History of Social Formations in India

Abstract

In order to situate India's historical experience within the Marxist framework, which sees history as a series of modes of production, it may be helpful to briefly review some of the pre-modern world's social formations before talking about social formations in relation to India. Since Marx and Engels recognised that India had a unique Asiatic mode of production before British control, it has been difficult to apply the framework to the study of Indian history. In the second section of the discussion, we will revisit this issue. It is sufficient to state that prominent Marxists who have studied Indian history over the past fifty years or so generally concur that the idea of the Asiatic mode of production should be abandoned. The sequence primitive communism-slavery feudalism-capitalism (P-S-F-C), which is primarily based on the European experience, is still up for debate, though.