50 SOCIAL SCIENTIST "Untouchable Freedom: A Critique of the Bourgeois-Landlord Indian State," Subaltern Studies X. Ed. Cyan Prakash and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998).] In 1959, Martin Luther King, Jr. visited India and travelled the country as a guest of Nehru. Although King's vision was decidedly socialist, unlike Robeson, he was more prone to stay within the lanes of the Gandhian movement (a bent that led him to express admiration for Vinoba Bhave and the Bhoodan movement [Martin Luther King, Jr. "My Trip to the Land of Gandhi," Testament of Hope. Ed. J. M. Washington (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1986), pp. 28-29.]). If Robeson had travelled to India, he would indeed have spoken in favour of the communist movement and (if he arrived after 1959), he would certainly have criticized Nehru for the dismissal of the Kerala government. In 1949, when Nehru was in the US, Robeson refused to see him because, as his biographer puts it, "Robeson felt that Nehru had been responsible for the large number of deaths among the Communists." [Duberman, Paul Robeson, p. 378.] Those who want to remember the man as an apolitical artist will have a hard time doing so with this sort of record before them. Of course, much that Robeson hoped for did not come to pass. In the US, the hand of Reaction is long and fierce. Black liberation is on the agenda on the streets, so too is the workers' movement. With the founding of the Black Radical Congress and with the emergence of a radical AFL-CIO, one hopes that the dreams of people such as Robeson will not perish in this century. W. E. B. Dubois, renaissance scholar and membef of the CPUSA at the end of his life, once said that "the only thing wrong with Robeson is his having too great faith in human beings." [Duberman, Paul Roheson, p. 396.] There is nothing wrong with "great faith" as long as there is a realistic analysis of the forces at hand. At times, Robeson underestimated the vise of inertia and habit in our lives and visions. For those who hope in the socialist tradition, such "great faith" is perhaps the only thing that keeps the struggle alive. With regard to Robeson, we might want to say to him just what the astounding jazz musician Charlie Parker said to him in 1951: "I just wanted to shake your hand. You're a great man." [Duberman, Paul Robeson, p. 397.]