6 SOCIAL SCIENTIST revolution; the specific place and role of the working class and urban centres in our revolution; the precise meaning and import of the concept of working class hegemony and the part played by the Communist Party in realising it in an underdeveloped and backward country like ours, where the modern working class does not exceed one per cent of the population—these were thrown up for serious inner-party debate and decision. Life and experience, after a prolonged inner-party struggle, enabled the Party to arrive at a fairly correct political line, with satisfactory answers to most of the problems posed. During the course of the struggle, particularly during the phase of its last two years, the Communist Party from top to bottom was sharply divided into two hostile camps, one defending the struggle and its achievements, the other denouncing and decrying it as terrorism and so on. Those who opposed this struggle had even come out openly in the press, providing grist to the mill of the enemies in maligning the struggle and the Communist Party that was leading it. This sharp political-ideological split, though enveloping the entire Party in the country, was particularly sharp and acute in the Party's Visalandhra unit, which was directly and immediately involved in this valiant peasant uprising. History has demonstrated that the inner-party unity achieved following the withdrawal of the Telangana armed resistance in October 1951 was only formal, superficial and temporary, and that the division actually got crystallised into two distinct and hostile political trends. It was certainly no accident that in the Communist Party split that came about in 1962-63, the division in the state Party unit of Visalandhra remained, more or less, of the same character and with the same composition, as it was during the 1950-51 inner-party strife. With the exception of a handful of individual communist leaders and cadres, who might have changed their loyalties and political convictions, the bulk that stood opposed to the Telangana struggle^ on one count or the other, opted out to the side of the right reformist and revisionist Right Communist Party; while the overwhelming majority, that defended the struggle to the last, rallied firmly behind the Communist Party of India (Marxist). No serious student of the Indian communist movement can succeed in getting to the root cause and reason that inevitably paved the way for the split in 1962-63 if he were to bypass the struggle of Telangana and the various inner-party controversies that broke around the issue of conducting this valiant peasant resistance movement. Hyderabad State : Its Socio-Political Background The Hyderabad State, which was formed by the Nizam after the death of the last Mughal Emperor, was reduced to a subsidiary feudatory state covering an area of about 83^000 square miles under the British, after the cession of Berar of the Maharashtra area and the coastal and ceded districts of the Andhra area to the British, The Hyderabad State consist-