Ajoy Ghosh was a target of the Chinese Communist Party in the twilight years of life for two reasons. At his last press conference as the CPI general secretary at the CPI headquarters, he lambasted the Chinese Communists' attempts to behave as the final judge for matters pertaining to Marxism and wisdom and claim that they knew the situation in India better than anybody else. He profoundly differed with acrobatics of terming Nehru as a 'running dog' of imperialism and of the Indian state as wholly representative of the reactionary big bourgeoisie and landlords serving the interests of their collaboration with imperialism. He asserted that as the General Secretary of the CPI, his views were the authoritative Communist views on India. now became as much the target of the CCP as of the 'Left' in the CPI.
Giving this background, Mohit Sen referred to the vicious personal slander campaign. unleashed against AG. "Even his ill-health was sneered at as being a pretext for frequent trips to Moscow. He was, in fact, quite unwell and scheduled to leave for Moscow for treatment in the autumn of 1961. He had already taken leave on medical grounds from General Secretaryship. E.M.S. Namboodiripad had taken over as Acting General Secretary. When he applied for formal permission to proceed to Moscow, E.M.S. informed him that this permission was being withheld. He was told that this was also in view of the prevailing inner-party situation. On his return, whatever view he expressed would be taken to be those of the CPSU. This would be unfair to those in the party who held different opposed views. It was not Ajoy Ghosh who told us what the Acting General Secretary had said, but the latter himself when he called a meeting of leading members of the apparatus of the central office of the CPI to clear misunderstandings. Ajoy could have had this decision overturned by calling a full meeting of the Central Secretariat and Central Executive Committee where the 'Left' was in a minority. He did not do so because he was personally involved and he was a very decent peson. E.M.S. had shifted closer to the 'Left' after Vijayawada and saw himself in a new historic role as the General Secretary of the CPI. It was quite a shock for some of us to see that such an important leader could be so small and inhuman. Ajoy Ghosh stayed on. He returned to work as the General Secretary when he should have been resting. In a few months thereafter he had to bear the brunt of leading the CPI in the 1962 general elections. In fact, he had wanted to go for treatment to Moscow in order to be fit enough to discharge this responsibility. In the course of campaigning he had a massive heart attack and died while being treated.
[From A Traveller and the Road: The Journey of an Indian Communist by Mohit Sen, Roopa and Co., New Delhi, 2003, p. 210-211]
__._,_.___