Mapping Transcontinental Socialism and Intellectual Networking in Trade Union Movement of Late Colonial Bengal (1920- 1947)

Abstract

This paper envisages the neglected
transcontinental European ties of Bengali trade unionists in Germany, Italy, and France for
(re)constructing a global intellectual history of decolonial socialist networking. Bengali labour activists like Bhupendranath Dutta or Saumyendranath Tagore were no strangers to the revolutionary ethos of socialism. However, the transcontinental synergies intensified in the opening years of the twentieth century and especially during the inter-war years as Bengal was steadily drawn into the global vortex of radical socialist and anti-fascist movements. Through an analysis of their intellectual outputs, the paper elucidates how indigenous interventions were made in the realm of ideological contemplations of socialism adding to the ever-expanding edifice of Marxist-Leninism. Instead of emulating the Europeans their ideological introspections reflected their vision of an egalitarian future rooted in the praxis emanating from their activism as well as their exchanges with the other colonies of Asia. Therefore, the paper aims to address this particularism(s) within the universalism of a global ideology like socialism through an analytical probe into the transcontinental intellectual networking of émigré trade unionists in late colonial Bengal between 1920 and 1947.