Author: Santanu Banerjee
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: September 28, 2003
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=32362
Introduction: KGB records show that
45 Indians were killed in Stalin's purges. But the Indian government is
showing little interest in its lost men
For a number of Indians, including
those born in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the lure of Russia proved fatal.
They were drawn to Bolshevism by Lenin and his famous thesis on the National
and Colonial Question at the Second Congress of the Comintern 1920. They
met their end at the hands of Jossef Stalin.
KGB archival records show that as
many as '45 Indian revolutionaries were sent to firing squads on trumped-up
charges of espionage and conspiracies'.
The purge, which began in the late
1930s, labelled these men 'British spies'. However, the documents do not
elaborate on the charges.
Records collected in the Memorial,
an institute run by Russian Indologist Yan Rachinskii in Moscow, show that
12 of the 45 Indians have been identified. They all lived in Moscow.
The Indian Communists in Russia,
who held a special relation with several Indian revolutionaries including
Savarkar and also the Communist Party of Great Britain, were sent to firing
squads just before Stalin signed the Treaty of Non-Aggression with Germany
in 1939.
One of them was Birendra Nath Chatterjee,
brother of Sarojini Naidu. Chatterjee joined hands with Savarkar to launch
a nation-wide movement against the British Government. After travelling
in Europe he went to the Soviet Union in 1918 and joined the Comintern.
He survived the war of succession following Lenin's death but was arrested
in 1937 and put before the firing squad.
Another was Abani Mukherjee whose
Russian name was Mukherjee Trilokovich. A professor of history at the Moscow
State University, he was arrested and shot the same year as Chatterjee.
Purobi Roy, who holds a chair in
St Petersburg University, says that while Russia is trying to find out
what happened to the 'lost revolutionaries who began vanishing from the
late '30s to early '40, there's hardly any interest in India to trace their
men. ''I think neither the Congress nor the Indian Communists wanted to
disturb the Indo- Russian friendship,'' says Roy.
Roy who visited Russia way back
in 1995 with the Asiatic Society team had also come across evidence on
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's reported presence in Russia after the air
crash in Taiwan in 1945.
Concerning the fallouts of the revelations
of the Indian killings, Roy is not quite clear. ''There isn't any elaboration
on the charges barring that they were accused of being British spies and
were killed. but I would try to link an interesting letter and 8-page missing
report which Ben Bradley, leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain,
wrote to Abani Mukherjee saying 'Don't allow Subhas Chandra Bose to re-enter
India'.'' The letter was written in 1936. At that time Bose was on last
leg of his exile in Europe and trying to come back to India with the British
Government's permission.
''We've already mentioned the letter
in our book Indo-Russia Relation from 1929 to 1947, Vol 2. Only then we
didn't know that these Indian members of Comintern were killed on charges
of espionage. Now we could understand at least that Bradley wanted to elicit
Comintern's support to put a check on Bose's return from exile. We need
more research to know exactly what happened.''
But the Indian Government doesn't
appear too keen to know what happened.
