Problems of Left Unity in India: Socialists, Communists, and the Meanings of Unity

As a phase of collaboration between socialists and communists, India’s United Front between 1934 and 1939 affords unique insights into the meanings of unity. Scholars typically conclude that this experiment with Left unity failed because communists infiltrated the Congress Socialist Party seeking to undermine and capture the organization. However, such interpretations overemphasize outcomes while concurrently neglecting original intentions. Further examination of this moment reveals genuine attempts by both camps’ ideologues to construct meaningful Marxist unity. Socialists and communists intended utilize India’s United Front as a global intervention, developing in India an ideological homogeneity that consistently eluded European radicals, thereby transforming international Leftism by transcending the doctrinaire bickering that hitherto obstructed genuine and lasting unity. At a foundational level, unity meant cooperation between members of ideologically similar parties. When they initiated United Front activities, socialists and communists enthusiastically collaborated to achieve common goals. At that moment, they embarked at the threshold of unity. They also celebrated their ability to establish the foundations for ideological homogeneity. Over time, increasingly contentious relations between members of the two parties irrevocably altered the meanings of unity, leading to the United Front’s steady disintegration between 1937 and 1939. At experiment’s end, socialist proponents of unity no longer expressed ideas about homogeneity, preferring instead to blame communists for the collapse of unity. Conversely, communists continued to produce rhetoric about united action, thereby depicting socialists as the disruptors of unity. By assessing the meanings assigned to unity by the architects of unity, this paper highlights the conceptual flaws with India’s United Front as an experiment with national and international unity.