4 - This Time is Ours

Summary

The next chapter, ‘This Time Is Ours’, looks at a regional expression of leftist politics. I examine how the politics and ethics of communist internationalism acquired a distinctly regional flavour through a case study of the Kirti Kisan Party and its successors in the Punjab. Partly financed, supported, and constituted by the Ghadar Party, the Kirti Party was the most prominent communist network in British Punjab. Alongside the Communist Party of India (CPI), it was also the only communist group in India to have direct relations with the Comintern. Not only is this chapter an attempt to move beyond CPI-centred histories of the Left, it is also an examination of how intimately communism was woven in with localized idioms. At the same time, it is also a reminder of how deeply local politics was tied to global developments and the politics of Communist Internationalism. In tracing this trajectory, I explore what communism meant to those involved in it. I also explore the kinds of ethical subjects inaugurated, in person as much as in imagination, by the communist movement in India.