Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

138 I Ramnath
However, the pattern has yet again to be acknowledged and
confront(d whereva a duality of possible paths occurs.
In February 1922, after the collapse of the
Noncooperation/Khilafat movement wave, Lotvala penned
an indictment of the Gandhian program. His paper lost
circulation thereafter through its championing of unpopular
ideas, but in the end Lotvala preferred loss of income to
ideological compromise. Meanwhile, he had acquired a new
enthusiasm: the Russian Revolution. He now pored over
the fu ll works of Marx, Lenin, Reed, and Roy, and built up
a fo rm idable collection ofleftist literature in the Nityanand
Library, including books on socialism and socialist newspapers
from abroad. Here he welcomed all workers, students,
and other "young enthusiasts who flocked every day" fo r
serious study of "discourses on all shades of Marxism."29
Forming the Lotvala Trust fo r advancing socialism in India,
he also turned his attention to the plight of the proletariat.
Yaj nik recalled the stimulating atmosphere of the
Hindustan's editorial offices in the 1920s and 1930s: the
egalitarian Lotvala joined journalists, college students,
politicians, and workers with the Labour and Kisan parties
fo r lively arguments over chai on matters of "various shades
of reform and communism, Stalinism and Trotskyism,
Gandhism and anti-Imperialism and all other vexed questions
of the day." The Hindustan's other major concern was
advocating fo r workers' rights in the Bombay textile mills,
publicizing a series of massive strikes in the 1920s. The paper
covered meetings, demonstrations, and world affairs,
putting fo rth a consistently rationalist, progressive line on
social issues, trumpeting the scientific and bemoaning the