Q.Besides his critique of the welfare state, what other major themes did A.R. Desai work on as a sociologist? In what way was his Marxist perspective not one-sided?

A.R. Desai is best known within Indian sociology for his critique of the welfare state, but this was only one part of a much wider body of Marxist-oriented work. Beyond that critique, he wrote extensively on peasant movements and rural sociology, on processes of modernisation, on urban issues, on political sociology more generally, and on questions of the state's proper form and of human rights. His doctoral work itself, later published as The Social Background of Indian Nationalism, had already applied a Marxist framework to Indian nationalism, foregrounding economic processes and class divisions while still taking full account of the specific conditions created by British colonial rule -- a book that proved popular enough to go through numerous reprints despite its critics.

What makes Desai's Marxism worth singling out, though, is that it was never simply a one-sided defence of Communist politics against capitalist ones. In his writing on the Marxist theory of the state, Desai was just as willing to turn his critical attention onto Communist states as he had been onto capitalist welfare states. He drew on Marxist thinkers themselves to argue that democracy remained essential even within a socialist state, insisting that political liberties and the rule of law needed to be genuinely upheld in any state that wanted to call itself authentically socialist -- a position that put him at odds with any simple, uncritical alignment with existing Communist regimes. …