Virendranath Chattopadhyaya
Virendranath Chattopadhyaya ( Bengali বীরেন্দ্রনাথ চট্টোপাধ্যায় Bīrendranāth Caṭṭopādhyāẏ ; born October 31, 1880 in Hyderabad , † September 2, 1937 in Moscow ) was an Indian journalist who supported the forcible elimination of colonial rule in British India .
Life
His origins from a wealthy Indian family enabled "Chatto", as he was called by friends, to study in London from 1911 to 1914. Since the anti-British rebellion of the Indians was supported by the German Empire at the beginning of the First World War , Chattopadhyaya, who had developed into an anarchist , moved to Berlin. The “ Indian Independence Committee ” had moved its headquarters from California to Berlin after the start of the war, and Chattopadhyaya was one of its leading members alongside Har Dayal . Legation secretary Otto Günther von Wesendonk from the Foreign Office helped them with the subversive activity directed at their homeland. The committee also received support and guidance from the News Office for the Orient .
Chattopadhyaya had Willi Munzenberg as a friend, married the American writer Agnes Smedley and volunteered for the League Against Imperialism for several years until he switched to Leningrad as a language teacher in 1933. He taught people who were supposed to do espionage work in the Soviet service in the common Indian dialects of the possible areas of operation. Chattopadhyaya himself became increasingly frightened. In the meantime he had a German wife and three children and was unsettled by the mass arrests of the Stalinist purges , as he revealed in 1937 when he met Margarete Buber-Neumann in Moscow. In the summer of 1937 he was arrested in Moscow; he was on a death list signed by Stalin on August 31, 1937 and was executed on September 2, 1937 after the death sentence was pronounced. When the Indian government wanted information about his situation after 1947, their ambassador in Moscow only received the information that "Chatto" had died of pneumonia.
Quote
- In his memoirs, Helmuth von Glasenapp reports on his work at the " News Center for the Orient " of the Foreign Office in Berlin around 1914: "Probably the most likable and reliable of the Indians was Virendranâth Chattopadhyâya. His father had a high position in Haiderabâd (Dekkan) his sister Sarojini Naidu was a famous poet. He spoke German, French and English equally without an accent and had something extremely attractive in his character. What became of him after the First World War is unknown, he is said to have perished in Russia " . - Helmuth von Glasenapp: My journey through life . Wiesbaden: Brockhaus 1964. p. 76.
literature
- Babette Gross : Willi Munzenberg. A political biography. In: Series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. No. 14/15, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1967, p. 197 f.
- Heike Liebau: " “ Enterprises and incitement ”: The Berlin Indian Independence Committee in the files of the Political Archive of the Foreign Office (1914–1920) ." In: MIDA Archival Reflexicon (2019), ISSN 2628-5029, 1–11.
Individual evidence
- ↑ nirode K. Barooah: Chatto, the Life and Times of an Indian anti-imperialist in Europe . Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 7 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- ↑ Wipert von Blücher : Turning point in Iran. Experiences and observations. Verlag Koehler and Voigtländer, Biberach an der Riss 1949, p. 90.
- ^ Heike Liebau: "Enterprises and Aufwiegelungen": The Berlin Indian Independence Committee in the files of the Political Archive of the Foreign Office (1914–1920) . In: MIDA Archival Reflexicon . 2019, p. 1–11 ( projekt-mida.de ).
- ↑ List entry on stalin.memo.ru
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Chattopadhyaya, Virendranath |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Chatto |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Indian journalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 31, 1880 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hyderabad , British India |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 2, 1937 |
| Place of death | Moscow , Soviet Union |