This is the earliest surviving photo of my Dad as a young man.

The photo was taken in a studio in Muktsar, Punjab when he was 16 or 17. It was 1956 or thereabouts.

I often wonder what this young man who had never been out of Punjab, let alone India, would have thought if someone told him what his future had in store? A life in London, and an English wife and children to boot!

Yet this young man left India and went on to become a lecturer in law, a leading Marxist theoretician, and the founding Chairman of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist). His early years witnessing the bloody end to the British occupation of India had a deep impact on his understanding of imperialism’s divide-and-rule policy. ~shared by @joeteebee