{"id":325,"date":"2026-05-28T05:57:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T05:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/?page_id=325"},"modified":"2026-07-08T01:53:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T01:53:39","slug":"manabendra-nath-roy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/manabendra-nath-roy\/","title":{"rendered":"Manabendra Nath Roy"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-page\" data-elementor-id=\"325\" class=\"elementor elementor-325\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-a1f811b e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"a1f811b\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-c9ecde0 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"c9ecde0\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-420 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/mn-roy1-243x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"243\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/mn-roy1-243x300.jpg 243w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/mn-roy1.jpg 668w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 243px) 100vw, 243px\" \/><strong>Manabendra Nath Roy<\/strong><br \/><strong>(21 March 1887 &#8211; 25 January 1954)<\/strong><\/p><p><strong><u>\u00a0Early Life:<\/u><\/strong><\/p><p><strong>MANABENDRA NATH ROY<\/strong> was born in the village Arbelia near Calcutta on Monday 21 March 1887 (by the Bengali Calendar 8 Chaitra, 1293). He was the fourth child by the second wife of his father Dinabandhu Bhattacharya. Dinabandhu had inherited the position of the priest of the goddess Ksheputeswari in a village in Midnapore, but he had moved to Arbelia where he became Head Pandit (or teacher of Sanskrit) in the local school. Manabendra&#8217;s given name at birth was Narendra Nath Bhattacharya. The name by which he is internationally known (M.N. Roy) was adopted by him in 1916 at Stanford. From police records and other sources it is known that in the course of his highly hazardous career as a revolutionary he used many other aliases, e.g., White, Martin, Mendez, Garcia, Richard, Mahmud, etc.<\/p><p><strong><u>Roy as a militant revolutionary<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p><p>In 1905 at the age of eighteen Naren joined the revolutionary underground movement in Bengal. By 1913\u201314 he became one of its principal organizers.\u00a0 Under the leadership of legendary militant leader Jatin Mukherjee, he and his colleagues had prepared a plan for an armed insurrection for the overthrow of British rule and \u00a0shortly after the outbreak of the first world war he tried together with his revolutionary nationalist associates to organize an armed insurrection in India against British rule.<\/p><p>\u00a0<\/p><p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-822 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-6-MN-Roy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"331\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-6-MN-Roy.jpg 250w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-6-MN-Roy-227x300.jpg 227w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/>In 1915 he went to Batavia to negotiate supply of a shipload of Germ He was involved in a number of political offences and conspiracy cases. When the First World War commenced, a promise was secured from certain German agents for the supply of arms to Indian revolutionaries. In 1915, Roy went to Java in search of arms from the Germans. That plan having failed, he went a second time to Java for the same purpose. Thereafter he moved from country to country in pursuance of his scheme to secure German arms but the plan could not materialize.<\/p><p><strong><u>Roy in USA, turns into a socialist<\/u><\/strong><\/p><p>The search for arms took Roy \u00a0on a perilous journey through Indonesia, Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, and eventually landed him at San Francisco in the United States. At Stanford, where he changed his name to M.N. Roy, he met a young radical, Evelyn Trent, who fell in love with him and became his wife and close associate. Here he studied socialist literature and became a socialist.<\/p><p>Soon thereafter, the United States joined the World War and Roy and some other Indians were charged in a conspiracy case instituted in San Francisco. Roy evaded the American police and managed to go to Mexico.<\/p><p><strong>\u00a0Roy turns communist and establishes first Communist party in the world outside Russia.<\/strong><\/p><p>After the United States declared war on Germany, the Roy fled to Mexico (1917) where he soon established himself as a leading radical intellectual. He quickly taught himself Spanish, wrote and published several books and tracts in that language, became a friend and adviser to the President of the Mexican republic, Venustiano Carranza, lectured at the University, studied Marx and other radical thinkers, joined the local socialists, organised a Conference of the Socialist Party of Mexico (1918), and founded El Partido Communista de Mexico (Communist Party of Mexico) late in 1919 which is the first communist party in the world founded after the\u00a0 Russian Communist Party.<\/p><p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-823\" src=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-7.MN-Roy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1825\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-7.MN-Roy.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-7.MN-Roy-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-7.MN-Roy-673x1024.jpg 673w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-7.MN-Roy-768x1168.jpg 768w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-7.MN-Roy-1010x1536.jpg 1010w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/p><p><strong><u>Lenin invites Roy to Moscow to attend Second Congress of the Communist International (1920).\u00a0\u00a0 <\/u><\/strong><\/p><p>In Mexico Roy met Michael Borodin, an emissary of the Communist International, and at Lenin&#8217;s invitation he proceeded to Moscow (1920) after having spent two and a half years as an active and prominent participant in the Mexican revolution. On his way to Moscow he halted for a few months in Berlin where he developed lasting ties of friendship with some of the founders of the Communist Party of Germany.<\/p><p>During the next eight years he rose very rapidly to international eminence, both intellectually and organizationally. At the Second Congress of the Communist International (1920) he differed with Lenin on the National and Colonial question; both Lenin&#8217;s Theses and Roy&#8217;s Supplementary Theses, with certain amendments, were adopted by the Congress.\u2074 Roy disagreed with Lenin on two major issues. Lenin&#8217;s perspective of revolution was largely Europe-centred like that of most Marxists. Roy maintained that without a revolution in Asia leading to the break-up of colonial empires a socialist revolution in Europe was unlikely. Secondly, Lenin expected the bourgeoisie in colonial and semicolonial countries to have a revolutionary role. Roy maintained that in countries like India and China, the indigenous bourgeoisie had hardly any revolutionary potential, that the truly revolutionary forces in those countries were the workers, the peasants and the radicalized section of the lower middle classes (the intelligentsia), that circumstances there were favourable for going &#8220;straight ahead through the successive periods of development of revolutionary experience&#8221; without having necessarily to &#8220;go through the stage of bourgeois democracy&#8221;. Inspite of such basic differences, Lenin not only moved the adoption of Roy&#8217;s Theses together with his own; Roy was also given full support and assistance to proceed to Tashkent, where he established the Indian Military School (Induski Kurs) for the training of the Muhajirs and founded the emigr\u00e9 Communist Party of India (October 17, 1920).<\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-827\" src=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-4-MN-Roy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1010\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-4-MN-Roy.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-4-MN-Roy-300x253.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-4-MN-Roy-1024x862.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-4-MN-Roy-768x646.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/p><p><strong><u>Roy writes \u00a0and send clandestine communist literature to India<\/u><\/strong><\/p><p>In 1922, Roy published, in English, German and Russian, what still remains a Marxist Classic, <em>India in Transition<\/em>, giving a fuller exposition of his Second Congress theses. He followed this up with the publication of his fortnightly organ from Berlin, <em>The Vanguard of Indian Independence<\/em> (May 1922), a journal which appeared regularly under different titles\u2014<em>The Advance-Guard<\/em>, <em>The Masses of India<\/em> until April 1928, and which, though frequently banned by the Government, reached many people in India and exercised considerable influence on the Indian urban intelligentsia during the twenties.<\/p><p>Roy came to occupy a high position in all the policy-making bodies of the Communist International.By the end of 1922 he succeeded through his writings, correspondence and emissaries in establishing communist groups in Bengal, Bombay, Madras, U.P. and the Punjab.. His main work at that time was to develop a Communist movement in India. He managed to send a number of Communist emissaries as well as literature to India. He has been recognized as the founder of the Indian Communist Party. The literature which he sent to India was one of the grounds to enable the British to charge prominent communist leaders for sedition under the cases famously known as \u2018Meerut\u2019 and \u2018Kanpur\u2019 conspiracy cases. In 1922 he was also elected a candidate member of the Comintern Executive Committee, and in 1924 he became a full member of the ECCI and a candidate member of the Comintern Presidium. Also at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern (1924) he was elected a member of the Political Commission, National and Colonial Commission, Russian Commission and Japanese Commission.\u2076 At the Sixth enlarged Plenum of the ECCI (February\/March 1926), he was elected full member of the Presidium and of the powerful Secretariat and the Orgbureau.\u2076A The publication of <em>The Future of Indian Politics<\/em> (1926) confirmed his position as one of the most outstanding Marxist theorists on Asia.<\/p><p><strong><u>Communist International sends Roy to China (1927):<\/u><\/strong><\/p><p>In 1927 he was sent to China as the Comintern&#8217;s representative to advise the Chinese Communist Party. The relation between the Kuomintang leadership and the Chinese Communists had already reached a very critical stage. The official Comintern line was to maintain good relations with the Kuomintang and at the same time to accentuate revolutionary polarization in China. Roy tried to persuade the Chinese Communist leadership to adopt a programme of &#8220;agrarian revolution, arming the peasants, rural self-government, creation of a state machinery for the realization of democratic dictatorship, and creation of a revolutionary army&#8221;, but his proposal was opposed by Borodin, who had been working in China on behalf of the Comintern since 1923 and who vigorously advocated collaboration between the Communists and the Kuomintang almost at any cost. The ambiguity in the Comintern&#8217;s instruction, opposition from Borodin and timidity of the Chinese Communist leadership prevented Roy from giving effect to his proposed programme. The revolution in China suffered a serious setback; the forces of counterrevolution took the offensive; and both Roy and Borodin returned to Moscow having failed in their Mission.\u2077<\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-831\" src=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-9-MN-Roy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"998\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-9-MN-Roy.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-9-MN-Roy-300x250.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-9-MN-Roy-1024x852.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-9-MN-Roy-768x639.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/p><p>\u00a0<strong><u>Roy\u2019s break with the Communist International\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/u><\/strong><\/p><p>\u00a0Meantime within the Soviet Union the struggle for power among the Communist leaders had reached its peak, and Stalin, who until then had supported Roy, decided to sacrifice him to win the support of the <em>apparatchiki<\/em> which had always been hostile to the &#8220;intellectuals&#8221; in the party leadership. At the Sixth Congress (1928), the Comintern adopted a rabidly sectarian policy which considered Social Democrats to be worse enemies than the Nazis and Fascists. Owing to illness Roy could not attend the Congress, but he considered the new line to be highly dangerous, and in 1929 he published a series of articles in the German Communist &#8216;Opposition&#8217; press criticising the new policy.\u2078 He was then officially excluded from the Comintern, but neither then nor afterwards has there been any official charge against him except that he had broken party discipline by publishing his views in the &#8216;Opposition&#8217; press.<\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-833\" src=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/photo-8-MN-Roy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1463\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/photo-8-MN-Roy.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/photo-8-MN-Roy-246x300.jpg 246w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/photo-8-MN-Roy-840x1024.jpg 840w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/photo-8-MN-Roy-768x936.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/p><p>From 1928 to 1930 Roy lived in Berlin. His report on China, <em>Kitaiskaia Revolutsiia i Kommunisticheskii Internatsional<\/em>, was published officially from Moscow in 1929, but he never saw a printed copy of this report. During those two years Roy wrote his monumental work <em>Revolution and Counterrevolution in China<\/em> and prepared material for a projected study of the \u201cDecline and Fall of the British Empire\u201d. The first work was published in Germany in 1930,\u00b9\u2070 but the draft manuscript of the second was left behind before it could be completed and it was probably destroyed by the Nazis. In Berlin also he met Ellen Gottschalk who was to become his second wife in 1937. (Evelyn Roy had separated and returned to the U.S. in 1926).<\/p><p><strong><u>Roy returns to India\u00a0 ( December 1930) and is jailed:<\/u><\/strong><\/p><p>A revolutionary is not content with research and writing but considers it incumbent on him to try to organize the people against oppression and injustice. Against the advice of all his close friends, Roy now decided to return to India. He reached Karachi by land route via Istambul and Baghdad in December, 1930, attended the Karachi Session of the Congress as Dr. Mahmud at Nehru\u2019s invitation, set up clandestinely a \u201cRevolutionary Party of the Indian Working Class\u201d, and trained a group of young radicals to work in trade unions and among peasants. According to Intelligence reports, \u201cin the seven months he was at large in India&#8230; despite the fact that the police were continually hot on his heels&#8230; (he) gained many adherents in Bombay and the U.P. and at a later date also in Calcutta and its environs\u201d. He was arrested in July, 1931 in Kanpur conspiracy case in which he was accused No.1 and tried and sentenced to twelve years transportation, which on appeal was reduced to six years rigorous imprisonment. Life in jail ruined his iron constitution, but he devoted those years to intensive studies and writing, and when he was released in November 1936, he had with him a vast manuscript in nine volumes, provisionally titled \u201cPhilosophical Consequences of Modern Science\u201d. Selected fragments of this work have been published under various titles. As stated by Prof. Sibnarayan Ray, the full text of the manuscript is preserved in the Nehru Memorial Museum in New Delhi, waiting for a team of competent editors and a brave and enlightened publisher.<\/p><p>\u00a0<\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-834 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-10-MN-Roy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"519\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-10-MN-Roy.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-10-MN-Roy-173x300.jpg 173w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>After his release Roy devoted himself to building within the Congress a radical leadership committed to agrarian revolution and secular democratic principles, in opposition to Gandhi and the right wing leadership of which he had been critical since 1920. He campaigned for the transformation of Congress primary committees into people\u2019s committees, for the convening of a Constituent Assembly which would declare India an independent sovereign state and give the country a truly democratic constitution, and for a renaissance movement to bring about a cultural revolution in India. His principal organ was the weekly <em>Independent India<\/em> (started in April, 1937). The Second World War greatly sharpened his conflict with the Gandhian leadership\u2014which totally rejected his view that India\u2019s commitment to democracy obliged it to support the Allies against the Axis Powers, that the prosecution of the anti-Fascist War would result not only in the defeat of the Fascists but also in the disintegration of the British man\u2014not in the abstract but as the individual measure of all things\u201d. \u00a0And according to Robert North, \u201cRoy ranks with Lenin and Mao Tse-tung in the development of fundamental communist policy for the underdeveloped, as contrasted with the industrialized, areas of the globe\u201d.<\/p><p><strong><u>Roy calls Indians to support Anti-Fascist Powers in the Second World War (1939-1944):<\/u><\/strong><\/p><p>In 1940, however, Roy and his followers had to part company with the Indian National Congress because of their difference on the issue of India&#8217;s participation in the Second World War.<\/p><p>When the &#8220;phony&#8221; stage of the Second World War was over and the Nazi armies invaded France in April, 1940, Roy declared that the war had become an anti-Fascist War and that it was necessary for the very survival of democracy throughout the world that the war efforts of the Allied Powers should be supported at all costs. &#8220;If Fascism succeeds in establishing its domination over the whole of Europe,&#8221; Roy declared, &#8220;then good-bye to revolution and good-bye to Indian freedom as well.&#8221; He also confidently predicted that &#8220;&#8230;the defeat of Fascism will weaken imperialism&#8221; and would bring India nearer to the goal of democratic freedom.<\/p><p>The leaders of the Indian National Congress were, however, of a different opinion. They declared that the Indian people would support the war efforts only if the British Government agreed to set up a National Government in India with full autonomy over defence and foreign affairs. Roy disapproved of this offer of conditional support, because it implied that the war efforts would be opposed if the condition was not accepted. Roy argued that since the success in the anti-Fascist war was necessary for India&#8217;s democratic freedom, we could not put conditions on our offer to help in achieving that success. On this issue Roy and his friends left the Indian National Congress and formed a separate party, called the Radical Democratic Party, in December, 1940.<\/p><p>As early as in December, 1942 Roy expressed the view that the Fascist Powers were going to be defeated in the war and that India would get national freedom as a result of the socio-economic changes which were taking place in Great Britain and the allied countries during the course of the anti-Fascist struggle. Roy&#8217;s anticipations were proved correct. Historians are agreed that India got national freedom largely as a result of the liberating forces generated by the defeat of international Fascism.<\/p><p>\u00a0<\/p><p><strong><u>Roy\u2019s ideas for reconstructing India<\/u><\/strong><\/p><blockquote><p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Justice Tarkunde further writes<strong><u>:<\/u><\/strong><\/p><p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201c When it became clear to him that the Fascist Powers were going to be defeated in the war, Roy switched his attention to the post-war reconstruction of India. He got prepared two basic documents in 1943 and 1944, one the &#8220;People&#8217;s Plan for Economic Development of India&#8221; <span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">and the second a &#8220;Draft Constitution of Free India&#8221;. <\/span><\/p><p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">The documents contained Roy&#8217;s original contributions to the country&#8217;s economic and political problems.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote><p>Contrary to the economic thinking which was then current, Roy gave priority in the People&#8217;s Plan to the development of agriculture and small-scale industry. Production under the People&#8217;s Plan was to be for use and not for profit, and the objective of economic planning was to supply the primary needs of the people consisting of food, shelter, clothing, education and medicine.<\/p><p>The Indian State, according to the Draft Constitution of Free India, was to be organised on the basis of a countrywide network of People&#8217;s Committees, having wide powers such as initiating legislation, expressing opinion on pending bills, recall of representatives and referendum on important national issues. The idea of People&#8217;s Committees subsequently popularised by Jayaprakash Narayan was mainly derived from Roy&#8217;s Draft Constitution of Free India.<\/p><p>After the end of the war, Roy began to express his heretical views regarding Communism and Marxism. He differed with Marxism mainly on the role of ideas in human history and on the primacy of moral values. He summarised the philosophy which he was propagating in a number of Theses. These came to be known as the 22 Theses of Radical Humanism. He also issued a manifesto on New Humanism.<\/p><p>The 22 Theses outline the principles of the personal and social philosophy of Radical Humanism. The basic values of freedom, rationalism and morality are traced in the Theses to man&#8217;s biological evolution. It is pointed out that quest for freedom and search for truth constitute the basic urge of human progress. The Theses emphasize the inseparability of political and economic freedom and indicate how the comprehensive ideal of political and economic freedom may be achieved.<\/p><p>Further discussion of the principles enunciated in the 22 Theses and the Manifesto led Roy to the conclusion that party politics was inconsistent with the ideal of democracy and that it was liable to degenerate into power politics. Roy was of the view that political power in a democracy should reside in primary organizations of the people such as People&#8217;s Committees and should not be usurped by any political party. He was further of the view that particularly in countries like India, where a major section of the electorate was illiterate, party politics was bound to become an unprincipled scramble for power. These ideas led to the dissolution of the Radical Democratic Party in an All India Conference held in December, 1948 and the launching of a movement called the Radical Humanist Movement.<\/p><p>One of the new ideas developed by Roy during his Radical Humanist phase related to the concept of &#8220;cooperative\u201d <strong>economy.<\/strong> In a cooperative economy, the means of production would not belong either to the capitalist class or to the State. They would belong to the workers themselves. Roy was of the view that cooperative economy was superior to both capitalism and State ownership.<\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-838\" src=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-12.MN-Roy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"858\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-12.MN-Roy.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-12.MN-Roy-300x215.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-12.MN-Roy-1024x732.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Photo-12.MN-Roy-768x549.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/p><blockquote><p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Prof, Sibnarayan Ray \u00a0wrote: \u00a0<\/p><p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201c<em>Like his other great revolutionary contemporaries, Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, Roy too was, of course, a product of his society and his age, and like them he also \u201cre-created\u201d himself in responding actively to the tremendous forces and pressures of contemporary history. If, unlike them, he did not succeed in leading the country of his birth to a revolution, a sensible explanation of his failure is more likely to be found in the basic difference between the situation in India on the one hand and of Russia and China on the other than in the personality or philosophy of Roy. Both Russia and China experienced a total breakdown of the machinery of government which made revolutions at all possible. In India power was transferred by consent, and the bureaucracy and the army, built carefully by the colonial regime, were bequeathed virtually intact to the politically organized native power-elite which was consistently opposed to any social revolution. A revolution probably remains as distant a prospect in India today as it was in the time of M.N. Roy, even though its historic need may have become more pressing. That none the less Roy devoted all his moral and intellectual resources to the single-minded pursuit of a \u201crevolution from below\u201d in this country and formulated a philosophy of revolution quite different from both Marxism and Gandhism, invests him with a historic significance which is comparable to that of Karl Marx who fared no better in his own lifetime. And lest it be forgotten, Roy, while advocating revolution from below, apprehended all along the negotiated transfer of power from the white rulers to the brown elites of India\u2026\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p><p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>\u201c\u2026..However, I did not come personally close to Roy till 1946 when at the end of the historic summer study camp at Dehradun he invited me to be his guest at 13 Mohini Road. For the next eight years till his death I was one of his closest associates in the radical movement. I was drawn as much by his personality as by his ideas. His lifelong commitment to freedom had shaped his being and the course of his life; at the same time his utter truthfulness and spirit of inquiry would not permit any compromise with what he considered to be false or hypocritical or arbitrary. I was profoundly impressed by the depth and range of his erudition, but he was moved by \u201cthe human urge to revolt against the intolerable conditions of life\u201d, and consequently he rejected the lure of professional academism. At the same time I recognized that politics being what it was (and still is) in India, a person of Roy\u2019s integrity stood virtually no chance of winning wide public support for his outspoken views. \u201cI have been lie-hunting\u201d, he wrote, \u201cever since I learned to think for myself\u2014to distinguish facts from fictions\u201d. Religious scriptures, traditions, or popular beliefs carried no authority with him nor did thrones and powers or ordinances or proscriptions. I doubt if in its long history India has produced another radical thinker of his calibre. The power of tradition continues to be very strong in India, and it is hard to anticipate if and when the relevance of Roy\u2019s ideas will be widely recognised in the country of his birth. But I have no doubt that his extraordinary life will continue to be an unfailing source of inspiration to youth, and that the ideas which he developed in the last phase of his life have significance which is not limited to the Indian context but is global and reaches beyond the limit of our own times.\u201d<\/em><\/p><p style=\"text-align: center; padding-left: 40px;\">LIE-HUNTING<\/p><p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">&#8220;Lie &#8211; hunting is my profession.\u00a0 This is thankless job.\u00a0 But someone must tell the truth, if it is not to remain an empty concept.\u00a0 I have been lie-hunting ever since I learned to think for myself to distinguish facts from fictions.\u00a0 It has not won me popularity.&#8221; &#8211; M.N.Roy<\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-de7ddf2 elementor-widget elementor-widget-spacer\" data-id=\"de7ddf2\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"spacer.default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-spacer\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-spacer-inner\"><\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-2f5e5cd e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"2f5e5cd\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\" data-settings=\"{&quot;background_background&quot;:&quot;classic&quot;}\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-b0557a9 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"b0557a9\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT<\/strong><\/p><blockquote><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>This statement was prepared by M.N. Roy in 1952 while applying for visa for the United States in connection with his proposed visit to that country. &#8211; <\/em><em>Sibnarayan Ray<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-09994bc elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"09994bc\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">I was born as\u00a0 Narendra Nath Bhattacharya, and adopted the name of M. N. Roy while in the United States of America, and have no other aliases. Identifying data: Height 6 ft. 2 inches.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">The name of my father was Dinabandhu Bhattacharya; my mother\u2019s name was Basanta Kumari.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">I entered the United States as Martin; I came by sea and landed in San Francisco. I remember neither Martin\u2019s first name, nor the date when I landed, but it was in spring 1916.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">I left the United States as Martin in summer 1917, but do not remember the exact date either. I left by train for Mexico, as M.N. Roy.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">Until the age of 16, I lived first in the village Arbalia, and from school-going age in the village Kodalia, both in the District 24 Parganas, Bengal.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">After I left India early in 1915, I spent over a year traveling through South-East Asia Indonesia, China, Japan, Philippines, until I came to America, where I spent just about a year. Thereafter, I lived for two and a half years in Mexico; then in Russia from 1919 until 1928, in which year I broke with the Communist International.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">Thereafter I lived for two and a half years in Germany, and left at the end of 1930 for India, where I spent six years in jail under the charge of \u201cConspiring to deprive the King of his Sovereignty in India,\u201d On coming out of jail at the end of 1936, I lived in Bombay for once and a half year, and since May 1938 at my present residence, 13, Mohini Road, Dehradun, U.P.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">As regards party affiliations, in 1918 I founded the Communist Party of Mexico and from 1919 was a member of the Communist International. I never belonged to any other organization abroad. I was elected a member of the Presidium and of the Secretariat of the Communist International, in charge of organizing the communist movement in Asia and of the training and education of Asiatic Communists in the Eastern University of Moscow. Apart from these services, I had no contributions like money or things of value to make.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">In 1928, I severed my relations with the Communist International for reasons of disagreement regarding both the theory and practice of Communism.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">After my release from jail in India, I joined the Indian National Congress, and was a member of its All-India Committee until the war, when I severed my relations with the Congress because of disagreement on the question of co-operation with the war efforts, as my advocating support to the war was incompatible with the Congress policy of anti-war activities.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">I thereupon founded, together with other Congressmen who agreed with my ideas and policy, the Radical Democratic Party of India in 1940, which was dissolved in 1948, when it appeared that party politics was incompatible with the philosophy of Radical Humanism, to which I and my co-workers subscribe.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\">Since then I have belonged to no political organization, occupying myself with philosophical and historical writing, as Founder-Director of the Indian Renaissance Institute, Dehradun, Which is a cultural-educational organization founded with the object of re-educating the educators and young intellectuals of India in the spirit and with the ideas of Radical (or Integral) Humanism.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>M.N.Roy<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Manabendra Nath Roy(21 March 1887 &#8211; 25 January 1954) \u00a0Early Life: MANABENDRA NATH ROY was born in the village Arbelia near Calcutta on Monday 21 March 1887 (by the Bengali Calendar 8 Chaitra, 1293). He was the fourth child by the second wife of his father Dinabandhu Bhattacharya. Dinabandhu had inherited the position of the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":327,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-325","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":52,"href":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":844,"href":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/325\/revisions\/844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimba.co.in\/iri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}