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Kavita Krishnan: “Our indifference to Ukraine did harm to our struggle in India”

Kavita Krishnan is one of the prominent figures in India’s left and women’s movements today. She has long been fighting for the rights of women, workers, and discriminated communities, playing a crucial role in large-scale campaigns to stop violence against women. In her texts, she analyzes the problems of Indian society and experiences of struggle from the Marxist feminist perspective. 

In response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kavita Krishnan managed to push the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation to condemn Russian aggression more unambiguously than other Indian political organizations, and to organize street protests against it. However, the CPI (ML) failed to show effective solidarity with the Ukrainian people, causing Kavita to leave the party leadership and its women’s organization, of which she had been a member for over two decades.

Today, Kavita Krishnan’s voice in support of Ukraine is one of the loudest among intellectuals in the Global South. In her numerous speeches and articles, she exposes the Putinist slogan of a “multipolar world” and the reactionary internationalism of the Kremlin, which unites authoritarian regimes and far-right forces worldwide. She calls for solidarity among liberation movements that resist anti-democratic tendencies in India itself and elsewhere.