When South Asian leftist intellectuals launched the manifesto of the Progressive Writers Association in London in the mid 1930s, their goal was to harness literature as a tool of social change.
They were fighting not only British colonial rule but internal modes of exploitation and oppression. Their field of vision was global, with a multidimensional analysis of empire, capitalism and race. In the 1930s-40s they linked their liberation struggle to the cultural front against world fascism, and from the 1950s to the 1980s, to the Afro- Asian solidarity movement working for decolonization in the midst of the Cultural Cold War.
Many Progressives undertook international journeys, including Mulk Raj Anand to Spain, Rashid Jahan to the Soviet Union, and Faiz Ahmad Faiz to Lebanon. Each illuminates a key moment in the forms of their internationalism.
Besides a history, this is a critical dialogue across time and context. The questions and concerns that drove the Progressive Writers—such as the articulation of (anti-)colonialism with (anti-)fascism, the connection of art with social change, the responsibility of cultural and intellectual workers to social movements, the relationships between words and actions, ideas and implementation, global and local, and the efficicacy of the utopian imagination—are mine too.
