COMMUNISTS AND THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE 5 states that the ban on the Party was lifted. Again, in 1940, when the Second World War had started, the Party had to go underground, and large numbers of its prominent leaders were detained. Only in 1942 when the Party supported the anti-fascist war could it function openly. Innumerable Communists were imprisoned and detaind for years all over India—Maharashtra, Bengal, Punjab, U P, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. In Bengal and Punjab many were tortured. The Commuuists experienced mass terror in Malabar when the brutalised Malabar Special Police was utilised to torture, shoot and kill. The experience was similar in Tamil Nadu. Transportation for life, firings and executions, had to be faced by many. The heroic Kayyur comrades, falsely accused in a murder case, walked to the gallows with their heads high and with firm loyalty to communism in their heart. The peasants of Bengal underwent harrowing experiences as they faced unprecedented repression. And nothing can compare with the brutalities perpetrated on the Telangana peasants during the last days of the Nizam's rule and the early days of the Nehru government. P Sundarayya writes in Telangana People's Struggle and its Lessons: "It extracted tremendous sacrifices from the fighting peasantry of Telangana and the Visalaandhra State unit of the Communist Party which was destined to lead its popular revolution. As many as four thousand Cofnmunist cadres and fighters were thrown into detention camps and jails for a period of three to four years. No less than a minimum of 50 thousand people were dragged into police and military camps from time to time to be beaten, tortured and terrorised for weeks and months together; several lakhs of people in thousands of villages were subjected to police and military raids and suffered cruel lathi-charges; the people in these military and police raids lost properties worth millions of rupees which were looted and destroyed. Thousands of women were molested and had to undergo all sorts of humiliations and indignities; in a word, the entire region was subjected to a brutal police and military terror rule, for full five years, initially by the Nizam and the Razakars and their armed forces and subsequently by the combined armed forces of the Union Government and the State Government ofHyderbad."1 Scientific Understanding of the Freedom Struggle The Communists were able to withstand this repression and also the attacks from the national bougeoisie, the unsympathetic attitude of the national press, because their spirit of patriotism was reinforced by their scientific understanding of the content and import of India's freedom struggle. Understanding the imperialist system and its workings, their internationalist outlook gave them added confidence when they understood that their struggle was part of the world struggle against imperialism and that mighty forces were fighting the common enemy in other countries too.