The anticolonial struggle in South Asia has often been narrowly portrayed as a nonviolent, Gandhian-led movement centered on civil disobedience. However, the fight against British colonialism in India was far more complex and revolutionary—a multilayered resistance that encompassed diverse ideologies, tactics, and visions for liberation. This session shifts the focus to the socialist currents within India’s freedom struggle, highlighting the radicals who envisioned not just political independence but a complete revolutionary transformation of society.
While the bourgeois nationalist leadership sought to establish a liberal postcolonial state, socialist revolutionaries—organized in parties, trade unions, and peasant movements—fought for an egalitarian, classless India, firmly aligned with global anticolonial and proletarian struggles. The Russian Revolution of 1917 electrified South Asia’s revolutionaries, inspiring an internationalist perspective that linked India’s emancipation with worldwide socialist liberation. Moreover, this internationalism provided a crucial ideological weapon against the rise of fascism, positioning India’s revolutionaries within a broader global front of anti-imperialist and anti-fascist resistance. This session critically examines these revolutionary movements and moments in late colonial South Asia, reclaiming the legacy of socialist anticolonialism beyond the dominant narrative of Gandhi. By doing so, we explore how these struggles continue to inform visions of international solidarity and revolutionary futures today.