CHINA AND THE UNDIVIDED CPI 5 The fight against right-wing deviations often leads to left-wing deviations, and opportunist deviations are more likely to persist in the foreign policy which is usually not under the same extent of criticism and control of the masses as domestic policy is, especially during a Cultural Revolution. Hence, even alongside a Marxist-Leninist domestic policy, mistakes and even objectively counter-revolutionary policies may appear in the foreign policy as long as imperialism lasts. For all practical purposes we shall overlook the rather complicated relations of the GGP with the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Indian government in the early years of independence. A brief reference must be made to the Hindi Chini bhai bhai (Indians and Chinese are brothers) period. Ever since the 1953 Madurai congress of the CPI, a majority of the Indian communists supported Nehru's peace policy reinforced by the China-India agreement of 29 April 1954 (on the status of Tibet) enunciating for the first time the five principles of peaceful co-existence. Visits of Chou En-lai to India and of Nehru to China were followed by the enthusiastic support of the Third World for the Ranch Sheela at Bandung. This policy got the whole-hearted support of the CPI, the CPSU and the CGP. Points of Difference Differences arose among the three parties on three questions: de-stalinization, peaceful transition and character of the Indian state. On destalinization^ the Central Committee of the GPI defended Stalin against Khrushchev^s attack: "Stalin rendered great service to the world communist movement and in the development of the communist parties. Comiade Stalin was a great friend of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples and his workimmensely helped them in their struggle for national liberation."6 Talking to the fourth congress of the GPI at Palghat in April 1956, general secretary Ajoy Ghosh declared that the editorial in the Chinese newspaper Jenmin Jibao of 5 April, "On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" was the most comprehensive and most satisfying document on this subject^ and in a resolution of the Central Committee in July the CPI almost verbally repeated the Chinese position against the "one-sided appraisal" of the CPSU: "It is evident that a system in which such violations and distortions (as alleged) were inherent could not have unleashed the creative energies of hundreds of millions on a scale never known before and brought about such unprecedented transformations.9'7 In the debate on transition to socialism also the CPI line was closer to the CGP than to the CPSU. In an article in New Times in July 1956, academician Modeste Rubinstein had contended that the objective conditions-for a non-capitalist path in India existed, and that, as a matter ©ffact, Nehru was advocating such a path.8 On the political plane the same theory was expounded by Anastas Mikoyan in his address to the eighth congress of the CGP in September of the same year: in view of the