Translating The Communist Manifesto in colonial Bombay

Radhika Saraf (National University of Singapore & King’s College London)

During the period of radical politics in colonial Bombay, Indian communists used translation as a key mode of imagination and political action to negotiate the tension between caste and class in their struggle to create a unified working-class movement. A central text of this process was the Kamyunista Jahirnama , the first Marathi translation of the Communist Manifesto in 1930-31 by Gangadhar Adhikari, one of the accused in the Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929. In this paper, I argue that the Jahirnama plays a crucial role in the very creation of the category of the proletariat – the revolutionary vanguard class – in the context of colonial Bombay, and is marked by the Bombay Marxists’ struggle to define kamgar (worker) in relation with dalit (‘untouchable’). Given that the term dalit was not commonly used to denote the depressed classes in the 1930s, the use of the term dalit and the multiple ways in which it is used in the Jahirnama signifies an attempt to redefine both kamgar and dalit , even as the Jahirnama presents itself as a moment in which a reconciliation of the caste and class question seems plausible. However, in mistranslating the meaning of freedom and revolution, the Bombay Marxists demonstrate a tendency for a labour fetish, which would adversely impact their address of the caste and minority question and delimit the revolutionary thrust of the communist movement. If this failure becomes stark in light of contemporary attacks on citizenship and concomitant identity-based assertion, the Jahirnama is a first instance of foreclosure of constitutional protection for political minorities despite the tenuous link between property and citizenship, but also a potent discourse for radical change and bridge between the caste and class question, rendering its continued relevance as a text that must be read, re-read and reclaimed.

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