ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book focuses on the process inside India and the establishment of the literary project in the early 1930s. It demonstrates how the movement was specifically informed by events and circumstances in pre-independence South Asia. The book explores the theorisation of literature and politics that informed progressive writing. It discusses how an early identification by many writers with Gandhi gave way to a close identification with Nehru and the Congress Socialists, and a willingness to follow the lead of the illegal Communist Party of India. Progressive writers identified the creation of an independent nation with the creation of a unified national language. This attempt was in direct opposition to the trend towards separatism between literary Hindi and Urdu by sections of the intelligentsia who insisted that these were two distinct languages with separate vocabularies as well as scripts.
