After Kanpur conspiracy, Britain had triumphantly declared that the case had “finished off the communists”. But the in December 1925, kanpur witnessed a conference of different communist groups, under the chairmanship of Singaravelu Chettiar. Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, Nalini Gupta, Shaukat Usmani were among the key organizers of the meeting. ⁣
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The meeting adopted a resolution for the formation of the Communist Party of India with its HQ in Bombay. The British Government’s extreme hostility towards the bolsheviks, made them to decide not to openly function as a communist party; instead, they chose a more open and non-federated platform, under the name the Workers and Peasants Parties.⁣
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The CPI’s initial objectives combined militant anti-imperialist patriotism with internationalism to create a movement parallel to the nonviolent civil disobedience campaigns led by Gandhi and the INC. ⁣
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At that time, however, the British colonial administration had imposed a general ban on communist activities and took a number of measures against the party, including imprisoning its leaders in 1929. ⁣
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The CPI thus remained organizationally weak and constrained to operate clandestinely until the party was legalized in 1942.⁣
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The CPI gained momentum after India became independent in 1947. It demanded social equality for women, suffrage for all adults, the nationalization of privately owned enterprises, land reforms, social justice for the lower and the right to protest through demonstrations and strikes—all of which increased the party’s popularity.⁣
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In 1951 the party substituted its core demand of the formation of a “people’s democracy” with one it called a “national democracy.”⁣
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In 1957 the CPI defeated Congress in legislative assembly elections in Kerala and, under Chief Minister E.M.S. Namboodiripad, formed the first non-Congress government in independent India. ⁣
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In 1964, in conjunction with the widening rift between China and the Soviet Union, a large leftist faction of the CPI leadership, based predominantly in Kerala and West Bengal, split from the party to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI (M).⁣