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The Marxist Sociology of A.R.
Desai and the Bombay School: A Tribute and a Discussion

Author(s): Vasanthi Raman
Source: Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 62, No. 2, Special Issue on The Bombay School of
Sociology: The Stalwarts and Their Legacies (May-August 2013), pp. 254-268
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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Sociological Bulletin
62 (2), May - August 2013, pp. 254-268
© Indian Sociological Society
The Marxist Sociology of A.R. Desai and the Bo

School: A Tribute and a Discussion
Vasanthi Raman
This paper is at once a tribute to a great teacher, a guru in the best sense
of the term to many of us and to me personally, and one who introduced
the exhilarating worldview of Marxism to the students in the latter
1960s: Professor Akshay Ramanlal Desai (1915-94). This is also simul
taneously a modest attempt at discussing some of the significant ideas in
his work.
There is a certain historical serendipity involved here. We are
discussing Desai's contribution when indeed global capitalism is in a
crisis of the magnitude that the world has not witnessed since the 1930s.
The historical attempts at building socialism have come to nought.
Present-day global capitalism seems to have let loose two tendencies: (i)
the enormous wealth-generating capacity of humans which has eroded
the capacity of nation states to pursue independent policies, and simul
taneously (ii) enormous concentration of wealth and heightened
inequalities, both among and within countries and between regions,
between peoples, classes, and genders, and intensified all existing
faultiness. The polarising tendency implicit in capitalism has got further
exacerbated. As one Marxist scholar has pithily put it:
It is one of the ironies of ideological production in our time that precisely

in the historical moment when capitalism has finally penetrated the farthest
reaches not only of economic but also cultural production itself, across the
globe, we witness the rise of an ideology, culturalism, ... which shifts the
locus of determination from the field of political economy to that of culture
(Ahmad 2004: 94).
Desai's work seems particularly relevant, given his overall orientation

and emphasis on the study of macro structures and processes and histori
cising and contextualising them.
The Marxist Sociology of A.R. Desai and the Bombay School 255
The legacy of the Bombay School has been principally associated

with G.S. Ghurye whose contributions loomed large in determining the
overall framework of research between the years 1924 and 1959 when he
was Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Bombay
(now Mumbai). There is a general and accepted assumption that the
legacy of the Bombay School is singular and that it is associated with the
work of Ghurye. D.N. Dhanagare (2011: 130) raises the critical question
whether there is a legacy or legacies of the Bombay School.1 He affirms
that there could be many legacies and that Desai's work, while consti
tuting a major shift in perspective, is also part of the legacy of the
Bombay School. It would seem that even determining what constitutes a
legacy and who can be legitimately considered as being part of the
legacy is itself enmeshed in the politics of institution-building, and the
silences and omissions also speak.
It has been claimed that the discipline of anthropology has been
tethered to its colonial origins, whereas sociology, right from its incep
tion, retained a degree of autonomy from political authority (Upadhya:
2007: 194-95). However, Manorama Savur's work in excavating the
archives of the University of Bombay highlights the colonial authorities'
deep imbrication in the project of bringing in an entirely unfamiliar
discipline into the research priorities of the University (Savur 2011). The
original plan was only to have a School of Economics; however, the
impact of the political unrest and the rising tide of militant nationalism
between 1911 and 1919 were a significant consideration in the introduc
tion of sociology. It would be relevant to quote the Secretary, Education
Department, Government of Bombay, '.... what the Gol [Government of
India] has in mind is a School of Research rather than a Chair of
Instruction' and also 'the aim of sociological history of India would be to
arrive at the conditions which have made politics, religion and the
general structure of Indian society its distinctive features' (ibid.: 4).
The debate on the similarities and differences between sociology and
social anthropology has appeared many times in professional journals.
Whether the disciplinary boundaries between the two are porous or not
depends on how one views the origins of both and also one's own
specific academic history and biography. One is in agreement with
André Béteille (2002) on this question when he states in an interview to a
Swedish anthropologist that, in the western world, the study of society
and culture is partitioned: the study of other cultures is anthropology and
the study of ourselves is sociology. But, more significantly, he states that
'Anyone who studies India, Africa or Melanesia is an anthropologist,
whereas to be a sociologist one has to be a specialist in western societies'
256 Vasanthi Raman
(ibid.: 236). The above

labour and issues of po
In their excellent an
Patricia Uberoi, Satish
the metropolitan divis
pology being reproduc
also in the non-wester
affirms 'India's need f
its present interface
sociology is eminently
This discussion, in a
social scientists in the
demands a degree of i
boundaries. The newl
osmosis from variou
division of labour in
Marxist concept of s
by definition, be wide
and anthropology to p
We look at Desai's co
crisis of global capita
the most tumultuou
Background of India
thesis submitted to th
point of the anti-col
from colonial rule but
His work gave a broad
the time: the changes
of Indian society; the
social forces; the asc
question of caste, refe
reform movements ag
the question of nation
that almost all the cri
either intellectually o
the potentialities of c
discussed and whether
analysed (ibid. : 16-1
was that it was based
immense potentiality
standing society. The
was, in a sense, centra
of colonialism, state, class, peasantry, etc. In this he charted another

course from the dominant orientation of the Bombay School, the main
contours of which were laid out by Ghurye, who was his guide and
whose disciplinary moorings were also deeply influenced by Indology.
Desai's canvas was the nation and not the village and class was the
central concept.
In Recent Trends in Indian Nationalism (1960), Desai assesses the
path of development and points to the kind of choices that were
available: bourgeois industrialisation versus socialist industrialisation.
He argues that a clear distinction between the two is necessary since this
would result in qualitatively different types of social, institutional,
ideological, and cultural patterns and thereby the kind of structural
pattern of the society (ibid. : 117).
Desai became Head of the Department of Sociology in 1967, when
the overall social and political situation was one of unrest, with the
Naxalbari uprising having stormed the national scene, on the one hand,
and the confrontation between the left-wing trade-union movement and
the rising chauvinist forces in the city of Bombay at a peak, on the other.
Desai was already active in initiating many Marxist study circles on
Marxist texts and Indian history during the late 1960s. These were
attended by academics not merely from the social sciences, but also from
the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and from the Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research along with many young student and working
class activists.
If indeed nationalism was the frame within which social sciences in
India grew and found a raison d'être, Desai was no exception and, his
Social Background of Indian Nationalism was a path-breaking study,
which ran into five editions and which he himself compared to other
works with a historical sweep - R.P Dutt's India Today and Jawaharlal
Nehru's Discovery of India. In a sense, one might say he was the master
of the big picture. However, the method of historical materialism does
not eschew an examination of micro categories, though the insistence is
on placing the micro in the context of macro forces and laying bare the
internal contradictions of both. We come to this question a little later.
Desai, however, does not find any mention in M.N. Srinivas and
M.N. Panini's long article on 'The Development of Sociology and Social
Anthropology in India' (1973). Srinivas and Panini do refer to the
influence of Marxism:
The influence of Marxism in also evident in Indian sociology though not as

prominently as in economics, politics and history. However, the Marxist
star is rising in Indian sociology. This is both due to the inherent strength
and appeal of the Marxist approach and to the popularity of the writings
258 Vasanthi Raman
and thinkers such as

recent radicalisation
popularity of Marxist
One wonders whethe

to the study of Ind
discipline. Perhaps on
development of the d
However, this negle
somewhat rectified b
Founders of Indian
Uberoi, Nandini Sund
article on Desai (Pate
contesting sociologi
Desai's contribution
butes some of the sh
modernity, 'which m
existing perspectives
There is a certain
mere sociologist, or
he was a scholar and an activist involved in labour-union activities and a
host of projects with many political activists. In a sense, he straddled the
worlds of both scholarship and activism and, in this, he imbibed the core
spirit of Marxism wherein the project of understanding the world and
transforming it were one and the same. It was because of his activist
involvement that he engaged with the key issues that were being debated
by radical left scholars and left parties as well as critiqued policy
initiatives. Desai wrote prolifically on a wide range of themes starting
from Social Background of Indian Nationalism to agrarian struggles,
peasant movements, labour history, human rights, the state and
repression, India's path of development, women and patriarchy, and the
crisis in Indian sociology. Mainstream sociologists did not consider these
academic enough to deserve serious consideration.
Relevance of the Marxist Approach
Desai's principal purpose was to understand Indian society from a

Marxist point of view and to apply the Marxian method in studying the
various contradictions of Indian society with the aim of transforming the
society (Savur and Munshi 1995). In that sense, Desai was interested less
in the development of the discipline and more in analysing social
processes from a Marxist point of view. This was largely because he
assumed that the Marxian method was not only significant, but also
necessary for an understanding of Indian society and, to that extent, he

assumed that the Marxist method and viewpoint were an integral part of
the discipline of sociology and social anthropology. And this despite the
fact that Desai's contribution was little recognised by the reigning stars
in the discipline at the time. His presidential address to the All India
Sociological Conference in Meerut in 1980 was on the 'Relevance of the
Marxist Approach to the Study of Indian Society' (Desai 1984). Many
points are made here. Desai highlights the major developments since the
1950s which need to be taken note of; one of these being the phenomenal
growth of institutions of higher learning, like universities and colleges,
with social sciences acquiring an increased importance. 'Knowledge
generators and knowledge transmitters in the social sciences are
operating on a big scale on the national scene' (ibid. : 2). In the field of
sociology and social anthropology, there is a sizeable number of trained
persons. But the punch comes when he states: 'It would ... be appro
priate to describe the institutional framework for training and research in
sociology which has emerged after Independence as a gigantic
knowledge factory, engaged in large-scale manufacture of knowledge
products comprising micro-surveys and micro-field reports' (ibid. : 3).
Desai was addressing his professional colleagues, partly articulating
the serious misgivings of social scientists, but also in a sense engaging
the profession in a dialogue about the social significance of the research
that was being generated. Some of the important issues raised can be
summed up as follows:
a. The colonial mould within which sociological research is

trapped, constricting its vision and sapping creativity, and
overall operating within a dependency framework, with
borrowed concepts and methods from the 'high prestige centres
of learning' (ibid. : 5) in the United States and the United
Kingdom. This uncritical acceptance of exogenous models
without gauging their relevance to Indian conditions and society
has distorted the perspective and stunted the growth of Indian
sociology.
b. The hardening of disciplinary boundaries leading to a seg
mented perspective and related to this is the reluctance to draw
from both Indology and history.
c. The important question of the value-free stance and a supposed
neutrality while simultaneously accepting uncritically the values
adopted by the policy makers; related to this is the wider
question of ethical dimension of sociology: it has become 'a
discipline without human meaning purpose' (ibid.).
260 Vasanthi Raman
d. Despite the fact

transformation,
ahistoric, static, an
structural function
quo-ist in their essen
e. Sociology is not e
Indian society a
meaningfully towar
What is significant i
leading practitioner
pology.
An integral part of Desai's vision was a historical dimension. For
him, history was essential to an understanding of the contemporary social
processes. Besides, he believed that a unified science of society which
would draw on the different disciplines was necessary for a holistic
understanding of society and was uncomfortable with disciplinary
boundaries. A mere interdisciplinary approach, is not the same as a
holistic understanding of society. Perhaps his own ideal and wish would
have been to be considered part of a more ambitious project - something
like Lucien Goldmann's The Human Sciences and Philosophy (1969).
The question of judgement of fact and judgement of value has been a
much debated issue in Marxist literature. There are divergent viewpoints
among Marxists as to whether socialism was an ethical imperative or a
historical necessity. This is also a much debated issue in social science in
general. Desai was strongly critical of any stance of value neutrality. In
his social vision both, that is, the judgement of fact and the judgement of
value, were fused and united. In this he struck a different note from the
dominant structural framework which was premised on a separation of
the two.2
Contemporary Dilemmas
Many questions have returned to us after sixty-odd years of Indepen

dence. The question of caste has remained with us for long, but it has
acquired new inflections and also new locations. But, more importantly,
the question of caste is intimately linked with the wider questions of
social transformation. The agonising dilemmas of a highly diverse and
hierarchical society, with a multiplicity of social classes and commu
nities contesting for their just share of the social and national resources
have been succinctly articulated by Dr B.R. Ambedkar in 1949 on the
eve of the adoption of the Constitution of India:
The Marxist Sociology ofA.R. Desai and the Bombay School 261
We must begin by acknowledging the fact that there is complete absence of
two things in Indian society. One of these is equality. On the social plane,
we have in India a society based on the principles of graded inequality
which means elevation of some and degradation of others. On the
economic plane, we have a society in which there are some who have
immense wealth as against many who live in abject poverty. On the 26th
January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics
we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote, and one vote one
value. In our social life, we shall by reason of our social and economic
structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long
shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life?
(Ambedkar 1949).
In this context, I wish to discuss here the two discursive strands in

the national movement. On the one hand, there is the modern territorial
notion of citizenship, a secular state committed to equality of all regard
less of caste, creed, and gender, and, on the other, we have a society that
is riven with contradictions based on caste and class, region, religion, and
even gender. It is essentially a collectivity-oriented society. The dialectic
between these two discursive strands plays itself out in various debates
during the colonial period and in the anti-colonial movement.
Prior to the 1920s, an inclusive and overarching notion of
nationalism, which gave legitimate space to different group identities,
gave way to a homogenising nationalism where identities based on caste,
creed, etc., were seen as obstacles to the development of an Indian
nationalist identity (Pandey 1990: 210). The very word 'communalism'
acquired a religious connotation and became synonymous with the
British policy of divide and rule since the 1920s. The question of special
representation for Depressed Classes, women, and minorities also were
caught up in the same conundrum in the period before Independence: the
public language had to be one of citizenship, universal adult franchise in
front of the colonial rulers, but the contradictions of the social and
collective moorings ranged along a hierarchy remained and continued in
the post-Independent years.
The Question of Caste
Let us take the question of caste. Caste has generally been theorised
divorced from class. Desai's discussion on the caste problem in his
Social Background of Indian Nationalism (1976/1948) is an example,
though this was the dominant tendency even among other left scholars
and practitioners. Caste was relegated to the superstructure. Desai's
reluctance to engage seriously with the question of caste was probably
262 Vasanthi Raman
due to the manner

mainstream structu
tially conservative w
was essentially divi
with the phenomen
abiding one (see Ko
pre-capitalist social f
in the appropriation
feudalism {ibid. : 8
element in the syst
caste in Kosambi's
conceptualised caste
It is important to n
production, wherein
surplus; it has been a
excellence of social in
and groups. It deter
assets and resources
centuries, the caste
assimilation and rigi
The caste-based socia
was so over-determin
Christianity could no
A discussion on ca
untouchability even t
The untouchables wer

people. They were mo
worst occupations. T
social, which were in
their economic exploi
to stabilize low socia
Nor can caste be su

even though the vil
discussion on lower-c
For example, he stat
only so far as it stru
Special representation
meaning, since there
castes comprising the
composing one of its
political, of non-Brahmin millowners would be served by joining the
millowners' association, an aggregation of millowners belonging to all
castes and communities. Similarly the interests of non-Brahmin workers
would be served of workers who belonged to all castes and communities.
Special representation only perpetuated communal divisions just as the
democratic movement of the non-Brahmins for social and legal and
religious equality paved the way for the dissolution of communal divisions
(ibid: 259).
Desai further cites approvingly Ghurye from Caste and Race in India:
Reserved representation is thus not necessary. Nay it is harmful in so far as

it tends to perpetuate the distinction based on birth. In countries where the
nation-community is strongly built up on the basis of the feeling of unity,
no such principle is recognized for the representations of the different
interests, even when they can be parcelled out into groups with conflicting
interests. To harp on the caste differences and to allow special repre
sentations is to set at naught the fundamental condition for the rise of
community feeling (cited in ibid.).
One of the reasons for this intellectual blind spot in Desai was that it
was assumed that, with the advent of colonial capitalism, Indian
feudalism was destroyed and what was left were merely survivals of the
old society. Or alternately, there was an insufficient understanding of
caste feudalism, despite Kosambi. Besides, perhaps it was assumed that
the modern classes of capitalism, the working class was to have a
decisive role in social transformation and the other classes were vestiges,
still mired in the stagnation of the old society. Here one needs to note
that Desai firmly held that colonial rule could not and did not play a
progressive role and differed from the reigning view of Marx's that
colonial rule would destroy the old society and pave the way for the
development of capitalism.
The response to colonial conquest resulted in collective social
mobilisation wherein the locus of such mobilisation was often caste,
tribe, and even religion, particularly in the 19th century. But all these
categories were not neat watertight compartments at any point of time;
they melded together in an untidy manner and, whatever the basis of
community, be it language, caste, region, or even occupational category,
during the colonial period, 'community' was the focal point of organising
and mobilising for collective articulation. As A. Ahmad has put it,
... modem politics in India began not as an exercise in citizenship, since no

one can be a citizen of a colony, but as so many attempts to organise
pressure groups that could negotiate with the colonial authority and,
264 Vasanthi Raman
inevitably, these press

existed already in soci
were paramount in th
Similarly, there wer

articulate this dialectic between the two discursive strands that I have
referred to above.
The emergence of a social structure which was the result of an
interface between colonial rule, colonial forms of knowledge and govern
mentality, and a society that was diverse, segmented, and organised
along the various axes of caste, region, and sect was unsettling, to say the
least. What resulted was a complex intertwining of categories of caste
(which, according to some, was a colonial construct), region, sect, etc.,
along with the more modern forms of divisions along the axis of class.
This intertwining of pre-capitalist forms along with modern structures
and processes has scripted our post-independence present.
One of the qualities of Desai's work was that he constantly tried to
analyse the fast-changing situation. Thus in his anthology Agrarian
Struggles in India After Independence (1986a), he attempts to take stock
of the upsurge of the agrarian struggles that rocked the countryside from
the late 1960s. In his article 'Changing Profile of Rural Society in India'
(1986b) in this volume, he attempts to analyse the dovetailing of the
class-caste issue. His principal argument is that there has been a great
'transformation in the structure, function and the very gestalt of the
Indian caste system' (ibid. : 25). He refers to the changing caste configu
rations in rural India and weakening of some castes and the strengthening
of some intermediate castes linked to agriculture and who have been
beneficiaries from the land reforms process. The process of polarisation
among these is highlighted. He emphasises the dovetailing of castes with
the emerging class configuration, a direct consequence of the process of
economic and political development (ibid. : 28).
The Question of Class
To illustrate the point regarding the intertwining of class with other

categories, attention is drawn to the working class in the tea gardens of
North Bengal and Assam. This is undeniably a working class but marked
indelibly by its colonial origins, wherein its super exploitation at the
hands of the tea plantation owners and managers is mediated by the
principle of ethnicity. Extra-economic coercion takes many forms and
ethnic domination and segregation is also one form of extra-economic
coercion, which, in turn, helps to extract super-profits and keep the
labourers in a state of subjugation (Raman 1995).
There has been a tradition amongst Marxists of defining class on the

basis of ownership and non-ownership of the means of production. This
was particularly so during the Second International. This viewpoint has
been extensively critiqued by Charles Bettelheim (1977) as one of
economism. The main thrust of this outlook was an economist worldview
which equated class relations with legal forms of ownership and which
assigned primacy to the development of the productive forces, which
were themselves viewed narrowly as technology (ibid. : 9-57). According
to Bettelheim, both Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky shared a similar
outlook. He further states that 'the existence of a "legal relation" to the
means of production does not come into the actual definition of classes'
(ibid. : 50).
V.I. Lenin's definition of class highlights the question of the social
organisation of labour and the place that labour occupies in a historically
determined system of social production and, consequently, by the share
of the social wealth: 'Classes are groups of people one of which can
appropriate the labour of another one owing to the different places they
occupy in definite system of social economy' (1964: 421).
The emphasis on the social organisation and division of labour is
something that also characterises the analysis of Kosambi when he is
analysing caste. But Kosambi highlights an important element that and
that is 'a religious method of forming social consciousness in such a
manner that that the primary producer is deprived of his surplus with the
minimum coercion' (cited in Roy 2008: 79). This also implies an inter
twining of the 'economic' and 'other than economic' elements and that
such intertwining of the economic instance and the social and ideological
instances is, in fact, an essential element in the very definition of class.
Concluding Remarks
My purpose in discussing the questions of caste and class vis-à-vis the

work of Desai is to highlight certain intellectual blind spots arising out of
a certain kind of Marxism which characterised his work and, more
importantly, point to the need for more in-depth and nuanced analyses of
Indian society. A historical and materialist analysis needs to take account
of the fact that assertions and articulations along the cleavages of caste,
religion, and ethnicity have come to characterise the social and political
system today. While particularist assertions of diverse groups can be
disconcerting and sometimes even counterproductive, it is necessary to
address both intellectually and socio-politically the systemic roots of
such assertions.
266 Vasanthi Raman
The development par

essentially dissolve or
the lines of historica
ethnicity, particularly
society. Political and
cularly after the mid
evolution and struct
marked by these divisi
people constituting th
safeguards.
Desai's emphasis in pointing to the macro structures of state, nation,
the nature of the bourgeoisie or the centrality of class analyses was
important to counter the dominant structural functionalist and essentially
conservative thrust of sociology in the 1960s and 1970s. However, while
he addresses a whole host of issues and problems of Indian society
during the 1970s onwards, his framework seemed limiting to understand
the explosion of assertions around the axes of religious identity, caste,
and other ethnic assertions, the fault lines of Indian society.
Some of the above questions have acquired an even greater urgency
given the hegemony of imperialist-capitalist globalisation and the neo
liberal paradigm. Capital has penetrated every aspect of life across the
globe leaving almost no aspect of the lives of people untouched. While
the universalising tendencies of capital has been accompanied by a de
territorialisation leading to a certain 'disembedding of social relations'
there has also been a counter-process which has led to a conscious
cultivation of specificity, an assertion of particularistic identities, based
on ethnicity, religion, and language which have been the fallout of the
anxieties and traumas caused by globalisation. Samir Amin draws
attention to an important aspect of capitalist globalisation:
Capitalist globalisation does not homogenize the world but, on the contrary
organizes it on the basis of ever stronger and more pronounced hierarchies.
The peoples which are its victims are thereby deprived of active and equal
participation in the shaping of the world. By encouraging culturalist
responses, globalisation strategies make as much use as they can of
diversity inherited from the past. At the same time, however, capitalist
globalisation imposes on the dominated some of the 'specificities' that
characterize its dominant centres (2004: 191).
The need for combining the macro and the micro approaches seems all
the more necessary, the one for examining the structures of global
capitalism and its reach, and the other to examine and analyse the impact
of these on the micro structures and institutions of the society.
There were many questions that Desai raised regarding the paradigm
of development which were critical questions, which, in turn, led to
intense debates amongst his students and admirers, many of whom may
not have necessarily agreed with his analyses. But the greatness of Desai
was that he had a catholicity of spirit which encouraged debate on some
of the most significant questions of the time, in the spirit of a collective
quest.
Notes
A similar point has been made by T.N. Madan with regard to what has been
considered the 'Lucknow School'; Madan highlights the differences in style and
orientation of the leading sociologists/social anthropologists, Radhakamal Mukeijee,
D.P. Mukerji, and D.N. Majumdar (cited in Uberoi, Deshpande and Sundar 2007:
29).
This is a much debated subject in the field of sociology and social anthropology, and
social sciences in general. A more recent discussion on the subject is that by André
Béteille (2009). Béteille affirms an old and dominant position that sociology is an
empirical rather than a normative discipline, although he adds that the question of
value judgments and judgments of reality is a difficult subject on which there are
differences of opinion.
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Vasanthi Raman, Professor, Department of Women's Studies, Mahatma Gandhi

Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalay, PO Gandhi Hills, Wardha, Maharashtra - 442 005
Email: vraman06@gmail.com

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The Marxist Sociology of A.R.

Desai and the Bombay School: A Tribute and a Discussion

The Marxist Sociology of A.R. Desai and the Bo

It is one of the ironies of ideological production in our time that precisely

Desai's work seems particularly relevant, given his overall orientation

The legacy of the Bombay School has been principally associated

(ibid.: 236). The above

of colonialism, state, class, peasantry, etc. In this he charted another

The influence of Marxism in also evident in Indian sociology though not as

and thinkers such as

One wonders whethe

Relevance of the Marxist Approach

Desai's principal purpose was to understand Indian society from a

necessary for an understanding of Indian society and, to that extent, he

a. The colonial mould within which sociological research is

d. Despite the fact

Many questions have returned to us after sixty-odd years of Indepen

In this context, I wish to discuss here the two discursive strands in

The Question of Caste

due to the manner

The untouchables wer

Nor can caste be su

Reserved representation is thus not necessary. Nay it is harmful in so far as

... modem politics in India began not as an exercise in citizenship, since no

inevitably, these press

Similarly, there wer

The Question of Class

To illustrate the point regarding the intertwining of class with other

There has been a tradition amongst Marxists of defining class on the

My purpose in discussing the questions of caste and class vis-à-vis the

The development par

Ahmad, A. 2004. On communalism and globalisation. Delhi: Three Essays Collective.

Kosambi, D.D. 1970. The

Vasanthi Raman, Professor, Department of Women's Studies, Mahatma Gandhi

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