‘The muck of the past’: revolution, social transformation, and the Maoists in India

Abstract

This article analyses revolutionary social change by exploring how people attempt to create a radically different future by taking action in the present, and the challenges that beset this transformation. Examining the relationship between the future, the present, and the past, the article takes the case of the spread of armed underground Maoist guerrillas in India to ask two questions: First, why does India hang on to this form of utopianism when the rest of the world appears to have abandoned it? Second, how and why does the 'muck of the past' influence the production of a radically different future? In answering these questions, this article suggests that for both processes of radical social change and our theories of them, we need to reinsert our analyses of politico-economic conditions into our ideologies of social change.Both for the production on a mass scale of ... communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessarily, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.Marx & Engels 1846 [1970]: 94-5, original italics, bold added Anthropology has spent much time thinking about the present, and the past in the present: that is, the extent to which the past has affected and is reflected in the present. The future has also increasingly troubled scholars (see, e.g., Guyer 2007; Maurer 2002; Munn 1992; Zaloom 2009). But the question of how people create a radically different future in the present through revolutionary action, and the challenges that beset this, the subject of this Malinowski Lecture, demands greater attention. 1 Towards the end of his life, Malinowski was deeply concerned about the future. Disturbed by Hitler's National Socialism, he lectured on the disastrous consequences of totalitarian regimes for humanity. At the time of his death, he was writing Freedom and civilisation (1947), laying out the dangers to democracy and freedom in modern societies. Their advanced political organization, he argued, always came with the potential to abuse power for the benefit of the few and the denial of freedom for the many. In * Malinowski Memorial Lecture, 2012.

Now: prefigurative politics through a north Indian lens

“…Prefigurative politics sometimes rests upon a self-conscious denial of the past. In the Anonymous Movement, for example, participants efface their personal and wider history as a precondition of participation, and Maoist leaders in central India are required to engage in a similar renunciation of the past (Shah, 2014). In other cases people draw on the past to develop prefigurative programmes.…”

Revolution

“…[2] On the other hand, though, Sahrawi refugees also experience their revolution as a new moral contract between governing authorities and governed constituencies (Wilson 2016b: 238-43 were operating under cover in terrains such as the jungles of Jharkhand. The marginalization of Jharkhand's tribal populations also motivated locals to support, and sometimes join, insurgents who were intent upon challenging that marginalization (Shah 2014). The guerrillas were expected to give up personal ties; but before becoming revolutionaries, many senior guerrilla leaders had in their youth been religious renouncers who had already abandoned personal possessions and ties.…”

‘To Fill Yourself with Goodness’: Revolutionary Self‐Making in Bolivarian Venezuela

“…Such statements epitomised the concerns that chavistas had about the capacity of themselves and their comrades to rid themselves of what Alpa Shah terms ‘the muck of the past’ (Shah, : 347). A common trend among chavistas in El Camoruco was that activists who had been politically active for some time often expressed doubts about the commitment or authenticity of newer comrades.…”