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:
Ashwin 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/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Journal of International Solidarity: