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Transnational Revolutionaries and Imperial Surveillance: Bengal Revolutionary Networks Outside India

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Policing ‘Bengali Terrorism’ in India and the World

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Abstract

This chapter explores how imperial intelligence agencies responded to the global dimensions of the Indian revolutionary movement during and after the First World War. From the beginnings of the revolutionary movement in Bengal, the Bengal Police’s intelligence and surveillance work ranged beyond the borders of the British Empire, as revolutionaries used the French colonial enclave of Chandernagore, north of Calcutta, as a base for their activities. During and after the Great War, revolutionaries overseas provided ideological inspiration and practical assistance in the form of arms to the revolutionary groups. The chapter focuses on two interrelated issues: (1) the lives and revolutionary aspirations of prominent Bengali anticolonialists who lived abroad, including the terrorist turned communist revolutionary M. N. Roy and the nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose, and (2) the efforts of imperial intelligence agencies, under the supervision of the office of Indian Political Intelligence in London, to monitor revolutionaries’ activities and thwart their plans.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Vivek Bald, Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

  2. 2.

    M.I.5 B.L. Volume XXI. (Indian Volume.) (Rev. ed., 1921), 28–29. L/P&J/12/667, APAC BL.

  3. 3.

    Declaration of intention to naturalize of Heramba L. Gupta, 28 January 1910, Charleston, SC. www.ancestryinstitution.com. Accessed 19 September 2018.

  4. 4.

    Mansfield Cumming (“C”) to J. W. Hose, IO, 13 June 1921, L/P&J/12/667, APAC BL.

  5. 5.

    IPI directed the India Office to burn all remaining copies of the original Black List, though fortunately for historians one survived in IPI’s archives. IPI to Peel, IO, nd [1928]. P&J No. 444 of 1928, L/P&J/6/1955, APAC BL.

  6. 6.

    Tim Harper, “Singapore, 1915, and the Birth of the Asian Underground,” Modern Asian Studies 47:6 (2013), 1782–1811.

  7. 7.

    Durba Ghosh, Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 4.

  8. 8.

    Kris Manjapra, M. N. Roy: Marxism and Colonial Cosmopolitanism (New Delhi and London: Routledge, 2010).

  9. 9.

    Michele Louro, Comrades against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); and Ali Raza, Franziska Roy, and Benjamin Zachariah, eds., The Internationalist Moment: South Asia, Worlds, and World Views, 1917–1939 (New Delhi: SAGE, 2015).

  10. 10.

    For the shift in revolutionaries’ ideologies, see David M. Laushey, Bengal Terrorism and the Marxist Left: Aspects of Regional Nationalism in India, 1905–1942 (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1975).

  11. 11.

    Two important exceptions are Daniel Brückenhaus’ studies of the cooperation between British, French, and German authorities in policing revolutionaries in Europe, and Kate O’Malley’s analysis of Indian Political Intelligence (IPI). Daniel Brückenhaus, “The Origins of Trans-Imperial Policing: British-French Government Co-operation in the Surveillance of Anti-colonists in Europe, 1905–25,” in Volker Barth and Roland Cvetkovski, eds., Imperial Co-operation and Transfer, 1870–1930 (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 171–193; and Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal Imperialism and the Surveillance of Anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Kate O’Malley, “Indian Political Intelligence (IPI): The monitoring of real and possible danger?” in Eunan O’Halpin, Robert Armstrong and Jane Ohlmeyer, eds., Intelligence, Statecraft and International Power. Historical Studies XXV. (Dublin and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 175–185; and Ireland, India and Empire: Indo-Irish Radical Connections, 1919–1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). See also Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire (London: Harper Press, 2013), 1–29.

  12. 12.

    Ian H. Magedera, “Arrested Development: The Shape of ‘French India’ after the Treaties of Paris of 1763 and 1814,” Interventions 12:3 (2010), 331–343 (quotation on 333). See also the other essays in the same issue of Interventions devoted to “French India.”

  13. 13.

    For the history of Chandernagore and its connections with nationalist politics in Bengal, see Margaret A. Majumdar, “Bengal: The French Connection,” International Journal of Francophone Studies 16:1&2 (2013), 27–50; and Sailendra Nath Sen, Chandernagore: From Bondage to Freedom 1900–1955 (Delhi: Primus, 2012).

  14. 14.

    Peter Heehs, The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India 1900–1910 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993), 52–53; and Sen, Chandernagore, 7–17.

  15. 15.

    Majumdar, “French Connection,” 32.

  16. 16.

    “Copy of a Report by Mr. S. Sen Gupta, Inspector of Police, on Special Duty, on the Importation of Firearms through Chandernagore,” (1907) in TIB III: 336–337.

  17. 17.

    “Copy of a Report by Mr. S. Sen Gupta, Inspector of Police, on Special Duty, on the Importation of Firearms through Chandernagore,” (1907) in TIB III: 340–341.

  18. 18.

    C. A. Tegart, “Note on the Chandernagore Gang,” 5, GOB Home (Pol) Conf. No. 342 of 1913, WBSA.

  19. 19.

    “Copy of a Report by Mr. S. Sen Gupta, Inspector of Police, on Special Duty, on the Importation of Firearms through Chandernagore,” (1907) in TIB III: 337–338.

  20. 20.

    The handguns were a Royal Irish Constabulary .45 Webley and an Osbourne .38. Heehs, Bomb in Bengal, 186 and 188.

  21. 21.

    C. A. Tegart, “Note on the Chandernagore Gang,” 7–8, GOB Home (Pol) Conf. No. 342 of 1913, WBSA.

  22. 22.

    Cited in Majumdar, “French Connection,” 32.

  23. 23.

    “List of Political Suspects in Bengal—Corrected up to the End of August 1912,” in TIB V: 533–538.

  24. 24.

    Note by E. H. Corbett, SP on special duty, Benares, 8 November 1915, in TIB V: 187.

  25. 25.

    Zetland to Montagu, 3 October 1921, Montagu Papers, MSS Eur. D 523/32, APAC BL.

  26. 26.

    “A Brief Note on the Prabartak Sangha of Chandernagore,” [1925] L/P&J/12/85, APAC BL.

  27. 27.

    Heehs, Bomb in Bengal, 233 and 246; and C. A. Tegart, “Note on the Situation in Chandernagore,” (1917) in TIB III: 276–279.

  28. 28.

    “A Brief Note on the Prabartak Sangha of Chandernagore,” [1925] L/P&J/12/85, APAC BL.

  29. 29.

    Ghosh, Gentlemanly Terrorists, 84.

  30. 30.

    CS to GOB, Pol. Dept., to Sec. to GOI, Home, 26 September 1923, L/P&J/12/85, APAC BL.

  31. 31.

    “Copy of a Report by Mr. S. Sen Gupta, Inspector of Police, on Special Duty, on the Importation of Firearms through Chandernagore,” (1907) in TIB III: 340.

  32. 32.

    Charles Tegart, “Note on the Chandernagore Gang,” 1–2 and 6, GOB Home (Pol) Conf. No. 342 of 1913, WBSA.

  33. 33.

    C. A. Tegart, “Note on the Situation in Chandernagore,” (1917) in TIB III: 296–297. The Defence of India Act and Regulation III of 1818 allowed for detention without trial.

  34. 34.

    Charles Tegart, “Note on the Chandernagore Gang,” 6 and 17, GOB Home (Pol) Conf. No. 342 of 1913, WBSA.

  35. 35.

    Charles Tegart, “Note on the Chandernagore Gang,” 16–17, GOB Home (Pol) Conf. No. 342 of 1913, WBSA.

  36. 36.

    “Copy of a Report by Mr. S. Sen Gupta, Inspector of Police, on Special Duty, on the Importation of Firearms through Chandernagore,” (1907) in TIB III: 340–341.

  37. 37.

    C. A. Tegart, “Note on the Situation in Chandernagore,” (1917) in TIB III: 295–296.

  38. 38.

    “Searches made at Chandernagore on 1st December 1916,” Appendix A to C. A. Tegart, “Note on the Situation in Chandernagore,” (1917) in TIB III: 297–303.

  39. 39.

    Governor of the French Settlements in India to Governor of Bengal, 4 January 1924; and Customs notification, 2 August 1926, L/P&J/12/85, APAC BL.

  40. 40.

    M. L. Bhattacharya, Calcutta, to G. C. Dutt, Deputy Director, Intelligence Bureau, Government of India, New Delhi, 9 January 1965. I am grateful to the late Sabyasachi Mukherjee, formerly of the Calcutta Police, for providing me with a copy of this letter.

  41. 41.

    In 1861 the Government of India had assured the Governor of French Possessions in India that no extradition for such offenses would take place.

  42. 42.

    F. W. Duke, Officiating CS to GOB, to Sec. to GOI, Home, 10 October 1908. Enclosure to Andrew Fraser, Governor of Bengal, to Lord Minto, Viceroy, 15 October 1908. MS 12,769, Minto Papers, National Library of Scotland [hereafter NLS]; Hiren Chakrabarti, Political Protest in Bengal: Boycott and Terrorism 1905–1918 (Calcutta: Papyrus, 1992), 229; and Heehs, Bomb in Bengal, 205.

  43. 43.

    Andrew Fraser, Governor of Bengal, to Lord Minto, Viceroy, 15 October 1908. MS 12,769, Minto Papers, NLS.

  44. 44.

    P. E. S. Finney, “The Chandernagore Raid,” [nd] Indian Police Collection, MSS Eur. F 161/39, APAC BL.

  45. 45.

    R. E. A. Ray commented that if the planned attacks had been successful, they “would have brought about a state of chaos which defies imagination.” R. E. A. Ray, “Report on the Activities of Terrorists in Bengal during the Period April to December 1930,” (1931) in TIB I: 613.

  46. 46.

    Tegart to Hugh Stephenson, Governor of Bihar & Orissa, 4 September 1930, Indian Police Collection, MSS Eur. F 161/39, APAC BL; and Manini Chatterjee, Do and Die: The Chittagong Uprising 1930–1934 (Delhi: Penguin, 1999), 173 and 327. Subodh Ray stated that torture was employed in an interview with Manini Chatterjee.

  47. 47.

    Tegart memoir, 222–223; and draft letter by Tegart regarding Chandernagore Raid, nd [September 1930] Indian Police Collection, MSS Eur. F 161/257, APAC BL.

  48. 48.

    Tegart memoir, 223. District Magistrate H. Quinton also described the raid as “a sort of Commando British Police raid.” “Terrorism in Bengal—A Memory,” Quinton Papers, SASC.

  49. 49.

    P. E. S. Finney, “Just My Luck, or Reminiscences,” Ch. 8, p. 37, Finney Papers, Photo Eur. 272, APAC BL.

  50. 50.

    P. E. S. Finney, “Just My Luck, or Reminiscences,” Ch. 8, p. 36, Finney Papers, Photo Eur. 272, APAC BL; and Chatterjee, Do and Die, 175–176.

  51. 51.

    To the dismay of British officials, the French Government refused to allow two of the League of Nations’ anti-terrorism treaties to apply to their overseas colonies such as Chandernagore. Mary Barton, “The British Empire and International Terrorism: India’s Separate Path at the League of Nations, 1934–1937,” Journal of British Studies 56 (April 2017), 361. The Government of India’s support for the League of Nation’s anti-terrorism treaties are discussed in Chap. 6.

  52. 52.

    “List of Outrages, 1933. Part A,” in TIB VI: 1031.

  53. 53.

    C. E. S. Fairweather, “Report on the Work of the Central and District Intelligence Branches for the Three Years 1930, 1931 and 1932,” p. 6, 10 March 1933, L/P&J/12/466, APAC BL.

  54. 54.

    R. E. A. Ray, notes on draft of To Guard My People, Ch. 18, pp. 21–22, Indian Police Collection, MSS Eur. F 161/257, APAC BL.

  55. 55.

    “A Brief Note on the Prabartak Sangha of Chandernagore,” [1925] L/P&J/12/85, APAC BL.

  56. 56.

    The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association in its early years was deeply influenced by Bengali revolutionaries in the United Provinces. Kama Maclean, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 27.

  57. 57.

    “Terrorist Conspiracy in Bengal from 1st April to 31st December 1925,” (1926) in TIB I: 464–466 and 472–473.

  58. 58.

    Harald Fischer-Tiné, “Indian Nationalism and the ‘World Forces’: Transnational and Diasporic Dimensions of the Indian Freedom Movement on the Eve of the First World War,” Journal of Global History 2:3 (2007), 325–344 (quotation on 326); and Shyamji Krishnavarma: Sanskrit, Sociology and Anti-Imperialism (London, New York and New Delhi: Routledge, 2014), 162.

  59. 59.

    Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 152.

  60. 60.

    Maia Ramnath, Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2011).

  61. 61.

    Quoted in Seema Sohi, Echoes of Mutiny: Race, Surveillance and Indian Anticolonialism in North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 48.

  62. 62.

    Peter Heehs, “Foreign Influences on Bengali Revolutionary Terrorism 1902–1908,” Modern Asian Studies 28: 3 (1994), 544–555.

  63. 63.

    M.I.5 B.L. Volume XXI. (Indian Volume.) (Rev. ed., 1921), 48–49. L/P&J/12/667, APAC BL.

  64. 64.

    Heather Streets-Salter, World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 165; and Richard J. Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence: British Intelligence and the Defence of the Indian Empire 1904–1924 (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 325–328.

  65. 65.

    Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest.

  66. 66.

    Although written before the opening of the IPI archive, Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, 125–141, discusses in detail the circumstances which led to Wallinger’s appointment in London. Charles Cleveland noted to the GOB that after he and Henry had corresponded about the issue of sending a Scotland Yard officer to India in 1909, “a special arrangement was made whereby an English official of the Indian Police was sent home. The rest of this part of the business is extremely confidential.” C. R. Cleveland, DCI to J. G. Cumming, CS to GOB, 27 November 1913, GOB Home (Pol) Conf. No. 182 of 1914, WBSA.

  67. 67.

    MI5 recruited women from Oxford and London Universities in this period. Wallinger to J. W. Hose, IO, 13 January 1926, L/P&J/12/34, APAC BL; and Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Allen Lane, 2009), 59–63.

  68. 68.

    Wallinger to J. W. Hose, IO, 13 January 1926, L/P&J/12/34, APAC BL.

  69. 69.

    IPI to Findlater Stewart, IO, 28 February 1927, L/P&J/12/34, APAC BL. Intelligence Bureau Director David Petrie praised IPI’s “indispensable” work on the Meerut case, particularly the information provided through a “very effective liaison with other intelligence organizations in England.” H. Haig, GOI Home, to Findlater Stewart, IO, 31 October 1933, L/P&J/12/40, APAC BL.

  70. 70.

    O’Malley, “Indian Political Intelligence,” 175–176; and O’Malley, Ireland, India and Empire, 7.

  71. 71.

    Ramnath, Haj to Utopia, 4–5.

  72. 72.

    Harper, “Singapore 1915,” 1797.

  73. 73.

    See O’Malley, Ireland, India and Empire.

  74. 74.

    The others were Philip Vickery, who joined IPI In 1915, and succeeded Wallinger as its head in 1926; Paul Biggane (1922–1923); and Paul Adam Hunter (1923).

  75. 75.

    Tegart’s biographer and Indian Police colleague J. C. Curry, concluded that “Tegart owed much of his success as a policeman to the fact that he dealt with so much Intelligence work himself and maintained personal contact with his secret agents … Tegart’s agents always had implicit confidence in him and he never betrayed it.” J. C. Curry, Tegart of the Indian Police (Tunbridge Wells: The Courier Co., 1960), 24.

  76. 76.

    Cited in Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), 196.

  77. 77.

    Daniel Brückenhaus, “Every Stranger Must be Suspected: Trust Relationships and the Surveillance of Anti-Colonialists in Early Twentieth-Century Western Europe,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36: 4 (2010), 534.

  78. 78.

    C. A. Tegart, “Indian Communist Party,” 18 August 1922, L/P&J/12/46, APAC BL.

  79. 79.

    Tegart noted that Baidyanath Biswas, secretary of the Bengal Trade Union Federation, had likely played a prominent part in one of the revolutionaries’ greatest coups: the 1914 theft of Mauser pistols from a Calcutta warehouse, while Sachin Sanyal was probably the leader of the Benares branch of the “Bengal Revolutionary Association,” and Upen Banarji had been convicted and sentenced to transportation for his role in Manicktolla revolutionary conspiracy. Tegart to Wallinger, 17 November 1922, L/P&J/12/46, APAC BL.

  80. 80.

    See L/P&J/12/46 and L/P&J/12/47, APAC BL.

  81. 81.

    Paul Biggane, “Indian Revolutionaries,” L/P&J/12/117, APAC BL.

  82. 82.

    Paul Biggane to Malcolm Seton, IO, 13 December 1922, L/P&J/12/55, APAC BL.

  83. 83.

    Note by J. W. Hose, IO, 21 December 1922; and Hose to Undersec. of State, IO, 16 July 1923. L/P&J/12/55, APAC BL.

  84. 84.

    See L/P&J/12/55, and L/P&J/12/99, APAC BL.

  85. 85.

    Kate O’Malley observes that “Throughout his career at IPI Vickery, as an Irishman, appears to have gotten great pleasure in locating precise and up-to-date information about any Irish names and figures that appeared on file from time to time. He often overwrote and corrected any misspellings or inaccuracies relating to Ireland in other people’s reports, and he always availed himself of the opportunity to show his true colors as a loyal Irish servant to the Crown.” O’Malley, “IPI,” 182.

  86. 86.

    The report, dated 6 October 1921, is referenced in Tegart’s report on the “Indian Communist Party,” 13 September 1922, but does not appear in the file or in other IPI files concerning Indian communists from this period. L/P&J/12/46, APAC BL.

  87. 87.

    C. A. Tegart, “Indian Communist Party,” 30 September 1922, L/P&J/12/46, APAC BL. In January 1923, he reported that Roy was conveying instructions to Bankim Banerji in Leeds via the Irish Communist Bridget O’Harte [sic]. “The Indian Communist Party,” 29 January 1923, L/P&J/12/47, APAC BL.

  88. 88.

    C.A, Tegart, “Indian Communist Party,” 11 November 1922, L/P&J/12/46, APAC BL.

  89. 89.

    In Maia Ramnath’s words, “There was no hermetic seal between the Bengalis and Punjabis, the students and laborers; between activities initiated in California, or elsewhere in the Indian political network abroad; between schemes underwritten only by subscription among the farmers, or aided by German funds.” Ramnath, Haj to Utopia, 4.

  90. 90.

    The stories were circulated through another Bengali, Suren Karr. Ruth Price, The Lives of Agnes Smedley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 65 and 105.

  91. 91.

    According to Sumit Sarkar, the international wanderings of revolutionaries helped to end the “intense Hindu religiosity,” “relative parochialism,” and “rather limited social outlook of early militant nationalism.” Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885–1947 (Delhi: Macmillan, 1983), 146.

  92. 92.

    History Sheet of Sailendra Nath Ghosh, 28 November 1929, L/P&J/12/197, APAC BL.

  93. 93.

    Joseph McQuade, “The New Asia of Rash Behari Bose: India, Japan and the Limits of the International, 1912–1945,” Journal of World History 27: 4 (2016), 641–667.

  94. 94.

    Tapan K. Mukherjee, Taraknath Das: Life and Letters of a Revolutionary in Exile (Calcutta: National Council of Education, Bengal, 1998).

  95. 95.

    History Sheet of Tarak Nath Das, 8 March 1923, L/P&J/12/166, APAC BL.

  96. 96.

    C. J. Davidson, Consul, Tokyo, “Memorandum Regarding Japanese Co-operation with Indian Revolutionary Agitators,” p. 3, 25 January 1923, L/P&J/12/157, APAC BL.

  97. 97.

    Yokota was former Director of the Bureau of Legislation during the Hara Ministry, and a prominent member of Seiyukai Party. The British consul speculated that he met Ghose at the request of Mitsuru Toyama, leader of “a group of irresponsible and dangerous political fanatics known as the Kokuryu Kai or Black dragon Society,” who had provided assistance to Bose. C. J. Davidson, Consul, Tokyo, “Memorandum Regarding Japanese Co-operation with Indian Revolutionary Agitators,” p. 3, 25 January 1923, L/P&J/12/157, APAC BL.

  98. 98.

    Copy of letter from Subhas Bose to S. N. Ghosh, Sec. of American Branch of Indian National Congress, 7 November 1929, L/P&J/12/197, APAC BL. Bose also forwarded Ghosh’s request for forty dollars to the INC Executive, which prompted IPI to observe, “I suppose this letter is genuine, but I cannot quite picture S. N. Ghosh asking the I.N.C. for $40.” Note by IPI, 16 December 1929, L/P&J/12/197, APAC BL.

  99. 99.

    SIS Memo on “Shanghai. Sudhindra Bose,” 15 August 1921, L/P&J/12/45, APAC BL.

  100. 100.

    Manjapra, M. N. Roy, 4.

  101. 101.

    Leonard A. Gordon, “Portrait of a Bengal Revolutionary,” Journal of Asian Studies 28: 2 (1968), 201–203.

  102. 102.

    Manjapra, M. N. Roy, 36–37.

  103. 103.

    Manjapra, M. N. Roy, 33.

  104. 104.

    Brückenhaus, “Origins of Trans-Imperial Policing,” 171–193.

  105. 105.

    See J. A. Wallinger, “Indian Communist Party,” November 1921, L/P&J/12/46/9, APAC BL.

  106. 106.

    Ghosh, Gentlemanly Terrorists, 60–91. See the example of Kanailal in section one of this chapter.

  107. 107.

    J. A. Wallinger, “Indian Communist Party,” 25 July 1922, and IPI, “Indian Communist Party,” 31 July 1922, L/P&J/12/46, APAC BL.

  108. 108.

    Charles Tegart, “Indian Communist Party,” 18 August 1922, and Tegart to Wallinger, 17 November 1922, L/P&J/12/46, APAC BL.

  109. 109.

    “The Indian Communist Party,” 29 January 1923, L/P&J/12/47, APAC BL.

  110. 110.

    Extract from Weekly Report of Director IB, GOI, 7 March 1923, L/P&J/12/47, APAC BL.

  111. 111.

    P. C. Bamford, “The Connection of Revolutionists in Bengal with Bolsheviks,” p. 3, 23 August 1923, File No. 1907 of 1924, L/P&J/6/1878, APAC BL.

  112. 112.

    Simon Ball, “The Assassination Culture of Imperial Britain, 1909–1979,” Historical Journal 56:1 (2013), 232.

  113. 113.

    Information about Premranjan Sen Gupta, in “Statement of Persons Arrested and Detained under (1) Regulation III of 1818, (2) Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, 1924, (3) Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1925. Possible Releases.” [1926] Lytton Collection, MSS Eur. F 160/37/159, APAC BL.

  114. 114.

    P. C. Bamford, “The Connection of Revolutionists in Bengal with Bolsheviks,” p. 3, 23 August 1923, File No. 1907 of 1924, L/P&J/6/1878, APAC BL.

  115. 115.

    See Michael Silvestri, “The Bomb, Bhadralok, Bhagavad Gita, and Dan Breen: Terrorism in Bengal and Its Relation to the European Experience,” Terrorism and Political Violence 21: 1 (2009), 1–27.

  116. 116.

    “Utho Jago,” Appendix III to “Activities of Revolutionaries in Bengal from 1st September 1924 to 31st March 1925,” L/P&J/12/466, APAC BL.

  117. 117.

    IPI also noted the tendency of nationalist newspapers, such as the Amrita Bazar Patrika, to publish “pro-Bolshevik” articles with “insidious” content “dealing with the interests of labour and the necessity for organizing the workers.” P. Biggane, “Summary. Indian Communists (21st November 1922–10th May 1923),” 11 May 1923, L/P&J/12/47/208, APAC BL. For colonial surveillance of early communists in Bengal, see Suchetana Chattopadhyay, “The Bolshevik Menace: Colonial Surveillance and the Origins of Socialist Politics in Calcutta,” South Asia Research 26: 165 (2006), 165–179 and “The Myth of the Outsider: From Whitehall to Elysium Row, 1917–21,” Twentieth Century Communism 6: 6 (2014), 105–123.

  118. 118.

    The one “Bolshevik” was Hugo Espinoza, whose life will be discussed below.

  119. 119.

    Information about Narayan Ch. Banarji, “Statement of Persons Arrested and Detained under (1) Regulation III of 1818, (2) Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, 1924, (3) Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1925. Possible Releases.” [1926] Lytton Collection, MSS Eur. F 160/37/101, APAC BL.

  120. 120.

    P. C. Bamford, “The Connection of Revolutionists in Bengal with Bolsheviks,” iii-iv, 23 August 1923, File No. 1907 of 1924, L/P&J/6/1878, APAC BL.

  121. 121.

    H. L. Stephenson, Officiating CS to GOB, to Sec. to GOI, Home, 17 December 1919, GOB Home (Pol) Conf. No. 405 of 1919, WBSA.

  122. 122.

    R. Clarke, Commissioner Of Police, Calcutta, to CS to GOB, 26 February 1920, and H. L. Stephenson, Officiating CS to GOB, to Sec., Home, GOI, 12 March 1920, GOB Home (Pol) Conf. No. 87 of 1920, WBSA.

  123. 123.

    Jeffery, SIS, 172. For MI5, see Andrew, Defence of the Realm, 139–185.

  124. 124.

    The IPI archive on Roy contains eight files devoted to his activities from 1922–1937, as well as a copy of one of his publications. See the L/P&J/12 series, APAC BL.

  125. 125.

    C. A. Tegart, “The Indian Communist Party,” 3 February 1923, L/P&J/12/47, APAC BL.

  126. 126.

    Charles Tegart, “Indian Communist Party,” 23 August 1922, L/P&J/12/46, APAC BL.

  127. 127.

    Charles Tegart, “The Indian Communist Party,” 3 February 1923, L/P&J/12/47, APAC BL.

  128. 128.

    The system only came to the notice of the police when a “keenly anti-British” lawyer named S. M. Sharma handed in a copy of a recent issue of Vanguard and other publications to the police. Malayan Bulletin of Political Intelligence, No. 18, 1 November 1923, L/P&J/12/103, APAC BL.

  129. 129.

    Unless otherwise noted, information about Hugo Roschis/Hugo Espinoza/Abdur Raschid is taken from the following: Extract from letter from SP, Midnapore, 12 January 1928, File No. 462, L/P&J/6/1955, APAC BL; and Census Return for Abdur Raschid and family, 1940; and Draft Registration Card for Abdur Raschid, 1942. ancestryinstitution.com. Accessed 18 September 2018.

  130. 130.

    Additional Deputy Sec. to GOB to Sec., Home GOI, 10 December 1927, File No. 462, L/P&J/6/1955, APAC BL.

  131. 131.

    R. Sharp, Special Agent in Charge, New York Division, Department of State, to R. C. Bannerman, Chief Special Agent, Washington, D.C., 3 February 1925. Reproduced in Prithwindra Mukherjee, Les origines intellectuelles du movement d’indepéndence de l’Inde (1893–1918) (Paris: Éditions Codex, 2010), np; M.I.5 Black List. Vol. XXI (Indian Volume), (rev. ed. 1921), 67. L/P&J/12/667, APAC BL; and Richard Spence, “Englishmen in New York: The SIS American Station, 1915–21,” Intelligence and National Security 19: 3 (2004), 520.

  132. 132.

    M.I.5 Black List. Vol. XXI (Indian Volume) (rev. ed. 1921), 67, L/P&J/12/667, APAC BL; and Spence, “Englishmen in New York,” 520.

  133. 133.

    GOI Home, “Conspiracy to Smuggle Arms into India via the Far East,” in A. C. Bose, ed., Indian Revolutionaries Abroad: 1905–1927. Select Documents (New Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 2002), 373.

  134. 134.

    Espinoza to Roy, 12 October 1922, reproduced in Wallinger, “Indian Communist Party,” 22 December 1922, IPI, L/P&J/12/46, APAC BL.

  135. 135.

    C. J. Davidson, Consul, Tokyo, “Memorandum Regarding Japanese Co-operation with Indian Revolutionary Agitators,” 25 January 1923, L/P&J/12/157, APAC BL.

  136. 136.

    “Conspiracy to Smuggle Arms into India via the Far East,” in Bose, ed., Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 373.

  137. 137.

    Malayan Bulletin of Political Intelligence, No. 15, 11 June 1923, L/P&J/12/103, APAC BL. The Akali Movement sought to gain control of Sikh gurdwaras or temples.

  138. 138.

    “Conspiracy to Smuggle Arms into India via the Far East,” in Bose, ed., Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 373.

  139. 139.

    Additional Deputy Sec. to GOB to Sec., GOI Home, 10 December 1927, File No. 462, L/P&J/6/1955, APAC BL.

  140. 140.

    “Conspiracy to Smuggle Arms into India via the Far East,” in Bose, ed., Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 373–374.

  141. 141.

    Choy Loy had recently resided in Bow in London’s East End until he was deported. IPI director J. A. Wallinger had “little doubt” that Loy was responsible for the smuggling of arms on the SS Schlesien, and advised the Intelligence Bureau that “Indian extremists who visit Hamburg are surely aware of Choy’s activities and may use him as their agent in furtherance of their own arms traffic.” Wallinger to David Petrie, Intelligence Bureau, 4 March 1925, L/P&J/12/78, APAC BL.

  142. 142.

    “Conspiracy to Smuggle Arms into India via the Far East,” in Bose, ed., Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 375–376.

  143. 143.

    R. Sharp, Special Agent in Charge, New York Division, Department of State, to R. C. Bannerman, Chief Special Agent, Washington, D.C., 3 February 1925. Reproduced in Mukherjee, Les origines intellectuelles.

  144. 144.

    Additional Deputy Sec. to GOB to Sec., Home GOI, 10 December 1927, File No. 462, L/P&J/6/1955, APAC BL.

  145. 145.

    John Slight, The British Empire and the Hajj 1865–1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 242 and 245.

  146. 146.

    Sec. to Home GOI to CS to GOB, 4 January 1928, File No. 462, L/P&J/6/1955, APAC BL.

  147. 147.

    Espinoza’s family was said to enjoy a “friendly relationship” with Massachusetts Senator David I. Walsh, a committed anti-imperialist, so it is possible that he intervened on his behalf. R. Sharp, Special Agent in Charge, New York Division, Department of State, to R. C. Bannerman, Chief Special Agent, Washington, D.C., 3 February 1925. Reproduced in Mukherjee, Les origines intellectuelles.

  148. 148.

    Telegram, Viceroy to Sec. of State, 20 March 1928, File No. 462, L/P&J/6/1955, APAC BL.

  149. 149.

    “Revised List of Indian Extremists in United States, Canada, Mexico and Panama. Dated January 1931,” P&J No. 444 of 1928, L/P&J/6/1955. The 1940 Census recorded that the former Hugo Espinoza lived in an apartment at 2145 Southern Boulevard in the Bronx, New York, together with his Hungarian-born wife Amina and his two sons Ameer (8) and Anwar (7). The family had lived there for at least five years, and Raschid worked as a shipping clerk for a tobacco wholesaler. He still held the position two years later, although the Raschid family had moved to Prospect Avenue in the Bronx. Raschid died in 1964.

  150. 150.

    Note by J. W. Hose, 24 May 1924; and note by IPI, nd [1929], L/P&J/12/197, APAC BL.

  151. 151.

    IPI to Sir John Ewart, GOI Home, 14 May 1936; and note by W. Johnston, IO, 21 August 1936. In this instance the Secretary of State for India Lord Zetland, a former Governor of Bengal, objected to Ghose’s return, but was willing to accede to the requests of the GOB and GOI. Note by Lord Zetland, Sec. of State, 30 August 1936, L/P&J/12/197, APAC BL.

  152. 152.

    DIG, IB, Review of Revolutionary Matters for the Week Ending 2nd March 1939, L/P&J/12/401, APAC BL.

  153. 153.

    Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 84. When Bose returned from his two European journeys he was immediately placed under house arrest in 1934 and imprisoned in 1936.

  154. 154.

    Viceroy to Sec. of State, 24 December 1932; and Viceroy to Sec. of State, 13 December 1932, L/P&J/12/214, APAC BL.

  155. 155.

    Viceroy to Sec. of State, 24 December 1932, L/P&J/12/214, APAC BL.

  156. 156.

    Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent, 86 and 87–88.

  157. 157.

    See Kate O’Malley, Ireland, India and Empire, 90–117.

  158. 158.

    Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent, 92.

  159. 159.

    IPI, “Subhas Chandra Bose,” 19 October 1933, L/P&J/12/214, APAC BL.

  160. 160.

    A memo from the British Legation in Prague forwarded to the India Office in 1936 refers to arrangements being “made for the supply of weapons needed by terrorists from or via Ireland.” “Anti-British Activities in India”: from Legation in Prague. Forwarded by Foreign Office, 25 May 1936, L/P&J/12/216, APAC BL.

  161. 161.

    Although Bose’s response to Mussolini in the 1930s was ambivalent, ultimately his “single-minded absorption in the cause of India’s independence” allowed him to ignore the atrocities of the Axis Powers. Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent, 11, 94 and 203.

  162. 162.

    The Bengali Communist revolutionary M. N. Roy referred to Bose as “the Bengal Communist” in an intercepted letter from September 1922; IPI noted that both Evelyn and M. N. Roy had established a connection with Bose, whose activities were “frequently mentioned” in notes. In the following year, Bengal Police IB officer P. C. Bamford described both Bose and C. R. Das as “impressed” with communist ideas. Tegart to Wallinger, 17 November 1922, and “Indian Communist Party,” 23 November 1922, IPI, L/P&J/12/46, APAC BL; and P. C. Bamford, “The Connection of Revolutionists in Bengal with Bolsheviks,” 23 August 1923, File No. 1907 of 1924, L/P&J/6/1878, APAC BL.

  163. 163.

    IPI, “Subhas Bose and His Associates” 20 September 1933; and IPI, “Recent Activities of Subhas Chandra Bose,” 20 July 1933, L/P&J/12/214 APAC BL. For the attraction of fascist ideals in India, particularly the idea of the Volk, see Benjamin Zachariah, “At the Fuzzy Edge of Fascism: Framing the Volk in India,” South Asia 38: 4 (2015), 639–655.

  164. 164.

    IPI to Peel, IO, 18 October 1934, L/P&J/12/214, APAC BL.

  165. 165.

    IPI particularly objected to a passage in which Bose described the killings of three successive district magistrates in Midnapore District as the result of “untold atrocities committed by the forces of the Crown in Midnapore.” IPI to Peel, IO, 18 October 1934, L/P&J/12/214, APAC BL.

  166. 166.

    Telegram from GOI to IO, 11 January 1935, L/P&J/12/215, APAC BL.

  167. 167.

    W. Johnstone to R. J. Peel, 17 January 1935; Note by Peel, 17 January 1935; and R. J. Peel to Wishart & Co., London, 5 February 1935, L/P&J/12/215, APAC BL.

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    Michael Silvestri

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Silvestri, M. (2019). Transnational Revolutionaries and Imperial Surveillance: Bengal Revolutionary Networks Outside India. In: Policing ‘Bengali Terrorism’ in India and the World. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18042-3_5

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