From his third-floor office in a Parel high-rise, 75-year-old Comrade Prakash Reddy watches a cityscape that tells a story of profound change. The veteran Communist Party of India (CPI) member peers through thick glasses at a horizon once dominated by textile mills and their smokestacks, now replaced by gleaming residential towers and shopping malls. As the CPI prepares to conclude its centenary celebrations, the view from Rudra Heights encapsulates the party's own complex journey in India's financial capital.
A Century of Struggle in a Transformed City
The Communist Party of India was founded on December 25, 1925, in Kanpur. Its valedictory centenary function in Mumbai's Dadar on December 26 prompts a reflection on the left's standing in a metropolis it once helped shape. The city's lanes once echoed with the revolutionary cry of inquilab zindabad (long live revolution) as thousands of girni kamgars (mill workers) fought for their rights, dreaming of a naya savera (new dawn).
The party's current headquarters itself symbolizes a shift. It now occupies two floors in the 22-storey Rudra Heights in Parel East, having moved from the iconic Dalvi building. In exchange for nine rooms it owned previously, the party's space now also houses the offices of the All India Federation, the Mumbai Girni Kamgar Union, and the National Federation of Indian Women. "The skyline has completely changed," sighs Reddy, a senior CPI member. "But the left movement survives in our struggle, even if we are not politically very strong."
Legacy of Achievements and Shifting Battlegrounds
CPI Secretary Milind Ranade, 63, recounts the movement's historic contributions. "Communists were at the forefront of the Royal Indian Navy revolt in 1946 and the Samyukta Maharashtra movement," he states. He credits left-led struggles for achieving the nationalisation of banks, the bonus system for workers, reforms in the LIC and GIC, and the abolition of the privy purses.
Ranade, who also leads the Maharashtra Municipal Kamgar Union and the Kachra Vahtuk Shramik Sangh, representing 15,000 members, emphasizes that the fight continues. "We took our fight to the Supreme Court to make 4,500 contractual safai karamcharis permanent. The spirit to fight for rights is alive," he asserts. The battlefields have changed since the era when over 200,000 workers toiled in the city's 60 cotton mills, supported by left-leaning cultural icons.
The Cultural Flame and Contemporary Challenges
The left's influence once extended deep into Mumbai's cultural heart. The communism-inspired Progressive Writers' Association (PWA) and the Indian Peoples' Theatre Association (IPTA) boasted members like legendary lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi. His poignant songs in the 1957 film Pyaasa gave voice to working-class anguish. Card-carrying CPI members included figures like P C Joshi and poet Kaifi Azmi, while Sajjad Zaheer, Ali Sardar Jafri, and Khwaja Ahmed Abbas bolstered the movement.
Today, preserving that legacy is a task taken up by people like Charul Joshi, 72, a former mill worker. She is organizing a photo exhibition of left-leaning writers and poets for the centenary event. "Post-independence, our target has changed, but the aim to help the working class remains," she explains. However, as noted by theatre and film director Ramesh Talwar, left-aligned theatre and cinema have suffered setbacks, with projects often struggling for commercial viability in a changed market.
As portraits of stalwarts like CPI founder and trade union leader S A Dange look down from office walls, the current generation of left activists in Mumbai navigates a landscape where old mills have made way for multinational corporations. Their mission, as they mark a century, is to adapt their century-old ideals of equity and justice to the new realities of 21st-century Mumbai.
