Red Books Day 2024
Nitheesh Narayanan, Sudhanva Deshpande, Vijay Prashad
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RED Books Day 2024 started in Indonesia, and it ended in Chile. Across the world, over one million people joined in a range of activities to celebrate a day that is increasingly becoming a fixture on the calendar of the international Left. In 2019, the Indian Society of Left Publishers began to investigate the viability of holding a celebration on February 21, the date of the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848. That book, one of the most widely read in the world, inspired billions of people over the past century and a half to build a process of socialism that would transcend the stalled problems created by capitalism (hunger, illiteracy, poverty). It continues to inspire millions in our time. The idea was to honour the Manifesto by holding Red Books Day on February 21.
Since the date is also Mother Languages Day, the idea was for writers, publishers, book shops, and readers to go into public places are read the Manifesto in their own languages. Despite the disruption of the pandemic, Red Books Day took hold with the epicentre in India but extending its reach across the planet. Soon, it became clear that the point was not to read the Manifesto alone, but to read any ‘red book’ on the day and not only to read books but also to hold festivals of different sizes to rescue the collective life and to promote the cultures of the Left.
This year, Red Books Day began in early February with the release of a powerful dance video by the young artist and communist cadre Chemm Parvathy. She performed alongside the French version of the Internationale, dancing along to the intensity of the song through the markets and workshops of the workers of Trivandrum. The song culminated with Chemm Parvathy at the beach, holding a communist flag, with the red sun behind her in the horizon. The video was widely shared across the world and set the tone for Red Books Day. Alongside her video came a series of original posters designed by artists from around the world to commemorate the day and to encourage more and more people to organise readings and performances in their localities.
It was clear that this Red Books Day would eclipse the previous attempts given the width and depth of participation. Public events were organised by socialist forces in Indonesia and East Timor, while the Havana Book Fair in Cuba set aside February 21 for a special day of events. Readings of ‘red books’ were held by the Socialist Movement of Ghana and the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil as well as by Red Ant in Australia and the Workers Party in Bangladesh, with communists in Nepal holding meetings in small villages in the high mountains to discuss the importance of study and struggle. In New York City, they celebrated the life and writings of the communist Claudia Jones, while in Chile they read the speeches of Salvador Allende, and while in South Africa they held a discussion about the concept of ‘human rights’ as used by the imperialist powers. Some of these events were broadcast online, while others posted pictures of the readings on social media.
IN INDIA
Red Books Day is now rooted in the cultural landscape of the Left within India. This year Red Books Day became a forum to commemorate the 100th birth anniversary of V I Lenin, the leader of the 1917 Revolution. In Kerala, half a million people met to read and discuss EMS Namboodiripad’s Leninism in Indian Context in 40,000 places. The largest of these events was in Trivandrum, where CPI(M) Kerala state secretary M V Govindan inaugurated the festival. The Purogama Kala Sahithya Sangham (Association of Progressive Art and Literature) held seminars and discussions on the contemporary relevance of the Manifesto across Kerala, with VKS Singers Group of Pukasa Nattilamekhala committee of the Association preparing a Communist Manifesto song video. In Karnataka, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member M A Baby delivered a lecture on Lenin and Culture, while in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, workers, peasants, and youth discussed Lenin’s life and writings (including through a webinar organised by Mana Manch iPustakam).
In Maharashtra, a webinar was held on Godavari Parulekar’s Jevha Manoos Jaga Hoto. In many parts of India – such as in Assam – there were readings of the Communist Manifesto, many of these readings organised by the Students’ Federation of India as part of a joint Red Books Day and International Mother Languages Day celebration. In both West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, tens of thousands of people read the Bangla and Tamil editions of The Political Marx, written by Aijaz Ahmad and Vijay Prashad; the book had won last year’s Muzaffar Ahmad Book Award.
As part of the act of turning this day into a broader cultural festival, students at the Hyderabad Central University and the English and Foreign Languages University held a poster exhibition and a book festival. At Delhi’s May Day Bookstore, there were songs and dances, as well as a street play by Jana Natya Manch and readings of the Manifesto in various Indian languages.
Building toward Red Books Day 2025, each month, we will release a poster that will culminate next year in a Red Books Day calendar. These posters will be circulated through social media. The idea is that Red Books Day will not be about the day alone but will allow us to hold activities through the year that build toward the main events of February 21.
Red Books Day is part of a broad project of the cultural struggle to defend the right to write, publish, and read ‘red books’ and to fight against obscurantist ideas that stand in for reason these days. It is anchored by the International Union of Left Publishers (IULP), which includes over 40 publishers from around the world, but it is not solely organised by the IULP. The general hope is that this day will go beyond the IULP and become a key part of the calendar of the Left. It was remarkable to see Red Books Day exceed the circuits of those affiliated to the IULP or to the Left currents already in our networks, and to see those far outside our ranks adopt this day as their own. This is precisely the objective of a day such as this – to become an integral part of public culture and to struggle to establish rational and socialist ideas as the ideas of society. By the end of the decade, we estimate over ten million people will participate in Red Books Day.
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