4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST them will be caught and shot, or undergo terms of imprisonment. Even in circles which, for diverse reasons, are drawn to them, they will remain objects of ridicule and derision, ai>d will be advised from time to time to examine their heads. A Muzaffar Ahmad is a rarity, almost a curiosum. It is in a setting as described above that he went about organising, of all things, a communist party in the colonial-feudal tract that India was circa 1920s. To suggest that the task was daunting will be an understatement. Hazard was Muzaffar Ahmad's constant companion. He would move in and out of prison, in and out of underground existence. He formed cells, which would disintegrate in no time; either the police would catch up with him, or there would be an abdication of courage on the part of some of those he had taken as comrades. Resources would be, for most of the time, either short or non-existent. There would be no shelter, always some doubt where the next meal was going to come from, but he would carry on, the mad visionary, the revolutionary who does not' flinch from taking the long view whatever the seeming hopelessness of the.circumstances. ^ Muzaffar Ahmad was therefore the quintessential romantic. Much of what the communist movement in India is today has grown out of that romanticism. And yet, it was just one of the many ingredients. You must know how to dream, and what to dream, but a revolutionary movement is not bred of dreams alone. You must also know—or teach yourself—how to begin with the base, and how to organise this beginning. Which means you must be patient as well as meticulous. Much of the spadework has to be done in great secrecy, for much of the work will be dangerous; if you are caught, you could be either shot or tortured or condemned to a long, very long spell in jail. The network of an organisation will perhaps be put together, it will be destroyed in no time, it will have to be built afresh, time after time. You have to stay this whole stretch. But building the base—and organising a communist party from scratch—calls for, apart from patience and acumen, an additional attribute and of an altogether different sort. You have to discover comrades, and persuade them to join you and stick it out. All you can promise them is sweat and toil and the ever present prospect of being picked up by the police. So you need to have, tucked inside you, a magnet to attract; you must also ensure that a fair majority of those who come to you are hopelessly sold on your dream, and your dream becomes their dream, it becomes the collective dream. Let there be no illusion in regard to this matter: as much as the allure of the distant goal, what is equally called for here is possession of a subjective charm on the part of the leader. This charm must be a compendium of love and fire. The comrades will be drawn to the leader not just because he has quite outstanding organisational skill and has an eerie ability to enter into the psychology of young people coming from a particular environment; he must, in addition, radiate affection. There must be no