Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 129
the contrary, their Indian Committee was "a revolutionary
body, similar to the Irish Sinn Fein, striving for the
independence ofIndia:'lO And yet Chatto had blurted in
response to an earlier allegation in 1909,
If it is anarchism to be thoroughly ashamed of being
ruled by a handful of vile alien vandals, if it is
anarchism to wish to exterminate them with the
noble desire of establishing our national freedom
upon the basis of popular sovereignty, of justice,
of mercy, of righteousness, and of humanity, if it
is anarchism to rise for the sanctity of our homes,
the integrity of our life, and the honour of our God
and our country, and to slay every individual tyrant,
whether foreign or native, that continues the
enslavement of the great and noble people, if it is
anarchism to conspire ceaselessly to take human life
with the only object of emancipating our beloved
Motherland, then we say, Cursed is the man that is
not an anarchist!lI
Of course, god and country are not generally within the
vocabulary of Western anarchism, but it's worth noting
where the salient sites of oppression and resistance appear
in this context.
In 1919, the pair made their way to Moscow. From
there Lenin sent Acharya to Kabul as part of a mission to
establish contact with the "Provisional Government of
India;' which had been set up there by a wartime German-,
Turkish-, and Ghadar-backed expedition. Following a