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The direction of socialist, communist, and broadly left politics in India has a lot to do with the material nature of Marxism as a discourse in the subcontinent. It is mediated by a different set of vernacular languages, conceptual repertoire, and regional cultures. Certain scholars have pointed out that it involves a complex process of postcolonial translation that is ongoing. However, this recognition has not come together with a close examination of the texts that are involved in the process, for example, a critical reading of the translated works of Marx and broadly Marxism in the different languages, especially contexts where they became powerful. This essay will offer such a reading in the context of late colonial Bengal and later West Bengal. The first part of the essay will outline a background of the early translations and adaptations, their experiments as well as the setting down of certain rules of discourse on …