Akshay Ramanlal Desai (26 April 1915 – 12 November 1994) was an Indian sociologist, Marxist[1] and a social activist.
His father Ramanlal Desai was a Gujarati writer, novelist and civil servant of the Baroda State who inspired him to study and explore facts of human society.
He graduated in Political Science and Economics from the University of Bombay in 1935 and obtained a law degree and PhD under the guidance of G. S. Ghurye in 1946.
[4] In his attempt to understand Indian society from a Marxian perspective, he consistently applied Marxist methods in his treatment of Indian social structure and processes and adopted a dialectical historical approach for his sociological studies on nationalism, examination of Community Development programmes, urban slums and their demographic problems, peasant movements and interface between state and society.
While focusing on the relevance of the Marxist approach for Indian society in his presidential address of AISC, he gave notice to the mainstream that Marxism indeed had a place in Sociology and accordingly created a forum for scholars in University of Bombay to broaden their horizons of research.