Vinod Mishra (1947 – 1998)

This volume comprises a selected collection of representative writings of Comrade Vinod Mishra. The writings are drawn primarily from four sources: documents presented and adopted in party conferences and congresses; articles, written originally mostly in English, but also in Hindi and Bengali, for party organs; published and unpublished interviews, and booklets and prefaces to books published by the party press; addresses to seminars, conventions, inner-party and public meetings and party schools and congresses. The period covered runs from the post-Emergency rectification movement when the reorganised party began to emphasise mass political initiatives through the IPF phase when the still underground party played the role of the ideological-political centre and organisational core of an open and legal multi-dimensional all-India political front to the last six years following the party’s coming overground in the Fifth Party Congress held in Calcutta in December 1992.

The selection aims at bringing glimpses of VM’s vast world of Marxist theory and practice. Spread over a dozen different sections, the writings begin with the invoking of the India of VM’s dreams and end with a clarion call for the party of his passion. The compulsion to keep the selections within the bounds of one single volume has meant leaving out at least four to five articles for every piece included. Left out are his entire writings published in Hindi journals “Shramik Solidarity” and “Samkalen Janmat” and English periodicals “Voice of Alternative” and “People’s Front”, extensive portions from various documents adopted in party conferences and congresses and minutes of Central Committee and Polit Bureau meetings and a host of other written records.

Even then, readers can clearly get an idea from the present selection about the great volume and variety of VM’s intellectual output during the twenty-odd turbulent years he steered the party ship. And more than that, what stands out singularly in every piece of his writing is the tremendous creative impulse whether we are reading the offbeat “India of My Dreams” or the editorials of Liberation and ML Update. … …

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