S.V. Ghate

Sachchidanand Vishnu Ghate (1896 – November 21, 1970), also known as S.V. Ghate,[1] was a freedom fighter and first General Secretary of the Communist Party of India.[2][3] The Communist Party of India Karnataka State headquarters, Ghate Bhavan, is named in his honor.[4]

Sachchidanand Vishnu Ghate
General Secretary of the
Communist Party of India
In office
1925–1933
Preceded byPosition Created
Succeeded byGangadhar Adhikari
Personal details
Born1896 (1896)
Died21 November 1970 (1970-11-22) (aged 74)
Political partyCommunist Party of India
OccupationFreedom fighter

Biography

Early life

S.V. Ghate was raised in Mangalore in a Maharashtrian Karhade Brahmin family in Mangalore. With the assistance of his older brother, he attended St Aloysius College in Mangalore.[5]

General Secretary of the Communist Party of India

Under the leadership of M. N. Roy, seven Communist leaders met in Tashkent in 1920 to establish the Communist Party of India. This established the Communist Party of India in theory. However, the party did not immediately come into existence in India, as upon their return several leaders were arrested.[6] It was not until December 1925 when the first Communist Conference of India was held at Kanpur with the leadership of Satya Bhakta that an amalgamation of many small left-wing parties allowed for the founding of an all-India organisation under the name of the “Communist Party of India”.

During the first Communist Conference in India held at Kanpur in December 1925, there was a debate among the leaders on the appropriate name for the party. While Satya Bhakta opined that the party was to be named “Indian Communist Party”, other leaders such as S.V. Ghate,  K.N. Jogelekar, R.S. Nimbkar stressed that the general international norm was that it was called the Communist Party of this country or that country, hence, insisted that the party should be called the “Communist Party of India”.[7] As a result of this, Satya Bhakta formed a separate party and called it the “National Communist Party” and the party was officially announced as the “Communist Party of India”. Finally, on December 26, 1925, the Communist Party of India was formed and Ghate was chosen as the first General Secretary.[8]

In 1927, Ghate became the first Communist to be elected as an All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) office bearer during the Kanpur session. Ghate's accession to AITUC signalled a shift in the organisation's philosophy. Gradually, the Communist faction gained further influence over the organisation and were successful in reorienting it toward their ideology.[9]

When the Communist Party purchased an old military jeep from the Indian Army, Ghate would pick up Party staff and leaders and transport them to the Communist Party's Central Office. His fellow Communist Party members, including Chandra Rajeswara Rao, dubbed this jeep the GTS, or Ghate Transportation Service.[10]

Workers’ and Peasants' Party (WPP)

Ghate and colleagues transformed the Socialist Group within the Congress into a WPP in 1927, with S. S. Mirajkar as the general secretary, and soon spread to other provinces. Ghate also initiated Young Workers’ League. He played a crucial role in the Boycott Simon Commission movement of 1927-28. It was an upsurge in Bombay, and the Commission had to by- pass Bombay on way to Poona. Seven effigies were burnt for seven members of the Commission. More than 50 thousand people came out in a historic procession led by the WPP. Ghate and Mirajkar met Shapurji Saklatvala when he came to Bombay in January 1927, and organized a huge public reception in his honour. Ghate was in-charge of one of the centres of Girni Kamgar Union (GKU) during the historic textile strike of 1928. He along with Dange, Joglekar, NM Joshi and others was a member of the Central Strike Committee. The all India conference of WPP was held in Albert Hall, Calcutta in December, 1928. Ghate played a central role. WPP also brought out a massive demonstration before the Congress pandal, demanding acceptance of resolution on full independence. Communist Party also held its meetings under his guidance.

Meerut Conspiracy Case

In 1929, he was jailed in the Meerut Conspiracy Case.[11]

While in jail, Ghate was the leader of the Camp No. II prisoners, which included about 200 prisoners, mostly Sikhs, and about 160 Communists and 30 socialists. When Ghate was jailed, Gangadhar Adhikari became the General Secretary of CPI. Next, when Adhikari was jailed, the CPI was forced underground. After going underground for several years, it successfully reorganised and PC Joshi took the reigns in 1935 as General Secretary.[12]

Portrait of 25 of the Meerut Prisoners taken outside the jail. Back row (left to right): K. N. Sehgal, S. S. Josh, H. L. Hutchinson, Shaukat Usmani, B. F. Bradley, A. Prasad, P. Spratt, G. Adhikari. Middle Row: Radharaman Mitra, Gopen Chakravarti, Kishori Lal Ghosh, L. R. Kadam, D. R. Thengdi, Goura Shanker, S. Bannerjee, K. N. Joglekar, P. C. Joshi, Muzaffar Ahmed. Front Row: M. G. Desai, D. Goswami, R.S. Nimbkar, S.S. Mirajkar, S.A. Dange, S.V. Ghate, Gopal Basak.

Later political activities

While working in Mangalore in 1934, workers from Kannur were influenced by Ghate and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, the two prominent Mangalorean socialists, to form the Kannur Beedi Thozhilali Union (KBTU).[13]

In 1935, CPI adopted a Popular Front strategy to ally themselves with other anti-colonial agitators. In 1936, Ghate sought to develop the Communist Party in the Madras Presidency. When he reached Madras in 1936, he met with and sought to unite political leaders, including Malayapuram Singaravelu, V. Subbiah, P. Jeevanandham, K. Murugesan Anandan, B Srinivasa Rao, and Puchalapalli Sundarayya. At that time, Ghate came to an agreement with Puran Chand Joshi and Jayaprakash Narayan that the CPI and Congress Socialist Party workers should join forces, and personally promised Narain to work to bring up CSP.[14] At that time, became the editor of New Age.[15]

Later on, in 1937, Ghate went to Kerala, where he participated in the formation of the state's first Communist cell.[16] Ghate, the national Communist leader, provided the requisite support for state activists E. M. S. Namboodiripad, P. Krishna Pillai, K. Damodaran, N.C. Sekhar to form the first Communist cell in the state.[17]

In March 1939, he was ordered to leave Madras and reside within Mangalore city limits. Despite complying with the order, in 1944 he was arrested and detained.[18]

The Three Ps Document

The Communist Party underwent a period of turmoil and dysfunction during which time leaders were put in jail and the organisation was forced to operate underground. During this tumultuous period, Ghate and his fellow leaders sought to unify the party. Writing under pseudonyms, Ghate, Shripad Amrit Dange, and Ajoy Ghosh — Purushottam, Prabodh Candra, and Prakash, respectively — released the "Three Ps Document" on September 30, 1950. The document sought to unify a party that had been brought to the brink of annihilation. It was written in opposition to both B. T. Ranadive's Ranadive Line, which sought to emulate the Russian Zhdanov Doctrine, and the Andhra Thesis, which advocated emulating the Communist Party of China's path.[19][20]

As the Three Ps Document put it, "The old leadership talked about the 'Russian way', the new leadership talks about [the] 'Chinese way'. The older leadership talked about 'revolutionary upsurge', the new leadership talks about 'civil war' ... Neither bothered to understand and analyse the situation in our own country." Instead, the Three Ps Document proposed an Indian path that took into account the local conditions and circumstances of India.[20]

Political Views

Ghate, Dange, and other CPI leaders whose base was with the working class and trade unions advocated for an end to the violent Telangana Rebellion and for participation in general elections.[21]

References
  1. Ghate, Sachchidanand Vishnu (July 29, 1971). "S. V. Ghate: Our First General Secretary: A Memorial Volume". Communist Party Publication – via Google Books.
  2. "Remembering S.V. Ghate - Mainstream Weekly". www.mainstreamweekly.net.
  3. "Kanpur Communist Conference (December 1926)". Communist Party of India (Marxist). April 28, 2015.
  4. IPA Staff (December 27, 2019). "Jharkhand Defeat Is A Definite Shift - India Press Agency". IPA Newspack. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  5. Kooiman, Dick (July 19, 1980). "Bombay Communists and the 1924 Textile Strike". Economic and Political Weekly. 15: 1228–1229 – via JSTOR.
  6. Noorani, A.G. (May 18, 2012). "Origins of Indian communism". Frontline. 29.
  7. Noorani, A.G. (May 18, 2012). "Origins of Indian Communism". Frontline. 28.
  8. Chandra, Bipin (9 August 2016). India's Struggle for Independence 1857-1947. Penguin Books. p. 295. ISBN 9788184751833.
  9. Dinesh, Sharma (2002). "Anti congressism and nation building with special reference to post independence period" (PDF). Department of Political Science T.D. College Jaunpur: 116–117 – via Shodhganga.
  10. Balakrishnan, P.K. (June 14, 2014). "Com CR: A Fearless Warrior of Indian Revolution". Mainstream Weekly. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  11. Windmiller, Marshall (July 29, 2011). "Communism in India". University of California Press – via Google Books.
  12. Noorani, A.G. (December 30, 2011). "Of Stalin, Telangana & Indian revolution". Frontline. 28.
  13. Franke, Richard (May 31, 2018). "The Story of Kerala Dinesh Beedi". Democracy at Work in an Indian Industrial Cooperative: The Story of Kerala Dinesh Beedi. Cornell University Press. p. 33. ISBN 9781501717550.
  14. Bose, K (February 1985). Forward Bloc In Tamil Nadu - A Political Study. Madras: University of Madras. pp. 32–33.
  15. Sagar, Rahul. "New Age (Communist Party of India)". Ideas of India. Retrieved August 30, 2020.
  16. Jeffrey, Robin (November 1978). "Matriliny, Marxism, and the Birth of the Communist Party in Kerala, 1930-1940". The Journal of Asian Studies. 38 (1): 77–98. doi:10.2307/2054238. JSTOR 2054238.
  17. Pinarayi, Vijayan (April 2015). "Welcome Address". Communist Party of India (Marxist). Retrieved August 30, 2020.
  18. "Seventy years ago: 'Habeas Corpus' prayer dismissed". Dawn. March 25, 2014. Retrieved August 30, 2020.
  19. Joshi, P. C. (December 25, 2007). "Remembering S.V. Ghate". Mainstream Weekly. 46.
  20. Lockwood, David (2016). The Communist Party of India and the Indian Emergency. SAGE Publications India. ISBN 9789351505778.
  21. Singh, Vijay (April 2015). "Document on the Tactical Line of Communist Party of India". Revolutionary Democracy. 21.
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