Draft:SUCI draft

Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist)
Abbreviation	SUCI(C)
General Secretary	Provash Ghosh
Founder	Shibdas Ghosh Nihar Mukherjee
Founded	24 April 1948
Split from	Revolutionary Socialist Party
Headquarters	48 Lenin Sarani Kolkata, India
Newspaper	Proletarian Era (English) Ganadabi (Bengali) Unity (Malayalam)
Student wing	All India Democratic Students Organisation
Youth wing	All India Democratic Youth Organisation
Women's wing	All India Mahila Sanskritik Sanghathan
Labour wing	All India United Trade Union Centre
Peasant's wing	All India Krishak Khet Majdoor Sangathan
Ideology	Marxism-Leninism, Shibdas Ghosh thought
ECI Status	Registered - Unrecognized
Website
www.sucic.org
Politics of India Political parties Elections

The Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist) (SUCI(C)), previously known as the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI), is an communist political party in India. The party was founded by Shibdas Ghosh and Nihar Mukherjee in 1948.

Split in RSP and emergence of SUC

Shibdas Ghosh and Nihar Mukherjee became active in the revolutionary nationalist movement Anushilan Samiti in Dacca in the period of 1936-1937. When the Anushilan Samiti movement evolved into the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) in 1940 Ghosh, Mukherjee and the majority of other Anushilan Samiti activists formed the RSP branch in Dacca. Ghosh and Mukherjee were jailed during the 1942 Quit India movement. In jail they formed a political faction along with fellow Anushilan Samiti revolutionaries Monoranjan Banerjee and Pritish Chanda, as well as Sachin Banerjee of the Jugantar group. The grouping articulated critiques towards the RSP on the process of party-building (arguing that the declaration of the Anushilan Samiti as a Marxist party was a superficial process) and on the role of Stalin. Per the Ghosh-Mukherjee faction strict adherence of the Leninist principle of democratic centralism was necessary to build a proletarian vanguard party. They argued for a complete break with bourgeois middle-class legacy of Anushilan Samiti. After release from jail, Ghosh authored the Bengali language pamphlet 'Revolutionary Socialism in Historical Perspective' in early 1946.

The critiques articulated by the Ghosh-Mukherjee faction were not well received by the RSP leadership. After the May 11-13, 1946 First National Convention of RSP, some thirty followers of the Ghosh-Mukherjee faction (mainly from south Calcutta) were expelled from the RSP accused of 'Stalinism'. In response to the expulsions the entire RSP South 24 Paraganas Committee (including its secretary Subodh Banerjee) joined the Ghosh-Mukherjee faction.

Per Deb (2022) it is not entirely clear when the Ghosh-Mukherjee faction constituted a formal political organization of their own. Per SUCI(C) historiography, the Socialist Unity Centre was formed in Calcutta on May 1, 1946. At some point around 1946-1947, a document was issued, titled the 'Platform of Action', calling for the unity of socialist forces in the process of building a genuine Marxist party. Four groups gathered under the umbrella of the Socialist Unity Centre - the Ghosh-Mukherjee faction of RSP dissidents, the group of Sudhindra Pramanik (a trade union leader and former associate of M.N. Roy), the group of Nepal Bhattacharya (leader of the leader of Port & Trust Union, Kidderpore) and the a group led by Biren Bhattacharya (leader of the Port & Dock Majdoor Union, Cossipore). A Provisional Central Executive Committee was formed, with Ghosh and Makan Chatterjee as joint convenors, and Sudhindra Pramanik, Nepal Bhattacharya, Biswanath Dubey and others as members. However, the attempt to forge unity between different groups disintegrated as Sudhindra Pramanik broke away and how remain independent from other organizations, Nepal Bhattacharya set up the Workers and Peasants League and Biren Bhattacharya joined the Communist Party of India.

April 1948 Convention

The remnants of the Socialist Unity Centre (i.e. the Ghosh-Mukherjee faction) held an All India National Convention in Jaynagar April 22-24, 1948, with delegates from West Bengal, East Pakistan, Bihar, Orissa and UP. SUCI(C) considers this gathering as the founding convention of the party. The 1948 convention elected a Central Committee, per Deb (2022) the members of the Central Committee were Shibdas Ghosh (general secretary), Nihar Mukherjee, Subodh Banerjee, Sachin Banerjee, Pritish Chanda, Rathin Sen, Promod Singha Roy (First Bengal Provincial Secretary of the SUCI), Monoranjan Banerjee, Radheshyam Saha and, possibly, Tribeni Bardhan (Deb argues that as Bardhan was the publisher of the 1946 Platform of Action, its is plausible that he was a Central Committee member). On the other hand, Deb (2022) disagrees with SUCI(C) historiography regarding whether Hiren Sarkar was a member of the first Central Committee. Per Deb (2022) it is not possible to identify the eleventh member of the first SUCI Central Committee.

The political thesis adopted at the 1948 convention argued that a sovereign bourgeois, national state had been established in India through the transfer of power from British colonial rule in 1947, and that albeit tasks from the phase of national democratic revolution remained unfinished the country was now in the phase of struggle for socialist revolution. The 1948 thesis identified the Soviet Union as the centre of revolutionary struggle and praised the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The 1948 thesis criticized the role of the Communist Party of India and the Communist International during the struggle for Indian independence, but differentiated between the role of the latter and Stalin.

Stuff

• "group meeting held at a house at Lake Temple Road , South Calcutta , decided to form the Socialist Unity Centre ( 1948 ) . The party was formed with the object of unifying all the socialist forces . They felt that the R.S.P. was not .."
• "was represented in the LS 1 MP in 1967-71 . In West Bengal it hel two seats in the Assembly in 1957- 62 , and since 1967 has held between""one and seven seats . It was represented in the United Frnt ministries of 1967 and 1969–70 , but since 1977 has refused to co - operate with the other left""It hel two seats in the Assam Asembly in 1978–83 , and won one in the Orissa Assembly in 1985 . Leadership . Nihar " Mukh GS "way with a Central Committee and Poliical Bureau . Mmbership . 165,304 ( 1983 claim ) . Electoral influence . The SUCI's 10 candidates in the 1984 elections obtained 196,767""votes ( 0.78 per cent of the vtes cast in West Benga""Organs English , Bengali , Oriya , Assamese , Malayalam and""Hindi ( total circulation 200,000 "
• " Following his release from prison in 1945 , differeces over the issue of the centraized ideological control of the party led him to build another intraparty faction that began to " two prorams "The first , referred to as the strategic program and adopted at the time the party was formally established in 1948 , deals with isues such as the nature of state power , the current stage of revolution , and the deployment of key" "social forces for revoluton . The scond type deals with more specific issues relating to the day - to - day activities of the party and consists of a""variety of statements issud on various occasions . Unlike most Comunist parties in the country , the SUC believes that cap- italism in India has maturd sufficiently to display a set of " imperialistic " char- acteristics and calls""equally mature proletariat of the country . As a practikal and short - term masure , the party proposes to set up a network of local people's comittees based on democratic values and the "The SUC's thirty - point charter of demands drafted by the party's Central Committee in the wake of the 1977 general election called for , among other things , the release of political prisoners ; introduction of a secular , democratic , and scientific system of education ; institution of minimum wages based on the worker's actual needs ; confiscation of all foreign capital nationalization of key industries ; modernization of agriculture ; and opposition to imperialism . The SUC organization is based on the principle of democratic centralism . Party cells , which are the primary units of organized party activity , operate under the direction of zonal committees , which in turn are under the direction of district committees "
• 1962 WBLA SUC 11 0 69844 0.73% 15.83%
• "The party took part in different protests against tram fare rise, proposed merger of Bihar and West Bengal and joined Food Movement of 1959-66."
• "SUCI formed United Left Front of 1957 ahead of the 1957 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election. The other constituents of the front were Bolshevik Party of India, the Democratic Vanguard in India and the Republican Party of India."
• "During the prevailing food crisis in West Bengal, SUC joined United Left Front of 1962 led by Communist Party of India."