Socialist Studies - Fall 2018 - Complete Issue

Sean Cain

doi:10.18740/ss27272

Abstract

Socialist Studies - Fall 2018 - Complete Issue

Highlights

Introduction to the Special IssueRadha D'Souza, Kasim Ali TirmizeyThe Conceptual World of the GhadaritesRadha D'Souza “The Typical Ghadar Outlook”: Udham Singh, Diaspora Radicalism, and PunjabiAnticolonialism in Britain (1938-1947) Silas WebbIn the Shadow of Ghadar: Marxism and Anti-Colonialism in Colonial Punjab Ammar Ali JanThe Madness of Jodh Singh: Patriotism and Paranoia in the Ghadar Archives Rohit ChopraWorkers and Militant Labour Activists from Punjab in Bengal (1921-1934)Suchetana Chattopadhyay
The pertinent question in relation to the Ghadar movement is this: how are we to understand the distinction between system and “lifeworld,” if at all, in a context where the “system” is capitalist /imperialist/ modernist and the “lifeworld” is South Asian/ Indic Enlightenment/ anticolonial? What was the “lifeworld” of the Ghadar leaders that informed their understanding of nationalism and state, secularism and religion, liberation and justice? Whereas their actions were directed at modern colonialism, their frames of reference for ethical action, the essence of politics, was formed by Sikh, Sufi, Bhakti and other dissident world views as articulated by the poet-saint traditions in the subaltern social histories in Punjab, Sindh and Northwest regions of the subcontinent
The Ghadar opposition to imperialism interweaves two strands of thought : one modern about political power entailed in ideas of secularism, republicanism, democracy, egalitarianism and such and another traditional, the ethical and moral basis for political action as articulated in the philosophical and intellectual traditions of Indic Enlightenment led most prominently by the poet-saints of the subcontinent

Summary

Introduction to the Special Issue

Radha D'Souza “The Typical Ghadar Outlook”: Udham Singh, Diaspora Radicalism, and Punjabi. 1983; Sareen 1994; Singh 1966; Singh and Singh 1989) These books may not have succeeded in competing with the official histories written in British, Indian and Pakistani universities, but they did keep the memories of the movement alive among new generations of activists and post-independence social movements in the subcontinent. The Ghadar movement took from pre-existing forms of rebellion in society such as banditry and dacoity common in peasant societies and “translated” and “transposed” those practices for the counter-hegemonic project of national liberation against imperialism and colonialism This translation was the result, precisely because of the encounter of the Ghadrites with Western socialists. As new migrants arrived in thousands in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, organisations such as the Indian Workers’ Association Great Britain which was born among diaspora as a result of the union of socialist and anti-colonial struggles, would “anchor far left politics and industrial action in London and the Midlands throughout the postwar period and era of deindustrialisation.” We are back to where we began: the need to revive, re-theorise and repoliticise the relationship between diaspora and neo-colonial/ imperialist politics

Conclusion

Introduction

Findings