Editorial Note, May-Jun, 2013

Kunwar Muhammad Ashraf was an outstanding Marxist intellectual who died in 1962. An active participant in the anti-colonial struggle, he was a member of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), and served as Secretary to both Maulana Azad and Jawaharlal Nehru when they were Congress Presidents, before joining the Communist Party of India. He served several jail sentences, including one in Pakistan in 1948, where he had gone after independence to organise the Communist movement. He authored a number of books, including The Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan, which was based on his doctoral dissertation at the University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies), and taught briefly in the 1950s at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, and also at the University of Delhi, where he was attached to Kirori Mal College.