Hope, Adventure and Tragedy: The Forgotten Story of Anti-Colonial Fighters Chatto and M.N. Roy

Max Zins, a leading French Communist party official used to tell me in the early 1980s that India was lucky to have been under a law-abiding colonial power like Britain, which, unlike Germany, France or Italy, did not use exceedingly cruel methods to crush anti-colonial movements. Max was part of the French Communist team to host the Chinese Communist delegation led by Xi Zhongxun which visited France in December 1983 for re-establishing relations between both parties. 

Yet some of our renowned freedom fighters had approached these three colonial powers and the Soviet Union to throw British colonialism out of India. This is the theme of Kavitha Rao’s delightful book Spies, Lies and Allies: The Extraordinary Lives of Chatto and Roy – a well-researched chronology of the contribution of two great personalities, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya alias Chatto and Narendranath Bhattacharya alias M.N. Roy, whose activities and sacrifices are hardly known by the present generation. 

Several books have been written on Chatto and Roy earlier, but this is perhaps the first to narrate their lives step by step, delving on their beliefs, conflicts, hopes and despairs in crisp, dramatic style. “Despite their diverse backgrounds, the two would lead parallel lives. But like parallel lines, they would never meet in agreement.” In fact, they met each other only in 1920 although they were bitter rivals for a long time.

Chatto, born in 1880 in Hyderabad, was senior to Roy by seven years whose birthplace was Arbelia in the old Bengal Presidency. Also, unlike Roy, he was an ‘accidental radical,’ since he had gone to London originally in 1901 with intention to appear for the coveted ICS examination. He failed twice and joined the Middle Temple in 1909 to qualify as a barrister. However, he did not pass, as he changed direction to be a radical in the India House ambience, influenced by Shyamji Verma and Veer Savarkar. 

Compared to Roy, Chatto got initially noticed as he was intensely involved in the anti-colonial activities in Europe by first joining the then biggest bugbear of British intelligence, the League Against Imperialism. While he was seen helping the visiting Indian Congress leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, he was also involved in the Zurich Bomb Plot (1915) for attempting to assassinate the king of Italy and Lord Kitchner for which he was sentenced in contumaciam. He was also indicted in 1917 for trying to send arms to India on behalf of the Berlin India Committee.

As against this, Roy disappeared from domestic radar by exiling himself from 1914, travelling to distant places like Java, Japan, China, Korea, America and finally to Mexico where he encountered Borodin, the wandering Communist preacher and Lenin’s confidante, under whose influence he returned to Europe and then to Soviet Union.

As a result “Roy had done what Chatto had wanted to do but couldn’t: won Lenin’s friendship.” Kavitha Rao describes Chatto’s last phase of life in the Soviet Union from 1931 to July 15, 1937 when he was arrested. Till 1956 his wife Lidya Karunovskaya did not know why he was arrested. On September 15, 1956 she was given a certificate that Chatopadaya Virendranat Agornatovitch (Chatto’s Russian name) was cleared of the accusations. “Two years later she was handed a death certificate stating that Chatto had died on 6 April 1943.” It did not mention where and why the death took place.

The author says, “while Chatto would face a firing squad” at his dream Zion, the Soviet Union, Roy “would rashly return to India in 1930 only to be imprisoned for six long years.”

I feel that it was not the ‘rashness’ of Roy’s return to India that led to his arrest as the author had mentioned. A.C.N. Nambiar, Chatto’s sister Suhasini’s husband, then living in Berlin during that period, had said in his memoirs that Roy had nowhere to go as he was wanted by the British administration and “hounded by Moscow and disliked by Nazis who were gaining power.” He said that emigration was a problem in different countries of Europe during that period and the possibility of staying elsewhere in Europe was bleak. 

In 2007, I contacted the late Justice R.A. Jahagirdar of the Bombay high court to get an introduction to the legendary Sibnarayan Ray who had published Roy’s monumental biography in four volumes. He could throw more light on Suhasini Chattopadhyaya, sister of Chatto. This was for writing the biography of A.C.N. Nambiar, who had married Suhasini and was staying with him in Berlin but had left him mysteriously and returned to Bombay to plunge into the Communist activities. 

Although I had Nambiar’s oral transcripts running into 128 pages which he had dictated before his death in 1986, there was no inkling why Suhasini had left him. This mystery was solved by Ray who wrote to me on February 17, 2007 that Chatto had requested Roy to help Suhasini in getting a visa to study at the Eastern University, Moscow. Chatto’s second request was to get him membership of the Communist parties in Germany and India. Ray also said that “Suhasini was partially responsible for Roy’s arrest” (in Bombay).

My enquiries revealed that this was because Bombay Special Branch was shadowing Suhasini and her British Communist companion Lester Hutchinson who were regularly visiting V.B. Karnik’s flat at Hanuman Terrace on Lamington Road where the ‘Roy Group’ used to meet. They were also intercepting and reading Suhasini’s letters to Roy. During one such meeting Roy himself appeared in disguise as Dr. Mahmud. His arrest followed. 

While Roy could settle down comfortably in India from 1936 after serving his prison sentence till his death in 1954, Chatto had no such luck. Of course, the ghastly murder of Ellen, Roy’s third wife, in 1960 was a great tragedy.

Kavitha Rao has described Chatto’s last days very poignantly in chapter 14. Roy was certainly luckier than Chatto whose tragedy was described by his common law wife Agnes Smedley who met him in Moscow in 1933: “The desire to return to India obsessed him but the British would trust him only if he were dust on a funeral pyre”. 

Kavitha Rao had done a great service in unearthing the lives of these two patriots who had contributed, in their own way, towards our independence. 

Vappala Balachandran is the author of A Life in Shadow: The Secret Story of A.C.N. Nambiar.