M. N. Roy and the Problem of Parliamentary Democracy

This article offers a new interpretation of anti-colonial constitutional thought of the mid-twentieth century. Historians and political theorists have long viewed the circulation of democratic constitutions at the moment of decolonization in terms of the diffusion of electoral, parliamentary government. This article argues against such a "parliamentary" reading of anti-colonial democracy by examining the political thought of Indian Marxist thinker M. N. Roy (1887-1954). I reconstruct Roy's writings on anti-parliamentary forms of popular sovereignty through the 1940s. Further, I situate Roy's democratic theory as a response to understandings of political representation within the Indian national movement.