Government Ideology: Marxist-Leninist Single-Party State
Land Claim: India, Bangladesh, Burma
Leader: Manabendra Nath Roy
Rough Population: 300 Million (estimated)
Capital: Kolkata (formerly Calcutta)
History of Your Nation since start of Great Depression: In the years prior to the Indian Revolution, the Indian people suffered under the colonial jackboot of the British imperialists. Just within the 20th century alone the British dogs led the Indian people into a Great War which took countless lives and crippled an entire generation of young people across the world, then when the Indians protested these drafts the Anglos cracked down on their very right to speak freely against the colonial administration. After the war there was an uneasy peace, with the Gandhists and Swarajists calling for a peaceful end to colonial occupation. However the Communist Party and her cadres knew, the British would never leave India's fertile lands without violence.
Injured Protesters in Hyderabad, circa Summer, 1926.Throughout the 1920s the CPI organized labour strikes and protests against the ever-industrializing Indian bourgeoisie and her British masters, calling for justice in a nation where labor laws still allowed children to work and forced the proletariat class to toil without end. The ugliest of these strikes occurred in June of 1926 when colonial police in Hyderabad opened fire upon protesting workers, killing ten and injuring a hundred. This led to an all out riot in the city for a week, leading to the deaths of 123 rioters and 15 police. After the 'Night of the Red Tiger' as it was called, the colonial administration of India called upon the British government at home for support in cracking down on Marxist influence in the crown jewel of the Empire. Thus, thousands of Indian communists were rounded up and a fatwa was called for Indian Muslims to fight against 'communist aggression' with force if need be. Fearing for their lives, many of the CPI's leadership fled north into the Tajik Soviet Republic to bide their time.
Then it happened, in 1929 the world economy faced a devastating collapse. Worldwide the ruling elite shook under the sudden drop of stock prices and an era of economic depression had arrived. In Britain, America, and the rest of the capitalist states the workers starved and their governments did all they could to save their citizens at home. However, this meant that the colonies of the European powers suffered even greater famines and pains without any aide in sight. The time had come, marching south with the support of the Soviet Union, the CPI returned under the leadership of Chairman Manabendra Nath Roy. The Indian Worker's Army under the command of Subhas Bose was a united front of central asian volunteers ranging from Turkmen and Uzbeks to Russians and Cossacks, all volunteers sent by the USSR to aid the CPI in liberating a red India.
Tajik Volunteers in Indian garb, circa Spring, 1930.Launching an offensive against unprepared colonial forces in Kashmir, the IWA spread across the province quickly in late 1929 and by December the entire province was under red control. Seeing their opportunity, CPI cells still within India launched their own respective revolts in West Bengal. By New Year's Eve, Kolkata had been taken by Bengali communists and northern India was under threat from the Red Provisional Government located in Kashmir. Seeing the quickly worsening situation, the British home government was quick to call up a mobilization of both the home isle and the dominions to 'defend the crown jewel'. Thousands of young men set sail from across the Commonwealth to face off against the red menace in India, however this was what the IWA expected.
Racing against time, the IWA continued their offensive through the winter and into the spring. Pushing to break through loyalist lines and block the way for commonwealth naval vessels coming to port in Bombay. While the fight raged on the field, the CPI worked to form a 'united front' with multiple independence groups across India in the hope of gaining much needed support for their cause. Though initially reluctant, Burmese and Bengali groups were eventually drawn into the fold and by November of 1930 the eastern seaboard from Kolkata to the Siamese border was secured by IWA red guards. Though aligned with the United Kingdom, Bhutan and her nobles remained neutral in the Indian conflict to both spare their nation and their people now that they faced their entire border being surrounded by the reds. However, the Bhutanese and Nepalese would remain a thorn in the side of the reds as their neutrality and passive-aggressive attitude meant that the Kolkata Front was under-supplied and logistically naked to commonwealth loyalists.
Indian loyalists marching to the Delhi Front, note the colonial banners. Circa February, 1930.The IWA's great spring offensive was labelled a success. Though they had not pushed as far south as they had hoped, New Delhi had fallen to the reds after weeks of prolonged street combat. At last however, on May 5th, the flag of the People's Revolution flew over the bombed out Secretariat Building. It was a massive blow to the morale of the loyalists, and a great gain for the reds. With the capital of the colony taken, thousands of 'on the fence' Indians began to accept that the reds would be the inevitable victor in the conflict and flocked to the banners of Comrade Bose and his 'Red Viper Army' as it was nicknamed.
With more and more Indians flocking to the banners of the revolutionaries, and discontent and anger rising across the colony, the colonial administration offered peace talks with the CPI in December of 1930. However the chairman of foreign affairs, Bidhan Chandra Roy, stated that the goal of the provisional government was complete independence of India, Burma, and Bangladesh from the British Empire. These were demands that the home isle would not accept, and peace talks quickly fell silent. In Britain, the public outcry over fighting a new war only a decade after the end of the Great War caused the government more then one headache, and anti-war protests were a common occurrence across the Commonwealth. What was once an assured victory now appeared to be the event that could shatter the British Empire...
Facing public outrage, a falling front in the north, and unrest in the very colony they were sending men to fight for, the British government returned to the negotiating table in March of 1931. Though fighting would go on well into the summer, an official peace would be announced May 13th, 1931. Following the announcement most loyalist forces were quick to drop their arms and surrender to the oncoming Worker's Army. However loyal nobles and religious extremists would continue to take up arms in a guerrilla war against the People's Union for many years to come.
With the revolution a success, the time to mourn the dead and form a new government came. With an estimated total death toll reaching over 1 million casualties, 89% of said casualties being Indian nationals, there would be much to rebuild and many promises to fulfill for the new government. In the provisional capital of New Delhi, the second Communist Party Congress was announced and delegates from all of the united front traveled to the war-torn city. In a month long event, M.N Roy was elected Party Chairman for a second time with war hero and liberator Subhas Bose to be Party Speaker and Chief of the Armed Forces. Chairman Roy was, for all intensive purposes, a moderate with a great admiration for Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks; though he held some level of disdain for Lenin's successor Joseph Stalin. Speaker Bose, however, was viewed as a radical. Toting a hardline platform calling for the forced collectivization of both agriculture and industry, and the enforcement of State-Atheism, he was certainly not a man who appealed to the public at large.
If the revolution drew the new lines for Central Asia, then the second Communist Party Congress drew the lines within the CPI. On one end the Mahatma Gandhi and his pacifistic supporters held a platform of reconciliation with the British and new India turning away from industrialization and instead embracing India's position as a bread bowl state. Meanwhile the moderates under the leadership of Chairman M.N Roy established a firm public and inner-party support base with building a new India and escaping the economic ills of the Great Depression through moderate industrialization and isolation from the world's political scene. Finally, the totalists under Subhas Bose called for mass industrialization and militarization of Indian society. All around red India were enemies to her freedom and all nobles and bourgeois scum would be kept at bay by the bayonet. Thus, at least politically, the People's Union had been formed. Though unstable, the CPI was prepared to lead the fragile new nation-state into a new era.
Today is November 1st, 1937. A new Party Congress has been announced and delegates from across India are coming to the new capital of Kolkata to discuss the many issues the hermit nation faces. Though the Great Depression is behind them, the nation still faces economic and social turmoil and the overtly superstitious and illiterate Indian populace still struggle to embrace Marxist ideals. In addition, the party has become tired with Chairman Roy's moderates and their isolation, and many within the party believe the time is now to spread the revolution beyond India's borders. Truly, the People's Union still is a young child with much to learn.
