From: "Frank Conlon" <conlon@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2011 10:08 PM
Subject: H-ASIA: Circulation of Marxisms in South Asia query
> H-ASIA
> July 5, 2011
>
> Query re: Circulation of Marxisms in South Asia
> ************************************************************************
> From: Prasanta Dhar <prasantadhar@gmail.com>
>
> Circulation of Marxism through Calcutta between 1947 and 1977
>
> In the last century, Marxism circulated through Calcutta being transformed
> in conceptually innovative ways and with considerable shifts in
> understanding. By 1960s, the new Left of Calcutta polemicized the Marxists
> of 1930s and 40s, as is evident, e.g., the subaltern critique of the
> nationalist depiction of Indian history. It is believed that this radical
> democratic formation of the Calcutta Left fell apart by the 1970s, in the
> wake of the violent, directionless activities: of the ultra-Left on the
> one hand, and the authoritarian state on the other.
>
> Attempted histories of the global circualtion of Marxism, however, remain
> incomplete spatially as well as temporally. First, Marxist intellectual
> activities were as vibrant in Calcutta, as in New York or Paris or any
> other locale in the global North. Yet, when it comes to historicizing the
> Left, the global South is inadequately historicized. To argue against this
> totalizing of the Left as a northern phenomenon, I ask: i) to what extent
> the circulation of Marxism through Calcutta influenced its global
> understandings? Secondly, attempted histories of circulation of Marxism
> hardly compare the intellectual, social and institutional bases of the new
> Left with those of the old. Partha Chatterjee once suggested that in order
> to understand the ethico-political world of the subaltern historians, one
> should look into the new Left of Calcutta. Such linking can be fruitful, I
> believe, only when we compare these bases of the new Left with those the
> old Left. I thus ask: ii) to what extent the old Left could be seen as a
> precursor to both rise and the so-called demise of the new Left?
>
> Materials pertaining to the multi-directional flows of Marxism through
> Calcutta constitute an unexplored archive; housed in Calcutta, Paris,
> Moscow, and London etc. This vast archive is amenable to a combination of
> methodological tools from the disciplines of history, anthropology, and
> political theory. The two subfields I have identified are historiography
> and cultural history. As I see it, this is a project in intellectual
> history of an idea - one may say a Western idea - circulating in a
> non-Western, postcolonial site. I intend to compare the nature of
> circulation of Marxism in West European sites such as London and Paris,
> with that in Calcutta. In that order, I need to compare the
> historiographies of Marxism as it circualted through different cultural
> milieu.
>
> As for me, the researcher, I bring to this research a unique blend of
> interpretative skills, cultural understanding, and academic rigour. I can
> translate scholarly texts in Bengali & Hindi into English and vice-versa.
> My decades long involvement in leftist Group Theatre movement in Calcutta
> suburb endowed me with the historical instinct at the core of this
> project,
> which was polished during my undergraduate training at the University of
> Toronto.
>
> As I start my graduate work to historicize the circulation of Marxism
> through Calcutta between 1947 and 77, I welcome your valuable input on the
> ideas / resources / methods relating to this topic. Also, any general
> input
> on historiography and cultural history would be valuable. I thank you
> kindly in anticipation.
>
>
> Prasanta Dhar
>
> PhD Student
> Department of History
> University of Toronto
> Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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