Rhyming Revolution: Marxism and Culture in Colonial Bengal

This article looks at communist engagement with literature in late colonial Bengal, and argues that the present Left hegemony in the state is largely based on the successful construction of a Marxist discourse in bhadralok cultural productions. By analyzing the verses of two iconic Marxist poets—Sukanta Bhattacharya and Samer Sen—I try to show how the terms of this discourse register important shifts from Marxist theory, and adapts to specific concerns of the Bengali intelligentsia, especially in regard to their self-perception and imagination of social transformation. Despite internal differences on the notion of revolution and revolutionary subject in such texts, the article tries to establish how the articulation of Marxism took on a distinctive middle class character in the process.