ABSTRACT
Roy’s ‘radical humanism’ declared modernist faith in the ‘laws of science’, and in evolutionary biology as setting forth undeniable common principles for all life. The ‘biological urge to life’ was that which ‘developed into the conscious need of a human being to evolve his personality, his individuality’. Roy’s Radical Humanist Movement proposed to combine ‘scientific rationalism’ with the ‘romantic faith’ that ‘man is the maker of his world’. Revolution, in Roy’s late writings, no longer had a direct referent in the material or social world, but referred specifically to an alteration of consciousness. It entailed mental process and a shift in viewpoint. M. N. Roy’s thought was a Swadeshi–Luxemburgist contribution to this humanist conversation, clearly working from some shared assumptions, but also drawing on resources outside European discourse. The influence of Brahmo exegesis, dharmic asceticism and the Swadeshi avant-garde left traces in Roy’s work, just as much as did 1920s German Marxist thought.
