ABSTRACT
The left movement in India is witnessing a stern challenge to sustain itself against the onslaught of communal and capitalist forces. Although, as a socio-political movement it has achieved some success in building certain progressive politics, it has failed miserably to garner support from the lower classes and castes. Deeply caught in frameworks that are Eurocentric and deterministic it has not been able to develop a truly authentic critique of the political in Indian society. Many reasons have been advanced for this failure. Most of these explanations fasten to economic arguments drawn from various sub-forms of mainstream Marxism itself. However, this chapter argues if seen as a socio-political movement, the left movement was reverse colonized by the very ‘lifeworld’ (culture and society) it attempted to change. If one attempts to inquire of scholars analyzing the movement the limitations of the movement emerge from the caste and class composition of the movement. Just like in every aspect of the Indian society, the intellectual and moral labour is largely restricted to people drawn from elites and dominant groups, the non-intellectual labor is undertaken by people drawn from disadvantaged lower classes and castes. This is a paradox because it undermines the egalitarian ethos and goals of the left movement. For example, it is difficult to find any writing or literature produced by the foot soldiers or party workers, who have remained so all throughout their lives within the left movement. This chapter is an endeavour to comprehend this phenomenon by employing both theoretical explanations offered by Jacques Rancière, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and practical experiences of people who worked in the movement.
