In November of 2011, Indian communist leader Sitaram Yechury travelled to Britain. There he would give a memorial lecture at the Perse school of Cambridge University, in honour of one its most notable alumni: the historian Rajani Palme-Dutt. That name may not be too well known outside academic circles. But in the words of historian Irfan Habib, the “first major Marxist work on modern India" was RP Dutt’s 1940 book, India Today. These comments by Habib appear in his 2010 essay on the development of Marxist history in India. That article is still available today on the official website of the CPI(M).

So, why is Indian Marxist historiography so bad? Perhaps because it was started by a British Indian communist who was covering for their alliance with Adolf Hitler. Born in England in 1896 to a Bengali father and a Swedish mother, and distantly related to future Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. So here is Rajani Palme-Dutt in November 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, telling what some might say is the lie of the century:

“Poland was used as a decoy duck by Chamberlain to draw on the Nazi troops, with the expectation that their onward sweep might lead them into conflict with the Soviet Union. This plan was defeated by the swift action of the Soviet Union in occupying the eastern areas of Poland. The only help to the suffering Polish people,........

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