6 - Red Scare

Summary

The sixth chapter, ‘Red Scare’, examines how the British Raj dealt with the communist threat. Viewed merely as a proxy of the Soviet Union, communist movements were relentlessly persecuted by the state. In an examination of the colonial state’s evolving response to the communist movement through an analysis of ‘conspiracy cases’ and other legislative, executive, and coercive mechanisms, I trace how the colonial state was instrumental in casting ‘communism’ and leftist politics in the subcontinent as essentially alien to India. Central to this argument was the way that ‘communism’ had been imagined by the state. Viewed from its very inception as ‘unnatural’ and ‘foreign’, and frequently likened to a ‘virus’ that could spread controllably if left unchecked, the state’s approach to communism provides significant insights into not just the nature of the state but also how it viewed the Indian political sphere. More importantly, it also shows how the state’s arguments were later appropriated by the nationalist movement and other forces inimical to the Left to delegitimize the latter’s politics. I argue that it was the Colonial State that was instrumental in fracturing the Left and its alliances with the other political movements. This explained in large measure how the Left came to be excised from histories of national liberation.