Oral history transcript 28

Sharma :  … or The Future of Civilizatior, a very interesting book.

Chavan :  I remember to have read a small book, what I believe by Bertrand Russell.

Sharma :  Your were first introducted to Roy's ideology by charles Mascarenhas.

Chavan :  Charles Mascarenhas and some other people. Some of the letters that Roy was sending out to his friends from jail were shown to us as letters of Roy. I believe political comments were there in them. I got interested in him because I had heard his name as a revolutonary before. He had played an important role in the communist movement of the world. He had played a role in establishing the communist party of India. He had made his won contribution towards Chinese Communism.

I came out of jail in 1933. From 1934-35, I was under the influence of the Congress Socialist Party of Achyut Patwardhan and Jayaprakash Narayan. There I came in contact with people who had come under communist influence by that time. For instance, Lakshman shastri Joshi. H. R. Mahajani, Wamanrao Kulkarni came under the influnece of Roy's group. So I was a Little more inclined towards them. This was as far as associations were concerned.

But from the view point of poitical revolution, etc., I found one or two very interesting aspects of it. Particularly, Roy was advocating to develop a parallel political organisation which could became a contituent assembly, ultimately. His theory of constituent assembly was related to it. He was feeling that the Congress Party was such a party the had the potentials of becoming a better constituent assembly. But one must try to make use of it with a revolutionary purpose and revolutionary determination. That it should be developed with the help of political movements and people's support, into a revolutionary party, so that it becomes ultimately a constituent assembly to bring about a revolution. This had some sort of logical appeal to my mind and I thought that here was a highly intellectual Leader who had a revolutionary path.

यशवंतराव चव्हाण सेंटर

जन.जगन्नाथराव भोसले मार्ग,
नरिमन पॉईंट, मुंबई – ४०००२१

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