Man behind Communism in India: M N Roy
Ashish Sharma, INN/Gwalior, @Infodeaofficial
M. N. Roy, the man known to be the Father of Indian communism and viewed as the first revolutionary leader of India. His original name was Narendre Nath Bhattacharya but he changed it to Manbendra Nath Roy when he was in California. Roy began his political career as a militant nationalist at the age of 14, when he was still a student. He joined an underground organization called Anushilan Samiti, and when it was banned, he helped in organizing Jugantar Groupunder the leadership of Jatin Mukherji.
In 1915, after the beginning of the First World War, Roy left India for Java in search of arms for organizing an insurrection to overthrow the British rule in India. From then on, he moved from country to country, using fake passports and different names in his attempt to secure German arms.
Finally, after wandering through Malay, Indonesia, Indo-China, Philippines, Japan, Korea and China, in June 1916, he landed at San Francisco in United States of America. Roy’s attempts to secure arms ended in a failure. The Police repression had shattered the underground organization that Roy had left behind. He had also come to know about the death of his leader, Jatin Mukherji, in an encounter with police.
The news of Roy’s arrival at San Francisco was somehow published in a local daily, forcing Roy to flee south to Palo Alto, California near Stanford University. It was here that Roy, until then known as Narendra Nath Bhattacharya or Naren, changed his name to Manbendra Nath Roy. Roy met Lala Lajpat Rai renowned freedom fighter) in New York and he also attended various public meetings with him. Questions asked by the working class audience in these meetings made Roy wonder whether exploitation and poverty would cease in India with the attainment of independence.
Later in Mexico in 1919, Roy met Michael Borodin, an emissary of the Communist International and it was because of long discussions and sessions with him Roy accepted the materialist philosophy and became a full-fledged communist. In 1920, Roy was invited to Moscow to attend the second conference of the Communist International.
Roy had several meetings with Lenin before the Conference. He had differed on the role of local bourgeoisie in nationalist movements with Lenin. On Lenin’s recommendation, the supplementary thesis on the subject prepared by Roy was adopted along with Lenin’s thesis by the second conference of the Communist International.
The following years witnessed Roy’s rapid rise in the international communist hierarchy. By the end of 1926, Roy was elected as a member of all the four official policy making bodies of the Comintern – the presidium, the political secretariat, the executive committee and the world congress. In 1927, Roy was sent to China as a representative of the Communist International.
However, Roy’s mission in China ended in a failure. Later in September 1929 after his return to Moscow, he was expelled from the Communist International for “contributing to the Brandler press and supporting the Brandler organizations.” Roy felt that he was expelled from the Comintern also known as Communist International mainly because of his “claim to the right of independent thinking.” (Ray 1987)
Roy returned back to India in December 1930. Within six months he was arrested in July 1931 for his role in the Kanpur Communist Conspiracy Case. He was sentenced to six years imprisonment. The forced confinement in jail gave him more time than before for systematic study and reflection. The reflections, which Roy wrote down in jail, grew over a period of five years into nine thick volumes (approximately over 3000 lined foolscap-size pages).
The ‘Prison Manuscripts’ have not so far been published in their totality, and are currently preserved in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Archives in New Delhi. However, selected portions from the manuscript were published as separate books in the 1930s and the 1940s. Immediately after his release from jail on 20 November 1936, Roy joined Indian National Congress along with his followers.
He organized his followers into a body called League of Radical Congressmen. However, in December 1940, Roy and his followers left Congress owing to differences with the Congress leadership on the role of India in the Second World War. Thereafter, Roy formed the Radical Democratic Party of his own. This signaled the beginning of the last phase of Roy’s life in which he developed his philosophy of new humanism.
Roy prepared a draft of basic principles of “radical democracy” before the India conference of the Radical Democratic Party held in Bombay in December 1946. The draft, in which his basic ideas were put in the form of theses, was circulated among a small number of selected friends and associates of Roy. The “22 Theses” or “Principles of Radical Democracy”, which emerged as a result of intense discussions between Roy and his circle of friends, were adopted at the Bombay Conference of the Radical Democratic Party. Roy’s speeches at the conference in connection with the 22 Theses were published later under the title Beyond Communism.
In 1947, Roy published New Humanism – A Manifesto, which offered an elaboration of the 22 Theses. The ideas expressed in the manifesto were, according to Roy, “developed over a period of number of years by a group of critical Marxists and former Communists.”
In 1946, Roy established the Indian Renaissance Institute at Dehradun. Roy was the founder-director of the Institute. Its main aim was to develop and organize a movement to be called the Indian Renaissance Movement.Roy started working on his last major intellectual project in 1948. Roy’s magnum opus Reason, Romanticism and Revolution is a monumental work (638 pages).
The fully written, revised and typed press copy of the book was ready in April 1952. It attempted to combine a historical survey of western thought with an elaboration of his own system of ideas. On June 11 1952, Roy met a serious accident. He fell fifty feet down while walking along a hill track.
He was moved to Dehradun for treatment. On the 25th of August, he had an attack of cerebral thrombosis resulting in a partial paralysis of the right side. On August 15 1953, Roy had the second attack of cerebral thrombosis, which paralyzed the left side of his body. On January 25 1954, ten minutes before midnight, M.N. Roy died of a heart attack. He was nearly 67 at that time.