The Manifesto of the Communist Party, popularly known as the Communist Manifesto, was published in 1848 as the programmatic document of the Communist League and has since then come to occupy a permanent place in the annals of revolutionary literature. A very slim book, the Manifesto, which is essentially theoretical in orientation, is an explosive text that addresses questions which in one sense open up new frontiers for posterity. In another sense it is an exercise in the rhetoric of revolution which drives the proletariat into action against its oppressors with the battle cry on its lips: “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” It is precisely such presentation of extremely compressed theoretical formulations couched in a style and language which is at places almost poetic that makes the reading of the Manifesto as a text apparently easy but essentially difficult. The very famous opening sentence of the book, “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism,” sets the mood, which is at once passionate and thoughtful, reminding one of the opening bars of the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Reflecting on such a structurally complex text, 150 years after its publication, is not understandably an easy task. Yet the encounter with this book on the threshold of a new century, when the world looks vastly different from the time of the Manifesto, generates a good number of interesting questions which may prove to be useful for a deeper understanding of the text.