This was surprising: A nightclub in Mexico in the name of MN Roy, an early 20th century Indian revolutionary, whose thoughts are claimed to be have influenced Lenin, Einstein, Gramsci and Sun-Yat Sen! A Communist who turned a radical humanist, whatever that means, during the later period of his life, Roy founded the Mexican Communist Party and participated as one of the top representatives in the Communist International.
The “revelation” about the nightclub is made in an article by one Krish Raghav in a site declared “unsecure” by an anti-virus software, yet, it is interesting. The article is titled “The Radical Indian Activist Who Influenced Mexico City, Lenin and Einstein: A Mexican nightclub still pulses for Bengali thinker MN Roy”.
A search on the Google found that currently, on account of coronavirus, the nightclub is closed. Be that as it may, this is what the small writeup says:
MN Roy is one of India’s intellectual giants, an early 20th-century figure whose mind thought globally, and whose influence ran through some of the era’s biggest minds, from Einstein and Gramsci to Lenin and Sun-Yat Sen.
All of this I learnt only after encountering a bizarrely named nightclub on the streets of Mexico City. MN Roy (not his real name) is also sadly obscure, a largely forgotten fringe figure in the annals of modern Indian thought.
But he shouldn’t be. His writings hold up extraordinarily well, and his philosophical school of Radical Humanism has newfound relevance in our fractured, divisive time.
The “revelation” about the nightclub is made in an article by one Krish Raghav in a site declared “unsecure” by an anti-virus software, yet, it is interesting. The article is titled “The Radical Indian Activist Who Influenced Mexico City, Lenin and Einstein: A Mexican nightclub still pulses for Bengali thinker MN Roy”.
A search on the Google found that currently, on account of coronavirus, the nightclub is closed. Be that as it may, this is what the small writeup says:
***
The streets of Mexico City in the early 1900s were buzzing with bohemian visions of a new world. The famous Mexican critic Carlos Monsiváis once described the capital as “an apocalyptic city, populated with radical optimists”. He forgot that, for three years at least, there was one radical humanist among them.MN Roy is one of India’s intellectual giants, an early 20th-century figure whose mind thought globally, and whose influence ran through some of the era’s biggest minds, from Einstein and Gramsci to Lenin and Sun-Yat Sen.
All of this I learnt only after encountering a bizarrely named nightclub on the streets of Mexico City. MN Roy (not his real name) is also sadly obscure, a largely forgotten fringe figure in the annals of modern Indian thought.
But he shouldn’t be. His writings hold up extraordinarily well, and his philosophical school of Radical Humanism has newfound relevance in our fractured, divisive time.
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