Skip to main content

Should India's Radical Humanists feel proud? Mexico remembers MN Roy thru nightclub!

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:
***
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. 

Comments

TRENDING

BRICS ends, but Bangladesh's empty chair says more than any declaration

By Nava Thakuria  The 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit, hosted by India at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 12-13 September 2026, has concluded with leaders formally adopting the New Delhi Declaration. The gathering, themed "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability," drew Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and other leaders of the now 11-member bloc, along with heads of partner organisations such as ASEAN, the African Union and the Eurasian Economic Union. Diplomats had worked through the final hours to bridge differences — notably between Iran and the UAE over West Asian tensions — before the declaration was signed.

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah   Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

BAPS, the Eiffel Tower and the curious silence on secularism

By Rajiv Shah   I was a little surprised to see how some of those whom I respect for taking a firm stand on patriarchal issues reacted to the manner in which they responded to the recent incident in Paris, in which women employees of the Eiffel Tower were asked to remain "invisible" on September 5 when 100 BAPS sadhus visited one of the world's top tourist destinations.