ABSTRACT
The national question has been very challenging to the Left radical politics in India's North East since pre-independence days. The national/ethnic question remains the most challenging for the Marxist Left in the region as much as in the rest of India. Classical Marxism remains philosophically incompatible with the categories of nation, nationalism or the national question. This incompatibility is categorical rather than ideological. The world which has experienced a high degree of 'ethnicization' witnesses, quite naturally, proliferation of studies on ethnicity. Most significant strategic contribution to the issue was made by Lenin and Stalin, who developed the strategic angle in classical Marxism with regard to nationalism and the nationality questions to suit a different revolutionary situation in Russia before 1917. The founders of Marxism reiterated that the general principles of their theory remained, but the application of the same would depend on the particular historical contexts concerned.
