Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/231422
Title: THE DISENCHANTMENTS OF LABOUR: MARXISM AND THE FIGURATIONS OF MINORITY IN COLONIAL BOMBAY
Authors: RADHIKA JUGAL SARAF
Keywords: Marxism, colonial Bombay, translation, minority, caste, labour
Issue Date: 20-Jan-2022
Citation: RADHIKA JUGAL SARAF (2022-01-20). THE DISENCHANTMENTS OF LABOUR: MARXISM AND THE FIGURATIONS OF MINORITY IN COLONIAL BOMBAY. ScholarBank@NUS Repository.
Abstract: I engage with the translation of Marxism in colonial Bombay to understand the Bombay Marxists’ encounter with the question of minority existence. Taking as my point of departure, Aamir Mufti’s thesis that the Jewish Question engenders a process of minoritisation which is globally disseminated in colonial modernity, I borrow from Faisal Devji’s notion of “ecumenical ideology” to suggest that the October Revolution sought to challenge the very form of the nation-state. However, Stalinist orthodoxy led the Bombay Marxists to neglect the historical antagonisms of Indian society, lending these antagonisms to minoritisation. Thus, even as the figure of the minority lay in contestation, with Ambedkar struggling to name the untouchable instead of the Muslim as the political minority, the Bombay Marxists deployed what René Girard calls a “scapegoating mechanism” to create a sacrificial victim of the figure most susceptible to minoritisation in that particular moment, first Pathan, then Dalit, then woman.
URI: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/231422
Appears in Collections:Ph.D Theses (Open)

Show full item record
Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormatAccess SettingsVersion 
SarafR.pdf1.31 MBAdobe PDF

OPEN

NoneView/Download

Google ScholarTM

Check


Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.