The recent publications of many kinds of source material on the beginnings of the Indian communist movement, including hitherto classified intelligence reports, creates the impression that the communist movement in those early days was a very powerful political force. The fact that in 1924, there was both a major strike in the Bombay textile mills and the launching of the Kanpur Conspiracy Case reinforces this impression of a well-organised, secret communist movement posing grave dangers to the government, and both the government and Communist Party leaders, for different reasons, seek to establish a causal relation between the two.