H6 SOCIAL SCIENT1CT progressive bourgeois intellectuals, which was nte^esriteted "by Vhe objective conditions of the time. This rise to prominence continued upto 1948. Conflicts within IPTA The year 1948 saw the banning of the CPI and in the subsequent years the vitality of the IPTA was slowly eroded. By the time the GPI again became a legal party and participated in the First Gjeneral Election of 1952, a good number of the front-rankers in the IPTA had left the organisation and had formed independent groups like 3?ohurupee^ LTQ, and so on. They, however, continued to maintain close links with CPI for some more time. The contradictions within the IPTA, however, came into focus from F948 onwards; contradictions which had existed since the days of its inception. Two lines of thinking were always present within the IPTA, a fact which was noted by a later evaluation of the most successsful play of that period, ^Nabanna": "The very success of ^Nabanna" has, however^ affected the IPTA in a different way. More attention was centred on technical perfection, skill etc. As a result, the popular aspect, popular demand, people's living contact came to h® counted as l^s^ imp&rAaiat." ^ ^ ^ The position within the IPTA can be better understood by the report2 of Shri Charu Prakash Ghosh, the then Secretary of the IPTA: ^Two trends of thought have been expressed within IPTA. One groups which we will ^all the first group, is represented by comrades like Sambbu^ Bijon and the other one is represented by Comrade Sudhi Pradhan, The first group feels, art and literature at® reduced to artificiality by reactionaries. So they want to create progressive people's art. To do this they think; (a) they should ^>e given absolute freedom in developing their, talents; (b) they give important stress on ^form3. They suggest that it would be better not to stage plays than to leave ^wm9 incomplete and (c) tb^y do not have any faiih in the guidelines of the party, as regards art. The second group, it seems, feels that the need for the IPTA lies in the spread of the mass cultural movement, in serving the masses through art and ^literature, and that through living contact with the people satisfactory art can develop. So they consider the role of ^ferm' a secondary one. Probably they feel that undue stress on Torm1 is the result of bourgeois ideas." These contradictions were aggravated by the evenU of 1947. India attained political independence and by this timefasclto had been beaten thoroughly. The Indian bourgeoisie hadeonteto power and thus the anti»c8tablishmcnt role of the bourgeois intellectuals was no longer a