The writing of this book was done during the Emergency when I was detained under MISA for eighteen months from August 9, 1975 to January 31, 1977. In fact, this was my third detention under MISA during the J. P.-led movement from 1974 to 1977. For the first three months I was in the Muzaffarpur Central Jail and the remaining fifteen months in the Palamau District Jail, Daltonganj. The exact putting it down in black and white was done between July, 1976 and January, 1977 in the Palamau District Jail, although the gathering of the material, slowly and Intermittently, was started in 1972. Since then even whenever in jails, my reading and taking down notes had continued. All this was from the aim of completing the third volume of my projected six-volume "Studies in Socialism in India", whose first volume, Studies in the Development of Capitalism in India, was published in 1963 and the second volume, The Indian Trade Union Movement in 1970.

As I was completing writing on Gopal Krishna Gokhale the radio blared the proclamation of the Lok Sabha election in March, 1977. It meant that we the detenus of the JP movement against the Emergency were going to be released and were in fact released.