Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

88 I Ramnath
this, society as a whole along with each individual within
it would require a psychological change. India's existing
national literature exalted materially unproductive parasites:
ancient epics glorified nobles and warriors, while the
medieval literature fe atured spiritual ascetics. Now, even
the nationalist "Extremists" gave no thought to the peasant
or artisan, aiming for a hierarchical government with
princes and pari iamentary houses. Others, "if they are wiser
and more democratic, they talk of a Republic, with representative
government, which would mean the rule of the
educated classes and the landowners, bankers and manufacturers,"
while the Indian people were still left out. "Our
imagination stops at the border-line that separates the clean
and literate classes from the dirty and illiterate masses.
Where we stop, there humanity begins. We waste our lives
in the service of false gods."20
Meanwhile to his U.S. audience, he advised renunciation
and asceticism as the path to humanity's salvation,
recommending a holistic amalgam of the theories of Saint
Rose, Saint Francis, Rousseau, Voltaire, Marx, Bakunin,
Mazzini, and Haeckel as the ideaPl In other words, he did
not fully jettison spiritual concerns but rather transposed
them into the sphere of concrete ethical action in society.
His Modern Review article "Marx: A Modern Rishi"
in March 1912 was thought (by first Communist Party
ofIndia [CPI] General Secretary Puran Chand Joshi no
less) to have been the first Indian article on Marx. But the
author's interpretation of Marx's significance was far from
orthodox. Like other Indian readers, Har Dayal respected
Marx first and fo remost as a moral exemplar of dedication