Indian People's Front
Encyclopedia
The Indian People's Front was a political organisation in India
, active between 1982 and 1994. It functioned as an open, mass front of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
, and contested national and state elections.
Its leadership included Nagbhushan Patnaik as president and Dipankar Bhattacharya
as general secretary. Dr. Jayanta Rongpi, leader of the Autonomous State Demand Committee
of the Karbi Anglong District
and Lok Sabha member, was a member of the IPF Central Committee
.
. A founding conference was held in Delhi
April 24–26, 1982, organized by the CPI(ML)Liberation, in which the Nagbhushan Patnaik and Chandra Pulla Reddy
factions participated. Vinod Mishra
, the CPI(ML)Liberation general secretary, was largely the architect behind the idea of building the IPF, through which the then underground CPI(ML)Liberation could develop links to other democratic forces on the basis of a popular, democratic and patriotic programme.
The IPF sought to present itself as a "national alternative". Initially IPF had been projected as a united front
of different revolutionary groups, but most other factions dropped out in the formation process and IPF effectively became a mass organisation of CPI(ML)Liberation. The Satyanarayan Singh faction publicly denounced and ridiculed the notion of IPF becoming a "national alternative".
IPF organised a mass rally against the Bihar
Press Bill on October 15, 1982. According to mainstream media sources, over 100,000 people took part in the rally.
.
elections in 1985. It failed to win any seats.
in Bihar. In August IPF organised a militant gherao
protest at the Bihar legislative assembly in Patna in protest of the massacre. The protest marked a new phase in the development of the movement.
In November 1987 IPF organised an All-India Workers Convention in Ambernath, near Bombay. Trade union
leader Datta Samant was the main speaker at the convention.
seat from western Bihar, the Arrah constituency
, in the 1989 parliamentary election
. Rameshwar Prasad
was the IPF parliamentarian from Arrah. In 1990 the organisation was able to win seven seats in the Bihar legislative assembly. IPF finished second in 14 constituencies. IPF had been able to win over a large share of the Scheduled Caste voters from the Indian National Congress
in Bihar. IPF voiced support for implementation of the recommendation of the Mandal Commission
, and also supported V.P. Singh's position to amend a 10% quota for economically weak sectors from upper castes. The IPF wanted reservations to be based on socio-economical factos.
, adopting a traditional leftist discourse. An All-India rally in Delhi with the slogan Dam Bandho, Kaam Do ('Check Prices, Give Jobs') was held on October 8, 1990. In the same month, the IPF organised a massive display of strength as it held a mass rally in Patna
, one of the largest rallies ever seen in the capital city.
, losing about a fifth of its votes compared to 1989 (having contested 15 Lok Sabha seats). The IPF suffered a severe blow when four of its Bihar legislative assembly members defected to Laloo Prasad Yadav, at the hight of polarisation around the Mandal issue.
On February 14, 1992, 14 Scheduled Caste landless labourers and followers of IPF were killed by the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh in Tikshora village near Patna.
In 1992 IPF won a seat in the Punjab legislative assembly election. IPF candidate Surjan Singh Joga won the Joga assembly seat.
. The popular anti-liquor movement in Uttarakhand
was also a constituent of IPF from the founding conference.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, active between 1982 and 1994. It functioned as an open, mass front of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
Communist Party of India Liberation is a communist political party in India.Communist Party of India was formed in 1969 by the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries, who had split from Communist Party of India in 1967...
, and contested national and state elections.
Its leadership included Nagbhushan Patnaik as president and Dipankar Bhattacharya
Dipankar Bhattacharya
Dipankar Bhattacharya is an Indian politician. He is the general secretary of the Communist Party of India Liberation. Bhattacharya succeeded Vinod Mishra as the leader of the party in 1998....
as general secretary. Dr. Jayanta Rongpi, leader of the Autonomous State Demand Committee
Autonomous State Demand Committee
Autonomous State Demand Committee, originally the Peoples Democratic Front, was set up as a mass organization of the Communist Party of India Liberation in order to fight for statehood for the Karbi Anlong region in the Indian state Assam. Several elections to the Lok Sabha and the District...
of the Karbi Anglong District
Karbi Anglong District
Karbi Anglong district is the largest amongst the 27 administrative districts of Assam state in north-eastern India. The district is bounded by Golaghat district on the east, Meghalaya state and Marigaon district on the west, Nagaon and Golaghat districts on the north and Dima Hasao district and...
and Lok Sabha member, was a member of the IPF Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
.
Founding
IPF was launched in 1982 as an open, non-party, mass organisation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) LiberationCommunist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
Communist Party of India Liberation is a communist political party in India.Communist Party of India was formed in 1969 by the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries, who had split from Communist Party of India in 1967...
. A founding conference was held in Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
April 24–26, 1982, organized by the CPI(ML)Liberation, in which the Nagbhushan Patnaik and Chandra Pulla Reddy
Chandra Pulla Reddy
Chandra Pulla Reddy was an Indian communist leader.Chandra Pulla Reddy was born in 1917 at Velugodu village in what is currently the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh. A leading activist in Indian freedom struggle as a student of Guindy Engineering College of the then Madras against British...
factions participated. Vinod Mishra
Vinod Mishra
Vinod Mishra was an Indian communist politician. Mishra served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India Liberation between 1975 and 1998.-Early life and student activism:...
, the CPI(ML)Liberation general secretary, was largely the architect behind the idea of building the IPF, through which the then underground CPI(ML)Liberation could develop links to other democratic forces on the basis of a popular, democratic and patriotic programme.
The IPF sought to present itself as a "national alternative". Initially IPF had been projected as a united front
United front
The united front is a form of struggle that may be pursued by revolutionaries. The basic theory of the united front tactic was first developed by the Comintern, an international communist organisation created by revolutionaries in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.According to the theses of...
of different revolutionary groups, but most other factions dropped out in the formation process and IPF effectively became a mass organisation of CPI(ML)Liberation. The Satyanarayan Singh faction publicly denounced and ridiculed the notion of IPF becoming a "national alternative".
IPF organised a mass rally against the Bihar
Bihar
Bihar is a state in eastern India. It is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at and 3rd largest by population. Almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25, which is the highest proportion in India....
Press Bill on October 15, 1982. According to mainstream media sources, over 100,000 people took part in the rally.
Second conference
The IPF held its second conference in Calcutta on November 4–6, 1984, in the midst of the chaos following the assassination of Indira GandhiIndira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
.
1985 elections in Bihar
IPF contested 49 seats in the Bihar legislative assemblyVidhan Sabha
The Vidhan Sabha or the Legislative Assembly is the lower house or the sole house of the provincial legislature in the different states of India. The same name is also used for the lower house of the legislatures for two of the union territories, Delhi and Pondicherry...
elections in 1985. It failed to win any seats.
Arwal massacre
In April 1986 more than one dozen Scheduled Caste labourers were killed by police in Arwal, Jehanabad DistrictJehanabad District
Jehanabad district is one of the thirty-eight districts of Bihar state, India, and Jehanabad town is the administrative headquarters of this district. Jehanabad district is a part of Magadh Division. This district is 45 k.m nearby of Patna, the capital of Bihar.Jehanabad is located on the...
in Bihar. In August IPF organised a militant gherao
Gherao
Gherao, meaning "encirclement," is a word originally from Hindi and is a typically Indian way of protest. Usually, a group of people would surround a politician or a government building until their demands are met, or answers given...
protest at the Bihar legislative assembly in Patna in protest of the massacre. The protest marked a new phase in the development of the movement.
Women's and Workers' Conventions
In 1986 IPF organised a National Convention of Women in Calcutta. Around 1000 people participated in the open rally at the convention. The convention was historic in that it marked a meeting point of feminists and Marxists, and in a speech to the convention the president of the IPF Women's Cell declared that Marxism and feminism were not antagonistic but complementary ideologies.In November 1987 IPF organised an All-India Workers Convention in Ambernath, near Bombay. Trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
leader Datta Samant was the main speaker at the convention.
1989 & 1990 elections and Mandal struggle
IPF won a Lok SabhaLok Sabha
The Lok Sabha or House of the People is the lower house of the Parliament of India. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by direct election under universal adult suffrage. As of 2009, there have been fifteen Lok Sabhas elected by the people of India...
seat from western Bihar, the Arrah constituency
Arrah (Lok Sabha constituency)
Arrah Lok Sabha constituency is one of the 40 Lok Sabha constituencies in Bihar state in eastern India.Arrah Lok Sabha constituency comprises the following seven Vidhan Sabha segments: Sandesh, Barhara, Arrah, Agiaon, Tarari, Jagdishpurand Shahpur.-Members of Parliament:Following is the list of...
, in the 1989 parliamentary election
Indian general election, 1989
General elections were held in India in 1989 to elect the members of the 9th Lok Sabha. The result was a loss for the Indian National Congress and Rajiv Gandhi, because all the opposition parties formed together a minority government under V. P. Singh and the National Front...
. Rameshwar Prasad
Rameshwar Prasad
Rameshwar Prasad is an Indian politician, belonging to the Communist Party of India Liberation. He is a Central Committee member of CPILiberation and the president of All India Agricultural Labourers Association ....
was the IPF parliamentarian from Arrah. In 1990 the organisation was able to win seven seats in the Bihar legislative assembly. IPF finished second in 14 constituencies. IPF had been able to win over a large share of the Scheduled Caste voters from the Indian National Congress
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
in Bihar. IPF voiced support for implementation of the recommendation of the Mandal Commission
Mandal commission
The Mandal Commission was established in India in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to "identify the socially or educationally backward." It was headed by Indian parliamentarian Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal to consider the question of seat...
, and also supported V.P. Singh's position to amend a 10% quota for economically weak sectors from upper castes. The IPF wanted reservations to be based on socio-economical factos.
Dam Bandho, Kaam Do
IPF also launched campaigns against price hikes and for the right to workRight to work
The right to work is the concept that people have a human right to work, or engage in productive employment, and may not be prevented from doing so...
, adopting a traditional leftist discourse. An All-India rally in Delhi with the slogan Dam Bandho, Kaam Do ('Check Prices, Give Jobs') was held on October 8, 1990. In the same month, the IPF organised a massive display of strength as it held a mass rally in Patna
Patna
Paṭnā , is the capital of the Indian state of Bihar and the second largest city in Eastern India . Patna is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world...
, one of the largest rallies ever seen in the capital city.
1991-1992
The IPF lost its Lok Sabha seat in the 1991 parliamentary electionIndian general election, 1991
General elections were held in India in 1991 to elect the members of the 10th Lok Sabha. The result of the election was that no party could get a majority, so a minority government was formed, resulting in a stable government for the next 5 years, under the new Prime Minister P.V...
, losing about a fifth of its votes compared to 1989 (having contested 15 Lok Sabha seats). The IPF suffered a severe blow when four of its Bihar legislative assembly members defected to Laloo Prasad Yadav, at the hight of polarisation around the Mandal issue.
On February 14, 1992, 14 Scheduled Caste landless labourers and followers of IPF were killed by the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh in Tikshora village near Patna.
In 1992 IPF won a seat in the Punjab legislative assembly election. IPF candidate Surjan Singh Joga won the Joga assembly seat.
Samajik Partivarthan Rally
On March 18, 1994 IPF organised the 'Samajik Parivarthan Rally' (Social Change Rally) in Patna. Tens of thousands of bare-footed, starving workers marched to Patna; some had traveled over 100 kilometers on foot to reach the venue. At the time political observers talked about the IPF as the fastest growing leftist movement in India.Disbanding
IPF was dissolved in 1994. From 1995 the CPI(ML)Liberation began contesting elections on its own, substituting the role of IPF.Affiliates
The Bihar Jhuggi-Jhopri Bashi Sangha (BJJBS), an organization of slum dwellers in Patna, was a major affiliate of IPF in BiharBihar
Bihar is a state in eastern India. It is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at and 3rd largest by population. Almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25, which is the highest proportion in India....
. The popular anti-liquor movement in Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand , formerly Uttaranchal, is a state in the northern part of India. It is often referred to as the Land of Gods due to the many holy Hindu temples and cities found throughout the state, some of which are among Hinduism's most spiritual and auspicious places of pilgrimage and worship...
was also a constituent of IPF from the founding conference.