Friends of the Soviet Union was an organisation in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. It was founded by members of the

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Em ...

and the

All India Communist Party The All India Communist Party (AICP) was a communist party in India. It was formed after a split in the Communist Party of India in 1980, by a section of CPI cadres dissatisfied with the political changes that occurred during the 1978 Bhatinda con ...

as an alternative to the

CPI A consumer price index (CPI) is a price index, the price of a weighted average market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Changes in measured CPI track changes in prices over time. Overview A CPI is a statistic ...

controlled

Indo-Soviet Cultural Society The Indian Society for Cultural Co-operation and Friendship (ISCUF) is an organization in India promoting people-to-people cultural understanding and friendship. The organization was initially known as the Friends of the Soviet Union and, later, t ...

(ISCUS), after the break between CPI and the Congress in the national political scene.Bhattacharya, Mrimoy in Banerjee, Gopal (ed.), S.A. Dange – A Fruitful Life. Kolkata: Progressive Publishers, 2002. p. 141 The May 1981 inaugural conference of FSU was addressed by Indian Prime Minister

Indira Gandhi Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (; Given name, ''née'' Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was elected as third prime minister of India in 1966 ...

. In her speech Gandhi scolded the CPI/ISCUS, calling them 'self-appointed custodians' of Indo-Soviet friendship.Andersen, Walter K.. ''India in 1981: Stronger Political Authority and Social Tension'', published in Asian Survey, Vol. 22, No. 2, A Survey of Asia in 1981: Part II (Feb., 1982), pp. 119-135

References

Soviet Union friendship associations Civic and political organisations of India India–Soviet Union relations {{Soviet-stub