1. the bombay radicals

   The Bombay Radicals (under contract with Cambridge University Press) tells the story of the origins of the working-class movement and the Left in colonial Bombay. The book traces a cohort of organizers who moved from nationalism to communism and shows how they adapted socialist ideas through trade unions, vernacular political writing, reading groups, strikes, and street mobilization. It argues that socialist and communist politics in India were shaped not simply through international networks but through local struggles over labor, caste, language, and nationalism. It also examines how the expansion of nationalist mass politics in the 1930s weakened popular support for the Left, prompting communist organizers to turn increasingly toward Marathi linguistic politics. The book argues that this turn helped reconfigure working-class identity and contributed to Bombay’s later transformation from a center of radical labor politics into a stronghold of nativist politics.

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