 was contributed by late Prof.
S.B. Chaudhury who took no notice of the NYDT articles attributed to Marx and Engels.
February 27, 2011
February 20, 2011
In the ten volumes of Subaltern Studies published by the OUP the only article on 1857 Revolt, under the title ?Four
February 13, 2011
Rebels of Eighteen Fifty Seven? by Gautam Bhadra (included in Vol. IV, 1985), takes no cognizance of the NYDT articles
February 06, 2011
and the FIWI.
January 30, 2011
Here I must take note of the attempts made by two British Marxist historians on the 1857 Revolt. One of them Prof. V.G.
January 23, 2011
Kiernan, who happened to be the guru of Prakash Karat, the present General Secretary of the CPI(M), in Cambridge
January 16, 2011
1 of 3 3/12/2015 7:20 PM
January 09, 2011 University, contributed a long article under the title ?Marx, Engels and the Indian Mutiny? to the book Homage to Marx
January 02, 2011 edited by P.C. Joshi and published by Peoples Publishing House, New Delhi in 1969. Kiernan was a committed Marxist,
had stayed in the ?commune of the CPI? at Bombay in the year 1944 and was a personal friend of P.C. Joshi, the then
December 26, 2010 general secretary of the CPI.
December 19, 2010
December 12, 2010 Being a devout Marxist he could not question the authenticity of the attribution of the authorship to Marx and Engels of
December 05, 2010 the NYDT articles compiled in the FIWI. But the contradiction between Marx?s position in 1853 signed articles and those
November 28, 2010 unsigned articles on 1857 Revolt was too transparent to him to be ignored. Kiernan admits, ?It is much to be deplored
November 21, 2010 that as 1853 went on, Marx?s attention was jerked away from India and modern imperialism to the far less profitable
November 14, 2010 conundrums of the Eastern Question, on which he wrote for the next three years nearly three times as much as he wrote
November 7, 2010 altogether on India.? (P.C. Joshi (ed) Homage to Marx, ND 1969, p. 132). But did the Mutiny really bring Marx back to
India?, this question Kiernan does not raise. But he is baffled to find that Marx was soon losing his interest in the Mutiny.
October 31, 2010 Kiernan writes: ?Marx, it would seem was giving up the problem in despair... He was turning away from it as if he felt that
October 24, 2010 he had lost the clue and must go back into the past to recover it. He plunged into a study of fundamentals of economic
October 17, 2010 theory, far removed from the hurly-burly at Delhi or Lucknow (ibid p. 136). Clue? Of what? And why was Marx losing that
October 10, 2010 clue in the ?Mutiny??
October 03, 2010
Throwing light on Marx?s inner dilemma, Kiernan writes ?...the most remarkable thing about what Marx said of the Mutiny
2010 Issues
is that... although intensely absorbed in it... he said so little. It might well baffle him and throw him into a painful
2009 Issues
dilemma...? because ?on its construction side, the British mission that he (Marx) thought so indispensable to Indian
progress had only just begun (ibid pp. 136). To get over his dilemma Marx, according to Kiernan, withdrew from the
2008 Issues
Indian Mutiny and devoted all his time and energy during 1857 to produce his master piece ?Pre-Capitalist Economic
2007 Issues
Formation?. Kiernan says, ?Here he had much to say about ?Asiatic Society? on the lines of the conclusions he had
2006 Issues
already been coming to about the old Indian society and its static nature, its incapacity for further evolution.? (ibid, p.
136).
Organiser
About us
In the light of this conclusion, obviously Britain had a civilising mission in India. Kiernan is clear on this point when he
Advertisement
says, ?At times, particularly about 1853, and particularly in India, he was prepared to think of a civilising mission? (ibid, p.
Circulation
144). Naturally the Mutiny of 1857 was an anti thesis of this view. While Marx wanted Britain to continue her civilising
Contact us
mission in India, the 1857 Mutiny or Revolt or First Indian War of Independence aimed at uprooting of the British mission
and at restoration of the old static Indian society. If we attribute the unsigned article published in the NYDT in 1857 to
Subscribe
Marx, we push him in a contradictory situation, if not, there remains no contradiction. In Kiernan?s view, ?Marx did not
overcome contradiction in his thinking or between his thinking and his feeling as in 1857 on imperialism.? (ibid. p. 145). In
my view this imaginary contradiction has been imposed on Marx by Moscow itself.
Similarly, Kiernan feels that Engels also does not appear to be in his real self in the NYDT articles, which have been
attributed to him, because in Kiernan?s words, ?Engels was a revolutionary, but a mutineer went against the grain with
him. Moreover, the opinion he had formed of the Sepoy army before the Mutiny was not flattering? (ibid, p. 139)
The second historian Eric Stokes (ed 1981) better known for his insightful ?English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959)
was a serious scholar who in his two later works, The Peasant and the Raj (Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant
December 16, 2007 Rebellion in Colonial India) (Oup, 1978) and The Peasant Armed: The Indian Rebellion of 1857, ed. by CA Bayley,
Organiser Home Oxford 1986), sincerely tried to apply the Marxian theory to the understanding of the Indian society in general and 1857
Interview rebellion in particular. He supervised nearly fifty undergraduate seminar papers for a Cambridge special subject on the
Editorial Rebellion in the late 1960s and collected the material for his The Peasant Armed during the years 1963-1980. He delved
Perspective deep in the original sources on the rebellion. But during this process, according to the editor Bayley, ?his perception of
Media Watch the key issues changed considerably.? (The Peasant Armed, p. 226). Stokes discovered that ?the Indian rebellion of
London Post 1857? was not one movement, be it a peasant revolt or a war of national liberation, it was many. The lineaments of the
Moving Finger Writes revolt differed vastly from district to district even village to village....? In the concluding article ?The Nature and Roots of
Think it over Peasant Violence in 1857? Stokes realised, ?If we allow force to Marx?s dictum that the peasantry is incapable of leading
SPECIAL ON 150 itself and has to be led, than we have to accept some difficulty in isolating peasant action from its larger political
YEARS OF 1857 framework? (ibid, p. 214). Significantly, Eric nowhere uses the NYDT articles as a source material for his research on
Kids’ Org 1857.
Bookmark
Readers’ Forum Lastly, we come to the ?eminent? Marxist historian Prof. Irfan Habib. It must be admitted, at the outset that of all the
Feed back Indian Marxist historians, Prof. Habib alone has devoted maximum attention and space to these NYDT articles in his
News Analysis writings. To my knowledge, first use of these articles was done by him in his well documented research paper, entitled
Open Forum Marx?s Perceptions of India, which was prepared on the occasion of Marx?s first death centenary in 1983 and was
Insight published in the CPM?s journal The Marxist, Vol. I, No. 1, July-September 1983. The later part of this lengthy research
Report
paper frequently quotes from these NYDT articles as found in the FIWI, (1959), On Colonialism (Moscow, 1959) and
Opinion
Avineri?s Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernisation, New York 1969) to expound what he considers Marx?s
perception of India. Prof. Habib does not feel any necessity to inquire into the authorship of these unsigned articles and in
tune with his reputation as CPM?s official historian, he takes it for granted that if Moscow says so they must have been
written by Marx and Engels.
The next major contribution of Prof. Habib on this topic is to be found in People?s Democracy February 25, 2007. This
two full pages long article under the title ?Marx and Engels on the Revolt of 1857? also treats the question of the
authorship of the unsigned NYDT articles as finally settled in favour of Marx and Engels. This is really puzzling. It was on
the suggestion of Prof. Habib that Iqbal Hussain of the AMU had conducted intensive research on the unsigned NYDT
articles attributed to Marx and Engels during his visit to USA in 1990. His research revealed that this process of
attribution was started by the IML Moscow in 1953 only. He discovered that ?the original drafts (sent by Marx) have
2 of 3 3/12/2015 7:20 PM
disappeared? (p. XIV) and that ?The Tribune archives being no longer extant, it is only the surviving papers
(correspondence and notebooks) of Marx and Engels that can tell us which of the Tribune?s leading articles and reports
from unnamed correspondents are from Marx?s pen (or from Engel?s in certain cases).? (p. XV).
Iqbal Hussain discovered also that the NYDT had two other correspondents on India?Beyond Taylor and a Polish born
Hungarian nationalist Ference Aurelius Pulszky, both of whom were treated by Marx as his rival. (Iqbal Hussain (ed), Karl
Marx on India, New Delhi, 2006.) Even the FIWI (end note 61, p. 231) admitted that in the opening sentence of the
leading article in the NYDT dated October 3, 1857, the editors had referred to Pulszky as ?our intelligent London
Correspondent? (FIWI p 99) All these facts should have been sufficient for a seasoned intelligent researcher like Prof
Habib to make independent inquiry into the methodology and sources that were used by Moscow to determine the
authorship of these unsigned articles and that too after a long gap of hundred years.
I am an admirer of Prof Habib?s penetrating intellect, erudition as well as ideological commitment. But as a scholar
should he not rise above narrow ideological boundaries and partisan approach? A dispassionate and critical textual
examination of these articles would have convinced him that most of these articles could not have been writtern by Marx
or Engels. In his article in People?s Democracy February 25, 2007, Prof Habib writes that after a point Marx ?left the task
of covering the military events entirely to Engles?. But why? The earlier reports on Delhi, attributed to Marx, are also full
of graphic details of town planning, fortification military formations, and strategy, and movements. All this presupposes
military expertise on the part of the writer, which Marx has somewhere claimed, was not his forte.
(To be concluded)
Content ©
3 of 3 3/12/2015 7:20 PM
Current Issue
Organiser Home
Editorial
Reports
Comment
The Moving Finger
Writes
Thinking Aloud
Bookmark
A PAGE FROM
RETROSPECT
Kids Org.
Did Moscow play fraud on Marx??XXVIII
News Round-up
Readers’ Forum: The textual examination of the NYDT articles
PEOPLE
PERSPECTIVE
The Institute of Marxism-Leninism (IML), Moscow has attributed the authorship of 31 unsigned articles on the 1857 Indian
Revolt published in the NYDT between July 15, 1857 and October 1, 1858 to Marx and Engels. The process of attribution
Kerala Newsletter
started in 1953 almost a century after their publication. In 1959 Moscow included 28 articles in its publication First Indian
War of Independence (FIWI) and in 1986 with the publication of the 15 volume of the latest edition of the Collected Works
Previous Issues
of Marx and Engels (CWME), 3 more articles were added to this list. Out of these 31 articles, 11 articles were attributed
September 04, 2011
to Engels and remaining 20 to Marx himself. In the NYDT 22 articles were published as ?leading articles? or editorials
and only 9 as general reports from its London based correspondent. Contentwise, 20 articles deal with military aspects, 8
August 28, 2011
with political aspects and only 3 with economic aspects. The IML do not possess any other texts of these articles and had
August 21, 2011
to depend entirely on the texts published in the NYDT. At the end of each article we find ?Printed according to the
August 14, 2011
newspaper text? in the FIWI or ?Reproduced from the New York Daily Tribune? in the CWME vol. 15.
August 07, 2011
While attributing the authorship of these unsigned articles as well as to leveling charges against the NYDT editors of
July 31, 2011
tempering with Marx?s original scripts, the spinmasters in the IML had to depend upon the same dubious ?Marx?s
July 24, 2011
notebooks? or ?Marx-Engels Correspondence?. The authenticity of these two sources is open to question and we have
July 17, 2011 already discussed it. If we could get hold of the NYDT archives, or the original drafts sent by Marx to the NYDT or his
July 10, 2011 correspondence with Charles Dana, the problem of the authorship of these articles would not have been there. Now, the
July 03, 2011 only course open to us is to put these articles to critical textual examination.
June 26, 2011 But before we embark upon the textual examination, let us take note of Marx?s main concerns and limitations during the
June 19, 2011 period 1857-1858. It is an established fact that Marx?s main concern was to develop his economic theory which later on
June 12, 2011 came to be known as ?Critique of Political Economy? or ?Das Capital?. During 1857-1859 his mind was deeply
June 05, 2011 engrossed in developing that theory.
May 29, 2011 He had no heart in writing for the NYDT. His wife Jenny wrote to Conrad Shramm (December 8, 1857) ?Karl is working
May 22, 2011 day and night. During the day to provide our daily bread and at night to finish his Economics.? Marx wrote to Lasselle, ?I
May 15, 2011 am forced to fritter away my days earning a living, only the nights remain free for real work.? Again on December 21,
May 08, 2011 1857 he wrote to Lasselle, ?The present commercial crisis has impelled me to set to work seriously on my outlines of
May 01, 2011 political economy.? According to Sergio Bologna, ?It was alienated wagework imposed by hunger.? (Money and Crisis:
Marx as Correspondent of the NYDT 1856-57) in Commonsense No 13, 1973). Rosdolsky writes, ?Characteristically, it
April 24, 2011 was the outbreak of the economic crisis of 1857 which was responsible for both the immediate decision to write the
April 17, 2011 Rough Draft, and the feverish hurry with which this was done.? (The entire work, almost 50 proof sheets, was completed
April 10, 2011 in nine months between July 1857 and March 1858). This is the period during which most of the articles on 1857 Indian
April 03, 2011 Revolt were published in the NYDT. This overlapping of time should not be lost sight of.
March 27, 2011 Besides his involvement in economic theory, Marx was facing serious problem in his relation with the NYDT. On January
March 20, 2011 20, 1857 Marx wrote to Engels, ?I am thorougly down on my luck. For approximately three weeks now, Dana is sending
March 13, 2011 me the Daily Tribune, obviously with the intention of only showing me that they no longer print any-thing of mine. The
March 06, 2011 Tribune in exceedingly poor and insipid leaders are moreover adopting a view almost diametrically opposed to all that I
wrote.? It looked as if they were wanting to force Marx to take the intiative of breaking off relations. Financially hard
February 27, 2011 pressed Marx could not afford to do that. Marx wrote to Engels, ?The Tribune probably imagines that now they have
February 20, 2011 turned me out, I shall resign myself to abandoning the Amercian camp altogether ...I shall postpone any outright rupture
February 13, 2011 until I find out whether I can fix anything up elsewhere in New York. If I cannot, and The Tribune for its part, does not
February 06, 2011 change, then the break will have to be made, of course. But in a sordid contest like this, I believe, it is important to gain
time.?
January 30, 2011
January 23, 2011 Finally, in a letter to Engels on March 24, 1857, Marx announced that he has arrived at an agreement with The Tribune;
January 16, 2011 he will be paid for one article per week, whether or not it is published; he must send a second article at his own risk, but
1 of 3 3/12/2015 7:20 PM
January 09, 2011 would be paid for it only in the event of publication. ?Thus they are in effect cutting me down by one half. However, I shall
January 02, 2011 agree to it and must agree to it.?
December 26, 2010 In this background, does it not look strange that why the same NYDT, instead of sticking to its decison to publish only one
December 19, 2010 article per week, should have rushed to publish three articles on three consecutive days?September 15, 16 and 17, 1857
December 12, 2010 and even two articles on the same day i.e., August 14, 1857, that too on the same subject by the same Karl Marx?
December 05, 2010
November 28, 2010 Marx's contribution to the NYDT was not confined to the subject of 1857 Revolt only, he was writing profusely on
November 21, 2010 European politics and economics as well those days. Besides the NYDT, he was a regular writer in the German journal
November 14, 2010 Nueu Oder Zeitung also. At the same time Marx and Engels both were very busy preparing alphabetical entries for
November 7, 2010 Charles Dana?s New American Cyclopaedia also. Their correspondence is replete with references to these entries.
October 31, 2010 A cursory examination of the articles on 1857 Revolt, included in the FIWI and the CWME, shows that out of 31 articles
October 24, 2010 20 are devoted to military aspect only. Out of these 20 articles 11 are said to have been penned down by Engels, on
October 17, 2010 Marx?s personal request. After having penned down nine articles on military movements, formations, strategy etc. Marx
October 10, 2010 realised that military aspect was not his forte and hence requested his friend Engels to deal with this aspect of the Indian
October 03, 2010
Revolt. Engels in true friendly spirit undertook this responsibility and, therefore, we find the NYDT articles on military
aspect beginning with the one entitled ?The Capture of Delhi? published on December 5, 1857 upto the ?Revolt in India?
2010 Issues
published on October 1, 1858, attributed to Engels by the IML. But all these articles, except one published on February 1,
2009 Issues
1858, were published as leading articles and their internal evidence shows that they were written at the desk of the NYDT
in New York.
2008 Issues
2007 Issues
Before we discuss this evidence, let me draw the readers' attention to the fact that it is not generally known in India that
2006 Issues
the 1857 Indian Revolt was very widely covered in the American media. Besides the NYDT we find other dailies and
periodicals like the New York Daily Times (which changed its name to New York Times in the year 1857 itself), the
Organiser
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Atlantic Monthly, Princeton Review, Harper's New Monthly, Liberty Weekly Tribune, The Louis
About us
Christian Advocate, The United States Democratic Review, New Englander and Yale Review, The North American
Advertisement
Review etc etc, had reported and commented on this great event during the period 1857-1862. The Indian Revolt was
Circulation
seen as the greatest event in Europe and America. America was linked to England, Europe and India through steam
Contact us
driven vessels. Such steam vessels would take one month from India and fifteen days from England to reach USA. We
are totld that Marx used to dispatch his articles to the NYDT by the bi-weekly steamer service on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Subscribe
Telegraph service had already been established between England and France. New York Daily Times dated September
8, 1857 reports under the title ?The Ocean Telegraph? that desperate efforts were being made to lay down undersea
cable in order to link USA and Europe telegraphically. Till then American newspapers were getting regular mail from
England, Europe and India as well. They were getting reports on Indian rebellion from many sources such as
newspapers and periodicals, Christian missionary centres, diplomatic sources. Some major papers had their own
correspondents in India. We find in the New York Daily Times dated July 15, 1857, a report on 1857 Rebellion sent by its
own correspondent Corigna and printed with byline ?Our East India Correspondence.? Under the caption ?Interesting
account of the mutinies in Bengal. The Massacres in Meerut and Delhi.? The correspondent was travelling by the
Steamer Alma, in Bay of Bengal and he penned down his report on Wednesday, May 26, 1857. Similarly, we find in the
New York Daily Times dated August 22, 1857 a report under the title, ?The India mutiny and the American missionaries?.
December 23, 2007 It gives many letters sent from India by the missionaries to the office of the Baptist Missionary Board in Boston. These
Organiser Home letters were published in the Boston Traveller and were reproduced by the New York Times. The report specifically say,
Editorial ?By the last India mail, letters were received at the office of the Baptist Missionary Board in the city, from the various
A Report stations in India....? How sad that even after 150 years of that great event, no systematic and exhaustive research has
The Moving Finger been done in any Indian university or by the large NRI community in USA in the topic 1857 ?Revolt in American Media.?
Writes
Think it Over Here, we shall confine ourselves to the internal evidence available in the articles published by the NYDT on the 1857
Insight Indian Revolt. The New York Daily Tribune was a largely circulated influential paper with enough resources at its
SPECIAL ON 150 disposal. Its interest in India is evident from the fact that as far back as 1854 the NYDT had chosen to spend ?500 on a
YEARS OF 1857 visit by its correspondent Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) to India, a fact which was bitterly resented by Marx in his letter
Bookmark dated April 22, 1854 to Engels. Similarly, we find that besides Karl Marx as its political correspondent for European
Readers’ Forum affairs, the NYDT had another correspondent, a Polish born Hungarian nationalist, Ference Aurelius Pulszky (1814-1897)
Kids’ Org stationed at London. We find specific reference to Pulszky as ?Our London Correspondent? in the NYDT leading article
Economy Watch dated September 17, 1857 (FIWI p. 75) and as ?Our Intelligent London Correspondent? in the leading article pulished on
Agenda October 3, 1857 (FIWI p. 99) This is a fact admitted by the IML also vide its end note no 61 (FIWI p. 231) In both
instances we are told that the letters sent by the correspondent are being published separately. It means that the leading
articles were written by somebody else and not by the ?London Correspondent?.
Besides, the reports sent by the London Correspondent, the NYDT was receving Indian newspapers directly from India
and London newspapers from England through steamer service. A study of the leading articles will show which leading
article is based upon London Mail and which on direct India Mail. For example, the leading article dated September 15,
1857 mentions ?the mail of the Baltic?; dated October 3, 1857 says, ?the news from India, which reached yesterday?.
Further, it also says ?from Delhi we have details to July 29 and a later report.... this report is admitted by none of the
London journals... As we know from all the Indian correspondence...? (FIWI p. 99). The leader writer shows
disagreement with ?our London contemporaries.? (ibid p. 100) The leading article dated October 13, 1857 says, ?The
news received from India by the Atlantic yesterday? (FIWI p. 104).
The leading article dated October 23, 1857 starts with the line ?We yesterday received files of London journals upto the
7th instt?. The FIWI drops this line (p. 109). The CWME retains it but in endnote no 414 on p. 680 says, ?This sentence
was interpolated by the newspaper editors.? They admit that the article was ?printed according to the newspaper text?,
2 of 3 3/12/2015 7:20 PM
then how could they identify the interpolation? The NYDT in the same issue of October 23, 1857 had published a table
separately on its page 6 giving a ?detailed statement of the effective British forces on August 10, 1857?, and clearly
stated that ?the table was sent by an artillery officer, writing from the camp before Delhi on August 13?, (FIWI p. 109,
CWME p. 369) but the FIWI declares it to have been sent by Marx and publishes it as part of the leading article itself. On
what ground is explained nowhere. The leading article dated November 14, 1857 says, ?The mail of Arabia brings us the
important intelligence of the fall of Delhi?. (FIWI p. 115). The leading article dated January 30, 1858 begins ?The last
mails from Calcutta, brought some details, which have made their way to this country, through the London journals...?
(CWME p. 419). Many more such instances can be quoted.
Any textual examination of the leading articles would show that most of them were written by one hand, who was
possessed of acute expertise on military affairs and had a wonderful grasp of the details of the townplanning at Delhi and
Lucknow, of its military fortifications etc. The author of these articles was interested in British victory and was
exasperated by their wasting time on the recapture of Delhi instead of forming a moving column, which in the opinion of
the leader writer, would have prevented the spread of the mutiny far and wide. The leader writer had exact knowledge of
the place-names, their location and distances all over India. I do not know if Marx and Engels had acquired this
knowledge.
For the paucity of space and time, it is not possible for us to go in further details. But our preliminary enquiry suggests the
need of a detailed study of the material published in the NYDT on 1857 Indian Revolt, its comparison with the material
published by other contemporary American or British journals. Only then the fraud played by Moscow on Marx would be
finally nailed down. (Concluded)
Content ©
3 of 3 3/12/2015 7:20 PM

'Did Moscow Play Fraud On Marx' by Professor Devendra Swarup

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

'Did Moscow Play Fraud On Marx' by Professor Devendra Swarup

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Organiser - Content http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modules160f.html?name...

June 10, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

January 09, 2011

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

June 24, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

July 08, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

July 15, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

Previous Page (34/41) - Next Page (36/41)

July 22, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

February 27, 2011

Previous Page (30/35) - Next Page (32/35)

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

August 28, 2011

October 31, 2010 .....(To be continued)

August 05, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

August 12, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

January 09, 2011

Previous Page (19/24) - Next Page (21/24)

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

October 31, 2010

August 26, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

August 28, 2011

September 02, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

August 28, 2011

Previous Page (12/34) - Next Page (14/34)

September 09, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

October 31, 2010

September 16, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

August 28, 2011

Organiser Previous Page (16/37) - Next Page (18/37)

September 30, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd

August 28, 2011

October 07, 2007

copyright© 2004 Bharat Prakashan(Delhi) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Designed and Hosted by KSHEERAJA Web Solutions Pvt Ltd