in South Asia
Arup Baisya
EPW
book reviewS
Democratic Governance and Politics of the Left
in South Asia edited by Subhoranjan Dasgupta; Delhi:
Aakar Books, 2015; pp v + 266, Rs 695.
BOOK REVIEW
class politics; it is not because of any conformity with class politics (p 50).
But, he stops short of formulating a
concrete agenda of class politics. The
capitalist assimilates the social division
into the technical division of labour, and
thus, under capitalism, communal identities are protected and reproduced to
assist the incessant drive towards reduction of variable capital, to reduce the
cost of production. The identity cleavages, thus, redefined by the capitalist
system itself, leave ample space for obscurantist forces to rise as a threat to
parliamentary democracy.
Maidul Islam, in his essay Indian Muslims and the Radical Democratic Project,
tries to formulate a programme encompassing class and identity issues, particularly to incorporate the Indian Muslim in
the project of the radical democratic peoples movement against the neo-liberal
system. Citing relevant data, he rightly
asserts that Indian Muslims, by and large,
do not own the major means of production, and, apart from being persecuted by
majoritarian communalism and facing a
number of disadvantages, it makes the
community a natural ally of the left.
Mid-Wicket Tales
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36
vol l no 48
EPW
BOOK REVIEW
EPW
References
Chattopadhyaya, Brajadulal (2010): Remembering Kosambi (190766), editorial note, The
Oxford India Kosambi, D D Kosambi, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Kosambi, D D (2010): The Oxford India Kosambi,
Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya (ed), New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Lenin, V (1965): A Great Beginning: Heroism of the
Workers in the Rear, Collected Works, Volume
29, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Thompson, E P (2010): The Poverty of Theory, New
Delhi: Aakar Books.
37