ABSTRACT
The story of Punjab politics cannot be written solely from the perspectives of the rulers or even of their Indian collaborators. It has to explore politics outside the mainstream and enter zones of thinking and activity which were neither white nor black. The extremist politics of the radical left inhabit this grey area; and an understanding of them throws light on what was happening on rather more prominent stages and in much better-known arenas. In the Punjab, the 1920s saw communist and socialist activity whose dangers have been hugely exaggerated but whose significance is nevertheless not insubstantial. When Ghulam Husain1 was arrested as a key figure in the Cawnpore Conspiracy Case in 1924, the ripples of the Russian Revolution had already reached a distant Punjab, and had an impact not only through reports in the press but by word of mouth, whether from accounts of servicemen who returned home after the war, or from the graphic reports of muhajirs who had fought for Turkey against the British.2
