Although the Communist Party of India (CPI) was established as a political party in October 1920, it was constantly suppressed by the
British Indian government and had to work as an underground movement. In June 1941,
Adolf Hitler attacked the USSR and CPI changed its strategy in viewing World War II not as an "imperialistic war" but as a "people's war against fascism". It also decided to support the Allied powers so as to defeat
Nazi Germany. In July 1942, the British rulers of India legalised the
Communist Party of India in return for its support to the British war effort. With this, CPI was also permitted to import books from the USSR and to publish its own party literature. Thus, People's Publishing House (PPH) started as a publishing and book distributing arm of the
Communist Party of India in 1942. It was officially incorporated as a private limited company on 12 March 1947. Although the PPH was officially established in 1942, after the CPI was legalised, the underground CPI had already published booklets under the name People's Publishing House since 1921. In 1921 it published a 43-page booklet titled
Thesis on the organization and Structure of the communist Parties. This booklet was also published in the same year in Hindi as well. In 1935, PPH published Frank Verulam's 46-page booklet titled
Imperialism and the People. In 1939, PPH published
Dona Torr's 31 pages booklet ''From Imperialist War to People's War''. In 1942, CPI rented a three-storey house, Raj Bhuvan, on the Sandhurst Road (now Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel Marg) in
Bombay. CPI's Party Headquarters (popularly known as PHQ) was established in this building. Several senior leaders of CPI and other workers used to live and work in the PHQ along with their families. People's Publishing House (PPH) and the
Hand Composing section of New Age Printing Press was also housed in the Raj Bhuvan building. The Hand Composing department of New Age Printing Press was located on the ground floor of Raj Bhuvan. Nearby, on Khetwadi Road, another half portion of a building, known as RK Building, and the top storey of another house was also rented by CPI. An English
Linotype machine was established on the Khetwadi Road building, and New Age Printing Press was also housed there. PPH's retail office was established on the third floor of this building. On the First Floor of the RK Building, Photographer
Sunil Janah used to have a
Darkroom. After the end of the Second World War,
B.T. Ranadive had decided to change the name of ''People's War
to People's Age''. In its formative years, PPH only published Marxist classics; literature belonging to the Second World War; and one or two story books by Soviet writers. The first book came out of the press in November 1942 and it was
Gangadhar Adhikari's ''From Peace Front to People's War
. The first edition that was published in November 1942 was in booklet form. The second edition, published in June 1944, was an enlarged one. Adhikari was the former General Secretary of CPI, who served this position between 1933 and 1935. In 1942, PPH also published a 46-page booklet by Sharaf Athar Ali titled Against Hitler – The Voice of Free Germany''. PPH also published, in 1943,
Mikhail Sholokhov's story
Hate; Elena Kononenko's story
Tanya; and
Nikolai Tikhonov's
Tales of Leningrad as separate booklets.
Tanya was also translated into
Gujrati and
Urdu. Its Urdu translation was done by
Ali Sardar Jafri. In 1943, PPH also reprinted
The Army of the Soviet Union by Prof. I Minz. This book was originally published a year before, in 1942, in Moscow. In April 1943, PPH published a pamphlet titled
Kisans on the March - For Food and Freedom, edited by the communist leader
E. M. S. Namboodiripad who later became the first chief minister of
Kerala. From 1943 onwards, PPH started to distribute Soviet books in India. National Book Agency (NBA), which was based in
Calcutta, had started distributing Soviet books in 1945. NBA was established by noted Marxist leader
Muzaffar Ahmad along with his colleagues Rebati Burman and Suren Kar in 1939. NBA is still functioning today from its historic premises 12 A, Bankim Chatterjee Street, Calcutta. Both PPH and NBA were the only distributor of Soviet books in British India. In 1944, PPH published
Otto Kunsinen's
Finland Unmasked, which was a 35-page booklet and available for 6
Annas;
Friedrich Engels's
Ludwig Feurbach; and
Molotov's New Powers of the Soviet Republics. In the same year it also published
PC Joshi's booklet
Among Kisan Patriots. In 1944 PPH started publication of a two volume series of
Historical Writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was the first Indian edition of Marx and Engels's works. Volume 1 of this series was published in 1944 and volume 2 was published in 1945. In 1944, PPH also published a 459-page book titled
The History of the October Revolution that was edited by
Maxim Gorky,
Vyacheslav Molotov,
Kliment Voroshilov,
Sergei Kirov,
Andrei Zhdanov and
Joseph Stalin. Maxim Gorky's reminiscences
Days with Lenin was published by PPH in January 1944. Just a few months before
Indian independence, PPH was organised as a trust on 12 March 1947, and it became a rivate limited company. Another entity was established under the name People's Book House in Rangoon city of
Burma. In several other cities of India, namely
Nagpur,
Poona,
Patna,
Trichur,
Allahabad and
Calicut, several People's Book Houses (PBH) were established in 1947 selling Soviet books and magazines. In
Vijaywada, a Prajashakti Publishing House was established in 1947. In 1947 PPH published the first Indian edition of the book
India Today by
R. Palme Dutt. During the late 1940s, all the People's Book Houses, National Book Agency (NBA) and Prajasakti Publishing House had directly served as the branches of PPH. Presently, NBA and Prajasakti are no longer associated with PPH, and are currently associated with
Communist Party of India (Marxist), which split from the CPI in 1964. CPI started a
Telangana Rebellion preceding independence. This movement gained momentum which led to, in 1948, most of the CPI's important leaders going underground to avoid arrest. PPH was not flourishing during this time, but in order to distribute books and other literature in Delhi, two volunteers, Atul Sawani and Madan Bakaya, arrived from Bombay and established a book shop called Delhi Book Centre on Irwin Road (now Baba Kharak Singh Marg) in
Connaught Place. This area was a calm market of Delhi in those days and intellectuals of Delhi often walked through this market to search for books. So for CPI, having a book shop in this area was of important value. But because of Telangana Rebellion, this was done very discretely and in different names to avoid attention of police. In 1950 a Marx House was established by CPI in Connaught Place, which was a meeting place for intellectuals and Soviet books and periodicals were available here for sale. It functioned for a year or two. CPI also opened a third book shop, Minerva Book Stall, in Connaught Place at this time. During this time of the Telangana Rebellion, the offices and Bombay Headquarters of PPH were also raided by the police in search of proscribed literature. In 1951, CPI ended the Telangana Rebellion and the Nehru Government had lifted its sanctions on the party. Just before the General Elections of 1951, CPI headquarters had moved from Bombay to Delhi. It was first established on Keeling Road (now
Tolstoy Marg) in Connaught Place. In 1952, it was shifted to a building called Pahwa Mansion on Asaf Ali Road. A nearby building, called Khanna Building, was also rented. Several volunteers from both the newspaper
Janyug (meaning People's Age in Hindi) and PPH were moved from Dev Nagar (Rohtak Road, Delhi) into this Khanna Building and it became the PPH headquarter in Delhi for next couple of years. The New Age Printing Press was accommodated in
Paharganj area. In 1951, a few leaders of CPI had opened a book shop called Progs Books in Connaught Place. It became a meeting point of CPI members from all over the country. In the same year, Connaught Place Showroom of PPH was established by renting half of a shop from the chemist Nath Brothers. In its heyday, many stalwarts of Indian culture, cinema and literature including
Ali Sardar Jafri,
Kaifi Azmi,
Shabana Azmi and
Annu Kapoor and others used to visit this showroom and purchase books. Between 1956 and 1958, CPI established a three-storey building for PPH on 5E, M.M. Road of Delhi (now Rani Jhansi Road, Jhandewalan, Delhi). New Age Printing Press was established on the ground floor of this building, from where the newspaper
Janyug and the English newspaper
New Age were printed. People's Publishing House was established on the second floor of this building. This building was named
R. Palme Dutt Bhawan, after the noted British Communist leader who visited India in 1946. On the second floor stairs of this building hung a photo of R. Palme Dutt that was taken by CPI in 1946 during his India visit. This photograph was there until very recently and might have been moved to CPI headquarters at Ajoy Bhawan in Delhi. By 1948, PPH was publishing and selling books by the Hindi author
Rahul Sankrityayan all over India, despite the fact that he had resigned from the Communist Party. Hindi author
Ram Vilas Sharma had started his literary career at PPH. In 1950s, noted Hindi writer
Nirmal Verma and veteran leader of
Communist Party of India (Marxist) Ram Aasre were associated with PPH and had translated Soviet Books for the publishing house. Verma translated
Alexander Fadeyev's Parajay, The Rout (पराजय) and the stories of
Alexander Kuprin into Hindi. Aasre translated
Maxim Gorky's
Literary Portraits (साहित्यिक संस्मरण) into Hindi. Narottam Nagar translated
21 Russian Stories (21 रूसी कहानियाँ) and
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's Stories (नेकी और बदी) into Hindi. In the months leading to the
collapse of Soviet Union, there was a period of
political instability in USSR. During this time, PPH stopped receiving Marxist literature because of
policy changes in the USSR. When Indian readers feared that Russian books were going to disappear forever, they rushed to PPH bookstores to buy entire volumes of Marx and Lenin. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians kept on supplying books to PPH till 1995. PPH continued selling these books until early 2000s from huge stockpiles that it purchased during the Soviet era. For importing Soviet Books into India, PPH directly dealt with Soviet Exports Agency for Books and Periodicals –
Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga (MK). == Soviet literature and India ==