Marxist Guru, Socialist Neta, Buddhist Acharya, Gandhi’s Shishya: the many Narendra Deva(s) (1889–1956)

Narendra Deva has been variously called ‘the first Socialist ideologue of India’, ‘the most learned and leading exponent in India of Marxism’, ‘a true follower of Gandhi’ and a ‘founder, foremost, all-India figure of the CSP’. He is also remembered as a ‘renowned scholar of Buddhism’. And yet, there is much less work on him when compared to his younger comrades Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia. This article revisits the political life of Narendra Deva with an aim to determine his place as much among the Socialists in India between mid-1930s and mid-1950s as in party politics, intellectual traditions, Gandhian movements and Marxist theory. Using Narendra Deva’s and his comrades’ private papers as well as their published writings; it reconstructs his political doctrines and their philosophical foundations, re-examines his political relationships and their role in the evolution of his understandings and recovers his multi-faceted intellectual self.