Piero Sraffa had been a close friend of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist leader who had been jailed by Mussolini and written his famous Prison Notebooks. A revival of the peasant movement was needed; and this occurred in the 1960s, with Harekrishna Konar playing a leading role in it. The young Bengali academic who had not heard of Harekrishna Konar was not an apolitical person. Some may say that each generation has its own icons, and that today’s youth, which may not have the icons that our generation had, has its own icons nonetheless. A more plausible reason, therefore, is the general recession in progressive transformative politics that has occurred in the current scenario of neo-liberal hegemony.

Source: The Telegraph May 08, 2019 03:00 UTC