This insightfulnew introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s two most important works presents the full text of Reform or Revolution and The Mass Strike,with explanatory notes, appendices, and introductions.
One of the most important Marxist thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century, Rosa Luxemburg is finding renewed interest among a new generation of activists and critics of global capitalism.
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Translated from the Hindi by Madhu Singh With a foreword by Angela Y. Davis
September 1970. Ramchandra Singh enters the Hardoi District Jail in Uttar Pradesh as a naxalite undertrial. Barely twenty, his life of expanding prospects—in studies, politics and love—is reduced to the horizon of a life term. The odds are stacked against the survival of his humanity and imagination, but Singh regenerates his gifts of empathy, humour, reflection and, above all, language—in a secret diary smuggled out with the help of friends.
A singular record of recent history and of individual witness, Singh’s prison diary, newly expanded, appears in English for the first time. Offering unprecedented intimacy with the everyday life of the imprisoned everyman, Singh challenges us to look without flinching and question our assumptions about crime and punishment.
Ramchandra Singh (1949–2018), of Bangarmau village in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, was a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Red Star, and served on its Central Committee. He was part of the editorial board of Red Star Monthly (Hindi). He passed away when this book was in press.
Madhu Singh is a professor in the Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow. She has previously translated the scholar G.N. Devy’s work, A Nomad Called Thief, into Hindi as Ghumantu Hain Chor Nahin.
Arrow of God is a 1964 novel by Chinua Achebe, his third. It followed his book Things Fall Apart. These two works, along with the third book, No Longer at Ease, are sometimes called The African Trilogy, as they share similar settings and themes. The novel centers on Ezeulu, the chief priest of several Igbo villages in Colonial Nigeria, who confronts colonial powers and Christian missionaries in the 1920s. The novel was published as part of the influential Heinemann African Writers Series.
The phrase “Arrow of God” is drawn from an Igbo proverb in which a person, or sometimes an event, is said to represent the will of God. Arrow of God won the first ever Jock Campbell/New Statesman Prize for African writing.
‘To be sure, When Google Met WikiLeaks is a vital book, an admirably direct and clear-eyed attempt to make sense of the modern-day privacy and freedom of speech debates’—The Sunday Guardian
‘For those interested to know how present-day geopolitics, surveillance, censorship and publishing (if not foreign policy itself) are being shaped by the gods of the internet, this is recommended reading’—The Telegraph
‘In When Google Met Wikileaks, Assange makes a case for the dark net by suggesting that the open web site we all know best has sinister intentions’—The Independent
‘The most important accomplishment of the book may be the connection Assange establishes between the Google Politic and the ambitions set loose in Digital Age’—Prague Post
Stretcher-Bearer of Empire
In the pantheon of global liberation heroes, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has pride of place. Leaders like Mandela have lauded him as being part of the epic battle to defeat the white regime and prepare the way for a non-racial country. A popular sentiment in South Africa goes: ‘India gave us Mohandas, and we returned him to you as Mahatma’.
Against this background, The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire unravels the complex story of a man who, throughout his stay on African soil (1893–1914), remained true to Empire while expressing disdain for Africans. For Gandhi, whites and Indians were bound by an Aryan bloodline that had no place for the African. His racism was matched by his class (and caste) prejudice towards the Indian indentured. He persistently claimed that they were ignorant and needed his leadership, and wrote their struggles out of history—struggles this book documents.
The authors show that Gandhi never missed an opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty to Empire, with a particular penchant for war. He served as stretcher-bearer in the war between Brit and Boer, demanded that Indians be allowed to carry fire-arms, and recruited volunteers for the imperial army in both England and India during the First World War.
Ashwin Desai is Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. His previous books include South Africa: Still Revolting, ‘We are the Poors’: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa and Reading Revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island among others.
Goolam Vahed is Associate Professor of History at the University of KwaZulu Natal. He writes on histories of migration, ethnicity, religion, and identity formation among Indian South Africans.
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