It was probably his influence that initiated Debiprasad to two major passions in his life – Indian philosophy and politics; he quickly progressed towards radical streams in both fields, developing a lifelong commitment to Marxism and communist movement.
At a very early stage of his life Chattopadhyaya immersed himself in the left nationalist movement by joining the Association of Progressive Writers, which was formed in 1936.
Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya obtained his academic training in philosophy in Calcutta, West Bengal under eminent philosophers like Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and S. N. Dasgupta.
Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya's work on materialism and scientific method led to his active interactions with the international community of philosophers, historians and Indologists.
While commenting on his work on Lokayata, German indologist Walter Ruben called him a "thought-reformer", who was "conscious of his great responsibility towards his people living in a period of struggle for national awakening and of world-wide fighting for the forces of materialism, progress, humanism and peace against imperialism.
He demolished the so-called "interpretation of synthesis" which sought to combine the diverse philosophical traditions of India to form a ladder that leads to the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta.
He shows how these rites and rituals that evolved as primitive scientific endeavours were transformed into superstitions and monopolies in the hands of the oppressors with the advent of class divisions.
The book also endeavours to demonstrate how Indian philosophy was not any exception to the sharp conflicts between idealism and materialism, which are universally evident in the philosophical traditions of other regions.
Further, it considers the role of the law-givers like Manu in establishing the supremacy of the idealist traditions, and how due to the censor and censure anti-idealists like Varahamihira and Brahmagupta worked out their philosophies in distinctive Aesopian language, developing their own modes of camouflaging their ideas.
They adhered to, in the words of Kumarila Bhatta, the principle of bahyartha-sunyatva (the unreality of the objects of knowledge), which, according to Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, formed "the real pivot of idealism throughout its Indian career".
According to Chattopadhyaya, "discarding scripture orientation, they [the Indian physicians] insist on the supreme importance of direct observation of natural phenomena and on the technique of rational processing of the empirical data.
This book was written in the context of growing state authoritarianism during the Indian Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi, on the one hand, and the upsurge of rightist forces in the form of Jan Sangh, Shiv Sena etc., on the other.
Chattopadhyaya opined "that in these grim and anxious days through which India today is passing, that which holds hope for our future is the growing awareness of our people of socialism being the only way out".
And, "an essential pre-condition for moving forward to Socialism is the consolidation of Socialist consciousness in its right sense among the Indians today", for which "it is imperative to understand and absorb the philosophical views of Lenin".
Namboodiripad in his overall appreciative review of the book criticised Chattopadhyaya for not explaining "in a sufficiently convincing way as to why Lenin thought it necessary to go to Hegel in his later years", as evident from his Philosophical Notebooks of 1914.
Concluding the review Larson avers "what begins as a refreshing anthropological methodology for studying ancient thought and culture is reduced to an ideological perspective designed to show that... private property and the state machinery are not eternal adjuncts to human existence..." and that "...the spiritualistic outlook is not innate in man".
Dasgupta, Riepe writes: Debiprasad's approach here is based on anthropological and archaeological findings, in sharp contrast to the mythopoeic constructions of the revivalists and Indian philosophers following the lead of modern Western idealism.
For example, Ramkrishna Bhattacharya states, "Chattopadhyaya did not deny Ajita Kesakambali was a materialist, but chose to emphasize that 'Ajita was no less a philosopher of futility and moral collapse than the Buddha, Mahavira, Purana and Pakudha [...]".
His efforts to explain materialism and atheism in Indian philosophy in its antiquity, against the old fashioned conception that India was and is the land of dreamers and mystics, required "tremendous intellectual courage", yet "Chattopadhyaya never flinched in the face of isolation in his own profession".