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1M. N. ROY'S MEMOIRS

2First Publiihed 1964 Reprint 1984Published byAJANTA PUBLICATIONS (INDIA)Jawahar Nagar, Delhi-110007DistributorsAJANTA BOOKS INTERNATIONAL1-U B, Jawahar Nagar,Bungalow Road,Delhi-110007Printed atTAJ OFFSET PRESS JAMA MASJID DELHI

3IntroductionAMONG his Indian contemporaries, Manabendra Nath Roy waswithout a peer; there is perhaps no comparable figure in the East. Hewas unique in the universality of his experience. A dozen differentcountries spread over three major continents provide the backgroundof his chequered career. He occupied leading positions in the greatmovements of Nationalism, Communism and Humanism, continuingto grow throughout in his understanding aided and enriched by hisrare intellectual gifts and vast experience. While holding positions ofauthority and influence and rubbing shoulders with some of thegreatest figures of contemporary history, he did not hesitate inchoosing the path of wilderness whenever his convictions, in thecontext of the situations he faced, seemed to demand the choice. Hecombined firmness of commitment to the basic values of freedom andtruth with a remarkable openmindedness, capable of absorbing newideas and learning from fresh experience. Indeed, his life was a greatquest, a steady and purposeful march; the movement had its momentsof slowing down or setbacks, but it knew no failures or defeats. It hadno room whatsoever for frustration or bitterness of any kind. That hislife, no less than his ideas, is his bequest to future generations is thereal measure of his greatness.The story of the life of Manabendra Nath Roy may perhaps never befully told; the task at any rate seems to be well beyond the resourcesof any individual. It is indeed unfortunate that he could not continuewriting his memoirs, for there are parts of this story he alone couldtell. The loss is permanent and irreparable. Those of us who had theprivilege of knowing and working with Roy still recall the great initialreluctance he had in starting this writing, a reluctance which all thepowers of persuasion and argument of Ellen, his wife, and of hisfriends and followers had to be used to overcome. The identificationof his life with his work was complete. So one

4VIM. N. ROY S MEMOIRSwas he with his ideas, ideals and pursuits that he seldom spoke ofhimself.Born in a Bengal village, Urbalia (24 Parghanas), in a priestly family,Narendra Bhattacharya joined the revolutionary movement in Bengalas a schoolboy of fourteen. He was soon distinguished as one of itsbold and brave members and soon after the outbreak of the FirstWorld War, left the country, in disguise, to secure arms foroverthrowing the alien rule. Narendra travelled through Burma,Indonesia, China, Japan and the Philippines and reached the USA inpursuit of his mission. Conditions in the USA changed with America'senlry in the war and he was arrested. It was in the United Srates thatNarendra Bhattacharya became Manabendra Nath Roy, a name thatstuck till the end. Roy jumped bail and escaped to Mexico. The breakwith militant nationalism and conversion to Marxism began while hewas in Mexico and culminated in his founding1 the Communist Partyof Mexico, the first Communist Party outside the Soviet Uiiicm. Roymet Michael Borodin in Mexico and was soon invited to the SovietUnion by Lenin. He reached Moscow in time for the Second Congressof the Communist International and soon won the confidence andadmiration of Lenin who described him as " the symbol of revolutionin the East." He was elected to the Presidium of the CommunistInternational and was for several years the Head of its EasternSection. In 1926, he went to China as the sole emissary of theInternational to guide the revolution there. In 1928 came the breakwith the International and after a brief spell in Germany, Roy returnedto India in I930—-nearly sixteen years aftef the departure from thecountry in search of arms.He retterned with arms but of a different kind. He had come baek witha vision and with ideas, with a devotion to freedom and justice whichwhile mobilising the Indian people against British Imperialism wouldalso rouse them against their native exploiters. He had outgrown thenaive inspiration of colonial nationalism. The new world of ideas andvalues opened to him by Marxism led him to insist that freedom mustdevelop dimensions other than the nationalist if it were to bemeaningful to millions of his countrymen.

5INTRODUCTIONVIIHowever, in less than a year of his return, Roy was arrested andsentenced to sik years' imprisonment. On release, he joined the IndianNational Congress; but soon after the outbreak of the Second WorldWar, came the break with the Congress on the question of India'sattitude to the issues posed by the war. The war signified for him aglobal struggle between democracy and fascism and the victory of theformer was a precondition for the liberation of the colonies. He leftthe Congress and founded the Radical Democratic Party in 1940. Thebreak with the Congress marked the beginning of his break withcommunism and the evolution of his ideas beyond and away fromMarxism. The man of action and the thinker were soon fused into asystem-builder who, more than any one else, was conscious of thelimitations and difficulties of any such endeavour and was never tiredof emphasising them. His ideas developed rapidly and crystallised intoa social philosophy, New Humanism, which he continued to developand propagate till the end. It was as a corollary of this developmentthat the Radical Democratic Party was dissolved in 1948.M. N. Roy was, I think, the first Indian thinker who appreciatedclearly the significance of the major break-through of the citadel ofImperialism by the forces generated by the Second World War. Hewas the first to maintain that the issue of Capitalism vs. Socialism wasbound to make room for that of Democracy vs. Totalitarianism, a factsupported by many and amply testified to by the history of the postWar period. Roy was again one of the very first few to recognise fullyand clearly the implications of the enormous destructive powerdeveloped during the War and its bearings on the idea and thetechnique of revolution. Insurrections have been clearly renderedoutdated; the ballot box, on the other hand, has been already found tobe insufficient and wanting. If ever there was a challenge to humanintelligence and ingenuity, here was one. It will redound to the creditof Roy, even after many of those who dominated the contemporaryscene are long forgotten, that he took up the challenge and laid thebasis of meeting it in an effective manner.It is hardly possible here to summarise his ideas. Suffice it to point outthat they constitute a dependable response to the

6VIIIM. N. ROY'S MEMOIRSdemands of a crisis which steadily increases the feelings ofhelplessness and hopelessness of the individual by asserting hisprimacy and supremacy and open up a perspective of restoring sanityand decency in public life. The latter was reinforced by drawing uponthe achievements of modern science which have made it possible tofurnish biological sanctions for the moral behaviour of man. Roy reassessed the potentialities of the democratic movement when it is freefrom the distorting influences of power politics. He also reexaminedMarxism without any inhibitions. The result was the formulation of aphilosophy which is essentially a mid-twenticth-century version of theRenaissance, modified and enriched by the knowledge and experiencewhich man had gained in the intervening centuries.Thus starting as a nationalist revolutionary and- spending nearlytwenty years in the vanguard of the Marxian revolution of our time,Roy ultimately crowned his career as a philosopher of the modernRenaissance. This indeed would be an outstanding achievement forany man and especially so for one who never entered the portals of auniversity or a seminary. And yet what marks out Roy as uniqueamong the dramatis personae of the history of the revolution in ourtime is a rare combination of the love of freedom, unimpeachableintegrity, a sense of loyalty, the courage of conviction, a passionateinterest in ideas and their human implications, an unqualifiedinvolvement in the struggle for freedom together with completedetachment from the game of power politics through which thisstruggle often expresses itself, and with all that a genuine interest inthe hopes and anxieties of the most ordinary of men who ever came incontact with him. There was something of the universal man in him,whose company made even the most mediocre of his comrades feelthat life, with all its ugly patches, was exciting and beautiful and thatthey, too, had an important place in its ever-renewing procession. Fewleaders have been able to release men's creativity as Roy could dowithout resorting to Shamanism of any kind.Roy could do this because he was the least interested in himself. Hissole concern was to realise freedom himself and to help others to doso. As his conception of freedom developed

7INTRODUCTIONIXa richer and more complex meaning, his political philosophy andactivity underwent a corresponding transformation. Similarly, his'failure' in the pragmatic sense of the word can be seen only as theinevitable consequence of his intellectual and moral integrity. Whereothers compromised principle with expediency, Roy chose to forgoostensible success in order that the values he sought should not eludehim. What he wrote in his last letter to Stalin is the basic clue to hiscareer: *' I cannot reconcile myself to the idea that decency, loyaltyand honesty should have no place in the catalogue of Bolshevikvirtues." Here spoke a man who was capable of throwing away thekingdom of the whole world for the sake of these simple virtues, aman whose greatness essentially lay in his goodness. Who can denythat the world needs a basic transformation if it is to be a placecongenial for men like him to live and to grow ?Reason was the sole guide that Roy accepted in his quest. Reasonalone, operating in the light of experience, could solve the problemsof men. He believed that once men saw the truth, they would accept itsooner or later. This was of course an unverifiable assumption, but notso Utopian as it may at first sight appear. After all, the educability ofman is grounded in his capacity to interpret and to learn from hisexperience, All that Roy did was to extend the principle from the fieldof formal intellectual instruction to that of co-operative social livingtogether. For morality is nothing but a body of rules governing interpersonal relationships, and Roy assumed that in a rationally orderedsociety the claims of morality would be compatible with those offreedom. Indeed they had to be; for, according to Roy, being rationalimplied being moral and reason itself was but an instrument forcarrying on the quest for freedom, which was an expression, on theplane of consciousness, of man's instinct for survival. His approachthus involved both the Socratic scepticism as to the current beliefs andthe Socratic faith that knowledge is virtue.The memoirs cover a period of about eight years, from 1915 to 1923.Part of this material was originally published in The RadicalHumanist, a weekly founded and edited by Roy; some portionsappeared elsewhere also. The manuscript was originally prepared forthe Press by Ellen Roy who unfortunately

8XM. N. ROY’S MEMOIRSis not with us to see it appear in print. The tragic circumstances of herdeath—she was murdered at her residence in Dehra Dun—make thegrief of survivors all the more poignant. I is a little comfort 'hat one ofher wishes is at last being fulfilled, through the appearance of thisvolume which is an excellent introduction to what may be called theformative period of Roy's life and career.The Publishers have our gratitude for undertaking the work. Thedifficulties in executing it were formidable. But they tackled thesewith their remarkable resourcefulness, tact and never-failing courtesy.The photographs included in the volume were old and faded and thedifficulties in reproduction were serious. We are thankful for theefforts in getting over these and including these old and rarephotographs in the book.The usefulness of the book has been considerably increased by theinclusion of the checklist of Roy's writings prepared by the Universityof California. Our thanks are due to the authorities, and Mr. Wilson asalso to Dr. Richard Park for making this possible.We are deeply thankful to Mr. D. N. Marshall, the ever-obligingLibrarian of the University of Bombay, who was kind enough toprepare the index in response to our requestThe publication of the book would hardly have been possible but forthe willing assistance and cooperation, of all these and many otherfriends. And yet a significant measure of credit in this is due to theTimes of India Press for completing the printing work in an excellentand expeditious manner. I cannot therefore conclude withoutconveying to them our sincere thanksG. D. PARIKHBombay 8 March 1964.

9CONTENTSIntroductionPart 1IN SEARCH OF AN IDEAL1.In Search of Arms Through. Asia32.Journey Across the Pacific143.My Rebirth224.The End of a Mission305My Experience of American Police and Justice376Conquistadores, Rebels, Bandits and Civil Wars457.The City of the Sleeping Woman518.Mexican Memoranda589.Mexican Days6510.Socialism in Mexican Politics7311.During World War I8112.Last Attempt to Purchase Arms in China8915.First Encounter with Bandits9814.American Radicals in Mexico10615.Marxism and Anarcho-Syndicalism in Mexico11416.Latin-American Monroe Doctrine12217.Chess, Socialism, and Riding12918.Interview with the President13519.A Regional Socialist International14120.How Things Were Done in Mexico14821.Portrait of a Future President13522.In Power by Proxy16223.A Red Baptism17024.A Mysterious Visitor17625.Meeting the First Bolshevik18226.Michael Borodin18927.A Story of Tzarist Jewek19628.First Communist Party Outside Russia20429.Preparing for the Pilgrimage215

10CONTENTSPart 2THE NEW FAITH30.Crossing the Atlantic22331.The Land of the Faded Glory23032.In Berlin, At Last23733.Great Expectations24534.The Defeat of the German Revolution25235.Civil War and National Bolshevism25936.Bloodless Battle of Berlin26537.The Old Guard of German Communism27238.Left Communism27839.Indian Revolutionary Committee in Berlin28640.An Embarrassing Associate29541.Foundation of the Communist International302Part 3IN THE HOLY LAND42.First Day in Moscow31343.Second Front of World Revolution32044.The Matriarch of Bolshevism32845.High Priest of the New Faith33546.First Meeting with Lenin34147.First Speech in Mass Meeting34848.International Concourse of Communists35449.The Grand Pageant36150.The Second World Congress. Politicians and Personalities36851.Disagreement with Lenin over the Colonial Question37552.The First Red Assault on Europe38353.Revolution Turns Eastwards39054.Fallen Heroes of Pan-Islamism39755.Strategy of Pan-Turanianism40456.The Strategy of Revolution in Asia41157.Plan to Raise an Army of Liberation419

11CONTENTSPart 4REVOLUTION COMES TO ASIA58.Lift in Central Asia42959.Counter-Revolutionary Conspiracy and the End of Enver Pasha43960.Bloodless Revolution44561.Revolution Enters the Harem45262.The Army of God45963.Lord Curzon's Nightmare46864.Indian Revolutionaries in Moscow47765.Indian Provisional Government Expelled from Kabul48666.Revolution nearly Wrecked by War Communism49467.Lenin Calls for Retreat50268.The Third World Congress of the Communist International51069.Bolshevik Gold and Demoralization of the Communist Movement 51770.Communist University for the Toilers of the East52571.First Meeting with Stalin53372.Appeal to the Ahmedabad Congress54073.Marxist Interpretation of Indian History54974. Communists Amongst Themselves556Epilogue by V. B. KARNIK565Bibliography607Index619

Part 1In Search of an Ideal

1In Search of Arms Through AsiaMORE THAN a quarter of a century before India finally attained thecoveted goal of national independence, the tempting vision of anearlier possibility had called a generation of young men to fruitlessadventures. On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Indianrevolutionaries in exile looked towards Germany as the land of hope,and rushed there full of great expectations. By the end of the year, thenews reached us in India that the Indian Revolutionary Committee inBerlin had obtained from the German Government the promise ofarms and money required to declare the war of independence. Thenews spread like wild fire, to affect the Indian soldiers of the Britisharmy also. Revolution was round the corner, although we had thevaguest possible idea about the things to come. In any case,independence was within reach. The imagined imminence of theattainment of the common goal induced several secret revolutionaryorganisations to compose their traditional feuds. Clandestineconferences led to the formation of the General Staff of the comingrevolution, with Jatin Mukherji as the Commander-in-Chief.The job of finding money for initial expenditure, entrusted to me, wassoon done according to plan. Then we were coo-fronted with theproblem of getting the promised arms into the country. Ourtransporting them all the way from Germany was out of the question.A messenger went to Berlin, with the proposal that the Germansshould deliver the arms to us in a neutral country nearest to India. Wechose the Dutch East Indies, and before the end of 1914 I left forJava—my first trip out of the country. I returned within two months,with some money, not much; but as regards arms, the coveted cargo3

4M.N . ROY’S MEMOIRSof the Golden Fleece—it was a wild goose chase. They failed toarrive, because, as it was discovered later, the whole plan was a hoax,a veritable swindle.But our youthful enthusiasm, thoughtless optimism and, above all, thefaith in the liberating mission of Germany, were not to be so easilydaunted. We resolved to try again; a new plan was made; and I leftIndia for the second time early in 1915, in search of the GoldenFleece, determined not to return without the precious cargo which, wefondly believed, was floating somewhere on the Pacific Ocean. As ithappened, I did not return until after sixteen years.A full story of my experience during those years may be told someday, not as the autobiography of an individual, but as a part of thehistory of the time. For the moment, I only propose to recollect howM. N. Roy was born. Because if the story is ever to be told, that willnot be of a naive youth who started on a wild-goose chase thirty-fiveyears ago; it will be a record of the experience of a different man.The attempt to smuggle arms in ships having failed, I went abroad forthe second time with the alternative plan of bringing arms overlandfrom China. They were to be smuggled through the north-easterntribal area, where the Abors had risen in revolt only recently. While Ileft to get arms abroad, a group of our comrades, led by the cleverestamongst us, was to proceed to the north-eastern frontiers, to incite theAbors and the neighbouring tribes to rise again in revolt; this time tobe helped with arms and other resources from outside.I made yet another attempt to bring help overseas from Indonesia. Theplan was to use the German ships interned in a port at the northern tipof Sumatra, to storm the Andaman Islands and free and arm theprisoners there, and land the army of liberation on the Orissa coast.The ships were armoured, as many big German vessels were, readyfor war time use. They also carried several guns each. The crew wascomposed of naval ratings. They had to escape from the internmentcamp, seize the ships and sail. The skeleton crew left on board eachship could have the steam up. Several hundred rifles and other smallarms with an adequate quantity of ammunition could be acquiredthrough Chinese smugglersJatin Mukherji—Jatinda—Roy's revolutionary Guru—Dada—Commander-in-chief of theGeneral S

The memoirs cover a period of about eight years, from 1915 to 1923. Part of this material was originally published in The Radical Humanist, a weekly founded and edited by Roy; some portions appeared elsewhere also. The manuscript was originally prepared for the Press by Ellen Roy who unfortunately

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