Leftism in India, 1917-1947 provides a comprehensive account of the Leftist Movements in India during the most decisive phase of its struggle for freedom and describes how they interacted with the mainstream of the Indian Freedom movement under the leadership of the Indian National Congress, guided by its supreme leader Mahatma Gandhi and his ideology of non-violence. This ideology directly opposed those who believed in Marxism - Leninism and, little wonder, their policies clashed at almost every stage of the freedom movement. These clashes gave rise to the dramatic developments which are vividly described in this work. Each such development has been highlighted in its proper context, analysed with scholarly objectivity and supported by primary source materials collected not only from the Indian National Archives but also from Berlin, Paris, London, Mexico, Moscow and Tashkent.

The historical assessments of Left unity in 1930s India misrepresent activities designed to achieve unity. The common treatment of the relationship between Indian socialists and communists emphasizes disunity and the inability to find common ground. Scholarly discussions about unity in fact highlight its impracticality and the inevitability of its failure. This book proposes that during this moment, for socialists and communists, unity was not just an ideal, but was in fact considered to be a possible and very realizable goal. Rather than focusing exclusively on ideological fissures as the literature does, the book explores the possibilities for unity. The author investigates the United Front as a conceptual framework for collaboration, as a scheme for assessing the extent to which cooperation between socialists and communists was feasible and practicable during the mid-to-late-1930s in India. He employs the notion of United Front as an instrument for identifying and compensating for the prejudices which permeate sources about the cooperation between the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) and the Communist Party of India (CPI). The author challenges the historicism found in extant scholarly assessments of Left unity by illustrating the ways in which the partners engaged in united front activities and approached the common goal of Left unity despite their fragmented ideological perspectives. The book presents the United Front not as an unsuccessful phase of collaboration, but rather as a concerted attempt to achieve ideological convergence and Left homogeneity which ultimately failed to radicalize Indian nationalism because, in reality, conditions for Left unity did not exist. The book will be of interest to academics studying South Asian history and politics in particular, and socialism, communism, nationalism and imperialism more generally.

Based On The Author`S Doctoral Thesis - Covers The Period 1917 To 1917 - Relations Between Indian Nationalists And Russia And The Influence Exercised On Each Other. 10 Chapters - Introduction - Furtherence Of Ideology, Lenin And The East - Revolutionary Zeal - Ideological Discord - Parting Of Ways - Congress And The 3 R`S - Gandhi And His Russian Guru - Conclusion - Bibliography.

The story of how the Indian reformer Bhimrao Ambedkar reimagined John Dewey’s pragmatism. In The Evolution of Pragmatism in India, Scott R. Stroud delivers a comprehensive exploration of the influence of John Dewey’s pragmatism on Bhimrao Ambedkar, architect of the Republic of India’s constitution. Stroud traces Ambedkar’s development in Dewey’s Columbia University classes in 1913–1916 through his final years in 1950s India when he rewrote the story of Buddhism. Stroud examines pragmatism’s influence not only on the philosophical ideas underpinning Ambedkar’s fight against caste oppression but also how his persuasive techniques drew on pragmatism’s commitment to reconstruction and meliorism. At the same time, Stroud is careful to point out the ways that Ambedkar pushed back against Dewey’s paradigm and developed his own approach to challenges in India. The result is a nuanced study of one of the most important figures in Indian history.

In this book Michele L. Louro compiles the debates, introduces the personalities, and reveals the ideas that seeded Jawaharlal Nehru's political vision for India and the wider world. Set between the world wars, this book argues that Nehru's politics reached beyond India in order to fulfill a greater vision of internationalism that was rooted in his experiences with anti-imperialist and anti-fascist mobilizations in the 1920s and 1930s. Using archival sources from India, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Russia, the author offers a compelling study of Nehru's internationalism as well as contributes a necessary interwar history of institutions and networks that were confronting imperialist, capitalist, and fascist hegemony in the twentieth-century world. Louro provides readers with a global intellectual history of anti-imperialism and Nehru's appropriation of it, while also establishing a history of a typically overlooked period.