Forms of the Left in Postcolonial South Asia: Aesthetics, Networks and Connected Histories

Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Illustrations
Contributors
Introduction: Forms of the left in postcolonial South Asia
	Histories in formation
	Form
	Contemporary articulations
Chapter 1: A melancholic archive: Chittaprosad and socialist art in postcolonial India*
	A melancholic archive
	Dialectical affiliations: Art and the party
	‘Bhejal itihash-er desh-e’: In the shadows of Nehruvian India
		Home and the world: Internationalism and stasis
	Socialist story-worlds
	Confessions: Testimony and testimonial
	Afterword: Memory/montage/manoeuvres
Chapter 2: Kagmari Festival, 1957: Political aesthetics and subaltern internationalism in Pakistan
	Desher Dak: We are the 95 per cent
	The upside-down village: Infrastructure, aesthetics and labour
	The hybrid mela
	Subaltern politics of joy: Gates, arts and lectures
	The foreign policy bahas
	Conclusion
Chapter 3: Between neorealism and humanism: Jago Hua Savera
	Plot summary of Jago Hua Savera
	Jago Hua Savera: Style and reception
	Realism in South Asian cinema before 1952
	Neorealism in Indian cinema after 1952
	Form and style in Italian neorealism
	Jago Hua Savera and La Terra Trema
	Humanism in Jago Hua Savera
	Songs in Jago Hua Savera
	Language and the limits of humanism
	Closing thoughts
	Appendix A
		Excerpts from the Jago Hua Savera booklet
Chapter 4: Lotus roots: Transposing a political-aesthetic agenda from South Asia to Afro-Asia
	Introduction
	From PWA to AAWA
	The Lotus agenda
	The art of Lotus
	Tradition and modernity
	Conclusion
Chapter 5: What got ‘left’ behind: The limits of leftist engagements with art and culture in postcolonial Sri Lanka
	Introduction
	A brief history of leftist politics in Sri Lanka
	Sinhala cultural production in the 1950s: Social justice, authenticity and nationalism
		Martin Wickramasinghe – nationalist authenticity and social justice
		Ediriweera Sarachchandra: The longing for national form
		Gunadasa Amarasekara: Fusing Sinhala nationalism and leftist social transformation
	The early avant-garde left
	What is left? Concluding thoughts on the forms of the left in Sri Lankan cultural discourse
Chapter 6: The conscience whipper: Alamgir Kabir’s film criticism and the political velocity of the cinema in 1960s East Pakistan
	Artists, cinema and the left in East Pakistan
	Alamgir Kabir: The conscience whipper
	Conclusion
Chapter 7: Look back in angst: Akaler Sandhaney, the Indian New Wave and the afterlife of the IPTA movement
	Introduction
	Situating the Indian New Wave
	Akaler Sandhaney: In search of ‘the enemy within’
	The ambivalence of auto-critique
	Fantasies of subaltern spectatorship
Afterword
Bibliography
Index