early communits

Remembering Comrade Rebati Barman

Comrade Rebatimohan Barman (1903/05 – 6 May 1952) was a full-time organiser of the undivided Communist Party of India and a communist intellectual. Comrade Barman was born in a family of legal practitioners and died from leprosy, a disease of the poor, contracted in prison. Comrade Barman’s political life had begun in the revolutionary nationalist fold. The mass upsurges from below made him recognise and reject the proprietor class positions embodied within anti-colonial nationalism. He con[...]

R.B. More makes his first address to a Bombay audience

Ramchandra Babaji More was one of the leaders of the Mahad Satyagraha in 1927. A great admirer and follower of B.R. Ambedkar, he later joined the Communist Party of India (and the CPI[M] in 1964); though that didn’t sour his relationship with Ambedkar who remained his friend. Today we’re sharing an extract from our book Memoirs of a Dalit Communist: The Many Worlds of R.B. More by his son Satyendra More. Translated from the Marathi by Wandana Sonalkar and edited by Anupama Rao, it also cont[...]

Liberate the Colonies! Voices from the Global Struggle for Freedom

‘I come from the Indies; I have travelled forty days.’ These words were addressed by Tan Malaka of the Communist Party of the Dutch East Indies to the Congress of the Toilers of the Far East—convened by the Comintern. He had been asked to conclude his speech as his time was up. He was in no mood to comply. Fighters for justice are not easily silenced, even by their comrades! The speaker hadn’t travelled forty days to discuss the political situation back home with foreigners. Divided by [...]

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[...]