Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad
Prashad in 2010
Born	Kolkata, India
Education	Pomona College (BA) University of Chicago (PhD)
Relatives	Brinda Karat (aunt)
Website	thetricontinental.org

Vijay Prashad, born August, 1967, is an Indian historian, author, journalist, political commentator, and Marxist intellectual. He is the executive-director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, editor of LeftWord Books, Chief Correspondent at Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. Ideologically a Marxist, Prashad is well known for his criticisms of capitalism, neocolonialism, American exceptionalism, and Western imperialism, while expressing support for communism and the global south.

Previously, Prashad has been the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and a professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, United States, from 1996 to 2017. Presently, he is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, part of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and co-founder of the Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL).

Prashad has provided reporting and political commentary for several publications, including Monthly Review, The Nation, and Salon.

Early life and background

The son of Pran and Soni Prashad, Vijay Prashad was born and raised in Kolkata, India. He attended The Doon School as a child. In the United States, he received a BA from Pomona College in 1989 as well as earning a PhD at the University of Chicago in 1994—writing a dissertation under the supervision of Bernard S. Cohn. He is the nephew of Marxist Indian politician Brinda Karat. Prashad identifies as queer.

Political views

Vijay Prashad is a fervent proclaimer of democracy, Marxism, socialism, and communism.

Criticism of capitalism is a recurrent theme throughout all of his work; one summary of such criticisms can be found in his 2002 book Fat Cats and Running Dogs. In addition, criticisms of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism and other such topics are regular themes.

Prashad's political views are paired with frequent calls for people to become activists, struggle, join movements, protest, organise in political parties, form trade unions and other such related activities.

Elsewhere, he has stated that American leftists, specifically, are not as effective as they could be in situations where they win influence through community organising, such as in local governments, because they often do not appreciate ideas originating from other parts of the world. He also calls on leftists, in general, to have a long-term view of social struggle rather than a focus on short-term results; this short-term focus often results from an economic system where companies are incentivised to demonstrate quarterly profits.

U.S. foreign policy

Prashad is an outspoken critic of American hegemony and imperialism. He debated historian Juan Cole on the 2011 US-French-NATO military intervention in Libya. Cole was for it, Prashad against. Prashad argued that the genuine Libyan rising had been "usurped" by various unsavory characters, including some with CIA connections. Prashad wrote the 2012 book Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, released through AK Press, on the topic.

Mother Teresa and Western charity

Prashad offered his analysis of Mother Teresa's missionary work in Calcutta, designating her as a representative of the collective "bourgeois guilt" of Western nations. He argued that people like Mother Teresa obscure the tragedies of capitalism. For instance, "During the night of December 2–3, 1984, the Bhopal disaster poisoned thousands of people". He states that the Bhopal disaster, which was caused by Union Carbide, was the most flagrant example of a transnational corporation's disregard for human life in defence of its own profit. In 1983, Union Carbide's sales came to US$9 billion and its assets totalled US$10bn. Part of this profit came from a tendency to shirk any responsibility towards safety standards, not just in India, but also in their West Virginia plant. After the disaster, Mother Teresa flew into Bhopal and, escorted in two government cars, she offered Bhopal's victims small aluminium medals of St. Mary. "This could have been an accident," she told the survivors, "it's like a fire (that) could break out anywhere. That is why it is important to forgive. Forgiveness offers us a clean heart and people will be a hundred times better after it." Pope John Paul II joined Mother Teresa with his analysis that Bhopal was a "sad event" which resulted from "man's efforts to make progress."

In the same article he also commented on Mother Teresa's alleged links with Charles Keating and Michele Duvalier (wife of Haitian dictator Baby Doc Duvalier). Denouncing the "cruel rule of capital" he also offered the view that the communists of Calcutta were the "real nameless Mother Teresas who conduct the necessary work towards socialism, for the elimination of poverty forever."

Resignation of Evo Morales

Prashad has written extensively about the removal of Evo Morales as President of Bolivia in 2019 and the 2020 Bolivian general election. He described Morales' removal as a coup d'état and said the Organisation of American States had "legitimised" the coup with unsubstantiated conclusions in its preliminary report. In March 2020, he wrote that Morales' removal from office was the result of his government's "socialist policy toward Bolivia's resources" which required that returns from mining resources such as lithium "be properly shared with the Bolivian people". He said that the government of Jeanine Áñez had extended a "welcome mat" to Tesla to establish a factory in Bolivia to manufacture lithium batteries from Bolivia's reserves.

Israel-Palestine conflict

In 2010, as Prashad was appointed to head the newly formed Trinity Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at Trinity College, a group of professors wrote a letter protesting the appointment based on "the prominent role he has played in promoting a boycott of Israeli universities and of study abroad in Israel". After initially refusing to meet with them, Trinity President James Jones eventually met with representatives from Jewish organisations, including the Connecticut Jewish federation, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford on 14 September 2010. One participant reported a "veiled threat" to have Jewish donors "weigh in". The university backed Prashad and rejected attempts to rescind his appointment.

Appraisal

The historian Paul Buhle writes, "Vijay Prashad is a literary phenomenon."

The writer Amitava Kumar notes, "Prashad is our own Frantz Fanon. His writing of protest is always tinged with the beauty of hope."

Criticism

Prashad has come under international scrutiny for his association with Neville Roy Singham, who has been accused of funding and promoting pro-Chinese government messaging and causes via a network of organizations (including the Prashad-associated Tricontinental Institute, NewsClick, The People's Forum, BreakThrough News, and Globetrotter). Prashad has responded to the criticism, deeming it “scurrilous” and characterizing it as an attempt “to conjure a conspiracy from something that is no secret at all” as well as a pretended “scoop based on public statements that I – and others – have made. The [critics] … uncovered no conspiracy and had no scoop, only innuendo."

Notable works

As author

• (2000) The Karma of Brown Folk. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0816634385.
• (2002) Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195658484.
• (2002) War Against the Planet: The Fifth Afghan War, Imperialism and Other Assorted Fundamentalism Manohar. ISBN 978-8187496199.
• (2002) Fat Cats and Running Dogs: The Enron Stage of Capitalism. Zed Books. ISBN 978-1842772614.
• (2002) Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity. Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0807050118.
• (2003) Namaste Sharon: Hindutva and Sharonism under US Hegemony. New Delhi: LeftWord Books. ISBN 8187496355.
• (2003) Keeping up with the Dow Joneses: Stocks, Jails, Welfare. Boston: South End Press. ISBN 978-0896086890.
• (2007) The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World. The New Press. ISBN 978-1565847859.
• (2011) Marx's Capital: An Introductory Reader. Contributed by Vijay Prashad, Venkatesh Athreya, Prasenjit Bose, Prabhat Patnaik, Jayati Ghosh, T. Jayaraman, R. Ramakumar. LeftWord. ISBN 978-93-80118-00-0.
• (2012) Arab Spring, Libyan Winter. AK Press. ISBN 978-1849351126.
• (2012) Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today. The New Press. ISBN 978-1595587848.
• (2013) Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Verso. Foreword by Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
• (2015) No Free Left: The Futures of Indian Communism. New Delhi: LeftWord Books.
• (2015) Letters to Palestine. Verso Books.
• (2016) The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520293250.
• (2017) Red October: The Russian Revolution and the Communist Horizon. New Delhi: LeftWord Books.
• (2017) Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt: Writers Respond to Climate Change. New Delhi: LeftWord Books.
• (2019) Red Star Over the Third World. Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0745339665.
• (2020) Washington Bullets. New Delhi: LeftWord Books. ISBN 978-8194592525. Preface by Evo Morales Ayma.
• (2022) Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, edited by Frank Barat. Haymarket Books. ISBN 978-1642596908.
• (2022) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power, with Noam Chomsky. The New Press. ISBN 978-1620977606. Foreword by Angela Davis.
• (2024) On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle, with Noam Chomsky. The New Press. ISBN 978-1620978573. Foreword by Miguel Díaz-Canel.

As editor

• (2016) Communist Histories, vol. 1. New Delhi: LeftWord Books.
• (2017) Land of Blue Helmets: the United Nations in the Arab World, co-edited with Karim Makdisi. University of California Press.

Articles

• Making Poverty History Jacobin, November 11, 2014.
• The Crackdown on Is an Attack on India’s Farmers’ Movement Jacobin, October 9, 2023.
• "Elites in the global north are scared to talk about Palestine," People's Dispatch, April 23, 2024.

Interviews

• (2013-08) "Reality Asserts Itself with Vijay Prashad" by Paul Jay. A set of 4 interviews conducted on August 2, 8, 9, and 11, 2013. Republished at the Analysis.news. Originally published at The Real News Network.
• (2015-02-24) "What Was Missing from Obama's Anti-Terrorism Speech" by Thomas Hedges, The Real News Network.
• (2016-12-20) "The Essentials of Socialist Writing" by Mark Nowak in Jacobin.
• (2020-11-29) "Washington's Bullets Can't Stamp Out the Hope of a Better World" by Karthik Purushothaman in Jacobin.
  • (2024-11-16) "The Cuba Embargo Is a Cold War Grudge That Won’t Die" by Karthik Puru in Jacobin

Talks

• (2021-09-19) "What's the Left to Do in a World on Fire?", hosted by the People's Forum NYC. [YouTube]

External links

External videos
Vijay Prashad - Hybrid Wars and US Imperialism on YouTube
The Chris Hedges Report: Struggle makes us human on YouTube

• Vijay Prashad's newsletters at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
• Vijay Prashad's Curriculum Vitae Archived 1 April 2017 at the Wayback Machine
• Vijay Prashad's personal blog website Archived 16 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine
• Vijay Prashad at Leftword Books.