They Left Socialism. Their Children Are Selling It Back.
From Kolkata to New York, what socialism means depends entirely on who you ask — and what they lived through.
“It broke all our hearts…I love my Kolkata, but I can’t be in Kolkata. There are no jobs,” Gargi Mukherjee, who played Mira Mashi — the overbearing Bengali aunt in Mira Nair’s The Namesake — told The Juggernaut. She remembered the uncertainty that plagued her city as industries dried up and Maoist Naxal gunmen walked the streets. “If there was one emotion,” she recalled, “it was fear.”
But looking at the newest crop of pro-socialist South Asians in the diaspora, from influencers to politicians, you would never know that socialism was part of a world that many of their parents escaped. Everyone wants access to excellent healthcare, education, and housing, but seems to disagree on how to get there.
So why are younger South Asians rushing to embrace something that hasn’t really worked in their homelands? The Juggernaut spoke to socialists (including Ella Devi, the “socialist socialite” who recently went viral), as well as those who chose to leave it behind, to find out.