Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

66 I Ramnath
he realized what they were talking about, he withdrew.
Libertad was an exponent of illegalism , an amoral and extreme
individualist school of thought. L'anarchie's rhetoric
favored criminality as an antinomian lifestyle and expressed
antipathy to all forms of organization. None of this interested
Kanungo, dedicated as he was to a militant cause with
a t(xused goal. The reason he had become so frustrated
with his Swadeshi comrades in the first place was whar he
saw as their aimless ineffectuality; this was not the remedy
he sought. Ironically, the fabled rampage of rhe Liberradinspired
outlaw Bonnor gang in 191 1-12 may have borne
some resemblance to the Samiti's dacoities, albeit more
purely nihilist in their hatred of the bourgeoisie, lacking the
additional motive of funding an anticolonial struggle. I"
When French law enforcement officials got wind of the
rumor that the notorious "Russian anarchist [Safranski was]
instructing natives of India ... in manufacture of explosives;'
they were quick to inform their British counterparts!H But
the detectives arrived too late ; the suspect was gone, and the
information successfully transmitted to India and the United
States. Their prize was "a single cydostyled copy of a manual
of explosives" whose opening sentence declared, "The aim of
the present work is to place in the hands of a revolutionary
people such a powerful weapon as explosive matter is."49
Full Circle
In late 1907 or early 1908, with their training complete,
Kanungo and Bapat left to bear their new skills