A traveller and the road

This also gradually made him a fierce critic of the Stalinist perversion of Marxism and socialism and the organisational structure of a communist party. More than anything else, it was this which brought him into conflict with many others in the communist movement. At the tail-end of his life, he tried in vain to build afresh a communist party on different, essentially democratic, lines.

Mohit’s study of the Indian national movement and his political activity also convinced him of the necessity of taking a fresh look at the Marxist understanding of the role of nationalism in India today. Secular, democratic nationalism, he argued, was basic to the struggle of the Indian people for social justice, equity and equality—that is, for socialism.

This commitment to studying nationalism and a strong and independent India was the reason why he gradually came to admire Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. He was also fiercely opposed to communalism of all varieties and in all garbs, and was keen to promote political understanding and togetherness between the communists, the Congress and the secular intelligentsia.

This understanding of the role of democracy and nationalism in the world system today was stressed by him in a seminal article on Iraq in The Indian Express only last week (the edit page, April 28). Warning against the pessimistic notion that the US would now be able to intervene in any country, he pointed out that it was able to do so in Iraq because of the absence in that country of both nationalism and democracy.

Mohit loved life, gave himself fully to his friends and family and enriched their lives. Above all, he carried on an over 50-year-old love affair with Vanaja, his wife and comrade. A great deal of his zest for life had left him after Vanaja’s death in December 1999. Even his autobiography, A Traveller and the Road, he completed only a few months before his death because Vanaja had wanted him to do so.

(The writer is a noted historian)