Revolutionary Pasts
Communist Internationalism in Colonial India

Raza traces the anti-colonial struggles of Indian revolutionaries in the context of Communist Internationalism during the last decades of the British Raj.

Ali Raza (Author)

9781108481847, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 April 2020

294 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.8 cm, 0.6 kg

'Revolutionary Pasts provides a deeply moving account of, and an important historical argument about, communism in India. Its insights resonate urgently with the present when, in India, every dissident is locked up on the grounds of being a dangerous communist - an “urban Naxal,” a “Maoist.” Without nostalgia, Revolutionary Pasts recovers radical lineages that are crucial for the future.' Ania Loomba, Pacific Affairs

In this engaging and innovative history of the communist movement in colonial India, Ali Raza reveals the lives, geographies, and anti-colonial struggles of Indian revolutionaries and how they sought to remake the world. Driven by the utopian visions of Communist Internationalism, Indian revolutionaries yearned and struggled for a global upheaval that would overthrow European imperialisms and radically transform India and the world. In an age marked by political upheavals, intellectual ferment, collapsing empires, and global conflicts, Indian revolutionaries stood alongside countless others in the colonized world and beyond in their desire to usher in a future liberated from colonialism and capitalism. Drawing from a wealth of archival materials, Raza demonstrates how Communist Internationalism was a crucial project in the struggle for national liberation and inaugurates a new approach to the global history of communism and decolonization.

1. Revolutionary pasts
2. Travellers, migrants, rebels
3. Break with the old world
4. This time is ours
5. Entangled histories
6. Red scare
7. A dream deferred
Postscript: utopias lost.

Subject Areas: Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Asian history [HBJF]