The Nomadic Decades: New Perspectives on M. N. Roy

The collection of essays studies the twentieth century Indian revolutionary, writer and thinker, Manabendra Nath Roy's life and ideological trajectories by using new archival records, novel interpretations of previously used sources and other published materials.The life of M. N. Roy (1887-1954), as he is popularly known, was framed by resistance to the overwhelming presence of European territorial empires and imperialism in Asia.The essays provide a nuanced view of M. N. Roy’s changing ideological moorings and the complex dimensions of his long political journey that started with revolutionary visions and ended in Cold War-era radical liberal humanism. The chapters question the existing perceptions of Roy which are recycled as staples of mainstream academia, and re-examines his relationship with early Indian nationalism, Marxism and Leninism, as well as the Cold War cultural apparatus on the basis of new sources and analytical standpoints, bringing out the multi-layered and contradict