Socialist Thought In Modern India- An Old and Rare Book (Only 1 Quantity Available)

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Foreword There has been for some considerable time a felt need in India, and elsewhere, for a meaningful survey of socialist thought in India; not only has socialism been accepted officially in India as the goal of social policy, but the literature published in India in social sciences and the newspapers contain much about the objectives and methods of socialism. The citizen in a democracy needs competent guidance from scholars to enable him to understand the concepts like socialism which guide public policy. Dr. Rai Akhilendra Prasad has made a useful, pioneering attempt to supply the felt need and I commend his scholarly effort to the scholar as well as the ordinary citizen. The task is by no means easy. All over, the world socialism has the reputation of being like a hat that loses its shape when worn by several people. The bewildering variety of meanings given to the concept in Indian writings makes one wonder if serious thinking has been given to it or if any consensus on socialism as a way of life can ever be reached. Jawaharlal Nehru thought that a vague, confused socialism was already part of the atmosphere of India when he returned from Europe in December 1927 and that mostly they thought along utopian lines; such confusion still exists among ordinary people about what socialism connotes.

Preface The present work is primarily a study of Indian socialism between 1930 and 1964-the Nehru era in Indian politics. However, it has been tried to make it as up to date as possible. In this study the three principal tasks that have been undertaken are (1) to high-light the indigenous roots of Indian Socialism, (2) to present a socialistic account of the life and times of the principal, non-communist, socialist thinkers of India-Jawaharlal Nehru, Narendra Deva, Sampurnanand, Jayaprakash Narayan, Rammanohar Lohia and Asoka Mehta, and (3) to bring to light a connected thinking of the socialist thinkers and socialist parties of India on major theoretical issues, such as, materialism and spiritualism, the place of individual and state, the methodology of socialist transformation of society, and the concept of democratic socialism in India.

Introduction PROBABLY NO IDEOLOGY in Political Science remains as vexed today as Socialism; and in a way, even more vexed than what it was during the period of its origin. It requires a considerably intense survey of the historical, sociological and politico-economic processes through which modern socialism has evolved to shape itself into the various facets of contemporary socialism. The possible method to make it explicable is to avoid any set definition of it; for naturally there must be several definitions, even as we have several definitions of State down from Aristotle to Marx and Gandhi.