This is a work of South Asian intellectual history written from a transnational perspective and based on the life and work of M.N. Roy, one of India’s most formidable Marxist intellectuals. Swadeshi revolutionary, co-founder of the Mexican Communist Party, member of the Communist International Presidium, and a major force in the rise of Indian communism, M.N. Roy was a colonial cosmopolitan icon of the interwar years. Exploring the intellectual production of this important thinker, this book traces the historical context of his ideas from 19th-century Bengal to Weimar Germany, through the tumultuous period of world politics in the 1930s and 1940s, and on to post-Independence India. In this book the author makes a number of valuable theoretical contributions. He argues for the importance of conceiving the ‘deterritorial’ zones of thought and action through which Indian anti-colonial political thought operated, and advances a new periodisation for Swadeshi on this basis. He also argues against viewing ‘international communism’ of the 1920s as a single monolith by highlighting the fractures and contestations that influenced colonial politics worldwide. A fresh and insightful perspective on the history of India in the interwar years, this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of the modern history of South and East Asia, America and Europe, and to those interested in anti-colonial struggles, Communist politics and trajectories of Marxist thought in the 20th century.

"To rectify the West's unfortunate neglect of one of India's premier intellectuals, humanist Innaiah Narisetti has complied this new collection of Roy's most significant works. Roy conceived of humanism as a scientific, integral, and radically new worldview. Among many interesting selections in this volume, Roy's "Principles of Radical Democracy: Twenty-Two Theses" especially represents his thinking. Here he emphasizes ethics and eschews supernatural interpretations as antithetical to his scientifically oriented conception of New Humanism. Roy also underscores the importance of universal education to make average people scientifically literate and to teach them critical thinking."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume presents a selection of Roy's writings that have not been in print for a very long time as they were proscribed by the government immediately on publication. The volume includes the complete texts of Political Letters and Future of Indian Politics, the Open Letter to J. R. MacDonald, and a selection of his articles from The Vanguard, The Masses, Inprecor, and The Communist International. This book is intended for historians, political scientists.

This book traces the life of M N Roy from his early years, to the Russian Revolution of 1917 which deeply drew him to Marxism and led him to found the first Communist Party outside Russia in Mexico in 1919. It takes us through his deep involvement with Marxism, and his subsequent disillusionment with Lenin and the autocratic nationalist and colonial aspects of Marxist thought, to his belief in democracy and commitment to a scientific, humanist and moral kind of socialist thought.

M. N. Roy, the founder of the Communist Party of India, has been described by Robert C. North as ranking "with Lenin and Mao Tse-tung." This book, focusing on the career of Roy, traces the development of communism and nationalism in India from 1920 to 1939. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.