Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna: Revolutionary Propaganda in Colonial UP, 1907–27

The revolutionary movement in United Provinces had its beginnings initially under the influence of the anti-Partition movement in Bengal from 1905 onward. It, first, appeared in radical papers established in 1909 in Urdu and Hindi. Initially, it supported Tilak’s National Party with a tinge of Hindu revivalism, but radical socialist views also began to develop under the influence of the Ghadr movement of 1914–15. Despite repression, the 1920s saw a great increase in propaganda and revolutionary activity, especially under the influence of the Soviet Revolution. Bismil, the revolutionary martyr, played a special role in both propaganda and armed activity. The article argues that though the Kakori case ended in the execution of Bismil and his comrades, the propaganda they had carried on had lasting effect on the ideology of the revolutionary movement and the radicalisation of popular feeling in Uttar Pradesh (UP).

Internal Colonialism, Alien Rule, and Famine in Ireland and Ukraine

The Irish famine of the mid nineteenth century and the Ukrainian famine of the twentieth century have been the subject of large and quite contentious literatures. Whereas many popular explanations of the Irish famine attribute it to the English government’s infatuation with laissez-faire economic doctrines, by contrast the Ukrainian famine has often been ascribed to Stalin’s resentment of Ukraine’s resistance to the Soviet revolution. This essay suggests that despite their many differences, during these years both Ireland and Ukraine can be considered to have been internal colonies of their respective empires. The key implication of this conception is that these appalling famines arose from a common underlying cause: namely, the inferior political status of these regions relative to that of the core regions of these states. One of the defining characteristics of internal colonies is that they often suffer from alien rule. Alien rulers are typically indifferent to the welfare of the residents of the culturally distinctive regions within their borders. Due to this indifference, both the British and Soviet central rulers cast a blind eye to the fate of the Irish and Ukrainian peasants.

The October Revolution: Inspiration or Trauma for the New Left

Despite some reductionist attempts to define the 1960s and 1970s New Left as a predominantly intellectual, generational, political, or cultural phenomenon, it was clearly a vast, very pluralistic, diverse and predominantly leftist radical political and social movement. In the intellectual and political discourses expressing the general reflections of the New Left on revolution and its meaning, the October Revolution was, of course, an important historical theme. The many interested interpretations, while contradictory and diverging in various ways, have agreed primarily in their recognition of its fundamental emancipatory or liberating significance and in their criticism of Stalinism. To illustrate this thesis, the present paper surveys the views held by four most representative interpreters or critics of the Soviet revolution, who demonstrate the attitude of the New Left to the Russian revolution and to its aftermath: Marcuse, Debray, Dutschke, and Cohn-Bendit.

Value Pluralism and Philosophy of History

In my reply to George Crowder’s criticism of my essay on the Soviet Revolution in the last issue of Analyse & Kritik, I discuss two problems: the nature of a reasonable value pluralism and the relation between ethics and philosophy of history. Concerning the first, I insist on the necessity of an objective rank ordering of values; with regard to the second, I side with Kant, who builds philosophy of history on ethics, and reject the Marxist idea that ethics is itself grounded in philosophy of history.