ABSTRACT
The terms ‘future’ and ‘revolution’ were keywords of Roy’s first major communist text entitled, India in Transition. It developed the Swadeshi-inspired narrative of eruptive new time, but through Marxist concepts. M N. Roy’s discussion of Indian society was not only aimed at understanding Indian society futuristically, but was also en route to the project of challenging Eurocentric assumptions of the West’s civilisational exceptionalism, or Asia’s supposed endemic social stagnancy. From 1921 onwards, Roy assumed the role in the Comintern of a master exegete of Marxism on topics relating to the colonial world. The very origins of Gandhi politics lay especially in efforts to protect the right of Indian indentured and free labour in South Africa, but also worldwide. But, in the realm of culture his was certainly a territorialising imagination. Even for Indians abroad, Gandhi insisted on the intimate practice of Indian body culture, and the preservation of Indian cultural continence against Western influence.
