Editorial Note, Mar-Apr, 2017

Professor Irfan Habib has for some time been developing a perspective on modern Indian history that is novel and rather different from that of much of the Indian Left, not to mention the bulk of the European Left. In contrast to the position within the Indian Left, which sees the contest of this period as involving a triad – namely, the colonial regime and its collaborators, the bourgeois-led national movement, and the Communist movement – he emphasises only one basic dichotomy, between the colonial regime and the anti-colonial struggle. In fact he accords a centrality to the anti-colonial struggle in the formation of modern India as an overarching multi-class struggle, and underscores the critical role of the Communists within it. This entails not only a particular reading of modern Indian history, but also an approach to Marxist political economy that emphasizes the crucial role of imperialism in the process of accumulation of capital in the metropolis.