Second Party Congress of the Communist Party of India

The 2nd Congress of the Communist Party of India was held in Calcutta, West Bengal from February 28 to March 6, 1948. At the Second Party Congress, the party line shifted dramatically under the new General Secretary B.T. Ranadive and subsequently the party engaged in revolutionary insurrections across the country.

The party had seen a rapid growth in membership in the years preceding the Second Party Congress, reaching around 89,000. In 1935 there had been only around 1,000 CPI members, and by 1943 the number had increased to around 16,000.

Whilst the CPI constitution stipulated that an All India Party Conference be held yearly under normal conditions, the last one had been held in 1943. By the time the Second Party Congress finally convened, P.C. Joshi had served a 13-year term as Party General Secretary.

When the Second Party Congress convened, CPI stood at a crossroads. Either they would work within the constitutional framework of the newly independent Indian state or it would engage in insurrectional revolutionary struggles. The incumbent CPI General Secretary, P.C. Joshi, represented the former position, B.T. Ranadive (BTR) the latter. At the time of independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 CPI adhered to a moderate line of 'responsive cooperation' with the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. But as of December 1947 the leftist group around BTR had won control over the Central Committee of the party. A key factor in the ascent of BTR and the defeat of the incumbent P. C. Joshi clique was post-Partition dissatisfaction with the past policy of alliance with the Muslim League. The group around BTR began to purge the followers of P.C. Joshi. The December meeting of the Central Committee sent out instruction to party branches to hastily elect delegates to the Second Party Congress.

919 delegates were elected by the party branches, but only 632 were able to attend. For example, only a handful of the 75 delegates elected from Telangana were able to reach Calcutta. Out of the 632, 565 were party whole-timers.

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