THE CLASS CHARACTER OF THE 19TH CENTURY 75 The formation of the secular Indian National Congress in 1885 was followed by the formation of the All-India Muslim League and the subsequent formation of other caste and communal organisations. The Akali Dal of the Sikhs in Punjab, the Scheduled Castes Federation led by Dr. Ambedkar, various other caste and communal organisations—all these were particular manifestations of those bourgeois sectors within the Communities which gave birth to the secular democratic Indian National Congress. The subsequent generation of Indian nationalists did, of course in their own way, fight the idea of casteism and communalism. But they could not put up an effective fight against casteism and communalism because their idea of national unity of all castes and religious communities was a unity of the upper sections of castes and communalists; they refused to appeal to the worker-peasant masses to whom particular communities belonged but who have a common class identity with the masses belonging to other castes and communities. The best specimens of anti-caste and secular nationalists could not appeal to the worker-peasant lakhs of the very castes and communities whom they were seeking to unite. That is why the call for caste and communal unity issued by the national leaders proved ineffective. MARXIST-LENINIST APPROACH AND ITS WEAKNESS It was against this background that, in the immediate post-World War years, Marxist ideas began to influence the younger elements of secular nationalists. The pioneers of India's Communist movement like M.N. Roy, Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, Singaravelu Chettiar and others projected against the Gandhian idea of Hindu-Muslim (communal) unity the revolutionary idea of class unity—the worker-peasant millions belonging to all Hindu castes, non-Hindu religious communities and tribes to revolt against the oppressing classes belonging to all castes and communities in their struggle against British imperialism, the feudal lords and the big bourgeoisie. They pointed out that only the class unity of the masses belonging to all castes and religious communities against the oppressing classes belonging to the very same castes and communities would cement the revolutionary unity and solidarity of the millions of toilers belonging to all castes and communities. Only if class unity breaks the caste and communal barriers will the Indian people get united. Such was the message broadcast among the people by the early pioneers of* India's Communist movement. * It was thanks to this groundwork laid by the early pioneers that in the 1940s the far better-organised and stronger Communist Party of India was able vigorously to oppose the Congress concept of a centralised unitary Indian State, as well as the league concept of India consisting of two nations on the basis of the religious coinmunities. They