In this fascinating biography of the Indian revolutionary M. P. T. Acharya (1887-1954), Ole Birk Laursen uncovers the remarkable transnational networks, movements, and activities of India's most important anticolonial anarchist in the twentieth century.
Driven by the urge for complete freedom from colonialism, authoritarianism, fascism, and militarism, which are rooted in the idea and politics of the nation-state. Acharya fought for an international vision of socialism and freedom. During the tumultuous opening decades of the 1900s-marked by the globalisation of radical inter-revolutionary struggles, world wars, the rise of communism and fascism, and the growth of colonial independence movements-Acharya allied himself with pacifists, anarchists, radical socialists and anticolonial fighters in exile, championing a future free from any form of oppression, whether by colonial rulers or native masters. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, private correspondence and other primary sources. Laursen demonstrates that, among his contemporaries, Acharya's turn to anarchism was unique and pioneering in the struggle for Indian independence.
Anarchy or Chaos is the first comprehensive study of M. P. T. Acharya. It offers a new understanding of the global and entangled history of anarchism and ant colonialism in the first half of the twentieth century.
'Let them call me an anarchist.'
In November 1922, the Indian revolutionary M. P. T. Acharya fled Russia with his new wife, the Russian artist Magda Nachman, and shortly thereafter arrived in Berlin on a Russian passport. He had spent the last three and a half years in Russia, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, associating with proto-nationalists, pan-Islamists, Muhajirs, communists, Bolsheviks, and anarchists, all as part of the struggle for Indian freedom from British rule. As a delegate of the Indian Revolutionary Association (IRA), a revolutionary body he had formed with Abdur Rabb in Kabul in late 1919, he had attended the Second Congress of the Communist International in July 1920, and he was one of the founding members of the exiled Indian Communist Party (ICP) in Tashkent in October 1920. However, shortly after the formation of the ICP, Acharya fell out with the domineering M. N. Roy, who had captivated Vladimir Lenin at the Second Congress, and he was subsequently expelled from the party in December 1920. Having become critical of the Bolshevik regime and the ICP and now associating with anarchists, Acharya was no longer tolerated in Moscow and, in November 1922, he and Nachman managed to escape to Germany. In Berlin, perhaps not knowing where else to go, Acharya and Nachman returned to Leibnizstrasse 42, where he had briefly lived during the First World War, in the Charlottenburg district, home to many Indians in the interwar period.
Hindu (908)
Agriculture (123)
Ancient (1097)
Archaeology (796)
Architecture (551)
Art & Culture (919)
Biography (718)
Buddhist (529)
Cookery (167)
Emperor & Queen (540)
Islam (226)
Jainism (322)
Literary (840)
Mahatma Gandhi (383)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Statutory Information
Visual Search
Manage Wishlist