We Shall Overcome

The future of the Left in India will be decided by the ability of the movement to rebuild and deepen its links with the working people

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A hundred years is long enough for political currents to appear and disappear.

Parties have risen on slogans and vanished in silence. What has endured in India, despite repression, distortions and political headwinds, is the Left movement. It has endured because it has always belonged to the working people of this country; to their labour, their dignity, and their dreams of a society free from exploitation. From the earliest murmurings of radical thought during anti-colonial resistance to the mass struggles of peasants and workers, from the severe blows of state repression to the experience of forming governments that delivered transformative reforms, the Left has left an indelible mark on modern India. The history of the Left is not parallel to the history of the nation, but it is rather interwoven with it.

The popular misconception that Left ideas were imported from abroad collapses the moment we revisit our own history with honesty. For example, in 1836, even before Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels joined the 'League of the Just', Vaikunda Swamikal, a social reformer who lived near the present day Marthandam (part of the erstwhile Travancore) started a utopian socialist movement called 'Samathwa Samajam'. This is just one example. In fact, an investigation into the history of most societies and civilisations will reveal many examples of historical, mythological or intertwined narratives of a just and egalitarian society.

The 1905 Russian Revolution electrified the world, but India already had its own revolutionary impulses. The Anushilan Samiti in Bengal and the Ghadar Party in North America reflected an uncompromising resistance to colonial rule and a belief that freedom cannot be begged, it has to be seized. The Ghadarites, many of whom later became communists, carried the message that national liberation was inseparable from social liberation.