Reclaiming Our Present

A common theme underpinning the Soviet dream and the dream of independence is the desire to take the present back from the first world. Whether one considers Dada Amir Haider Khan’s experience at the University of the Peoples of the East or Sukrano’s proud speech. There is a thirst to push back against Western domination, a thirst to regain basic dignity and more importantly, a thirst to create a new world that will be free from the monstrosities of the white man. 

Dada Amir’s dissatisfaction brought him to a world of real diversity that was not ready to stay in the waiting room of history anymore. This world wanted to practice the ideals taught by thinkers such as Lenin to birth a new order. Moreover, unlike the Europeans, these people displayed inclusion by supporting any resistance against the West defining people’s present. 

 

Now that these people had set their goal of taking the present back from the Europeans, and had refused to stay confined to the waiting room of history, the question of “how” is of top priority. The poster attached to my blog portrays Lenin teaching a child. The poster and the depiction of Lenin in it have manifold effects. First, it points towards the need for education to break out of the chains of history. Second, it stresses the need to follow Lenin’s ideals of diversity and equality. These ideas held great importance at the time Dada visited the Soviet Union since the liberal thought put forth by Europe had failed to realise its goals of humankind being “equal and independent”. (Locke) 

The diversity witnessed by Dada Amir at the university was unlike anything he had seen before. His time on Soviet soil uncovered the facade of diversity put forth by the whites. 

He now finds himself at a place where people from different countries and races are not only living together but are dedicated to helping each other achieve the goal of self-determination. 

Finally, it becomes easily understandable why communism was seen as a threat by the West, and why the discourse on it presents it as a system bound to fail. If aligned with the colonised world, Marxist principles had the potential of snatching the present back from the Europeans. It had the ability to replace the capitalist world order with one where prosperity did not have to come to one country’s people at the cost of exploiting another. Nevertheless, it was not possible to achieve this goal without educating and unifying the discriminated against the ordeals of the West. On the other hand, the speeches at Bandung are emblematic of the Dada Amir’s experience. Similar to the revolution in Russia, the colonised world had also realised their “right” to be free. The third world project now resonated closely with the Bolshevik notions of freedom. They had won independence and now aimed at striving for a new world that was independent of Western labels. This was supposed to be a world where peoples of diverse races and ethnicities could come together in furthering their own cause however they saw fit.