VIRENDRANATH CHATTOPADHYAYA

VIRENDRANATH CHATTOPADHYAYA

Virendranath Chattopadhyaya also called  Chatto (1880 — September 2, 1937, Moscow) was a prominent Indian revolutionary who aimed to overthrow the British Raj in India by using violence as a tool.

His childhood nickname was Binnie or Biren. Virendranath was the eldest son of Dr. Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya (Chatterjee), who was an ex-principal and professor of science at the Nizam College, in Hyderabad. Aghorenath’s other children Sarojini Naidu and Harindranath Chattopadhyay were famous poets. Viren received a secular and liberal education. He was a polyglot and was fluent in the Indian languages Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Urdu, Persian, Hindi, as well as English; later he was to learn French, Italian, German, Dutch, Russian and the Scandinavian languages as well. He matriculated in theUniversity of Madras and received an undergraduate degree in Arts from the University of Calcutta. In Kolkata, through his other sister Gannu or Mrinalini, who was already known to be an advanced Nationalist, Viren was introduced to Bejoy Chandra Chatterjee, a barrister who was also known as an extremist. He was also introduced to Sri Aurobindo’s family, especially his cousins, Kumudini and Sukumar Mitra; the former was editor of the seditious magazine, Suprabhat. For years afterwards, Viren maintained contact with all of them.

In 1902, Viren joined the University of Oxford, while preparing for the Indian Civil Service. Later, he became a law student of the Middle Temple. While frequenting Shyamji Krishnavarma’s India House at 65 Cromwell Avenue in London, Viren became closely acquainted with V.D. Savarkar (since 1906). In 1907, Viren was on the editorial board of Shyamji’s Indian Sociologist and in August, along with Madame Cama and S.R. Rana, he attended the Stuttgart Conference of the Second International where they met delegates like Hyndman, Karl Liebknecht, Jean Jaurès, Rosa Luxemburg and Ramsay Macdonald among others. In spite of the presence of Vladimir Lenin, it is not certain if Viren met him on this occasion.

In 1908, at “India House” he came in contact with a number of important “agitators” from India: G.S. Khaparde, Lajpat Rai, Har Dayal, Rambhuj Dutt and Bipin Chandra Pal. In June 1909, at an India House meeting, V.D.Savarkar violently advocated assassinations of the Englishmen in India. On 1 July, at the Imperial Institute in London, Sir William Curzon-Wyllie, political aide-de-camp at the India Office, was assassinated by Madanlal Dhingra, who was deeply influenced by Savarkar. Viren published a letter in The Times on 6 July in support of Savarkar, and was promptly expelled by the Benchers of the Middle Temple. In November 1909, he edited the short-lived but virulent nationalist periodical Talvar (‘The Sword’). In May 1910, seizing the opportunity of a tension between England and Japan over the Korean peninsula, Viren discussed the possibility of Japanese help to Indian revolutionary efforts. On June 9, 1910, along with D.S. Madhavrao, he followed V.V.S. Aiyar to Paris, for avoiding a warrant issued for his arrest. Upon reaching France, he joined the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).

Aiyar left for Pondicherry, publishing the Dharma newspaper and a number of stirring pamphlets in Tamil, while maintaining a regular contact with Madame Cama. Chatto and some other revolutionaries stayed with her at 25 rue de Ponthieu and helped her to edit the Bande Mataram: its April 1911 issue “was one of the most violent that ever appeared” praising outrages in Nasik and Kolkata, claiming that:

"With gentlemen we can be gentlemen, but not with rogues and scoundrels. (…) Our friends the Bengalis have also begun to understand. Blessed be their efforts. Long be their arms." 

In connection with the Tirunelveli Conspiracy Case in February 1912, Madame Cama published an article showing that these political assassinations were in accordance with the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. Earlier in the year, Viren married Miss Reynolds. Demoralised by the Great War, they separated and his wife returned to England while Viren reached Berlin in April 1914 for furthering the revolutionary activities. He also sent fellow revolutionary Herambalal Gupta to Japan via the USA.

In Germany, to avoid suspicion he enrolled in a university as a student. As a student in comparative linguistics at the University of Saxe-Anhalt in April 1914, Viren met Dr. Abinash Bhattacharya alias Bhatta and some other nationalist Indian students. The former was well-known to the influential members as belonging to the Kaiser’s immediate circle. Early in September 1914, they formed a “German Friends of India” Association, and were received by the brother of Wilhelm II, wherein they signed a treaty in favour of German help in order to oust the British from India. With the help of Baron Max von Oppenheim, who was an expert in Middle Eastern affairs in the German Foreign Office, Viren informed Indian students in thirty-one German universities about the Association’s future plans.

Among its first members were Viren alias Chatto, Bhatta, Dr. Moreshwar Govindrao Prabhakar (Cologne), Dr Abdul Hafiz (Leipzig), C. Padmanabhan Pillai (Zurich), Dr. Jnanendra Dasgupta (Zurich), Dhiren Sarkar, Narain S. Marathé, Vishnu Suktankar, Gopal Paranjapé, Karandikar, Shrish Chandra Sen, Satish Chandra Ray, Sambhashiva Rao, Dadachanji Kersasp, Mansur Ahmad, Siddiq. Other prominent revolutionaries who soon found their way to Berlin were Har Dayal, Taraknath Das, Mohammad Barakatullah, Bhupendranath Datta, A. Raman Pilla(A.R.Pillai),Chandrakanta Chakravarti, M.P. Tirumal Acharya, Herambalal Gupta, Jodh Singh Mahajan, Jiten Lahiri, Satyen Sen, and Vishnu Ganesh Pingley.

On September 22, 1914, Sarkar and Marathé left for Washington, D.C. with a message for then German ambassador, Von Bernstorf. The latter got Von Papen, his Military Attaché, to arrange for steamers, purchase arms and ammunition, to be delivered on the eastern coast of India. On November 20, 1914, Viren sent Satyen Sen, V.G. Pingley and Kartâr Singh to Kolkata with a report for Jatindranath Mukherjee or Bagha Jatin. Bagha Jatin conveyed a note through Pingley and Kartar Singh to Rash Behari Boseasking him to expedite preparations for the proposed armed uprising.^[6] In 1915, when Viren went to meet Raja Mahendra Pratap in Switzerland and convey him the Kaiser’s personal invitation, there was an attempt to murder Viren, while he was dogged by British agent, Donald Gullick.

With the failure of the Indo-German Zimmermann Plan, in 1917 Viren shifted the Berlin Committee to Stockholm. In 1918, he contacted the Russian leaders Troinovski andAngelica Balabanova, the First General Secretary of the Communist International. In December, he dissolved the Berlin Committee. In May 1919, he arranged for a secret meeting of Indian revolutionaries in Berlin. In November 1920, in his search of financial and political support exclusively for the revolutionary nationalist movement in India, he was encouraged by M.N. Roy (with Borodin’s approval).

Viren went to Moscow with Agnes Smedley. The latter shared her life with him till 1928. Under her influence, Viren coveted the influential position M.N. Roy enjoyed in Moscow. The next year, he was received by Lenin, along with Bhupendra Nath Datta and Panduranga Khankoje. From May to September, he attended the Indian Committee of the Third Congress of Communist International in Moscow. In December 1921, he founded in Berlin, an Indian News and Information Bureau with his correspondent Rash Behari Bose in Japan. According to Sibnarayan Ray, in spite of a climate of rivalry created between Roy and Viren by Agnes:

"Roy would have liked to work with him since he admired the latter’s intelligence and energy. (…) By early 1926 Chatto had got into good terms with Roy."

At Roy’s instance, Willi Muenzenberg “took Chatto under his wings” in organising an international conference in Europe to inaugurate the League against Imperialism. On the eve of Roy’s mission to China, in January 1927, Viren wrote to Roy asking “if there is anything further you wish me to do…” On 26 August 1927, he wrote to M.N. Roy, after the latter’s return to Moscow from China, asking to help him “directly” to gain admission to the Communist Parties of India and Germany and, after being advised by Roy, he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

In 1927, while working as the head of the Indian Languages Section of the KPD, he accompanied Jawaharlal Nehru to the Brussels Conference of the League against Imperialism. Viren served as its General Secretary. His younger brother Harin went to Berlin that year to meet him and Agnes. On learning of Nehru’s becoming president of the Indian National Congress, Viren asked him – in vain - to split the party for a more revolutionary programme for full independence from British imperialism. Inprecor, the Comintern organ, published 28 articles by Viren (27/20/1930-3/12/1932) about an ultra-leftist sectarian turn of the Communist Party of India. Between 1931 and 1933, Viren went on advocating anti-Hitler activities, Asian emancipation from Western powers, independence of India, and Japanese intervention into Chinese revolution. Among his Korean, Japanese and Chinese friends was Zhou Enlai, the future Prime Minister of the People's Republic of China.

Agnes saw him for the last time in 1933 and remembered later:

"…He embodied the tragedy of a whole race. Had he been born in England or America, I thought, his ability would have placed him among the great leaders of his age… He was at last growing old, his body thin and frail, his hair rapidly turning white. The desire to return to India obsessed him, but the British would trust him only if he were dust on a funeral pyre." 

In January-February 1934, he had a correspondence with Krupskaya (Lenin’s widow) and on March 18, 1934 he gave a talk about his reminiscences of Vladimir Lenin. He wrote to Georgi Dimitrov, Comintern’s Secretary-General, on September 9, 1935: “For three years I have been kept away from active work in the Comintern.” In a letter to Muzaffar Ahmad, Clemens Palme Dutt (who was the brother of Rajani Palme Dutt), mentioned having seen him for the last time in 1936/37 at the department of ethnographyof the Academy of Science in Leningrad. Viren was arrested on July 15, 1937. Death list with his name among 184 other persons was signed by Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Zhdanov and Kaganovich on August 31, 1937. Death sentence was pronounced by Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on September 2, 1937 and the same day he was shot.

On 10 July 1938, Nambiar, Viren’s brother-in-law, wrote to Nehru about this arrest and the latter replied on July 21, agreeing to find out about Viren’s fate.

More information is found on Viren alias Chatto in James Campbell Ker’s Political Trouble in India: 1907-1917; but the author’s personal animosity brings out a seamy aspect of a man who was, nevertheless deeply admired by his colleagues (like M.N. Roy and Dr. Abinash Chandra Bhattacharya) for his able leadership, sharp intelligence and sincere emotion. An abridged tribute from Jawaharlal Nehru will better define and defend the unique personality that was Chatto:

"A very able and a very delightful person… His humour and light heartedness never left him… A fit of homesickness came to him when he longed to be back… No exile can escape the malady of his tribe, that consumption of the soul, as Mazzini called it… Of the few I met, the only persons who impressed me intellectually were Virendranath Chattopadhyay and M.N. Roy."

Virendranath's family line survives today in Kolkata.