The irony that accompanies intersectional politics is an interesting one. One the one hand, while the various political movements come together aiming for justice for different groups, on the other hand, their very interaction excludes and marginalizes the interests of some subset of the groups, or creates yet another form of injustice. In other words, discriminations and oppressions overlap in intersectional politics. The question now is, if intersectional politics can be productive despite the aforementioned complexity.

Firstly, I would suggest that the term intersectional politics does primarily come with a productive potential. That is, it helps in eliminating the natural versus discursive dichotomy and opens the possibility of working with the ‘discourse’ part alone. Hence, the navigation of productivity becomes easier, thanks to Judith Butler. One may make peace with the idea that the natural or the real is an impossible realm. The norms and laws that exist around us are historical constructs only. They are not inherent in a natural, divine plan. Therefore, discourse is where energies should be directed. Discourse creates materiality. In other words, discourse acts as materiality. The next question now could be: Can we do away with the discourse altogether?

The answer is no. We cannot do away with discourse altogether, because we are confined. Our access and reach are limited. The space to act is limited. However, limited space does not mean non-existent space. It is the recognition of this space combined with the willingness and consciousness to push through it which challenges the norm. In other words, there is a limited space within discourse where act of amending, fighting or challenging it can take place. Regardless to mention, the ‘recognition’ that may or may not follow decides the how successful and effective the push is on a larger scale.

The productive potential also lies in the possibility of citations’ misfiring potential. When something betrays the endlessly repetitive cycle of norms, the citations collapse. The strength of the norms declines in that moment. The system crumbles, and the world’s forces try their best to erase the misfire. They try their best to counter it.

This sounds very familiar. This is the story of the black woman.

How is it that the black women formed their separate feminist group? They mobilize themselves under the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO).They define and clarify their politics on their terms. They do political work within their own group and represent themselves. Is it not an example of the norm missing its target? The very norm that oppresses them through various means has now caught itself in their consciousness. It has caught itself in their self-belief and self-appreciation. Their hope has hurt the norm.

Put differently, Black feminists’ statement from the Combahee River Collective hints at an emerging tension in existing power relations. The power that had been controlled by white women and black men now has a new candidate: the black women. This may explain why according to Butler, power is not something that only oppresses, it also ‘produces’. Power relations define and produce everything around us. Reality itself is a product of power relations. It allows us to act, react and navigate through this world. Ever step we take in the navigation, we increase the possibility of erasing the citations. Similar to how black feminists have been erasing and challenging them. In other words, they have increased the potential of existing on their own terms and liberating themselves. In this liberation, there is an endless possibility of being productive against the norm and destabilizing it. There is also the possibility of creating an identity, a discourse, or a power relation outside the norm. They know that multiple oppressions facing them are not their destinies. There is no natural plan designed to oppress or subjugate them. This liberating recognition acts as a catalyst for them to act and to challenge. It pushes them to destabilize the constructed rules and make themselves visible. It allows them to challenge the norm that prevents them from becoming what they are otherwise capable of. Is this not productive?

This very liberatory and productive potential of identity politics was first offered by black women. It is evident in the statement. They mention the synthesis of various oppressions that makes the conditions of their lives. Their lives are unique because of how sexual identity combined with racial identity makes their entire life situation distinct. The productive potential may then also lie in the uniqueness of their experience; oppressions are embedded in their everyday existence. This uniqueness leads to the creation of their own politics that is “anti-racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white men.” They use their anti-racist and anti-sexist positions combined with economic oppression under capitalism and heterosexism to provide them with a direction. It pushes them to challenge the racist, sexist and capitalist norms working together to oppress them. They form study groups, write papers, circulate black publications and mobilize their combined strength. They open crisis centers, help working women, and hold conferences. This is yet another example of how black women recognize the productive potential in intersectional politics. Hope is not lost. They refuse to give in to the historical construct’s disguised as nature. They refuse to accept the norm as nature.

The norm is designed to make the black women consider themselves inferior, but the aforementioned recognition and action unveil their (black women) inherent value. They begin to prioritize themselves. They realize that if black women are free, it would mean the destruction of all systems of oppression and therefore, result in freedom for everyone. Their politics involves a healthy love for themselves, their sisters and the community. It gives them courage to seek liberation. They become the first to examine the multilayered texture of black women’s lives, and they’re proud of this. They are proud of their resolve. They look forward to make a leap into revolutionary action.

Of course, there are obstacles to productivity in intersectional politics. First, as mentioned earlier, is the limited space available to push the norm. One is confined. There is neither absolute agency nor autonomy. Second, as the statement mentions, is the fact that individual Black feminists live in isolation all over the country and their numbers are small. The need for organization challenges them. They find themselves engaged in a continuous fight to challenge the power relations. However, despite the obstacles, they continue to use their skills in writing, printing, and publishing as a means of organizing Black feminists. They do not undervalue the importance of conferences, study groups, written papers and black publications. This active struggle itself argues in favor of the productive potential that black women see in intersectional politics. It is proof of their belief in change, and in betterment.

Black women’s constant subjection intersectional politics since birth has given them the confidence to address both the racism in the white women’s movement and the sexism deeply rooted in the black man. They realize the damage and are ready for “a lifetime of work and struggle” to defy the norms and liberate themselves. In other words, their political existence and activity is evident proof of the productive potential in intersectional politics.

It is proof of the fact that the norm isn’t nature.

The question of whether Malcolm X and C.L.R. James can be viewed in the same light is an interestingly complex one. I would use ‘rays’ of light in the attempt to understand one through the other and try to find one’s reflection in the other, for ‘light’ in itself is what they both were, and are. I have only, so far, reached the rays.

In his work called “The Black Jacobins”, James begins with the chapter called ‘Property’. What an intelligent, provocative and tragic word in the sense that he uses it. Needless to say, a purpose and an intent can be derived from it. The word ‘property’ alone, immediately evokes a sense of emotion and anger, uneasiness and discomfort. A necessary discomfort and unease, i would say. And this is primarily what Malcolm X did when he spoke. He invited discomfort, strain and sweat, he invited the truth that some realized and others didn’t or perhaps were forced not to. In this sense, both James and X are holding out and urging everyone to see and to recognize the torches of truth.

In Malcolm’s speech titled as “The house Negro and the field Negro”, the ‘property’ in James’ “The Black Jacobins” is perhaps what Malcolm is referring to when he speaks of the ‘house’ Negro. The Negro, the human being, who was made to be considered a property of the slave master, a debt to the master, answerable to the master, and indebted to feel a sense of pride by denying themselves agency, own will and independence for the sake of being in close proximity of the master. In other words, when James recalls the physical torments faced by the ‘property’, Malcolm brings into attention the psychological impact and its manifestation in the minds of many Blacks who were made to live as property for hundreds of years. While James sees the slaves through the lens of what was imposed and forced upon them, Malcolm also takes into account how some slaves reacted to that imposition by submitting further to the masters and perhaps deriving some sense of pride from it. Here one might sense a complementary relationship between James and Malcolm, while, of course, appreciating the uniqueness of both in viewing and expressing the question of slavery and the then present condition of the black people.

When James speaks of the dark past, he is vivid. Painfully vivid. He narrates the journey that every slave would have embarked on when they were taken away from their land, their home. He tells how they lived, and how they died. How they protested, even in their deaths. Perhaps James is more inclined towards the journey undertaken by the slaves, and their sufferings that made them what Malcolm could classify as the field negro and the house negro. James is probably setting the stage for Malcolm to build his classification on, and to give his voice on. It feels like both are standing at different stages of the same history which has been cruel, unfair, unjust and agonizing for the Africans. They are both talking about the same thing, but the tones, the lens, the emphasis is unique to each. There is tragedy, and a very close association to the on-going tragedy, in the words of both. They choose to speak about it.

In terms of expression, both occasionally use sarcasm and wit to express what they strongly feel about. Maybe wit was their way of balancing their emotions, when repeating, recalling and re-identifying the sufferings that had penetrated into their present. This is especially true for Malcolm. No matter how much he and his audience laughed during some of his speeches, he knew and they knew what he was saying and what he meant even behind the veil of the laughs. Similarly, when James starts his work with two ironic sentences about the hypocrisy of Columbus, what is his ironic style doing. Why is there an impactful use of irony, strong language and wit. The answer is simple, and it lies in the beautiful fact that they were both artists. They knew art, they recognized art and they spoke art. It is their words embedded in art and the language of art which has given immortality to them, their imagination and their extraordinary audacity.

The story that James is narrating, Malcolm is directly addressing the sufferers of that story, urging them to bring their suffering to a halt. He is telling them directly to know their rights and to change their conditions. His work does not end at narrating and recounting the miseries and pains, the blood and deaths, the homelessness and injustice of the past, but his work and his voice are dedicated to bring an end to the past, on his and his people’s terms. The past does not stop or blur his imagination. Malcolm is thinking present. Malcolm is thinking future. He is taking James’ story ahead. Malcolm is thinking hope, however his hope is neither theoretical nor imaginary, and neither utopian nor effortless, his hope is one which requires effort, action, determination and the compulsion of proudly ‘knowing’ what is one’s right as a human being.

Both him and James are also interested and deeply invested in the question of location, of situating the black people, making them visible out of the racist boundaries confining their existence, their imaginations and their potential. To address the question of location, they use what they own in abundance. Memory.

When going through the words of both, one may occasionally recognize the distinction between a historian and an activist. However, i will not confine the two to the prefix of either being a historian or an activist. They were obviously, undoubtedly and evidently much greater than the two or three labels or professional titles attached to their names. They were artistic existences. And art does not belong to a definition or a title.

Other than the aforementioned (sometimes abstract) commonalities and complementary reflections of Malcolm in James and James in Malcolm, perhaps the most striking and bright point of convergence, which brings them into the same rays of light, is the ‘courage’. Their courage, their audacity and their choice to recall, to speak, to make known what darknesses and veils were holding within themselves. If James was telling history, Malcolm was seeking to overpower that history while keeping its memory alive, and taking direction from the memory.

It is this memory, this courage and this voice that bring C.L.R James and Malcolm X together under one light, illuminated from one source and spread in both overlapping and distinct rays.

The question of whether there is space for universalism in Senghor’s understanding is a complex one, that needs to be dissected while staying careful and conscious of the details he is hinting at. For Senghor, the idea of universalism appears to be incomplete without the affirmation and recognition of the “African” or “Black personality”, as he calls it. That warrants a few questions immediately. Is he inclined towards separating ‘blackness’ from the world or is he placing it within a larger universal framework?

While quoting the American Negro poet, Langston Hughes, he explicitly signals towards giving an independent expression to the ‘black’ personality, not bound by fear or shame. Again, this gives rise to questions. In terms of the universal, is the prefix to personality ‘human’, or is it specifically blackness? For Senghor, that is. His ideas unveil and delayer as we proceed. He views Negritude, “a sum of the cultural values of the black world” as a contribution to humanism. The recognition of it being a ‘contribution’ and not a whole, overarching theme suggests the existence of diversity and differences in the universal realm. Be it in ideas or languages, philosophies or religions, customs or literature, as he himself enlists.

Also, art.

Senghor places a great emphasis on art and its location in humanism, and perhaps universalism too. Since he repeatedly addresses the various ways of conceiving life itself, it suggests that he is possibly not getting towards one form of existence, rather he is speaking in celebration and recognition of diversity. It is this recognition that gives Africa its place in the universal debate and discourse, otherwise, according to him, no one would speak of Africa.

Africa matters.

Africa must always be a part of discussion. One can break down his focus on the distinctness of the African identity into two strands. He might have believed that Negritude and the African identity would be lost in universalism. Secondly, it seems he was inclined towards the ‘particular’ more, just like Casaire. This particular-ness would not be possible without locating the ‘identity’ of his people in a universal framework, as opposed to letting it diffuse or even fuse perhaps. This is not to say that he views his identity or Negritude in isolation. On the contrary, he sees Negritude as a way of relating and engaging with the world, of contact and participation, where the black identity makes itself ‘known’. If here what is meant is a relative, instead of an independent existence, where then is the space of universalism?

In addition, a clear pattern is Senghor’s words is the discussion on ‘race’. It is important for Senghor and he does not ignore it to a greater, universal identity. He says, with reference to the world wars, that all the world powers were proud of their race. Therefore, his discussion on universalism does not quite look possible without situating the factor of race in it. Similarly, he clearly speaks of the contrasting offerings to the world, by Africa and Europe. While the traditional European philosophy tends to be static and objective, Africans understand the world to be a unique, “mobile reality”. This is not to say that the African is oblivious to the material aspects of being and things. They do recognize the tangible qualities of things which facilitate in understanding the reality of the human being. However, if a universalism is European (static, tangible) in its basic philosophy, then that leaves little room for Senghor’s, and Africans’, conception of a mobile reality comprised of various life forces. Interestingly though, at this point, Senghor does take into account how the Europeans and the Africans use the same expression for the ultimate reality of the universe. This is where he momentarily blurs the boundaries between the two, possibly creating space for a universal commonality.

However, soon after, Senghor moves on to the basics of morals and ethics, and here the African attitude again becomes separate. According to him, the African moral law is inseparably tied to nature itself, and every life force in the universe translates to a network of natural forces, which are ‘complementary’, or harmonious. Nature, consequently, brings with itself a certain human order. One that imagines man into a close knit society, based on various circles such as that of the family, village, nation or humanity itself. The African civilization values both the community and the individual. The notion of the particular again becomes apparent here. While group solidarity is important, the individual is not crushed or undermined. The closely knit society is the human society, made up of both contradictory and complementary life forces.

Negritude understands and also celebrates the ‘interplay of life forces’. Through these life forces, man journeys towards God and reinforces himself. This, for Senghor, is a journey from ‘existence’ to ‘being’.

Negritude lays the foundation for this journey, and enables itself to create space in the contemporary humanism, thus allowing Africa to make its ‘contribution’ to the “Civilization of the Universe”. In its contribution to the universal, it plays a part in international politics as well as in the fields of art and literature. For him, art is an expression of a certain conception of the world, of life, and of philosophy. Art is where Senghor, as well as the early explorers of African art, sought the human value, of a way of living, existing, being.

While it is difficult to ‘absolutely’ conclude whether there is space for universalism with reference to Senghor, yet one can deduce certain possible explanations. At some points, he refers to the universal forces, and the common expressions used for them, but does not hint at ‘universalism’ explicitly. He also discusses how the various forms of art integrate to create the universe, and perhaps his idea of universalism lies in this integration. He is possibly trying to show that universalism can come only via art, and within art stands out the ‘Black’ art, black humor, and black aesthetic. This again ties to the fact that perhaps Senghor does not want the African contribution, or the African art, to be lost or overshadowed in the cause of one universalism. In his negritude, universalism can not exist at the expense of what is ‘black’. He wants it to exist and stand out in the form of a harmonious, rhythmic song which expresses fundamentally the life of cosmic forces. These cosmic forces then trace back to the Being of the Universe; God.
Here it seems that his idea of universalism then, additionally, lies in the ‘origin’ of it, that is, going back to the one Source and Being of the universe. Or he probably believes in a universalism that is based on complementary cosmic forces forming a beautiful rhythm of harmony and union.

One thing, however, is clear. Universalism cannot exist without Africa’s contribution, and the space for a discourse on universalism can only come through the idea of Black African art primarily. Therefore, if a space of universalism does exist for Senghor, it will be of ‘blackness’ as one of the fundamental values. It has to come through keeping blackness as one of the ‘particulars’.

In other words, Universalism needs to be a function and expression of the black identity and black distinctness, to qualify for Senghor. 

In her work called “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”, Mohanty sets the stage by the various ways in which colonialism, as a discourse, is repeatedly employed by the West, be it about cultural appropriation, economic and political hierarchies, domination or understanding of the third world.

Particularly, understanding of ‘women’ of the third world. By Western Feminism.

Mohanty’s concern is with the creation, production and reference to the “third world women” as a singular, monolithic subject in recent Western feminist texts. The idea is to investigate the specific, methodological manner in which knowledge regarding the third world women is articulated, presented, and made popular. How and why a particular view or image of the third world women has increasingly become common, or convenient, is in question. While the author carefully points out the fact that Western feminist discourse is not homogeneous or unified, yet there exists certain points of coherence and convergence. Such areas are visible in the in the overarching and unsophisticated assumption(s) of the West regarding the third world women.

Western feminism defines itself via creating the ‘other’ as non-Western. Thus, Feminist scholarship is not just concerned with ‘producing’ knowledge regarding a subject, instead, it is to be understood as a political and discursive ‘practice’. An ideologically motivated practice, which intervenes into certain hegemonic discourses. It is, therefore, no surprise that feminist scholarship puts its entire emphasis on power-dynamics, which scholarly practices deal with in a number of ways. The author does, however, make it known that apolitical scholarship does not exist. She speaks of Western feminism in terms of colonialism and its attempt to ‘colonize’, to dominate and ignore, the differences and heterogeneity that exist in the lives of women in the third world, and convert this heterogeneity into a singular image, as reflection of the ‘Third World Woman’. Crucial to note here is the distinction made between woman and women. While ‘woman’ refers to a compound, unified identity based on certain ‘universal’ social and anthropological relations, ‘women’ is used for actual, historical subjects, with collective pasts and presents. Needless to say, this label of the ‘Third World Woman’ is approved by the Western humanist discourse, and carries with itself certain implicit assumptions convenient to the ideas, frameworks and perceptions of the West. In addition to deciding what ‘should’ be understood of the third world woman, confined to patriarchy and oppression, what exists within this label is a reductive notion which does not appreciate or recognize the existing complexities, differences and heterogeneous elements in what is known of women in the third world.

 The West comes from a hegemonic position, which consequently leads to the systematization of the women’s oppression in the third world, and it is through this homogenization that power relations are created. Thus the author makes the reader understand Western Feminist scholarship as a combination of two relating concepts: power and struggle. It seems, therefore, that a feminist eye coming from a Western setting cannot, or does not want to, understand the third world women as individuals with agency and independence. Rather the popular practice is to examine these women in dependency of someone else, either the men or the colonizer. Doing this, women are robbed of their individual identities and the very recognition of their agency, in whatever shape and form they have it. Evidently, this is problematic because the idea of the third world women then suggests women as dependent, struggling beings, oppressed, seen through their relations with X, as opposed to their existence as independent, individual identities. In other words, women are seen as functions of either patriarchy or colonialism, or both. This binary analytic is what the author is uncovering and challenging. While the author uses the works of many scholars on the subject, yet the defining characteristic remains the same; the effect(s) of representing third world women as a homogeneous category. What coheres the Western Feminist scholarship is defining women with an ‘object status’, a norm problematic, and a norm that needs to be challenged, for this ‘common’ understanding suggests being comfortable with keeping a certain category of women “outside history”.

Because women, particularly third world women, are constantly objectified, the immediate consequence this objectification and reductionist portrayal has is the image of women as immature and deprived of the very ethos of feminism. Or ‘Western’ feminism, in particular.  Owing to this system of establishing a universality when it comes to the third world women, the voices of women are affected despite class, cultural and regional differences. This universality has many a strand attached to it. These include constructing women in terms of religion, economic dependence, familial systems, patriarchy, violence and colonial processes. To narrow these strands down, what the author highlights is the cross cultural existence of “male domination and female exploitation”, as the crux of Western feminist writings on the third world women. Interestingly, the use of numbers and arithmetic methods comes into play too in aiding the idea of universality. Here becomes relevant the example of the veil, suggesting that the greater the number of women wearing the veil, the more widespread is the sexual control and domination over women. An overly simplistic and problematic method, but that is frequently employed in Western feminist works.

This method or popular discourse portraying women as powerless against possessing power undermines a very important badge that the third world women pride themselves in. This is the badge of revolutionary struggles, which must not be looked upon in binary terms. It is here, in the creation of ‘perpetually’ oppressed women that the role of colonial tendencies becomes clear. In other words, confining third world women into a unified, homogeneous category of oppressed, powerless women makes the first world women the uncontested and only ‘subjects’. The independent. The deciders. Consequently, it becomes impossible for third world women to rise above their object status in Western Feminist understanding. It is as if to say a particular category of women can not represent themselves, while the other can. The identified tension is, therefore, between self-presentation of Western feminists, and the ‘representation’ of the third world women by the same Western feminists.

The point to take away, therefore, is that such a framework only reflects a theoretical self portrayal of Western women and a flawed understanding of third world women, not a material reality. If that were the material reality, history would not be witnessing socio-political movements in the West, and challenging debates facing the West. If that were the material reality, there would be no struggles, no victories won by the third world women.

Think of a story that goes in the following order. A people recognize their being through culture. They stand out, identify and make themselves recognized through it. They voice it. In a flash, however, they are robbed of that very culture. They keep flying back to it, to the remains of that suppressed, oppressed, dear-to-the-heart culture. They still find their voice in it. They fight, mobilize, call and cry in its name.

They finally win in its name.

This is the culture, the weapon and the strength, that holds unequivocal value in the light through which Amilcar Cabral viewed National Liberation.

How ‘true’ is the cultural victory is a story for another day. The chronological story mentioned above, however, is the story of the colonized peoples. One that they pride their struggles in. One that holds immense importance, power and value for them. One that is personal to Cabral and his experiences.

Culture can be identified as a sensitive, crucial reality which was immediately recognized and played with, by the colonial powers. It was this culture that was suppressed, undermined and ridiculed to an extent that eventually the reverse of it came true, that is, there was a birth, one after the other, of heroes and leaders who pulled the culture out in the light once again, to be accepted and celebrated. To be remembered, embraced and prided in. To be used as the catalyst of hope and resistance, of the past memory, that the national liberation movements would stand tall and strong on. Such was the importance of culture, and such was the attachment of Cabral with it. Such was culture in the dream of Nkrumah and the hidden fears of Sukarno, in the protest of Gandhi and the sacrifice of Lamumba. For the purpose of this essay, we will confine ourselves to the powerful thoughts of Cabral.

It is astounding how his understanding and situating of ‘culture’ instantly brings about such vivid and loud images of what was happening. He had done the near impossible, that is, to condense the aim of centuries of control and conquest into one word: culture. He made the primary prey of colonialism absolutely clear. It was a fight between cultures, except that one side was not allowed to ‘compete’ or ‘represent’ itself. How else could the rich, historically rooted, celebrated culture(s) be paralyzed to an unbelievable extent. Was it not the genocide of culture that was exercised for hundreds of years by the empires to remain in power. To suppress, and to assimilate. 

For Cabral, culture was the very identity of the society he was coming from, and the societies suffering around him. It was the best, most accurate and sensitive representation of who ‘they’ were. In the ‘us versus them’ dichotomy, what ‘they’ had and were systematically robbed of was this very reality: the reality of their culture. It was this culture, the norms and the identity, the image and the practices, which the National Liberation movements sought to reclaim and rebuild. It was this memory and attachment to culture that assembled the broken, fragmented, bleeding lands and peoples together, in the effort to give it the life it deserved and the life that it itself promised. 

It is almost poetic, and yet so crucial, how Cabral basis his entire understanding of National Liberation on just one simple thing; Culture. Poetic, because it is as if this one word accurately and wholly contains within itself, the memory of two pasts. The past that was free and the past that was dictated, robbed and controlled. This one word expresses both the pain of the struggles and sacrifice, as well as the celebration, pride and might associated with it. It is the thirst of this pride and might that the National Liberation drove on and for. Culture was both, the catalyst and the goal. 

What colonial rule did was a combination of both a subtle and aggressive suppression of culture. Subtle, when terming it as a means to civilize, polish and train the ‘natives’, and create “assimilated intellectuals” (as Cabral would call them) for their own good (of course). Aggressive, when ‘they’ were out-rightly showed that no matter how perfectly they adopted the ‘civil’ system, the European way of life, they could never merge with the people of the empires. The actions, laws, and inhuman attitudes were repeatedly and methodologically employed to show the colonized ‘their place’. The place, the tier, the stratification they would always, inescapably belong to no matter how closely they embraced the alien model of life.

National liberation was, therefore, directed against thin unfair, painful, forced domination. The fight was fought, voices were raised, and blood was spilled to reclaim the culture from the reins of domination. Staying true to his powerful wording, Cabral rightly calls it the “cultural combat”; a duel to preserve the long standing values and traditions, the identity and representation. A combat which called itself National Liberation and derived its power from the essence of culture it was fighting for. It is beautiful how the pride and unity in the liberation movements manifested themselves in the longing, and recovering of their cultures. 

In the eyes of Cabral, the idea of liberation was never an exclusionist one, or an “attribute of privileged peoples”. Far from it. What he dreamt was to preserve and promote culture while taking everyone on board, including the Africanized “petite bourgeoisie”. Thus, this culture was to bind the people together, accommodate them, break them free from the prison of a culture and system they did not belong to, and did not own. 

In National Liberation, if one seeks to understand what is it that really drove it, empowered it, kept it breathing and willing to breathe in the face of much tyranny and tragedy. The answer lies in the longing, memory and love for culture. It was love that kept the liberation movements going. It was this longing that made the giant leaders and their followers never stop, to not allow the domination and suppression again, to live on their own terms. 

They had embarked on the journey of returning, to define, celebrate and relive their own culture. Their own personality.

The world has witnessed many an extraordinary moment. Moments that shifted not only the surface but also the substance of the world, or at least this is what the extraordinary, unbelievable moments promised, and dreamed. It is, therefore, an art to appreciate the strength and might of those moments and decades, following their emergence. I say decades because the time in reference here is not a distant history, neither has it lived through centuries. It will, but just not yet. The memory is fresh, and recognizing the very fact that it has not been long, is enough to make one pause every thought, enter into an epoche and solely devote the mind and the heart to understand, appreciate, and root for the revolutions of the twentieth century. The struggles, the convictions and the fears. What is crucial is to appreciate the powerful, terrific moments not in isolation, but in togetherness. Together in the fight directed against oppression, force, tyranny and conquest. A fight that lived through decades, sacrificed immensely and finally broke through the chains of time, a time undefined and inescapable. A time that was robbed, but that time also gave the motivation and strength to defeat the tyrannies.

 Inconceivable yes, but it did happen.

This fight was as much as Amir Haider Khan’s (Dada) as it was for Sukarno. As much a fight for those fighting for independence as it was for the communist revolutionaries marching to their capital from every corner of the world. Victory in sight, memory of the past and endless hope for the future. The contexts were different but celebrations the same.

Sukarno, in his speech, celebrates the coming together of the new Afro-Asian states in Bandung by ‘choice’, not by necessity. He recognizes their victory in gathering together, not dictated in a foreign land, but in their home country, having seen similar histories of violence, conquest, robbed representation and injustice. This idea and celebration of togetherness was reflected in Dada’s memoir as well. For him, it was a celebration of the coming together of communists from around the world to a ‘home’ that not only welcomed them but promised to provide for their future fights and transformations. A hub that united them under one flag, and one past, though lived separately but under the burden of one reality.

Sukarno was envisioning the unity and wave of fresh, free air that Dada was in fact ‘living’ and breathing in, during his time in the Soviet Union. This was the unity that Sukarno was dreaming for his nation and the nations that had emerged into light and life with his.

In Dada’s world, the racist, unjust, unequal forces had been defeated, or at least he was now out of their reach in the land that had promised him and his comrades the dignity, value and respect they had craved. Dada was in a space that accommodated one and all, bound by a common deeply-embedded ideology. Years later, Sukarno was stressing over the very need to unite, to recognize the urgency of a ‘sustainable’ togetherness. Reading Sukarno into Dada, one cannot help but realize that what Dada had experienced in terms of freedom and liberty was what Sukarno was desiring, idealizing and praying for.  How Dada and his comrades’ lives changed in the Soviet Union was a reality. The words of Sukarno were a longing for that reality. For the likes of Sukarno, Dada’s memoir could be a model not too old to replicate or desire, but far more complex and difficult to achieve. Perhaps, that is why one senses a strange and uncomfortable fear in Sukarno’s speech. In his words, there was less to celebrate and more to fear, to recognize and to work on. There was urgency. There was a search for fraternity. The more one reads through it, the more manifest it becomes.

Sukarno refers to him and the attendees as “Masters of our own house”. While he celebrates the solidarity and agency, he also fears for it. Dada was in the new capital of the world, which stood in direct confrontation against the empires, capitalism. Sukarno knew that there was no one uniting hub for the new nations. They were on their own against the giants, and he recognized the new faces these giants had now taken, in the form of agonizing economic and intellectual control. That was, in the fears of Sukarno, another wave of colonialism. Much to the magic of time, the questions and dreams Sukarno had in his vision reflected exactly those that Dada had questioned and sought answers to for his homeland, India. Why couldn’t the same happen to India, he asked. There was struggle and sacrifice in India as it was in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, why then could the Indians not come out victorious, he would ask. In Sukarno’s universe, they did come out victorious. But could that India, or that Indonesia, promise the kind of power, liberty, equality and most of all, dignity, that the young Dada had lived in the Soviet Union. Was reaching freedom and liberty in its true sense simply not achievable, given the dependency of the new states on the predatory world. Dada saw a center which called him and his comrades from every race, color and country. It was probably that center which Sukarno had in his eyes, but only in the abstract. No defined structure of that center, neither a defined path to embark on. Instead, what Sukarno and his comrades had was an idea, or an ideal, not as easy to accomplish as words felt. Hence, the heaviness and fear in Sukarno’s words, which had immediately recognized that there were many colors of freedom. They had discovered just one.

What is apparent is different stages of a ‘single’ reality; the reality of being (treated) human. While Dada had lived that reality, Sukarno was promising to make it happen.

Thus, one reality was lived, one was dreamt.