M. N. Roy, the founder of the Communist Party of India, has been described by Robert C. North as ranking "with Lenin and Mao Tse-tung." This book, focusing on the career of Roy, traces the development of communism and nationalism in India from 1920 to 1939. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Raza traces the anti-colonial struggles of Indian revolutionaries in the context of Communist Internationalism during the last decades of the British Raj.
In 1957, Kerala became the first region in Asia to elect a communist government parliamentary procedure. Dilip Menon's book traces the social history of comunism in Malabar, the bastion of the movement, and looks at how the ideology was transformed into a doctrine of caste equality, as national strategies were reshaped by local circumstance and tinged by pragmatism. While existing literature concentrates on the intricacies of party policy, Dilip Menon explores the diversity of political practice within a particular region. He particularly analyses the relationship between landowners and cultivators, demonstrating their economic and cultural interdependence. Inequality and difference were tempered by a perception of shared symbols and values. As the author points out, the success of communism in Kerala lies in its recognition of this fact.
Examines the emergence of anti-imperialist internationalism during the interwar years from the perspective of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Here is the history of the disintegration of the Russian Empire, and the emergence of a multinational Communist state. Pipes tells how the Communists exploited the new nationalism of the peoples of the Ukraine, Belorussia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Volga-Ural area—first to seize power and then to expand into the borderlands.
Revolutionary Desires examines the lives and subjectivities of militant-nationalist and communist women in India from the late 1920s, shortly after the communist movement took root, to the 1960s, when it fractured. This close study demonstrates how India's revolutionary women shaped a new female – and in some cases feminist – political subject in the twentieth century, in collaboration and contestation with Indian nationalist, liberal-feminist, and European left-wing models of womenhood. Through a wide range of writings by, and about, revolutionary and communist women, including memoirs, autobiographies, novels, party documents, and interviews, Ania Loomba traces the experiences of these women, showing how they were constrained by, but also how they questioned, the gendered norms of Indian political culture. A collection of carefully restored photographs is dispersed throughout the book, helping to evoke the texture of these women’s political experiences, both public and private. Revolutionary Desires is an original and important intervention into a neglected area of leftist and feminist politics in India by a major voice in feminist studies.
In 1919, Bolshevik Russia and its followers formed the Communist International, also known as the Comintern, to oversee the global communist movement. From the very beginning, the Comintern committed itself to ending world imperialism, supporting colonial liberation, and promoting racial equality. Coinciding with the centenary of the Comintern's founding, Left Transnationalism highlights the different approaches interwar communists took in responding to these issues. Bringing together leading and emerging scholars on the Communist International, individual communist parties, and national and colonial questions, this collection moves beyond the hyperpoliticized scholarship of the Cold War era and re-energizes the field. Contributors focus on transnational diasporic and cultural networks, comparative studies of key debates on race and anti-colonialism, the internationalizing impulse of the movement, and the evolution of communist platforms through transnational exchange. Essays further emphasize the involvement of communist and socialist parties across Canada, Australia, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Latin America, South Africa, and Europe. Highlighting the active discussions on nationality, race, and imperialism that took place in Comintern circles, Left Transnationalism demonstrates that this organization - as well as communism in general - was, especially in the years before 1935, far more heterogeneous, creative, and unpredictable than the rubber stamp of the Soviet Union described in conventional historiography. Contributors include Michel Beaulieu (Lakehead University), Marc Becker (Truman State University), Anna Belogurova (Freie Universitat Berlin), Oleksa Drachewych (University of Guelph), Daria Dyakonova (Université de Montréal), Alastair Kocho-Williams (Clarkson University), Andrée Lévesque (McGill University), Lars T. Lih (Independent Scholar), Ian McKay (McMaster University), Sandra Pujals (University of Puerto Rico), John Riddell (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education), Evan Smith (Flinders University), S.A. Smith (All Souls College, Oxford), Xiaofei Tu (Appalachian State University), and Kankan Xie (Peking University).
Leftism in India, 1917-1947 provides a comprehensive account of the Leftist Movements in India during the most decisive phase of its struggle for freedom and describes how they interacted with the mainstream of the Indian Freedom movement under the leadership of the Indian National Congress, guided by its supreme leader Mahatma Gandhi and his ideology of non-violence. This ideology directly opposed those who believed in Marxism - Leninism and, little wonder, their policies clashed at almost every stage of the freedom movement. These clashes gave rise to the dramatic developments which are vividly described in this work. Each such development has been highlighted in its proper context, analysed with scholarly objectivity and supported by primary source materials collected not only from the Indian National Archives but also from Berlin, Paris, London, Mexico, Moscow and Tashkent.
