Posts

The Apartheid Wall

On World Heritage Day, as we celebrate structures people in the past erected, let us remind ourselves of one monstrosity that the world allowed to be built, and allows to remain standing. No amount of spray-paint can sanctify it. We share an excerpt from Githa Hariharan’s essay in From India to Palestine (LeftWord, 2014). […] The wall, which Israel has been building despite its being declared illegal by the International Court of Justice, is officially called a Separation Barrier or a Se[...]

Planning from Below—and Above

We’ve all noted with admiration in several weeks past—with envy if you’re a chief minister outside Kerala—how Kerala has flattened its Covid-19 curve. While the state’s renaissance set in motion processes that led to what we have today, the role of the left front in the state’s development cannot be ignored. Here’s a 1996 article by E.M.S. Namboodiripad from Frontline that explains how the Left Democratic Front helped develop Kerala, from The Frontline Years (LeftWord, 2010). Pl[...]

Victor Kiernan

Victor Gordon Kiernan (1913–2009) was a British Marxist historian. He was part of the famous Communist Party Historians’ Group of the 1940s that included E.P. Thompson, Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton and others. Described by Hill as ‘one of the most versatile of British historians’, he is, however, not as well known as the others. Eric Hobsbawm, in this essay, taken from Across Time and Continents (ed. Prakash Karat, LeftWord, 2003), talked about this humble but brilliant man. Victor[...]

The Accidental Autocrat

In 1953, C. Rajagopalachari, chief minister of the erstwhile Madras State brought in the Modified Scheme of Elementary Education. It turned out to be his undoing. D. Veeraraghavan’s MPhil dissertation, edited and annotated, with an introduction by A.R. Venkatachalapathy as Half a Day for Caste?, offers a unique account of the fallout of the law and the pedagogy behind it. Here’s Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s foreword to the book: Rajaji was conservative. That, to borrow a part-phrase he coined[...]

Ambedkar and Communism

In 2017, we published a book titled India and Communism (also available in Hindi). Written by B.R. Ambedkar, it contained two finished chapters from an incomplete manuscript for a book which he would have called by that name. It offers insights into what he thought about communism. In his introduction to the volume, Anand Teltumbde discusses what is contained in the two chapters and what the rest of the book is about: […] Ambedkar spoke out about his reservations on Marxism. If he had comp[...]