Passports, Citizenship, and the (Im)possibility of Return: The Indian Revolutionary M. P. T. Acharya in German Archives

Table of Con­tents
Pas­sage to Exile  |  The First World War and the Indi­an-Ger­man Con­spir­a­cy  | The Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion and State Author­i­tar­i­an­ism  |  Cit­i­zen­ship, Pass­ports, and Sedi­tion in Weimar Berlin  |  Archival Sources  |  Con­clu­sion  |  End­note  |  Bib­li­og­ra­phy

Through­out his almost twen­ty-sev­en years in exile, the Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ary Man­dayam Pra­ti­va­di Bhayankaram Tiru­mal “M. P. T.” Acharya (1887–1954) trav­elled from India to Britain in 1908, to Por­tu­gal, France, Ger­many, Turkey, and the Unit­ed States from 1909 to 1914, to Ger­many, the Mid­dle East, and Swe­den dur­ing the First World War, and to Rus­sia in 1919. He then spent twelve years in Berlin from 1922 to 1934, before he escaped Nazi Ger­many, liv­ing under­ground in Switzer­land and France, and final­ly returned to India in 1935.

Like so many Asian anti-colo­nial­ists of his gen­er­a­tion, Acharya lived an itin­er­ant rev­o­lu­tion­ary life in exile (Harp­er, 2021: 50–51). At a time of great transna­tion­al anti­colo­nial activ­i­ty, through­out war and rev­o­lu­tion, the rise of fas­cism and Nazism, to trav­el across sev­er­al con­ti­nents and cross­ing bor­ders was no easy task. This has also made it dif­fi­cult for his­to­ri­ans to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive account of Acharya’s life (Sub­ra­manyam, 1995). Based on my biog­ra­phy of Acharya (Laursen, forth­com­ing), in this essay I reflect on archival traces of this wan­der­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary through pass­ports and the issue of cit­i­zen­ship. As John Tor­pey argues, pass­ports have been cen­tral to states’ “abil­i­ty to ‘embrace’ their own sub­jects and to make dis­tinc­tions between nation­als and non-nation­als, and to track the move­ments of per­sons in order to sus­tain the bound­ary between these two groups (whether at the bor­der or not)” (Tor­pey, 2018: 2). What is more, as Rad­hi­ka Mon­gia makes clear in rela­tion to Indi­an migra­tion, exile, and empire, the mod­ern pass­port emerged “through the artic­u­la­tion of nation, race, and state” and, in doing so, was cru­cial to defin­ing these cat­e­gories in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry (Mon­gia, 2018: 112).

Dur­ing his time in exile, Acharya spent con­sid­er­able time in Ger­many (1910–1911, 1922–1934) and under Ger­man pro­tec­tion (1914–1919), which has left sev­er­al traces of him in the Poli­tis­ches Archiv des Auswär­ti­gen Amts (PA AA). In fact, in explor­ing his wan­der­ing life, it is infor­ma­tive to read files from the PA AA in con­junc­tion with India Office Records (IOR), held in the British Library, Lon­don, files from the Nation­al Archives of India (NAI) as well as files from the North Amer­i­can Records Admin­is­tra­tion (NARA) to ful­ly under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of exiled anti­colo­nial lives and the (im)possibility of return to India. Indeed, focus­ing on the role of pass­ports, the files on Acharya in the PA AA reveal a great deal about the embrace of state author­i­ty and cit­i­zen­ship as well as, con­verse­ly, how they evad­ed and sub­vert­ed the watch­ful eyes of colo­nial authorities.

Passage to Exile

In Novem­ber 1908, fear­ing impris­on­ment for sedi­tion, Acharya fled India and arrived in win­ter-cold Mar­seille, pro­ceed­ing imme­di­ate­ly to Paris and, a week lat­er, to Lon­don. In the impe­r­i­al metrop­o­lis, he soon became part of the inner cir­cle of Indi­an nation­al­ists at India House and, in August 1909, with fel­low India House mem­ber Sukh Sagar Dutt, ven­tured on a mis­sion to join the Rif anti­colo­nial strug­gles against the Span­ish in Moroc­co (Acharya, Sep 1937: 3). For this, Acharya obtained a British pass­port on 16 August from the India Office in Lon­don and depart­ed from Southamp­ton on 18 August 1909. Acharya’s British pass­port has since gone miss­ing in the IOR (IOR/L/PJ/6/956, files 3066–3070) but been recov­ered from the NARA (Old Ger­man Files, 1909–21, 8000–1396, M1085). Acharya failed to reach the Rifs and was soon strand­ed in Tang­i­er. Mean­while, back in India, a war­rant for his arrest was issued in Sep­tem­ber 1909 for his involve­ment in the nation­al­ist paper India in 1908 (NAI, Home & Polit­i­cal, B 1909, Dec 37). This meant that Acharya could not return to India or set foot on British ter­ri­to­ry again. How­ev­er, with a British pass­port in hand, through­out the next two years, Acharya trav­elled to Lis­bon, Paris, Brus­sels, Rot­ter­dam, and Berlin before he arrived in Munich in the spring of 1911.

In the autumn of 1911, in an act of anti-Euro­pean sol­i­dar­i­ty, Acharya want­ed to join the Tripoli­ta­ni­ans against the Ital­ian invaders in Abyssinia. On 25 Octo­ber 1911, he obtained per­mis­sion to trav­el to Con­stan­tino­ple from the Ottoman con­sulate in Munich (NARA, Old Ger­man Files, 1909–21, 8000–1396, M1085). Spend­ing almost sev­en months in Con­stan­tino­ple, noth­ing came off his efforts, and in July 1912 he escaped the watch­ful British author­i­ties and fled for the Unit­ed States. His two years in the US remain some­what obscure: he worked as a farm labour­er and is known to have applied for US cit­i­zen­ship in 1913, which was denied due to the US’s strict anti-Asian immi­gra­tion laws, while also resum­ing his rev­o­lu­tion­ary activ­i­ties and briefly join­ing the rad­i­cal anti­colo­nial Hin­dus­tan Asso­ci­a­tion of the Pacif­ic Coast (Ghadar Par­ty), trans­lat­ing their paper Ghadr into Tamil, as well as the Hin­dus­tan Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca in New York, but lit­tle else is known of his life there (Laursen, forthcoming).

The First World War and the Indian-German Conspiracy

Short­ly after the First World War broke out, his old friend Viren­dranath Chat­topad­hyaya (‘Chat­to’) set up the Indi­an Inde­pen­dence Com­mit­tee (IIC) in Berlin and, with Ger­man finan­cial and logis­tic back­ing, soon recruit­ed exiled Indi­ans into the com­mit­tee.^[1] The PA AA holds exten­sive files, dig­i­tized and avail­able online, on IIC’s activ­i­ties and Acharya’s involve­ment with the group (PA AA, RZ 201/21070–21118 – Unternehmungen und Aufwiegelun­gen gegen unsere Feinde – Indi­en). Records show that Acharya arrived in Berlin in Decem­ber 1914 on a Per­sian pass­port pro­vid­ed by the Irish anti­colo­nial rev­o­lu­tion­ary George Free­man (PA AA, RZ 201/21074–75). He left his British pass­port behind in New York and sym­bol­i­cal­ly turned his back on British cit­i­zen­ship (NARA, Old Ger­man Files, 1909–21, 8000–1396, M1085). Arriv­ing in Berlin on a Per­sian pass­port, how­ev­er, soon land­ed him in trou­ble with the Berlin author­i­ties, but the Auswär­tiges Amt (AA, For­eign Office) inter­vened and pro­vid­ed him with a Ger­man ID card (Per­son­alausweis / PA AA, RZ 201/21074–75).

In ear­ly 1915, the IIC deployed its first mis­sion to Con­stan­tino­ple with the aim to col­lab­o­rate with the Ottomans and under­take mis­sions against the British through­out the Mid­dle East. The AA pro­vid­ed the Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies with fake pass­ports, trav­el­ling as Ger­man East Africans, and Acharya assumed the name ‘Muham­mad Akbar’ (PA AA, RZ 201/21078). Through­out the next two years, Acharya and the Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies trav­elled across the Mid­dle East, reach­ing Bagh­dad, Jerusalem, and the Suez Canal, while sub­vert­ing the author­i­ty of British pass­ports and cit­i­zen­ship (RZ 201/21070–RZ 201/21118).

How­ev­er, lit­tle came off their efforts, and by ear­ly 1917 the IIC closed their mis­sion in Con­stan­tino­ple. The 1917 Feb­ru­ary rev­o­lu­tion in Rus­sia and Euro­pean social­ist attempts to bro­ker a peace changed the Indi­ans’ per­spec­tives and alliances. In May 1917, trav­el­ling on Ger­man Per­son­alausweise, Acharya and Chat­to relo­cat­ed to Stock­holm to bring the ques­tion of Indi­an inde­pen­dence into social­ist peace nego­ti­a­tions. In oth­er words, they shed their Ger­man East African iden­ti­ties and, while still sup­port­ed by the AA, sought new alliances with Euro­pean social­ists and oth­er colo­nial and sub­ject peo­ples (PA AA, RAV 250–1/474 – Krieg 1914–1917 – Indi­en – Indis­ches Nation­alkomi­tee in Stock­holm; PA AA, RZ 201/20519 – Die inter­na­tionale Sozial­is­tenkon­ferenz in Stock­holm, Wien und London).

They set up the Indi­an Nation­al Com­mit­tee and agi­tat­ed among Euro­pean social­ists. How­ev­er, the social democ­rats in the Sec­ond Inter­na­tion­al were not sym­pa­thet­ic to Acharya and Chatto’s efforts and even accused them of being Ger­man agents. Short­ly after the end of the war in Novem­ber 1918, they ter­mi­nat­ed their mis­sion in Stock­holm, but the ques­tion remained: what to do next? Reports to the AA reveal that many of the Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in Stock­holm and Berlin want­ed to become Ger­man cit­i­zens, though it appears that none of them did, but they acquired Per­son­alausweise and pro­tec­tion by the Ger­man state (PA AA, RZ 201/21117).

The Russian Revolution and State Authoritarianism

In June 1919, Acharya and a group of Indi­ans, includ­ing Mahen­dra Prat­ap and Abdur Rabb, depart­ed from Berlin for Moscow with Ger­man assis­tance (PA AA, RZ 201/21118). After meet­ing Lenin, the group set off for Afghanistan to exploit anti-British sen­ti­ments and recruit local Muha­jirs into their cam­paign against the British in India. Through­out the next three years, Acharya set up the Indi­an Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Asso­ci­a­tion (IRA) in Kab­ul, he attend­ed the Sec­ond Con­gress of the Com­mu­nist Inter­na­tion­al in Pet­ro­grad and Moscow in July 1920 as a del­e­gate of the IRA, and with M. N. Roy, Abani Mukher­ji, and Muhammed Shafique, he co-found­ed the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of India (CPI) in Tashkent in Octo­ber 1920. How­ev­er, Acharya soon fell out with the dom­i­neer­ing Roy and was expelled from the CPI in Jan­u­ary 1921. Instead, he asso­ci­at­ed with notable anar­chists, crit­i­cized the Bol­she­viks, and eked out a liv­ing as a jour­nal­ist in Moscow, where he met and mar­ried the Russ­ian artist, Mag­da Nach­man (Laursen, 2020: 241–255; Bern­stein, 2020: 142–159).

Citizenship, Passports, and Sedition in Weimar Berlin

By the autumn of 1922, Acharya’s pres­ence in Moscow was no longer tol­er­at­ed by the Bol­she­vik regime and he had to flee again. In Novem­ber 1922, Acharya and Nach­man arrived in Berlin on Russ­ian pass­ports (PA AA, RZ 207/80558). Once again, Acharya had shed his state-sanc­tioned iden­ti­ty and pass­port. How­ev­er, as Acharya was known to the AA, the cou­ple eas­i­ly acquired per­mis­sion to stay in Berlin. By the mid-1920s, the Ger­man cap­i­tal had become a hub for exiled Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, many of them being alum­ni of the IIC and com­mu­nists such as Roy, caus­ing some trou­ble for the Ger­man state’s diplo­mat­ic rela­tions with Britain. Indeed, by late 1924, the two for­mer ene­mies ini­ti­at­ed dis­cus­sions about deport­ing sev­er­al notable Indi­ans from Ger­many, includ­ing Acharya, Chat­to, Mukher­ji, and Roy, illu­mi­nat­ing the ten­u­ous posi­tion of the exiled Indi­ans. In the end, how­ev­er, as the Ger­mans felt they owed the Indi­ans some degree of pro­tec­tion after their col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing the First World War and as the British did not want them on the loose in India, the depor­ta­tion case was dropped (Barooah, 2018: 12–23; IOR/L/PJ/12/223; NAI, Home & Polit­i­cal, NA 1925, NA F‑139‑I Kw). At the same time, as files from the PA AA show, Acharya had his res­i­dence per­mit extend­ed in Ger­many (PA AA, RZ RZ 207/80558; RZ 207/78315).

The depor­ta­tion case, how­ev­er, prompt­ed Acharya to apply for a British pass­port to leave Ger­many (IOR). In his appli­ca­tion, he stat­ed that his pass­port had been stolen from his address in Berlin in 1914 and not that he had left it behind in New York. When the British refused to offer Acharya amnesty for his activ­i­ties against Britain dur­ing the First World War, he aban­doned the appli­ca­tion as return seemed impos­si­ble (IOR/L/E/7/1439).

In 1929, Acharya resumed his pass­port appli­ca­tion (IOR/L/PJ/6/1968, file 3981). He was not the only one. In the ear­ly 1930s, oth­er IIC alum­ni such as Rishi Kesh Lat­ta, L. P. Var­ma, Abdur Rah­man Mansur, and A. Raman Pil­lai also want­ed to return to India. Like Acharya, how­ev­er, they found this dif­fi­cult due to their activ­i­ties dur­ing the First World War. The PA AA con­tains files with let­ters from these Indi­ans, ask­ing for finan­cial help to return or even to be able to remain in Ger­many, nego­ti­at­ing their indi­vid­ual cas­es with the AA, while they await­ed the out­come of their pass­port appli­ca­tions (PA AA, RZ 207/78314–315–316).

With the rise of Nazism in Ger­many, life became more dan­ger­ous for Indi­ans in Berlin. At the same time, in India, the British were crack­ing down on the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence move­ment and arrest­ed thou­sands of pro­test­ers, includ­ing lead­ers such as Gand­hi, Nehru, and Saro­ji­ni Naidu, Chatto’s sis­ter. This made the prospect of return­ing to India almost impos­si­ble. Pil­lai, Mansur, and Var­ma man­aged to return to India, while Lat­ta hes­i­tat­ed and went to Teheran, where he died short­ly after (PA AA, RZ 207/78314–315–316).

In ear­ly 1934, the British final­ly grant­ed amnesty to Acharya and pro­vid­ed him and Nach­man with British pass­ports valid for trav­el to India on the con­di­tion that he would refrain from polit­i­cal activ­i­ty (IOR/L/PJ/6/1968, file 3981). With trav­el mon­ey pro­vid­ed by the AA, Acharya and Nach­man hur­ried­ly fled Berlin in Feb­ru­ary 1934 and arrived in Switzer­land, where they stayed with Nachman’s sis­ter in Zürich. While the AA helped Acharya leave, inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence in the PA AA also shows that they did not want Acharya to return to Ger­many (PA AA, RZ 207/78314–316).

Through­out the fol­low­ing year, Acharya lived clan­des­tine­ly in Zürich and Paris, with­out legal res­i­dence papers, try­ing to secure mon­ey for a safe pas­sage back to India, where he still feared that he faced the risk of impris­on­ment (IOR/L/PJ/6/1968, file 3981). He even­tu­al­ly returned to Bom­bay in April 1935, where Nach­man joined him a year lat­er. A life of wan­der­ing was over for Acharya, and while he remained active in the inter­na­tion­al anar­chist move­ment, he nev­er went to prison for his polit­i­cal activ­i­ties. Nach­man died in Bom­bay on 12 Feb­ru­ary 1951, and Acharya died impov­er­ished on 20 March 1954 (Laursen, 2020: 241–255).

Archival Sources

India Office Records, British Library, London, UK

In addi­tion to pass­port appli­ca­tions, the IOR holds Week­ly Reports of the Direc­tor of Crim­i­nal Intel­li­gence, who was respon­si­ble for track­ing the activ­i­ties and move­ments of Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies with­in India and abroad. The pass­port appli­ca­tions usu­al­ly con­tain His­to­ry Sheets of the appli­cants as well as cor­re­spon­dence regard­ing the application.

National Archives of India, New Delhi, India

Many of the files from the IOR are also held in the NAI and avail­able online at https://www.abhilekh-patal.in/. These include files on Acharya’s arrest war­rant, his trav­els to Moroc­co, pass­port appli­ca­tions, and the 1924 depor­ta­tion case against Indi­ans in Germany.

North American Records Administration, Maryland, USA

The NARA holds files from the Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, the pre­cur­sor to the FBI, on the activ­i­ties of Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in North Amer­i­ca. The Old Ger­man files (1909–1921) cov­er the peri­od before, dur­ing, and after the First World War, includ­ing mate­r­i­al on the Ghadar Par­ty and the Indi­an-Ger­man con­spir­a­cy dur­ing the war.

The Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts), Berlin, Germany

The PA AA holds exten­sive archival mate­r­i­al on the activ­i­ties and move­ments of Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in exile dur­ing and after the First World War. The most sig­nif­i­cant are the dig­i­tized files per­tain­ing to the IIC and First World War (RZ 201/21070–21118 – Unternehmungen und Aufwiegelun­gen gegen unsere Feinde – Indi­en), which also includes files on Indi­an sol­diers held in Ger­man pris­on­er-of-war-camps (RZ 201/21244 – Unternehmungen und Aufwiegelun­gen gegen unsere Feinde – Tätigkeit in den Gefan­genen­lagern Deutsch­lands) and the Indi­an Nation­al Com­mit­tee in Stock­holm (RAV 250–1/474 – Krieg 1914–1917 – Indi­en – Indis­ches Nation­alkomi­tee in Stock­holm; PA AA, RZ 201/20519 – Die inter­na­tionale Sozial­is­tenkon­ferenz in Stock­holm, Wien und Lon­don). In addi­tion to these, the PA AA has exten­sive files on the polit­i­cal activ­i­ties of Indi­ans in Weimar Ger­many, includ­ing mate­r­i­al relat­ing to pass­ports and expul­sions (RZ 207/78314–316 – Agen­ten- und Spi­onagewe­sen – Ori­ent), as well as Indi­an pro­pa­gan­da, press, and social activ­i­ties ema­nat­ing from Ger­many (RZ 207/77446 – Jour­nal­is­ten, Pres­sev­ertreter; RZ 207/77449 – Pressewe­sen; RZ 207/77461–462 – Poli­tis­che und kul­turelle Pro­pa­gan­da; RZ 207/77463 – Vereinswesen).

Conclusion

The files held in the PA AA, read along­side those in the IOR, the NAI, and the NARA, open a win­dow onto the peri­patet­ic lives of many Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies who had col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Ger­mans dur­ing the First World War and end­ed up in Berlin in the inter­war years. In fact, it is nec­es­sary to look beyond the bina­ry colo­nial log­ic of archival traces – i.e., IOR (Lon­don) and NAI (Del­hi) – and exam­ine a wider web of archives to ful­ly under­stand the peri­patet­ic life of Acharya. Indeed, as I have demon­strat­ed here, the PA AA is cru­cial to under­stand­ing such rev­o­lu­tion­ary lives. By focus­ing on pass­ports, a state-autho­rised doc­u­ment issued to reg­u­late and embrace indi­vid­u­als’ cit­i­zen­ship and move­ments, the archives illu­mi­nate both the ways in which Indi­an rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies sub­vert­ed the colo­nial legal appa­ra­tus through their trav­els as well as the dif­fi­cul­ties for them to return to India. Acharya’s many pass­ports reveal a great deal about the ephemer­al stan­dard of state-autho­rised doc­u­ments in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry which, how­ev­er, even­tu­al­ly land­ed him in trou­ble with the author­i­ties he was try­ing to evade when he want­ed to return to India. At the same time, it also becomes clear that, despite being state-autho­rised doc­u­ments, rival states con­tributed to sub­vert­ing the author­i­ty of these doc­u­ments by, at times, pro­vid­ing fake pass­ports and offer­ing hos­pi­tal­i­ty to exiled rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. How­ev­er, as is evi­dent from Acharya’s case, this hos­pi­tal­i­ty was con­tin­gent and relied on the Ger­man state’s embrace of its cit­i­zens, which ulti­mate­ly was pred­i­cat­ed on exclu­sion from as much as inclu­sion with­in its bor­ders along the lines of race, eth­nic­i­ty, and nationality.

Endnote

[1] See Heike Liebau’s entry on the Indi­an Inde­pen­dence Com­mit­tee: Liebau, Heike, “‘Under­tak­ings and Insti­ga­tions’: The Berlin Indi­an Inde­pen­dence Com­mit­tee in the Files of the Polit­i­cal Archive of the Fed­er­al For­eign Office (1914–1920)”. MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con (2022): 10 pp, https://www.projekt-mida.de/rechercheportal/reflexicon/, DOI: 10.25360/01–2022-00048, or the article’s orig­i­nal Ger­man ver­sion: Liebau, Heike, “‚Unternehmungen und Aufwiegelun­gen‘: Das Berlin­er Indis­che Unab­hängigkeit­skomi­tee in den Akten des Poli­tis­chen Archivs des Auswär­ti­gen Amts (1914–1920)”. MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con (2019): 11 pp, https://www.projekt-mida.de/rechercheportal/reflexicon/, DOI: 10.25360/01–2022-00007.

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