ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Russian RevolutionSubscribe to Russian Revolution

Vernacular Communism

Satyabhakta’s engagements with communist politics, the Hindi print public sphere, and workers’ movements in the Gangetic heartland often intermeshed caste, gender, and nationalism, with an indigenous communism. Signifying a strand of the Hindi literary project, he represents some of the suppressed traditions of left dissent, and takes us back to debates between internationalism and nationalism, materialism and spiritualism, class and caste. Even if his ideas were, at times, amateur, they provide us with the everyday lived realities of communist lives, and utopian dreams of equality, which need to be taken into account and historicised seriously.

 

Russian Revolution in Perspective

The October Revolution of 1917 profoundly influenced the course of the Indian freedom movement in multiple ways. It gave “impetus to Indian political aspirations,” widened the base of the freedom struggle by making industrial workers and peasants active participants, and endowed the movement with a progressive outlook. The revolution’s principles resonated deeply among the people and leaders of the Indian freedom movement. In fact, many of the values enshrined in our Constitution, adopted post independence, were inspired by the lofty ideals of the Russian Revolution.

Globalisation: A Saga of Poor Understanding

The experience of the Bolsheviki in the Russian revolution has lessons to offer the Indian left, if only it would read history. Rising from its disarray, the left could make the demand for effective democratic panchayati raj institutions with full autonomy a rallying point for struggle against the current system and so raise mass consciousness.

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