Newsletter - International Gramsci Society

Gramsci’s Presence in India
by
Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta
To understand the exact nature of Gramsci’s reception in India, it is necessary to keep
in mind certain historical complexities underlying it. Gramsci remained virtually an unknown
figure in India until the availability of Louis Marks (ed.), The Modern Prince and Other
Writings (New York, 1957). Very soon, this book was reviewed (in Bengali) in Parichay, a
well established left wing periodical, by Bhabani Sen, a very important political leader of the
then undivided Communist Party of India (in India the Communist Party was split in 1964).
However, the major atempt to introduce Gramsci to the Indian reader was made by Susobhan
Sarkar, a distinguished marxist historian, in his article “Thought of Gramsci” in Mainstream
(2 November 1968). Interestingly, till now the response of the mainstream political parties of
the left towards Gramsci has been rather lukewarm, if not indifferent. The availability of
Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York, 1971), the selection from the Letters from
Prison (London, 1979), the two volumes of Selections from Political Writings—1910-1920
and 1921-1926—(New York, 1977 and 1978), Selections from Cultural Writings (London,
1985), and a new selection of Prison Letters by Hamish Henderson (London, 1988)
throughout the 1970s and 1980s, however, evoked a very warm, serious and encouraging
response on the part of the marxist intellectuals towards Gramsci. This was largely facilitated
also by the publication and availability in India of the following commentaries on Gramsci:
John Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism (California, 1967); G.
Fiori, Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary (London, 1970); and A. Davidson, Antonio
Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography (London, 1977).
While the organised left parties in India formulated their political strategies primarily
in terms on a Soviet or Chinese model, basically adhering to a rather mechanical or
deterministic understanding of marxism, the intellectuals found in Gramsci an altogether
fresh approach to marxism with its emphasis on consciousness, praxis and, above all, a
framework for relating marxism to the history, society and culture of one’s own country.
Besides, there were also certain major political considerations underlying this appreciation of
Gramsci in India—a process that began in the 1970s and matured in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the late sixties and seventies it was a feeling shared by the left that the collapse of
India’s rather fragile political order was almost imminent, faced as it was by a severe political
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