suchetna chattopadhyaya

Early Indian Communists and their Historian: An Interview with Suchetana Chattopadhyay

Suchetana Chattopadhyay, who teaches at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, has been producing some of the most important work on early Communist history. Her first book – An Early Communist: Muzaffar Ahmad in Calcutta, 1913-1929 (Tulika, 2011), traces not only the early life of  Kakababu but also the world of colonial and radical Calcutta. The book was reviewed when it came out by Vijay Prashad in Frontline. Most recently, Chattopadhyay has contributed an essay for our own new volume – Communi[...]

“Exiles From the Future”: Why Communist Histories

[courtesy counterpunch.org] Prof. Vijay Prashad is one of the most impressive scholars today. His recent anthology Communist Histories Volume 1 gathers together a series of essays by historians from across the globe that creates a new vision of Indian history and a Communist Party that was simultaneously aligned with the Soviet Union and a populist mass movement. I sat down for an interview with Prof. Prashad wherein we discussed this new volume and what it can teach activists today. The audi[...]