“If Christ were to reincarnate today, he would have chosen to live in Moscow!”: Communist internationalism of situation in twentieth-century Kerala

Keywords: internationalism, archives, Communism, Kerala,
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

My paper seeks to enrich the debate on the diversification of internationalisms by highlighting the dynamics of aesthetic manifestations of Communist internationalism in the southern Indian ‘region’ of Kerala from 1930s-1950s. While I primarily deploy Raza’s framework of Communist Internationalism to make sense of this spatio-temporal frame characterised by an affective relation with ‘the present’, I however make a major departure. Complicating his thesis of the demise of Communist internationalism after WWII and decolonization, I argue that Communist internationalism in Kerala persisted, if not intensified even beyond WW2 and Indian decolonisation. The second theme of my paper highlights the need to transcend official colonial archives, especially in this context, as they reinforce existing power structures and imperialist discourses, villainizing the Left as unreflexive, if not dangerous agents of the Soviet Union. Drawing from local and universal influences as diverse as Victor Hugo, Chekhov, Gandhi, Lenin, Christ and Mahabharata, I argue how non-archival resources like the literary and aesthetic movements, including the Progressive Literature Movement, exemplified in novels, poetry and theatre offer a snapshot of an idiosyncratic "internationalism of situation” i.e. identification under structurally similar forms of colonial, feudal and capitalist subjugation, which significantly influenced Kerala’s revolutionary politics.