Return to Bandung

In this episode, I’m joined by Laleh Khalili, Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso, 2020), to discuss the incredibly important but often-overlooked role of international shipping and logistics in the capitalist-imperialist world system. We discuss how the global shipping industry relates to everything from transnational labor exploitation to environmental devastation to the genocide in Palestine, as well as the power of organized labor in this crucial industry to bring the capitalist system to a grinding halt. About the show:Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.Support Return to Bandung:If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! If you’re able, please also consider supporting my work—which encompasses both my writing and this podcast, as well as various other political education projects by signing up as a paid subscriber to my Substack or making a one-off contribution:Become a paid Substack subscriberBuy Me a CoffeeSources and helpful links:Laleh Khalili — Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso, 2020)Deborah Cohen — The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade (University of Minnesota Press, 2014)Johan Mathew — Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea (University of California Press, 2016)Jatin Dua — Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean (University of California Press, 2019)Laleh Khalili — The Suez Canal Is a Lifeline for Global Capitalism (interview with Jacobin, March 2021)Peter Cole — Building Worker Power on the Docks (interview with Jacobin, December 2019)Ashok Kumar — How Yemen’s Houthis Brought Maritime Capitalism to a Halt (Jacobin, May 2025)Laura Montanari — We Said “We Will Block Everything” and We Did: Inside Italy’s Strike for Gaza (Truthout, September 2025)Peter Cole — Dockworker strikes in solidarity with Gaza have a long legacy (Waging Nonviolence, October 2025)Katie Fox-Hodess — Global Solidarity on the Docks (New Labor Forum, January 2022)Mask off Maersk campaign websitePhotograph of Walter RodneyWalter Rodney — How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972)Social links:Return to Bandung:Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠Pranay Somayajula:Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠Laleh Khalili:Twitter: https://twitter.com/LalehKhalili

In this episode, I’m joined by intellectual historian Sam Klug, author of The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), to discuss the idea of ‘internal colonialism’ as it applies to the situation of African Americans and other racialized peoples in the United States. We explore how this concept developed within the Black radical tradition, how it evolved over time, and how it was taken up by an astoundingly diverse array of thinkers and activists across the ideological spectrum, and discuss what this radical way of thinking about the politics of race can offer us on the anti-racist and colonial left today. About the show:Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.Support Return to Bandung:If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! If you’re able, please also consider supporting my work—which encompasses both my writing and this podcast, as well as various other political education projects by signing up as a paid subscriber to my Substack or making a one-off contribution:​Become a paid Substack subscriber​Buy Me a CoffeeSources and helpful links:​Sam Klug — The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025)​Return to Bandung interview with Adom Getachew (October 2025)​Angela Davis — Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (Haymarket, 2016)​Aziz Rana — Race and the American Creed (n+1, Winter 2016)​Eugene Puryear — Harry Haywood’s contributions to the national question and the fight for class unity (Liberation School, February 2024)​Harold Cruse — Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American (Studies on the Left, 1962)​Kenneth Clark — Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (Harper and Row, 1965)​Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton — Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (Random House, 1967)​James and Grace Lee Boggs — The City is the Black Man’s Land (Monthly Review, April 1966)​Vine Deloria, Jr. — Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Macmillan, 1969)​Return to Bandung interview with Nick Estes (February 2025)​Huey P. Newton — Speech at Boston College on Revolutionary Intercommunalism (November 1970)​Return to Bandung interview with Julian Go (February 2025)​Sam Klug — Who’s Afraid of Frantz Fanon? (Boston Review, March 2024)​Stokely Carmichael — What We Want (New York Review of Books, September 1966)Social links:Return to Bandung:​Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠​Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠Pranay Somayajula:​Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠​Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠​Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠​Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠

In this episode, I’m joined by political theorist Adom Getachew, author of Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton University Press, 2019), to discuss the politics of ‘anticolonial worldmaking’ that swept across the Third World throughout the latter half of the 20th century, when Global South leaders envisioned new ways of radically reshaping the international order into one founded on principles of international justice and sovereign equality. We explore what became of this worldmaking political project, its contemporary legacies and reverberations, and what lessons we can draw from it as we work to build a more equitable world order in the 21st century. About the show:Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!Sources and helpful links:Adom Getachew — Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton University Press, 2019)Vijay Prashad — The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (The New Press, 2007)Vladimir Lenin — The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1916)Mark Mazower — No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton University Press, 2009)Howard French — The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (W.W. Norton, 2025)Andrée Blouin — My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria (Verso, 2025)Sukarno — Opening Address at the Bandung Conference (April 1955)Social links:Return to Bandung:Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠Pranay Somayajula:Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠

For this special one-year anniversary episode of Return to Bandung, I’m joined by my comrade Ashwin Shantha to discuss our shared project of anti-imperialist political education. In this conversation, posted as a collaborative episode with Ashwin’s excellent International Solidarity Podcast (itself a part of Ashwin’s larger Journal of International Solidarity project), we explore the importance of political education in our current moment of crisis, the challenges of raising anti-imperialist consciousness in the imperial core, the contradictions and opportunities that from working within Western academia, and much more.About the show:Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!Sources and helpful links:Journal of International SolidarityInternational Solidarity PodcastAshwin Shantha — The Dispossession of International Students by Canadian Higher Education as a form of Imperialist Extraction from the Global South (Potentia: Journal of International and Public Affairs, September 2025)Ashwin Shantha — Why Indians Must See Themselves in Palestine (Journal of International Solidarity, June 2024)Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine (1969)Metro DC DSA — Beyond the Bombs: Anti-Imperialist Summer School (May-June 2025)China vs. India: Divergent Paths of Development (International Solidarity Podcast, April 2025)Frantz Fanon — The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1963)Social links:Return to Bandung:Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠Pranay Somayajula:Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠Journal of International Solidarity:Substack: https://intlsolidarity.substack.com/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6pbGw76EukzP0xPisBS9SjYouTube: https://youtube.com/@JournalofIntlSolidarityInstagram: https://instagram.com/journalofintlsolidarityTwitter: https://twitter.com/revintlist

In this episode, I’m joined by scholars Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, coauthors of Venezuela, The Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution (Monthly Review Press, 2020), to discuss the history and current situation of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Situating our discussion in the context of escalating imperialist attacks against Venezuela’s socialist project, this wide-ranging conversation explores the relationship between state power and grassroots organization, the role of communes in Venezuelan socialism, and how the Chavista grassroots has mobilized to defend the Bolivarian Revolution against U.S. sanctions and imperialist aggression. About the show:Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!Sources and helpful links:Venezuelanalysis websiteCira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert — Venezuela, The Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution (Monthly Review Press, 2020)Chris Gilbert — Commune or Nothing!: Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project (Monthly Review Press, 2023)Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert (eds.) — Communes and Socialist Construction (Monthly Review July-August 2025 Special Issue)Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs — Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela (Center for Economic and Policy Research, April 2019)Francisco Rodriguez — How Sanctions Contributed to Venezuela’s Economic Collapse (Global Americans, January 2023)Nick Estes — Empire, Colonialism and Solidarity (interview with Venezuelanalysis, August 2025)Pino Arlacchi — The Great Hoax Against Venezuela: Oil Geopolitics Disguised as ‘War on Drugs’ (Venezuelanalysis, September 2025)Communal (and Working Class) Resistance — Venezuelanalysis interview series with grassroots participants in the Bolivarian RevolutionGregory Wilpert — Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chavez Government (Verso, 2007)Hugo Chavez — Speech to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2011)Social links:Return to Bandung:Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠Pranay Somayajula:Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠Venezuelanalysis:Website: https://venezuelanalysis.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/venanalysis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/venanalysis/

In this engaging discussion, economic anthropologist Jason Hickel explores the intricate links between imperialism and global economic inequality. He critiques mainstream narratives that portray inequality as a natural phenomenon, instead emphasizing capitalism’s and colonialism's roles in perpetuating poverty. Hickel introduces the concept of unequal exchange, using modern examples like the iPhone to illustrate value transfer from the Global South to the North. He also highlights the need for anti-colonial frameworks and global solidarity to combat entrenched disparities.

This is the recording of a lecture that I gave in July at the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago, titled “‘This is the Human Race Speaking…’: Reviving the Bandung Spirit in a Multipolar World.” In the lecture, which I also published as an essay on Substack, I reflect on the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference and the legacies of the Third Worldist movement, arguing that the global left—particularly in the United States and other Western countries—urgently needs to revive the ‘Bandung Spirit’ of anticolonial internationalism in order to remain relevant in the face of today’s increasingly multipolar global order.About the show:Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!Sources and helpful links:Socialism Conference Website“‘This is the Human Race Speaking…’: Reviving the Bandung Spirit in a Multipolar World” (lecture text published on Substack)Social links:Return to Bandung:Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠Pranay Somayajula:Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠

In this episode, I’m joined by Pawel Wargan, Coordinator of the Secretariat of the Progressive International, to discuss the past, present, and future of left internationalism and international solidarity. In this wide-ranging conversation, we unpack what ‘internationalism’ really means, how debates over internationalism have evolved on the left over time, and what a politics of solidarity across borders can and should like amid the present moment of global upheaval.Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!Sources and helpful links:Vladimir Lenin and M.N. Roy — Theses on the National and Colonial Questions (1920)Progressive International — The People’s AcademyAditya Iyer — The Indian Radical Who Helped Found the Mexican Communist Party (Jacobin, August 2021) Religion Dispatches coverage of the 2024 National Conservatism ConferenceReactionary International websiteDomenico Losurdo — Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn (Monthly Review Press, 2024)Paris Yeros — A Polycentric World Will Only Be Possible by the Intervention of the ‘Sixth Great Power’ (Agrarian South, December 2023)Jason Hickel — How Unequal Exchange Shapes Our World (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, July 2025)Vijay Prashad — Resurrecting the Concept of the Triad (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, June 2023)Nick Burns — Never Forget Portugal’s Revolution (Jacobin, April 2024)Aimé Césaire — Discourse on Colonialism (1950)Robin D.G. Kelley — Fighting Fascism: Lessons From the Colonies (Lecture at Socialism 2025 conference)Social links:Return to Bandung:Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠Pranay Somayajula:Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠Pawel Wargan:Twitter: https://twitter.com/pawelwargan Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pawelwargan/ Progressive International:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProgIntl Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/progintl_en/Website: https://progressive.international/

In this episode, I’m joined by critical development economist Jayati Ghosh to discuss the complex relationship between imperialism and international development. In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore the problematic assumptions underlying mainstream ideas of ‘development,’ why GDP is a profoundly inadequate measure of a country’s economic well-being, and how the globalization of the international economy has shaped the structural dynamics of imperialism as a world system—as well as some of the ways that the global economy needs to be restructured in order to deliver genuine justice and sovereignty for the Global South. Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!Sources and helpful links:Amiya Bagchi — Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital (Bloomsbury, 2008)Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, Surbhi Kesar, and Devika Dutt — The Colonial Origins of Economics (Economic and Political Weekly, October 2024)Jostein Hauge — This year’s Nobel prize exposes economics’ problem with colonialism (The Conversation, October 2024)Benjamin Selwyn — Walt Rostow’s Development Theory Shows That Capitalism Relies on Brutal Violence (Jacobin, June 2023)Walter Rodney — How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972)Daniela Gabor and Ndongo Samba Sylla — The Global South Must Be at the Center of the Making of a Just Global Economic Order (interview in Jacobin, February 2023)Jayati Ghosh — Let’s Count What Really Matters (Project Syndicate, June 2022)Jayati Ghosh — Globalization and the End of the Labor Aristocracy (Dollars and Sense, March 2017)Jayati Ghosh — A Life in Development Economics and Political Economy (Real World Economics Review, 2022)Social links:Return to Bandung:Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠Website: https://www.returntobandung.com/Pranay Somayajula:Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠Jayati Ghosh:Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jayati1609

In this episode, I’m joined by Samar Al-Bulushi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine and author of War-Making as World-Making: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror (Stanford University Press, 2024), to discuss how the United States outsources the violence of empire to countries in the Global South—particularly in Africa—in the context of the War on Terror. Focusing on Kenya as a case study, we explore the nuances and contradictions of the United States’ so-called ‘security partnerships’ with Global South states, examining what this cooperation looks like in practice and how the governments and populations of these states navigate the complexities of this dynamic.Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!Sources and helpful links:Samar Al-Bulushi — War-Making as World-Making: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror (Stanford University Press, 2024)Chinyere Obasi — It’s Time to Ratify the Rome Statute. No, Really This Time. (Harvard Political Review, November 2021)Samar Al-Bulushi — The US Plan to Outsource Its Imperialism in Haiti to Kenya (Jacobin, May 2024)Samar Al-Bulushi — The Global Stakes of Kenya’s Protests (Jacobin, July 2024)Black Alliance for Peace — U.S. Out of Africa CampaignInternational Crisis Group — Overkill: Reforming the Legal Basis for the U.S. War on Terror (September 2021)Tim Krüger — Kenya’s Tax Protests Have Ignited a Movement (New Internationalist, July 2024)Non-Aligned Movement — Kampala Declaration (January 2024)Pranay Somayajula — Bandung’s Ghosts (Protean, April 2025)Patrice Lumumba — Speech at the opening of the All-African Conference in Léopoldville (August 1960)Social links:Return to Bandung:Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠Pranay Somayajula:Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠Samar Al-Bulushi:Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/samar42