M. N. Roy and Gandhi: From Revolutionary Critique to New Humanism

Few intellectual rivalries in modern Indian political thought are as fascinating as the one between M. N. Roy and Mahatma Gandhi. Roy, a globe-trotting revolutionary who helped found communist parties in Mexico and India, spent decades critiquing Gandhi’s leadership and ideology. Yet in a remarkable twist, Roy’s later philosophy-New Humanism-brought him surprisingly close to some Gandhian ideals, even as fundamental differences remained. Understanding this complex relationship reveals much about the ideological debates that shaped India’s freedom struggle.

Roy’s revolutionary journey 🔗

Manabendra Nath Roy was born Narendra Nath Bhattacharya on March 21, 1887, in Bengal into a family of hereditary priests. His extraordinary political journey began at age fourteen when he joined the revolutionary Anushilan Samiti and later helped organize the Jugantar Group. After the outbreak of World War I in 1915, Roy left India seeking German arms to overthrow British rule.

His search for weapons took him across Asia and eventually to the United States, where he landed in San Francisco in 1916. There, at Stanford University, he changed his name to Manbendra Nath Roy to evade British intelligence. In New York, Roy attended public meetings with nationalist leader Lala Lajpat Rai and began studying socialism at the New York Public Library-initially to combat it, but he soon discovered he had become a socialist himself.

Roy’s transformation into a full-fledged communist occurred in Mexico in 1919, where he met Comintern emissary Michael Borodin and founded the Mexican Communist Party-the first communist party outside Russia. In 1920, Roy met Lenin in Moscow and co-authored theses on colonial revolution adopted by the Communist International. He rose rapidly through the Comintern hierarchy, becoming a member of all four policy-making bodies by 1926. After founding the Communist Party of India in Tashkent, Roy was sent to China in 1927, but his mission failed. He was expelled from the Communist International in September 1929 for claiming the right of independent thinking.

Roy’s critique: Gandhi as a reactionary force 🔗

During his Marxist phase, Roy was one of Gandhi’s harshest critics. At the 1920 Communist International congress, Roy fundamentally opposed Lenin’s assertion that communists should ally with bourgeois nationalist movements. Using the Indian National Congress as an example, Roy argued that socially conservative elites like Gandhi ran the show and would switch allegiance to imperialist powers if it suited them.

Roy’s critique of Gandhi was comprehensive and scathing. He described Gandhi as a “cultural and religious revivalist” with a medieval mentality who was bringing religion into politics. He called Gandhi a bourgeois leader-an instrument of the rich class who was popular only due to the backwardness of the Indian people.

Rejection of religious superstition 🔗

Roy was deeply critical of what he saw as Gandhi’s reliance on religious superstition over scientific rationality. Gandhi’s frequent references to his “inner voice” as a guide for political decisions struck Roy as profoundly irrational. For Roy, who believed that a philosophical revolution must precede social revolution, Gandhi’s mixing of religion and politics was fundamentally regressive.

The Ram Rajya question 🔗

Gandhi’s vision of Ram Rajya-his ideal society based on the mythical rule of Lord Rama-represented everything Roy opposed. While Gandhi understood Ram Rajya as a moral order based on truth, non-violence, and decentralized governance, Roy saw it as romanticizing a feudal past. For Roy, invoking religious mythology as a political ideal contradicted the rationalist and scientific outlook necessary for genuine social progress.

Critique of trusteeship and village idealization 🔗

Roy found Gandhi’s economic ideas equally problematic. The concept of trusteeship-where capitalists would voluntarily act as trustees for society-seemed to Roy like a naive scheme to protect capitalist interests while providing an illusion of social justice. Marxist intellectuals like Roy projected Gandhi as the spokesperson of the bourgeois class, suggesting that trusteeship was merely a means to avoid genuine class conflict.

Similarly, Roy criticized Gandhi’s idealization of village life and the revival of khadi (homespun cloth) as economically backward. While Gandhi saw decentralized, self-sufficient villages as the foundation of true Swaraj, Roy considered these ideas obsolete and incapable of addressing India’s economic problems in the modern age.

The shift to New Humanism 🔗

Roy’s most significant intellectual transformation occurred during his six years in prison after returning to India in 1930. Imprisoned for his role in the Kanpur Communist Conspiracy Case, Roy used this time for systematic study and reflection. He wrote nine volumes of handwritten manuscripts-still preserved at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi-reexamining Marxism in light of contemporary science.

Gradually, Roy grew disillusioned with orthodox Marxism. He found its economic determinism too rigid and its dismissal of individual autonomy troubling. After his release in 1936, Roy joined the Indian National Congress briefly but left in 1940 over differences regarding India’s role in World War II. He formed the Radical Democratic Party in 1943.

The 1946 transformation 🔗

In December 1946, Roy prepared his famous “Twenty-Two Theses” or “Principles of Radical Democracy” for the Radical Democratic Party conference in Bombay. In 1947, he published New Humanism: A Manifesto, elaborating these ideas. The following year, Roy dissolved his party entirely, concluding that party politics was inconsistent with his ideal of organized democracy, and launched the Radical Humanist Movement.

Core principles of New Humanism 🔗

Roy’s New Humanism represented a complete philosophical system. It emphasized that the individual is prior to society and that freedom can only be enjoyed by individuals. Unlike Marxism, which subordinated individuals to class interests, New Humanism placed human beings-as rational, moral entities-at the center of all social movements.

Roy traced the quest for freedom and search for truth to biological roots but insisted that once formed, ideas exist by themselves, governed by their own laws. This recognition of intellectual autonomy marked a significant departure from Marxian economic determinism. Roy believed a “twentieth century Renaissance” based on rationalism and scientific humanism was essential for genuine democracy.

Similarities and divergence with Gandhism 🔗

Remarkably, Roy’s New Humanism brought him closer to Gandhi on several structural points, even as fundamental philosophical differences remained.

Points of convergence 🔗

Both Roy and Gandhi recognized the individual as the center of all social movements. Both supported decentralization of political and economic power. Roy’s vision of “organized democracy” based on people’s committees resembled Gandhi’s ideal of village panchayats as foundations of self-governance. Both were skeptical of centralized state power and sought alternatives to conventional party politics.

Both thinkers also gave supreme importance to morality in politics. Roy argued that human beings are moral because they are rational, and that ethics must be central to any genuine philosophy of freedom. Gandhi, of course, famously insisted on the unity of means and ends, making morality the foundation of his political practice. Roy and Gandhi alone among Indian leaders of their time advocated for native institutions of democracy rather than simply adopting Western parliamentary models.

The fundamental divide: spiritualism versus materialism 🔗

Despite these convergences, a fundamental philosophical gulf separated Roy and Gandhi. Gandhi was guided by spiritualism; Roy remained a materialist. For Gandhi, truth was God, and moral action flowed from spiritual realization. His inner voice, his practice of prayer, and his invocation of Ram Rajya all reflected a worldview grounded in religious faith.

Roy, by contrast, insisted that true humanism must be based on science and reason, not compassion or divine will. He rejected all supernatural entities, opposed fatalism and the doctrine of karma, and advocated for secular morality. In his view, no philosophical advancement was possible without getting rid of orthodox religious ideas and theological dogmas.

Roy’s final assessment 🔗

While Roy appreciated Gandhi’s ethical content and his role in mass awakening, he maintained that Gandhi’s methods were ultimately limited by their religious foundations. Roy believed that scientific rationality, not spiritual appeals, was the true path to human freedom. His New Humanism was explicitly cosmopolitan, envisioning a world federation that would transcend national and religious boundaries.

Roy’s philosophy found institutional expression in the Radical Humanist Movement, which joined other humanist groups in 1952 to found the International Humanist and Ethical Union (now Humanists International). Roy was elected one of its first vice-presidents, though illness prevented him from attending the inaugural congress. He died on January 25, 1954, leaving behind a unique philosophical legacy that bridged revolutionary activism and humanist thought.

What do you think? Can genuine social transformation occur through spiritual appeals to conscience, as Gandhi believed, or does it require the kind of rationalist, scientific approach that Roy advocated? In an age of resurgent religious nationalism, does Roy’s insistence on separating religion from politics seem prescient or impractical?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._N._Roy
2. https://iep.utm.edu/roy_mn/
3. https://politicsforindia.com/mn-roy-political-thoughts-psir/
4. https://politicsforindia.com/gandhi-political-thoughts-psir/
5. https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/psp07/chapter/m-n-roy-and-radical-humanism/
6. https://humanists.uk/humanism/the-humanist-tradition/20th-century-humanism/m-n-roy/
7. https://www.civilserviceindia.com/subject/Political-Science/notes/indian-political-thought-m.n.roy.html