The Popular Front and the Global Circulation of Marxism through Calcutta, 1920s-1970s

Description

This book examines the global circulation of Marxism seen from one of its most highly charged sites: Calcutta in India. Building on but also revising existing approaches to global intellectual history, the book presents the circulation of Marxism through Calcutta as a historically-sited problem of mass mediation. Using tools from media studies, the book explores the way that Marxism was presented to the public, the technologies used, and the meanings of Marxism in twentieth-century Calcutta. Demonstrating how the Popular Front was split between the so-called 'people's group' and those whom were called 'intellectuals', the book argues that the people's group generally identified themselves as Marxists and preferred audio-visual media such as theatre, while the so-called intellectuals privileged academic rigour and print media, usually referring to themselves as Marxians. Thus, the author reveals a polyphony of Marxisms in the Popular Front. Tracing Marxism back to the Bengal Renaissance and the Swadeshi and Naxal movements, this book shows how debate around the meaning of 'Marxism' continued throughout the 1970s in Calcutta, and eventually engendered the historiographical movement that has come to be known as Subaltern Studies.  Series Editor’s Foreword Titles Published Titles forthcoming Acknowledgements Contents 1 Introduction Marxism and Publics Marx’s Own Writings and the Political Economies of Their Circulation Meanings of Marxism in Calcutta A Prehistory of Subaltern Studies The Global Circulation of Marxism Through Calcutta The Chapters 2 Of Homelands and Revolutions Swadeshi Culturalism and Communist Internationalism The Associations Before the Swadeshi: Their Techniques and Ideologies The Swadeshi Associations: Their Technologies and Textualities Swadeshi Culturalism and Socialist Internationalism: The Double Bind The Making of the Indian Resistance The Narrative of the Indian Renaissance Aurobindo’s Renaissance in India A Marxian Rendition of the Indian Renaissance: M. N. Roy’s India in Transition “Historic Materialism” and the “Transition” Narrative Conclusion 3 Popular Front and the Polyphony of Marxism Marxism Before the Popular Front “Actually Existing Socialism”: The Soviet in India The Indian Students Abroad: The Academic Circuits of Marxism The Split Between the Marxists and the Marxians Marxism in Jail: The Prisoners of the Meerut Conspiracy Case The Marxians on the Right: The Representations of the Intellectual The Left Marxians and the Representations of the Intellectual The Popular Front and the Representations of the Intellectual Polyphony of Marxism in the Popular Front Progressive Writers Association “Bhadra Sanskriti” Versus “Jana-Sanskriti” Indian People’s Theatre Association Conclusion 4 Meanings of Marxism: The Debate on the Bengal Renaissance and Marx’s Notes on Indian History The Various Versions of the Indian Renaissance Loyalist Historians and the Anti-Muslim Version of the Renaissance Narrative The Right Marxians and the Indian Renaissance Institute The Left Marxians & the Notes on the Bengal Renaissance The Marxist Literary Debate and Marx’s Notes on Indian History The Cold War and the Separation of the Right and the Left Marxians The Peasant Bourgeois as the Agent of the Bengal Renaissance The Case Against the Awakening of the Peasant Bourgeois Reading Marx’s Notes on Indian History 664–1858 Conclusion 5 The Afterlife of the Popular Front and the Academisation of Marxism Decolonisation and the Triumvirate of the Cold War Indian Institutes for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation The Soviet Institutions in India The Asiatic Mode of Production: The Limitations of Marx’s Writings on India The American Funders and Scholars The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity The Bengal Renaissance and the Euro-American Academia Cultural Revolution, Reading Gramsci and the Intellectual The Afterlife of “the Bengal Renaissance” Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and the Bengal Renaissance Conclusion 6 Conclusion Literature on Mass Mediation Mass Mediation: Technology, Publics, Meanings Technology: Book History Versus History of Circulation Marxist Publics: The Popular Front and the Public Intellectual Meanings of Marxism: Subaltern Studies and the Representations of the Intellectual Bibliography Author Index Subject Index