Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 67
and information back to India. Thereafter the Criminal
Investigation Department recorded, "Special emissaries . ..
moved ftom time to time between India and Europe for arms
and bomb manuals."50 Kanungo's manual contained three
sections: preparation of explosive substances, fabrication of
shells, and use of the finished products. In the estimation of
James Campbell Ker, assistant to the director of Criminal
Intelligence,
The subject is exhaustively and scientifically treated;
the amount of attention given to detail may be
gathered from the fact that the composition and
manufacture of thirty different explosives of one
class only, namely those containing salts of chloric
and chlorous acids, are described. The reason why
it is necessary to be able to make explosives of various
substances is given as follows: "In revolutionary
practice we have often to use not the explosives
we should like to use, but those which we
can prepare with the materials at hand .... Again
in the time of armed conflict the expenditure of
explosives is considerable, and it is necessary to expropriate
pharmaceutical shops (just as armourics
are expropriated) and out of useful substances to
prepare what is needed."sl
The remainder of the manual, Ker explained, gave
specialized instructions for making percussion and fuse
bombs, with fuses ranging from instantaneous detonation
through lengths of seconds or minutes, up to eight