La controversia tra Lenin e M.N. Roy al Secondo Congresso del Comintern (1920)

“At the Second Congress which met from July 19 to August 7, 1920, Roy and his wife, Evelyn, played a very active part. Roy was not the only Indian at the Congress, and in fact he represented Mexico, not India. Phillips was also there, listed in the official account under his alias, Frank Seaman. The Indian delegation consisted of Abani Mukherji and a man listed as Acharya, presumably M.P.T. Acharya. Mukherij had known Roy in Bengal in 1914 and had been sent to Japan at about the time that Roy made his first trip to Java (30). Acharya had left India in 1908 and had traveled in Europe and America. But of the Indians present at the Congress only Roy had a vote, accorded to him as head of the Mexican delegation. Evelyn Roy, Mukherji, and Acharya had only consultative votes. Both Roys (who used the name Allen at the Congress) served on the Colonial Commission, Roy representing Mexico, Evelyn representing British India. Lenin had already prepared and circulated his own formulation of policy on the colonial problem. But Roy, in his memoirs, stated that in their private conversation Lenin was so impressed with Roy’s point of view that he asked Roy to draft an alternative thesis for the Colonial Commission. He further states that Lenin presented Roy’s draft to the Commission with the declaration that prolonged discussion had made him doubtful of his own formulations. Whether or not it was at Lenin’s behest, Roy did write an alternative thesis and did submit it to the Congress. Because it embodied an entirely different evaluation of the revolutionary potential of the Indian middle class, Roy’s thesis differed fundamentally with Lenin’s. In the debates at the Congress, both theses were modified, and both were adopted. But even though word changes had softened the contradictions between the two documents, those contradictions remained leaving wide scope for conflicting interpretations in later years. Lenin’s Strategy for Colonial Areas. The main point of disagreement between Lenin and Roy is embodied in Paragraph 11 of Lenin’s preliminary draft: “11. In respect to the more backward countries and nations with prevailing feudal or patriarchal and patriarchal-peasant relations, it is necessary to bear in mind especially: a) The necessity of all Communist parties to render assistance to the bourgeois-democratic liberation movement in such countries; especially does this duty fall upon the workers of such countries upon which the backward nations are colonially or financially dependent “. Roy’s disagreement is described in a contemporary Russian newspaper account as follows: “Comrade Roy arrives at the conclusion that it is necessary to eliminate from point 11 of the theses on the national problem the paragraph according to which Communist Parties must assist any bourgeois-democratic liberation movement in eastern countries. The Communist International should assist exclusively the institution and development of the Communist movement in India, and the Communist Party in India must devote itself exclusively to the organization of the broad popular masses for the struggles for the class interests of the latter”” [Gene D. Overstreet Marshall Windmiller, Communism in India, Bombay, 1960] [Lenin-Bibliographical-Materials]  [LBM*]