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.
Author(s): Prasanta Dhar
Series: Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 217
City: Cham
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
