Driven by the idea of a global modernism in culture and society, the life of Indian intellectual Mulk Raj Anand was deeply shaped by reciprocal exchanges between Asia and Europe. One of the enduring achievements of the philosopher and writer is Marg, a magazine of the arts, which Anand founded with local and exiled creatives in Bombay in 1946.
Anand had already met some of the contributors to Marg, for example the Ceylonese art historian Anil (Marcia) De Silva and the socialist writer George Orwell, in his London days. Educated in Amritsar and Lahore, Anand moved to the British capital in 1925 shortly after being arrested for anti-British agitation. He studied philosophy at University College London, completing a doctoral thesis on Bertrand Russell in 1929.
London and its intellectual scene provided a fitting environment to deepen his political and humanitarian commitments. Living in precarious conditions, part-time jobs for Bloomsbury Group connections including Virginia Woolf and the literary magazine CRITERION, provided him with a small income. Nevertheless, his network extended far beyond the local literary scene: from cultural practitioners like Sigmund Freud to the Spanish civil rights movement. These acquaintances were characterised by shared attitudes towards aesthetic reforms and a commitment to global socialism.
In the colonial metropole Anand increasingly distanced himself from oppressive power structures and societal norms. Early novels such as Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936) and The Big Heart (1945) portrayed the lives of India’s lower social strata to denounce class and caste discrimination in Indian society. Anand also experienced everyday racism, which further reinforced his anti-fascist and anti-colonial stance. Emerging as a key voice of Anglo-Indian literature and co-founder of the Indian Progressive Writers’ Association, he was committed to an independent, secular and modern India.
Transnational contexts also determined Anand’s life after his return to Bombay in 1945. Not untypical of the city's left-wing milieu, he lived in a shared a flat –  in his case with the sisters Anil und Minnette De Silva.  It was there at 25 Cuffe Parade, that the art and architecture magazine Marg was conceived. Assuming the mantle of Marg’s editorship from 1946 to 1981, Anand and the interdisciplinary founding team shaped the Indian discourse on art and architecture. The diversity of the thematic and regional focus of the magazine is reflected in the diverse founding members. These included local architects such as M. J. P. Mistri or the poet Bishnu Dey, but also German exiles such as the  chief architect of Mysore State Otto Koenigsberger, the art historian Hermann Goetz and the art critic Rudi von Leyden.
With von Leyden Anand shared a multifaceted, mutually formative relationship. Both were instrumental in establishing the Progressive Artists' Group in Bombay. Anand may have identified with the young group of artists because of their desire for aesthetic reform and their urge for an artistic expression of the newfound freedom from colonial rule. Mulk Raj Anand's at-home-soirees or Souza’s farewell party at von Leyden’s home, which was also attended by exiles Walter and Käthe Langhammer and Emanuel Schlesinger, bear witness to Bombay's cosmopolitan, cultural elite. According to art historian and painter Rathan Parimoo, Leyden also formed an important reference figure for Anand's practice as an art critic, which was reflected in his equal analysis of form and style. How much Anand relied on Leyden's understanding of art was demonstrated not least by his appointment of Leyden as a jury member at India’s First Triennale of Contemporary World Art in 1968.
As a confidant of the first prime minister of independent India Jawaharlal Nehru, Anand propagated secular state interventionism in the cultural sector. Anand − himself closely aligned to the Communist Party of India − saw the arts as powerful liberating tools and societal correctives. Architecture was for him the “mother art” (Marg, vol 1, no. 1, 1946, p. 6), seismographically anticipating the making of a modern India based on humanism.
Although Anand can be criticised for his utopianism and orientation towards European modernity, he remained committed to his progressive social agenda. This manifested itself not only in his advocacy of international solidarity, but also in his attitude of equality towards women or people from lower castes. Although increasingly threatened, to this day, Anand's belief in socialist egalitarianism beyond nations’ borders continues to resonate in India's cultural history, and in the freshly printed pages of Marg magazine.