Anticolonialism as Violent Revolution: M.N. Roy on the Right of Self-Determination (1920s-30s)

Abstract

This paper explores M.N. Roy’s engagement with the right of self-determination for colonised peoples alongside the formation of the nationalist movement in India and the emergence of communism as an anti-imperial ideology on the world scale. An internationally recognised anticolonial communist leader, Roy’s idea of self-determination was premised on the forging of a revolutionary mass struggle by peasants and workers. He related the achievement of self-determination to the broader goal of throwing off the yoke of capitalist-imperialist domination. This paper traces Roy’s critique of bourgeois nationalism and his rejection of the principle of non-violence shaped by the illegitimate demands of colonial law, and his advocacy of “mass-action” based on the growing power of the working class (particularly in India in the 1920s which led to a series of communist “conspiracy” cases). Engaging with postcolonial and decolonial critiques of the postcolonial sovereign state (Chatterjee 1993, Walsh & Mignolo 2018), and recent historiography on the alternative possibilities and imaginaries of anticolonialism (Cooper 2014, Wilder 2015, Getachew 2019, Mantena 2023), this paper argues that Roy’s framing of anticolonialism as violent revolution represented the broader ideas of emancipation that were foreclosed upon political decolonization. Finally, it shows how Roy’s critique of bourgeois nationalism and advocacy of violent mass struggle anticipated Fanon and Cabral on African decolonization.