Virendranath Chattopadhyaya - Revolutionary Vagabond

Revolutionary Vagabond

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 and Angelica 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, Viren was encouraged by M.N. Roy (with Borodin’s approval).

He went to Moscow with Agnes Smedley and they became companions, sharing their lives until 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 in Berlin, Viren founded an Indian News and Information Bureau with his correspondent Rash Behari Bose in Japan.

According to Sibnarayan Ray, Roy and Viren were rivals for 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, Chatto wrote to Roy asking “if there is anything further you wish me to do…” On 26 August 1927, he wrote to 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. After being advised by Roy, Chatto joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

In 1927, while working as the head of the Indian Languages Section of the KPD, Chatto 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 Jawaharlal Nehru’s becoming president of the Indian National Congress, Viren asked him – in vain - to split the party for a more revolutionary programme of full independence from British imperialism.

From 1930 to 1932, Viren published 28 articles in Inprecor, the Comintern organ, about an ultra-leftist sectarian turn of the Communist Party of India. Between 1931 and 1933, while living in Moscow, Viren continued to advocate anti-Hitler activities, Asian emancipation from Western powers, the independence of India, and Japanese intervention into the Chinese revolution. Among his Korean, Japanese and Chinese friends was Zhou Enlai, the future Prime Minister of the People's Republic of China after its successful Revolution.

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."