Reality Tarnished, Dream Intact

Neena Nehru’s The Revolutionaries captures the restless, questioning spirit of the 1960s generation — a class of privileged idealists caught between Marx and modernity, and between empathy and the comfort of their own privilege

- YAUVANIKA CHOPRA

In 1960s London, two young Indians — a South Indian girl from an administrative family and a North Indian boy from a feudal family — come together over Frank Sinatra songs and Francois Truffaut films. Aruna and Sandeep share rooms and thoughts with Nigerian, Indonesian and Iranian students whilst learning from British professors who encouraged them to question everything.

They share an upper-middle-class sympathy, fostered through elite liberal college education, for the struggles of the proletariat; they critique Indias “mai-baap” mentality and the descent into nepotism which accompanies every successful dynasty; they are critical also of self-indulgent “Palace Plotter” Pakistani revolutionaries quoting from Mao in planning to support Balochi independence alongside erstwhile Indian princesses who enjoy discussing Lenin's What is to be Done?

Everyone, after all, is a communist in their 20s. Except sometimes those members of the working class who do not have time to read Engels’ ‘The Dialectics of Nature. When Aruna attempts to politicise a group of Indian Punjabi housewives while on a “declassing mission’, she realises that her Hindi does not have the complexity - and simplicity - required to translate theory into dialogue. And her shock at aspects of their lives is a steady undercurrent: “Although she hid her feelings, Aruna was seething with indignation at the way the women were treated, no better than servants”

Yet she is aware of class disparity, and switches her academic career from interior design to architecture because: “I know that inequalities of wealth and opportunity can only truly be erased through political means, but I feel that is a very long-term ideal; in the meantime, everyone needs to be properly housed, educated, and have their basic needs met, and I would like to be able to contribute to that”