In Anarchy or Chaos, Ole Birk Laursen sets out to bring the life and intellectual contributions of MPT Acharya, a relatively unknown yet vitally important Indian revolutionary, to a wider audience. This biography delves into Acharya’s involvement in nationalism, anticolonialism, revolution, and anarchism, drawing extensively from memoirs, letters, newspapers, and intelligence reports. The result is a remarkable and comprehensive portrayal of a man, for whom much of his life was spent at the centre of major radical activity.
Born in Chennai in 1887, Acharya embraced nationalism and sedition early in his life, working to promote Indian Independence movements, leading him to seek refuge from British Indian authorities, first in the French enclaves of Pondicherry and later in Europe. His long spell outside of India, Laursen argues, “enables a fresh view of the politics of exile” and also “highlights the existence of anticolonial movements beyond the British empire.”
During a spell in London, at the infamous India House, a hostel for Indian students that was also home to many Indian revolutionaries, Acharya’s life offers a portrayal of the flurry of political activity that many Indian exiles were engaged in. Yet after the assassination of William Curzon-Wyillie, the political aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India, by Madan Lal Dingra, another regular India House visitor, the political climate in London became too repressive for Acharya’s political activities. So he set off across Europe, North Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, Russia & North American, where he was busy “associating with proto-nationalists, pan-Islamists, Muhajirs, communists, Bolsheviks, and anarchists” as part of his efforts to secure Indian freedom from British rule.
The book reveals the complex web of alliances and challenges faced by Indian nationalists during the tumultuous years of the early 20th century and sheds light on the global reach of Indian anticolonialism during this period, exploring alliances with unlikely partners like Germany and the Soviet Union. Lausen asks
How do we understand the global reach of Indian anticolonialism in the first decades of the twentieth century? What does this mean for our understanding of nationalism as an international project.
The book does a good job of answering exactly that. The book highlights how, as the Indian Independence movement fought to become international, how at times power dynamics and other factors both strengthened and hindered this international movement. For example, World War 1 saw Indian Nationalists forging alliances with Britain’s wartime enemies, to defeat Britain’s hold on India, despite the fact the Germans were also colonialists. Indeed, the Germans never really believed in Indian independence; rather they believed in saying what had to be said to gain an important ally in the fight against Britain.
The book isn’t limited in scope to just the Indian independence movement as it shows the myriad of divisions between rest of the world’s socialists and pacifist movements in Ireland, Egypt, Russia, Germany and elsewhere. By studying Archays activity, both in Russia and elsewhere in Europe, “we arrive at a more nuanced understanding of communism and anti-imperialism.” One of the book’s central questions is how Indian anticolonialism reached a global scale and how this impacted the broader understanding of nationalism as an international project.
Throughout, readers encounter an array of supporting characters and witness a flurry of revolutionary and intellectual activities. The book vividly captures the itinerant lives of anticolonial revolutionaries during that era, providing a rare glimpse into the racial Indian diaspora and migrant communities worldwide.
The book packs a staggering number of events and characters into its 240 pages. Indeed at times, the book threatens to buckle under the weight of the sheer amount of meetings, organizations, individuals, publications, and committees. Nevertheless, the book is a significant and invaluable contribution to historical scholarship.
Despite dying in relative obscurity in 1954, Acharya’s intellectual contributions endure, with over 200 articles published in Indian and international anarchist publications. The book, in its own words, is “an attempt to recover a life like Acharya’s, and to think more broadly about its implications for wider political movements such as the Indian freedom struggle and the international anarchist movement”, it succeeded in this aim and its academic contribution is as important as it is impressive.