Communism and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1939-45

The book analyzes the role of the Communist Party of India, its relationship with the Congress within the broader framework of nationalist politics in the Indian freedom struggle and British imperialism during the Second World War. The author documents the Communist Party of India’s efforts to establish its hegemony over the freedom struggle in order to transform a democratic revolution into a socialist one. The book locates the reasons for the failure of the CPI to either ‘expose’ the ‘bourgeois leadership’ or establish its own hegemony over the anti-imperialist struggle.