Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 125
Acharya
Among radical nationalist revolutionaries, none made
their identification with the international anarchist movement
more explicit than Acharya. Born in 1887, this
"somewhat remarkable youth" was labeled early on as a "seditious
character." By the time he was twenty, he was working
on two newspapers in Madras: the Tamil India and the
English Bala Bharat. Over several months he "copied out
... most of the English version ofV. D. Savarkar's book
on the Mutiny" of 1857 for serial publication. When the
editor was arrested in July 1908, Acharya took the reins.l
On the retrospectively ironic date of August 15 the
India office and press were raided, articles seized, and the
paper charged with sedition. To evade further searches
Acharya finally moved operations to French Pondicherry,
transferred formal ownership to a cousin (who thought
him "very enthusiastic and very daring"), and boarded a
steamer to Marseilles, where he hoped to apprentice with
a process engraver. Finding no prospects in Marseilles, he
then wrote to Varahaneri Venkatesa Subramaniam Aiyar in
London. Aiyar had been a correspondent for India ; among
his writings were an article on Rousseau's Social Contract
and a Tamil history of Garibaldi. He was also a part of
the radical core at Krishnavarma's India House, where he
now invited Acharya to come and live for free. British intelligence
first spotted Acharya at a meeting in London
in January 1909, after a stop in Paris along with a nameless
Bengali (who was in town "to learn the art of making
noiseless bombs" from a M. Etienne). Aside from Aiyar,