ABSTRACT

Post-war posturing by members of the Quit India campaign as August Revolutionaries destroyed all lingering possibilities of renewing attempts to establish the united front. Immediately after the final, formal breakup of the united front, once socialists and communists overtly exchanged mutual recriminations, Jayaprakash Narayan, Narendra Deva and other socialists began revising the narrative about the united front. Narayan declared that communist slogans about unity were merely a ruse to access positions within the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) and the Congress. Socialists represented their party as a homogeneous Marxist organization. However, others perceived the CSP as merely a forum for Left unity, not as a coherent Marxist party. The brand of Marxism–Leninism that founded the united front assumed that nationalist policies reflected specific class interests. The specific continuity of Leninism that permeated united front activities was not whether or not the Congress constituted a bourgeois movement or party.