Le brahmane du Komintern (2006) - full transcript

I attend the changing
of the guard at the Kremlin,

and I am surprised
at this sentry guard,

who photographs
his collegues for souvenirs.

Both actor and spectator,

of a ritual, whose solemnity he spoils,

as he tries to capture it...

"THE COMINTERN BRAHMIN"

PART 1 : MEXICO, RUSSIA

In Moscow's autumn gusts,

I also seek my place,
in pursuit of a ghost.

Narendranath Bhatthacharya,



alias Manabendra Nath Roy,

alias M. N. Roy,

who become in the Twenties
here, in Moscow,

a leader of the
Communist International,

or Comintern,
as the Russian named it,

always fond of acronyms.

A year before, it was in Mexico,
I started to follow his tracks:

Mexico, where M. N. Roy
disembarked in June 1917,

where fighting rumbled on,

between the troops of
Zapata and Pancho Villa.

The last thrones
of a peasant revolution,

pompously commemorated

by the monument in the centre
of the Republic Square

"Plaza de la Republica",
which that Sturday became...



The rock 'n' roll square!

From 3 to 5 o'clock in the evening!

I first came across
the name 'Adolfo Gilly'

in the correspondence
of sub-commandant Marcos.

Then I read his works on the
insurgent Mexico of 1910-1920.

before discovering,

that he was an important
Latin-American left-wing activist

of the 60's and 70's.

In short, an ideal guide,
at the crossroads

of the revolutionary dreams,
of yesterday and today.

But our discussion
takes alternative paths:

the missile crisis in 1962,
that Adolfo Gilly lived through in Cuba,

early century American and Mexican
anarcho-syndicalism,

Bolivarism, Zapatism...

And M. N. Roy in all of that?

On Roy we've already said it all?

We said everything.
You missed it.

That's it, you had to be there.

You had to be there,
dear filming machine

and you weren't there.

It was very interesting.

It's past.

Roy was a nationalist,

an Indian

of the high Brahmin caste,

who became...

who was what is today
called a terroist,

but who was in fact
an insurrectional nationalist.

He came to the USA
to buy weapons,

for the anti-colonialist
struggle in India.

That was in 1916.

He came to California.

And there he had the first revelation:

that is, he discovered
Western philosophy in California.

In Standford, of all places!

There, he not only learned
Western philosophy,

but he had a second revelation,

he met Evelyn Trent.

It seems there was an elective affinity.

"radiacl militant"

I think he became
acquainted over there

with the anarcho-syndicalist ambiance.

I think so,

because it was Vladimir Leon
who suggested it to me...

This interview is horribly rigged,
it has to be said!

...who suggested me to think
what I just said in front of the camera.

And yet, I hadn't invented M. N. Roy.

I remember this photo that
Hari Vasudevan had show me,

a historian from Culcutta met in Paris,

where I was astounded to discover,

beside Lenin, Gorky,
Bukharin, Zinoviev,

the tall silhouette, totally unknown,
of an Indian:

M. N. Roy...

Who was he?

How had he gotten there?

What was his role?

And why did nobody today
seem to remember him?

I chose to stay at the hotel: "La Habana",
in Cuba Street,

subway stop: Salvador Allende.

As if by summoning up
some other revolutionary ghosts,

I would have more chance of
coming across that of M. N. Roy.

Nothing is less certain.

More than 80 years have passed
since his arrival in Mexico.

The eyewitnesses have disappeared.

History had past its gloss over.

Hello...

I'd like to speak to
Paco Ignacio Taibo.

I'm Vladimir Leon.

Thank you.

Adolfo Gilly had given me a lead.

Paco Ignancio Taibo II
known as "PIT dos",

author of successful
political detective novels,

a charismatic figure of the Mexican left,
may be able to help me.

In the car of my precious cicerone,
Ignancio Saldivar,

I try to pick up the thread again

So M. N. Roy fails in love with Evelyn,
a young American radical.

He flees the USA
where the police track him down,

and he finds himself in Mexico

What does he live on?
German money.

The Kaiser's secret services
support this anti-British activist.

He owes his false identity to them,

Charles Martin,
a seminarians from Pondichery:

So we drive towards PIT 2's house.

I'm sure to find a reliable ally in him,

to obstinately uncover
the forgotten histories.

of the years 1845-1847,

There is no good history
of the Texas war.

When you want to read one,
there's only General Filisola's text!

A soldier's version,
written 150 year ago.

Under the eye of the Zapatist
sub-commandant Marcos

and accompanied by the dog Gurtis,

PIT 2 takes from his library,
a work he wrote 20 years ago,

one of the few
that assigns such importance

to M. N. Roy's visit to Mexico.

But even this book
seems like a mirage.

First National Congress
of the Mexican Socialist Part

that opens on 25 August 1919

and where about 30 delegates met,

supporting almost as many tendecies.

Among them is M. N. Roy,
who abandoned a last attempt

to transfer Chinese arms for
an Anti-British insurrection in India,

and his wife Evelyn,
now members of the small Party.

Roy reveals in his "Memoirs"

his romantic and enthuasiastic version
of this first socialist demonstration

in the Zocalo,
Mexico's central square.

"Behind a huge picture of Lenin

"held high in front,

there was a forest
of red flags and festoons

"on the later were striking:

'Down with Yankee imperialism!'

'Petroleum belongs
to the Mexican people!'

Long live the Revolutionary Alliance
of Latin-American Republics!

'Long live the Bolsheviks!'
'Long live the Soviet Republic of Mexico!'

"At the conference that followed,
the proletarian delegates,

"and bourgeois guests, all alike,

"listened with rapt attention

"to the message
from the Great October Revolution,

"from petrograd,

"composed
by John Reed in New York,

"and applauded vigorously,
when the chairman

"finished reading the spurious
document by raising the slogans:

'Lond live the Great October Revolution!
Long live Comrade Lenin!'

"A new god and new religion

"demanded the devotion
of the revolutionary proletariant.

"I joined the ranks of the faithful
in quest of the utopia."

And Roy definitely didn't delay
in joining these faithful.

In a Chinese coffee shop
in the town centre, "El Chino"

a small cosmopolitan group met up

in order to found
what he callls nothing less than

"the first Communist Party
outside of Rusia".

PIT 2 draws the supposed location

of the coffee shop "El Chino"
that l'll never find.

Just as I'm disappointed,

in the posh area of Colonia Roma
on the Merida Avenue

by not finding number 48,
Roy's house.

The number going suddenly
from 36 to 50A.

At the other address
I have for M. N. Roy, 33 Cordoba Street.

to the left is No. 30,
to the right is No. 35,

A local resident I asked, replies laughing:
It's a ghost house.

I roam the Colonia Roma area
looking for a sign of this past.

I end up getting completely lost,

and find myself
in a small, shaded square,

bearing Puskin's name.

There is a bust of the poet,

that immediately reminds me
of his famous statue

in Moscow's centre,
Puskin square,

two steps from the Lux hotel,
home to the Comintern delegates

Mikhal Borodin,
his true name Mikhail Gruzenberg,

alias the Englishman, alias the Banker
alias Iakov, alias Mr. Brown

disembarks in Mexico
in the summer of 1919.

He arrives from the U.S.A

where he had tried to sell
Russian Imperial jewels

on behalf of the young Soviets.

He meets M. N. Roy.
The two get along.

Borodin moves into the beautiful house
of the "companero indio",

"the Indian comrade",
as they called him here.

Borodin is an old Bolshevik
a professional revolutionary.

In the course of the late,
heated discussions.

he ends up converting M. N. Roy,

sweeping away
his last nationalist convictions.

Roy writes in his "Memoirs":

"Borodin introduced me to the intricacies
of Hegelian dialectics

"as the key to Marxism.

"My lingering faith in the
special genius of India faded

"as I learned from him
the history of European culture.

"It was no easier for
a born heretic

"to accept a new faith,
albeit materialist and atheistic,

"than to pass through
the eye of a needle.

"It was my last resistance to Marxism."

-I used to speak Russian a long time ago.
-In Moscow?

Yes. But here I cannot practice.

I'm a member of the PRD.

I was a member of the
National Council of the PRD.

I was twice deputy...

Well, it's a long story!

And I feel a Comintern spirit
on discovering

that I can speak Russian
with Gerardo Unzueta

former leader of the
Mexico Communist Party,

today leader in the
Party of Democratic Revolution, PRD,

who receives me at the Centre of Studies
of the Worker and Social Movement.

We are soon met by
Comrade Arnoldo Martinez Verdugo

another historic figure of the CP

and by my friend
Ignacio Saldivar who performs,

with all the necessary seriousness
the introduction to our meeting.

Today we have the opportunity,

on this Wednesday 13...

Yes

...13 November,

to meet one of the great leaders
of Mexican communism,

Gerardo Unzueta.

And he will now provide us with

information about
this Indian personality,

Roy, in our country.

This will be the first question.

Good.

I think that the response
to this first question

can only be very unsatisfactory.

And for one reason:

that we have very little information

about Roy's stay in Mexico.

Roy went, as delegate
of the Mexican Communist Party

to the 2nd Congress
of the Communist International.

And there, on the very day of his arrival,
the opening day of the congress.

he stopped being the delegate of the
Mexican Communist Party

and become the delegate of British india,

of the Communist Party
of British India.

Which means he stopped
being the Mexican Party delegate.

That's why I say he was a turncoat.

Excuse me.

No, no please.

I haven't much more to add.

Just a few little things.

Roy published in Mexico,
while he was still here,

a book that's very hard to find

but perhaps in a library

you may find it.

He arrived in Mexico in 1917.

From there he left for Moscow

in December 1919.

From that moment,

I don't know how long he worked

in the

International team

but I understand that he spent
several years in Moscow.

And so, in the archives in Moscow

you can find the meterial.

Not just because over there

they've preserved everything better...

Nothing has been preserved here!

The archives have disappeared,

because they were lost,

or taken by police...

Not even the acts of the
National Congress are here anymore.

Not even the acts!

No more acts of Congress
and no more trace of M. N. Roy

nor his American friends,

these "slackers"
as they were nickname:

left-wing militants
who fled wartime United State.

Among them, Charles Philips,

a 25 year old pacifist,
with whom Roy collaborated

in various socialist publications

and who would be in Petrograd
the following year.

On the famous photo,
he has a small moustache and white shirt

behind Zinoviev,
to Roy's right

But for now, Charles Phillips
and the other "slackers",

writers, poets, designers,
revolutionary apprentices,

haunt the town's streets and bars

forming this "small
cosmopolitan community of free men"

in M. N. Roy's word
who loved to take them to Sanborn's

a chic drudstore on Madero Avenue
whose coffee he particularly liked.

The drugstore is still there.

they still serve coffee,
cocoa and pastries

but I doubt you'll come across
many Marxist conspirators now.

No doubt these debauched Yankees

who were to introduce Roy
to the taste of wine

and join his small communist party

bore little resemblance to the image
of a rebel peasant in a straw hat

for anyone this country
to really want to remember them.

Daniela Spensers
historian of Mexican politics,

met thanks to Adolfo Gilly,

suspects Roy of having exaggerate
his role in Mexico, It's probable.

She doubts his friendship with
the President of that time,

Venustiano Carranza.

And I want to believe it

because Roy, in his "Memoir"
is so careful to justify the paradox.

He writes:

"Concretely,
I felt that an aristocrat

"intellectually emancipated
from the prejudices of his class

"could make a more disinterested
and enthusiastic social revolutionary

"than the most passionately
class-conscious proletarian."

This peculiar aristocratic Marxism
of M. N. Roy

that he forges here in Mexico

under the influence
of his rebelious "slacker" friends,

the local anarcho-syndicalism,

the more or less
enlightened bourgeoise,

with whom he courts shamelessly.

And of course, Mikhail Borodin,
the man from Moscow.

At the end of 1919,

the latter suggests that Roy
Evelyn and Charlie Philips

Join him in Soviet Russia as delegates
at the 2nd Congress of the comintern.

An Indian and 2 Americans
co-opted by a Russian Jew

to represent the Mexican working class.

The International on the march!

And I have trouble
imagining such nonchalance

such political freedom

when, wandering
in the peaceful Coyoacan district

an otherside of ferocious Soviet past
suddenly appears.

Here Frieda Kahlo

had her blue house

and some streets from here
her intimate comrade,

Leon Trotsky, lived in that fortress-villa,

protected by a watchtower,

built after a first
failed assassination attempt

on the founder of the
4th international in May 1940.

But Stalin wanted to achieve his aims:
destroy his personal enemy

and the last great figure
of October 1917.

inside the house,

everything seems
to have been left as it was

on that 20 August 1940,

when Romon Mercader,
a GPU agent,

was introduced to Trotsky

and struck him a mortal blow
to the head with a ice pick.

in the archives of the
Communist International in Moscow

I will come across
this cardboard file,

labelled "L. D.. Trotzki"

with applique writing,
enclosing his letters from exile.

The Soviet terror
was also bureaucratic.

They liquidated men,

but preserved their writings,
carefully indexing them.

"Roy is a national democrat
who has led messy policy in China

"and who up to now
has still not understood it"

Here, Trotsky writes in French:

"In Russia we have the right-wing
who, regarding colonial revolution

"are in solidarity with Roy and Brandler
and not with us.

"What's more, Roy led
Stalin's policy in China

"that I fought with all my forces.
My best wishes, Leon Trotsky."

And it's a letter
date-stamped in Constantinople.

Moscow
Shakespearean capital of intrigues,

of swings of alliance,
of assassins

and irony tyranny
where Roy in 1927

will be one of those
voting for Trotsky's exclusion

from the Comintern's
Executive Committee

despite his admiration
for the Red Army's leader.

And Moscow of 1920,

where Evely and Roy arrive
joining Charlie Philips

in preparing for the
2nd Congress of the Internation

in a country ravaged by civil war
but still vibrating

with the enthusiasm
for the building of a new world.

And Moscow of 2004,
that I come to in search of this past,

staying in Tverskaya Street,

the central artery of the town

where the Roys and Philips stayed,
at the Lux Hotel.

The street is today lined
with chic shops

and obstructed by four-door saloons
with tinted windows

and gaint 4*4 cars, driven
with the same arrogance as in the past

the black limousines
of the apparatchiks.

The central telegraph
at the bottom of the street

just beside the Kremilin
becomes my headquarters.

And not really knowing
where to look for M. N. Roy here,

I call all over.

Yes, M. N. Roy!

I thought that...

well, you're also called Roy

because of M. N. Roy.

And, as I'm making my film

by seeking political relationships

that might exist
between history and this Indian.

I've already been
to Mexico and India,

now I'm in Moscow.

All that might link him

to a more contemporary history
is interesting.

But I can talk to you about it
in more detail

if we have the chance to meet...

And we got the opportunity
to meet the next day.

historian who become famous
in Gorbachev's time

for his works on Stalin,

explains in great detail,
the journey to his house.

He's surprised
that I don't have a car.

So I have to take the suburban train,
the "elektrichka",

which will take me
to the small station of Nemchinovka.

It's one of these localities
on the outskirts

where the Moscovites
love to come to their "dachas",

small village house,

where they disappears
as soon as they can,

to devote themselves frantically
to DIY,

home gardening,
mushroom-picking

or salting cucumbers.

in front of Roy Medvedev's house

a car is parked
from NTV television station

come to interview him about the
depositiion of Nikita Khrushchev

by the Central Committee
in 1964, 40 years ago.

We wait in the the garden,
with Olga Nikolaevna,

who reigns over the administration
of the Medvedev house.

at the moment, they're still working

and I feed Rex.

Have you done a lot of walking?
There's not really much to see here.

There's an interesting
Georgian restaurant.

Over there is a cathedral,
have you seen it?

A superb cathedral... Baptist.

-Baptist?
-oh yes, huge!

Yes, that surprised me,
that non-orthodox cross.

It was the Baptists
who built that here.

It's big, big!

Well, that's customary.

You know, they have identical
buildings all over.

There's a service every Saturday.

There are lots of dachas
that are built.

They grow link mushrooms!

4 years ago the house
were mainly wooden.

Today people are buying them up.

Over there, they buy the land
and demolish the old house.

The areas's not bad,
close to Moscow

Are they the "New Russians"
who are buying here?

They're not poor people of course.

Roy Alexandrovich
who isn't really one of the richest,

builds slowly.

But it's like Irakli's house
that doesn't go so fast.

it has to be done progressively.

The masonry is done
but the roof has to wait.

But for those with the means,
the house is built in 3 months.

I'll go see if Roy Alexandrovich
needs me to do anything.

In a few sentences, Olga Nikolaevna
plunges me into this new Russia

where people buy land
left, right and centre,

and take to revering all possible cults,
however unorthodox.

And yet, this curious feeling
that nothing changes:

the birches, the rowan trees
and gooseberry bushes,

the wooden toilet cabin
at the bottom of the garden,

the neighbour doing, DIY,
the sound of the train in the distance...

Did the Revolution take place?

Did the Soviet Union crumble?

Seen from this little garden,
Russia seems forever still.

But now the NTV team
have finished their interview,

we hurry to join Roy Medvedev
in his study.

When I was born in 1925

everyone knew the name of Roy.

He intervened in China
at the Chinese Party Congress,

he also intervened in the Comintern

which, at the time, played
a great role in the country.

But it was all about
customary reports at that time

that could be done by a communist

who was considering working for India

in the service of the Soviet Union

and who could go to China
to give instructions.

It was the psychology of
revolutionaries at this time.

He would just as likely have
gone to France

and intervened in the French party.

That seemed perfectly normal to them.

But I am of course, interested
in this figure

as I was named in his honour.

All communist parents then tended

not to give their children
Russian names but unusual ones:

"Vladen" for Vladimir Lenin,
"Mir" which means :the peace"...

"May" and "Maya" for 1st of May.

There was also "Stalina"
and lots of Vladimirs for Lenin.

A boy called "Tractor",
another "Ikki"

the Russian acronym of the Executive
Committee of Communist Internantional.

"Roy" and "Jaures"
were really quite human names!

Usually, people thought it was
an English or American name.

And I, so as not to pass for
an Englishman or an American

which was important,

I said it wasn't an English name,

but the name of a famous
Indian revolutionary.

I said that. But no one knew him.

And I could not be more specific.

I said he was famous
in the middle of the 20's

and then he left
the political scene.

So you have a very communist
family?

Of course!
My father was a communist,

he was a political commissioner
in the Red Army.

He studied and taught
at the Military and Political Academy.

It was a family of young communists,
very staunch,

In their circle, It was allowed
usually at this time.

He was a "red professor",
a Party intellectual and commissioner.

He died during the Stalinist repressions.

That's all I can tell you about Roy.

Before leaving him,

Roy Medvedev suggests
that we meet again in two days time,

at the Duma, the lower chamber
of the Russian Parliament

where he is invited to a round table

on the eviction of Khrushchev
organised by Vladimir Jirinovsky,

nationalist and populist politician,
conveniently turned unpredictable

and extreme opponent,
at the time of Boris Yeltsin.

When I worry about
such a dubious sponsorship,

Roy Alexandrovich immedialely
corrects me:

In your country, France,
they demonize Russian politicians

and represent them
as they've never been.

Jirinovsky is, for the Russians
a completely normal character,

with whom it is interesting
to watch the Duma session.

You never know in advance
what he's going to say.

And that's all
No one takes him seriously.

Neither himself, nor his party.

Here, in Rusia, we don't consider him
as a politician,

but as a curious
intriguing character

even a little clownish...

The atmosphere, however
is hardly clownish

in the parliamentary offices
of the LPDR,

Jirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party,

whose golden initial
are on show everywhere.

Under the watch of
the plain-clothes guards

who, it's not clear, if they're
protecting or supervising,

this strange commemorative
ceremony takes place:

a meeting of nostalgic veterans
turned spiritualist session

with, around the table,

the old Communist Party executive,
the current Jirinovsky militants

but also, Nikita Khrushchev!

I'd like to hand over
to Nikita Khrushchev to speak,

grandson of the First Secretary
of the CPSU Central Committee,

jounalist

I would first like to thank
that you have remembered...

-Does the microphoine work?
-...this date.

In fact, I didn't expect to intervene,

and I'm not prepared
for a serious speech.

But I'd like to thank everyone.

And...You've nothing to add?

Face with
the grandson's sullen silence

Jirinovsky tries another question.

But you're the grandson!

We're celebrating your grandfather!

You can't only find pleasant.

You could observe it from the inside.

What did Nikita Sergueievich
think about his deposition?

As a result of Brezhnev's competition

who wanted to be General Secretary?

Or did it really concern
a charge of course

and your grnadfather committed
great errors

and the country was truly tired?

Or was it an international plot?

I'm amazed that it was so easy
for our small film crew

authorized by absolutely no one

and having warned only the day
before of its arrival,

to enter and film so freely
inside the Duma.

I don't know if it should be seen
as a sign of transparent democracy

or rather a sign of this
Assembly's lack of influence.

I'd been surprised by this remark
by Roy Medvedev,

concerning the role of the deputies
in Russia:

Deputy, that's not
a political activity.

I was a deputy for two years
in Gorbachev's time,

and it's not a political role.
It has no power!

The delegates and leaders
of the Communist International

gathered in Moscow in July 1920
for the 2nd Congress,

burned with another flame.

They weren't more than
35 years old on whole

and saw themselves
at the avant-garde of a World Revolution

that seemed so imminent to them.

Charlie Philups wrote:

"Roy was the only delegate
from the colonies

"the only one who can speak
with experience and intelligence

"from the viewpoint of the struggle
in the oppressed countries.

"He made a great impression
on everyone. Including Lenin"

M. N. Roy presents his thesis
on the colonial question,

that Lenin had personally ordered,

and where he asserted
contrary to the later,

that the communist movement
must refuse all collaboration

with the nationalist bourgeois
movements.

"The bourgeois nationalists

in no way reflect
the aspirations of the masses."

He accuses them of defending
a local capitalism

that would only replace
foreign capitalism

without changing any of the
deprived people's conditions.

Roy provokes an outcry
when he declares that

"The destiny of the revolutionary
movement in Europe

"depends on the course
of the revolution in the East."

Lenin restores that comrade Roy
is going to far

but the latter finally manages
to have his thesis adopted

together with Lenin's
unanimously, less than 3 abstentions.

For the first time,
a voice from the colonies

made itself heard in the concert
of European revolutionaries,

affirming
the autonomy and power

of liberation movements
from other countries.

As for Vladimir Jirinovsky,

he at last ends his question
to Khrushchev's grandson.

But the latter keeps wishing
not to remember anything.

The microphones are taken away

and he doesn't utter a word
until the end of the meeting,

which closes with a speech by Jirinovsky

where history is triumphant
and celebratory, but not dialectic

And in this country,

would they really have believed in
historic materialism one day?

The fact that our round table
takes place

in the building with the highest
decision-making power

must confer it
a special significance.

The Duma is the highest level
of legislative power.

There is nothoing above it.

This is even the highest floor.

Above us there's nothing else.

- Molotov was here.
- Yes. And this floor,

70 years ago, when the Soviet
goverment was based here,

was occupied by
Kaganovich and Molotov!

Before, I was in Molotov's office,
but I moved.

The whole floor is for the LDPR.

We've been here for 11 years.

For us, It's become a tradition:

in 1997,
we commemorated the date

related to the 80th anniversary
of the burial of our Czar.

It was at exactly at the time
of the funeral in St. Petersburg.

And since then we commemorate
all these anniversaries:

Leonid Ilitch Brezhnev's death
in 1992

and the 40 years of Khrushchev's
deposition.

There was good in Imperial Russia
and in the Soviet Union.

And even only good!

With some shadows
as in anyone's life!

That's our country.

And we want everyone
to be proud of it

of the Imperial period,
of the Soviet Period

likewise the current period.

History is a good thing
and we live in a marvellous country.

History is a good thing
and we live in a marvellous country.

Action!

History is a good thing indeed and
allow for all types of nostalgia:

that of Jirinovsky,

whose eyes light up to occupy
Molotov and Kanganovich's officers

the bureaucrat and the butcher
of the Stalinist terror

that of the Russia that only wants
to look at its Soviet past fondly,

as the huge success of the
televised historical sagas testify

picturesquely reconstructing the
brutal 20's, 30's or 40's.

So I too, reconstruct
And I resume M. N. Roy's "Memoirs"

where he describes his arrival
in Petrogrand

in the spring of 1920

then his almost immediate
departure for Moscow:

"I was naturally very anxious

"to visit the cradle of the Revolution.

"It looked like a haunted place.

"The main thoroughfare
were practically deserted.

"The wooden pavement
of the famous Nevsky Prospect

'was torn in many places.

"Only two years ago, it was lined
with luxury shops and palatial houses.

"They were boarded up and closed.

"Across the river Neva

"stood the spire of the
St. Peter and St. Paul Basilica

"which had for a century guarded
the subterranean dungeons

"where hundreds of political
prisoners had languished.

"The bullet-riddled Winter Palace
presented a sombre spectacle.

"Before I had seen enourh,

"It was time to rush to the station
and catch the train for Moscow.

"A night's run and I was there.

"The vast open space
in front of the station

"was crowded with men in uniform;

"rickety carriages
pulled by emaciated horses

"Lurched on the cobble stones

"at the risk of being smashed
by motor cars

"which defied all usual
traffic regulations."

From Three Statations Square, a car
took the Roys towards the town.

While crossing the Moskova,

they passed the imposing cathedral
of Christ Saviour,

destroyed by Stalin in 1931,

to build a gigantic Soviet Palace
never finished,

and whose foundations were recycled
into an open-air swimming pool,

before Yeltsin decided to rebuid
the identical cathedral in 1994.

The mansion were Roy
was surprised to be met by Borodin,

is still there, beside the river

and now houses
the British Embassy.

In M. N. Roy's words:

"The ground-floor was
the private residence of Karakhan

"the Vice-Commissar
of Foreign Affairs.

"The upper storey was reserved
for distinguished State guests.

"Borodin conducted me
to a tall window

"and pushed aside the
thick pink satin curtain.

"The Moskwa was flowing
in front of the house;

"along the other bank there ran
a high wall behind which

"several huge golden domes
glistened in the afternoon sun.

"That was the Kremlin."

What is Soviet power?

What is the essence
of this new power

that still no one wants to
or can understand

in most countries?

It essence that attracts to it
the workers of all countries

in always greater numbers,

lies in the fact
that the state was previously led

by rich people and capitalists

and now for the first time,

the State is led by the very classes
that capitalism oppressed!

Even in the most democratic,

even in the freest of republics

while Capital dominates,

while the land remains
private property,

the State will always be led
by a small minority,

made up of capitalists or rich people.

For the first time in world

political power is organised
here in Russia,

so that only the workers,
only the peasants,

excluding the exploiters,

make up the mass organisations,
the Soviets,

to which all political power
is transferred.

"What is Soviet Power?: V. I Lenin,
recorded in the Kremlin, 1919.

Yes, hello... hello.

Yes.

Excuse me, but I have
a French film crew.

I speak and they film me.

Good, okay.

Is it for work?

First, there are these containers

that are very practical for
preservattion.

There are the questions of
temperature, humidity,

but we have very good
air-conditioning.

Everything is preserved here.

And carefully: if something
doesn't work, we repair it,

we change the dust jackets...
in short, we preserve.

But everything is recorded.

This is the only place guarding
all the Comintern's archives.

And is access easier today?

Up to 19191, access was limited
to institutions,

or to representatives
of the Communist parties.

After 1991, the circle was
of course enlarged.

There is free access to
many documents.

Researchers come here
to work in the reading room.

I imagine there's a lot more
of them than before?

Yes, lots more.

Of course, some documents
remain confidential.

They are in restricted access, for now.

M. N. Roy's face suddenly appears
on the rolls of microfilms

as he was in spring 1920
when he first met Lenin,

where the latter welcomed him,
exclaiming.

"You are so young!

"I expected a grey bearded
wise man from the East."

Which didn't stop him submitting to
comrade Roy,

for criticisms and suggestions
his theses on the colonies.

I return to the Russian Archives of
Social and Political History,

formerly the Institute of
Marxism-Leninsm,

formerly the Archives of the
Communist International,

fully aware that I won't have time

to see the documents kept here
regarding Roy.

Lazar Heifitz, a Comintern historian,

will speak to me, painfully
of the opening of these archives in 1991

when he discovered authentic pieces
undermining his previous works

based on the only accessible source
of Soviet historical fiction.

Lazar Heifitz welcomes me
with his son Viktor,

also a Comintern specialist

in their apartment in St. Petersburg.

That's their arrival in Petrograd?

Yes, at Moscow Station.

It's the delegates' welcome.
There's John Reed,

Philips, Roy.

Between their personal archives

and those preserved in Moscow
with all its bureaucratic ecstas,

You are taking quite a lot.

You're taking lots of files!

I'am taking all these. Yes...
Thanks you.

In one of the first files,
Mexico reappeared dramatically

with 2 letters addressed
to the Comintern,

in the summer of 1920
during the Congress.

The first, signed by an
anarcho-syndicalist leader

denies Roy any representation,
treating him as schemer,

a secret agent,
an ambitious politician,

whose social circle is incompatible
with working class aspirations.

In the second, Cervantes Lopez,

Secretary of the
Mexican Socialist Party,

denounces Roy's communist party
of being infiltrated by the police

and of having ties with the president
of a capitalist republic,

and of having ties with the president
of a capitalist republic,

mixing with Wall Street plutocrats.

Carranza knew Roy well.

Simply because the political circle
was very small,

a few hundred people.

But what does "knew well" mean?

Did Roy and Philips knew Lenin well?

There were one or two days,
in Petrograd,

when they could communicate
largely and at length.

But where is it recorded?
Nowhere!

It's an established fact:

Roy and Philip's presence

at the opening of the
2nd Congress of the Comintern.

But there's a subtle nuance:
there were lots of people

but only 4 strangeres!

Bombacci, Roy, Philips and Evely Roy!

The Comintern's problem

I think, at the very start,

was to be short of people!

Roy, among the few who were there,
and there were Indians already...

- Indians of the Tashkent group...
- Of course Roy stood out

perhaps as the most informed,
the most perceptive.

And above all,
we have to return to Borodin here,

Borodin had recommended him.

- Borodin had a fantastic influence!
- Yes, he was very powerful.

That's how it came about:

Borodin saw in this Mexican
Communist Party leader

still then socialist

a man who could prove to be useful

not so much in Mexico itself, as in Asia...

- In all the colonial East...
- Simply because he was Indian.

And an interesting person
with ideas

who could become the leader

of an anti-colonial, anti-British
movement in Asia.

"We hereby attest that comrade Roy
was sent to Tashkent

"to represent
the Executive Committee of the C. I

"on a mission in the East.

"All competent Soviet authorities
are asked to offer him assistance.

"Nikolai Bukharin."

M. N. Roy's first internationalist
mision:

he leaves for Soviet Turkestan,
aboard a special 27=wagon convoy,

trasporting arms, ammunition
and a war chest,

destined for the national
insurrections in the region.

He must organise a military school
in Tashkent

intended for the militant Islamists
who have taken refuge there,

to support them in their
anti-British battle and, incidentally,

convert them to Bolshevism.

Thus, one year after the foundation
of the Mexican Communist Paarty,

M. N. Roy is involved in creating
another communist party.

this time an exiled, Indian One,
but still as small:

7 members
including Roy and wife Evelyn.

It's n old idea:

attack England via India.

The first to think of it
were Czar Paul I and Napoleon.

They wanted to send an
expeditionary force to India

to attack England.

That was late 18th,
and early 19th century

then, in the 20th century, it was
the communist movement.

Theorectically if the Bolsheviks
had decided to organise

such an attack on England
via India,

it would have definitely been
via Tashket!

And from Tashkent, Roy built his
Indian revolution,

even trying to contact the most
eminent of bourgeois nationalists,

Gandhi,
who never responded.

The English did not really appreciate

these insurrectional plots
on their Empire's border.

They put pressure on the Soviets

while negotiating
a major trade agreement.

The Tashkent School is dismantled
in March 1921

and leads to the creation
in Moscow

of the Communist University
for the Toilers of the East

where Roy becomes one of
the directors

and Evelyn, one of the teachers.

I look for the building

somewhere behind Pushkin Square
and the Rossia cinema

which has become a casino,
cluttered with sad neon lights

from where a voice
erupts praising by loudspeaker,

the place's comfort and luxury.

I end up finding the supposed house

where apprentice revolutionaries
from Asia

Including Ho Chi Minh in 1922

Followed courses on the
history of the worker's movement

and insurrectional military
technic.

from the end of Summer 1921

Roy feels restricted by
his academic duties.

He complains to Karl Radek
and Grigori Zinoviev

the Secretary and President of
the international

about how his Indian students are
demoralized

by the lack of clothing and food

but above all by the uselessness
he feels, staying in Moscow

when a new propaganda base
is needed

to develop the nascent
Indian communism.

He suggests Germany.

In April 1922,
his request is finally heard:

Roy and Evelyn move to Berlin.

They publish a journal there:

"The Vanguard
of Indian independence"

that they manage to send illegally
to India.

It's during this stay in Berlin

that Roy becomes
attached to the country

to its language and way of thinking.

He weaves links
with communist leaders

including August Thalheimerand
Heinrich Brandler

who will become future alias in the
anti-stalinist battle.

But for now, Roy is a faithful agent
of the international

ready for all missions.

in the middle of the bills,
I come across this spy accessory:

Roy's code, his Coded alphabet,

allowing him to correspond secretly
with Moscow.

in 1923 he was in Berlin

for the preparation of the
German revolution.

He is in the group preparing for the
November Revolution: Roy, Gouralsky...

Bela Kun, Tukhachevsky...

Tukhachevsky had been there a while
and Stassova too.

it was a large group that
he was in direct contact with.

He was there precisely because
of his contacts in Germany.

And then there were other objectives.

Berlin was an important centre
for Indian immigration.

They had a committee.

There was the possibility of using
these Indians in Berlin

to organise in India
a movement of considerable size.

"Paris was an excellent centre
for our work for 6 months.

"We did a lot there,
as you'll see in my report.

"We were in close and constant
contact with India,

"where our influence on the national
liberation movement

"was appreciable a reinforced.

"That's why the English decided to
demolish our Paris centre,

"and drive me back, where I couldn't
maintain contact with India.

"I'm afraid I'll no longer be able

"to stay in any European country.

"I wait your instructions.
with communist greetings Roy."

- When did he write that?
- in 1925.

M. N. Roy bases in Europe
are dismantled,

he returns to Moscow.

But Evelyn, this time, will not follow him.

The caos of the secret lifestyle,
takes its toll on their marriage,

she goes back to the USA

in 1926. Roy reaches the peak
of his duties within the comintern

becoming a member of the Presidium,
the Secretariat, the Orgburo

end of the editorship of the
Communist International revue.

He's at all the demonstrations:

his tall silhouette seen hovering
behind Kalinin,

Stalin, Vorochilov and Trotsky
at Dzerjinsky's funeral

the head of the Cheka,
the political police.

Here he is an apparatchik
in. Moscow,

when he wanted to be the
man of action in India.

And finally, Stalin sends him
to China

to apply is contradictory directives

faced with Chang Kai-Chek's
Kuomintang Nationalists.

The latter, ends up
eliminating bloodily

his allies from the
Chinese Communist Party

and will send back home
the powerless Soviet advisors

among them an old acquaintance:
Mikhail Borodin.

"Canton,
Soviet consulate 1927"

Borodin represented the Soviet Union...

- He was a soviet citizen
- ...and the Party.

While the Comintern was
represented by Roy.

in China that all ended,
Independently of Roy,

independently of Borodin
and our military advisors

with Chang kai-Shek's
Coup d'etat.

Even if Roy accelerated it a little.

He acted like an elephant
in a China shop

calling for the immediate
creation of Soviets!

in fact, his position was closer
to Trotsky's

but he also collaborated
with Bukharin's close associates.

Roy wasn't excluded
for being Trotskyite,

but for being right-wing!

it's quite simple: at the end of
the 20's, early 30's

the most shining figures,

- the most Independent...
- and who couldn't be brought into line!

Togliatti was totally independent
but he knew to stop himself.

Roy wouldn't stop!

According to the customs
established in Lenin's time,

which were not simple neither

they considered that they had
the right to speak, thing

and act, as they liked.

For that,
one could criticize them,

but without the sanctions
of the apparatus.

But the situation swiftly changed.

Most didn't understand,
Roy included,

what meant the Stalinisation and
bureaucratisation of Comintern.

Confidential
Personal

To comrade Stalin

Attached is the resume of the letter
we received from Comrade Roy.

strictly confidential
Resume of the letter from com. Roy

"Berlin, 9 November 1928

"Dear Comrades,

"The intrigues of some people
on the comintern on E. C. apparatus

"to whom for some reason
unknown to me,

"I am a Persona non grata,

"have been successful in shutting me
out of all effective political work.

"are virtues essential
for a true revolutionary.

"After a revolutionary career of
over 20 years

"and with the enemy
hunting me down,

"I am treated by the international
as if I were not worth 2 cents.

"Dear Comrades,

"I consider it my revolutionary duty
to express my views, nevertheless

"In the absence of fearless criticism
of our defects

"and free expression of views,

"the International suffers from
intellectual stagnation,

"which I have heard Comrade Bukharin
often complain.

"This stagnation will not be broken

"by throwing out those who recognise
the situation as deplorable

and endeavour to improve it

"To return to India,
under any condition,

"prepared to meet
the inevitable consequences

it is the only way left to me

dear comrade

I must speak openly

"and do not know
to whom else I could do so.

"with communist greetings,
M. N. Roy."

just after, in the same folder,
two letters:

a first that confusedly
accused M. N. Roy

of wanting to steal a document
in an empty office

and yet for all to see;

then another criticizing his poor
Marxist-Leninist knowledge

and of daring to compare
his works to those of Marx or Lenin.

It ends with a phrase that
makes clear the benefit

a false trial would soon have been
able to draw from this:

"When asked for news of his health
he replied that he was sick

"physically and politically

"it was impossible,
during the discussion

"to decipher a more accurately
the meaning of these words.

"19 June 1928"

in fact this photograph
was always published like that.

it was famous.

But I think it was
retouched so much

so that this face was no longer
visible.

it could be even framed
a bit larger,

as all the rest was retouched.

These faces should not be seen.

It was to look pretty much like that.

- Yes, you could see the column...
- The column and Lenin in full.

All The rest was retouched.

- Who survived on this photo?
- Well, from left to right

Karakhan...

Karakhan was shot,

Radek, short,

Bukharin, short,

Lashevich, a Military Chief,
was shot,

Zinoviev was shot,

Philips was expelled
from the American CP,

Our hero is hidden...
Roy was expelled from the party,

Evelyn Roy, perhaps you can tell us
what happened to her?

She died in the U.S.A.
in the 70's.

Bombacci was expelled
from the Italian CP.

And hung alongside Mussolini!

Berzin was shot.

Shot, deported, disappeared,

exiled, these militants from
start of the Communist International

that M. N. Roy got to know
more intimately,

during informal meeting at the
Comintern's residence,

the Lux Hotel, whose heavy facede
still stands on Tverskaya Street.

It's with a nostalgic account of
these drunken revolutionary nights

that his unfinished "Memoirs" end:

"The midnight surpper parties
usually turned out to be very lively,

And sometimes lasted
until the early morning hours

"It was on those occasions
that important Communists

"from different parts of the world

"got acquainted with each other
as human beings.

"Trotsky as a rule
avoided such occasions

"where personal in habitations
necessarily broke down.

"Stalin was still not well very well-known

"outside the inner circles
of the Russian party

"and had little to do with
the Communist International.

View was a conventional petit-bourgeois

In his personal habits

but bukharin, raidak and some other
less known Russian leaders

Usually join us in
our night social gathering

which were As a rule and
envivened by singing and dancing

However had a opportunity
of living in the hotel luX

Indore early days of the revolution
must cherish the memory

"as one of the richest experiences
of his life."

I return alone to the archives

to settle the filming rights

and I can't resist stealing
some last shots of empty corridors,

empty exhibition rooms

Of this place keeping the memory of
the Communist International

that many people here don't want
to know anything more about.

Were they too free
these men and women

Who initiated the final struggle
to emancipate humanity,

Which Stalin crushed

Worried as a good bourgeois

Of the shaking

With which the world revolution
threatened the old order?

What are you doing here
with the camera?

What have you go to smile about?
There's nothing to smile about!

How are we doing to deal with this?

Run, run as fast as you can
from this country,

It's the only solution for M. N. Roy.

"Political sick", as the letter
denounced him,

he is attacked for
his theory of decolonisation,

Judged right wing and reformist
when he predicted that the British

preferring a new market
to a turbulent Colony,

Will eventually grant India
its independence.

"Physically sick",

because he had an ear infection
that no one cures.

He wanted to treat it in Germany,
but could not get his passport back.

Thanks to his Swiss mistress
Leuise Geissler,

and with Bukharin's in discrete
support,

Roy manages to leave
the country with her

in April 1928 on boarrd a flight
for Berlin

He will never return to Moscow

and will be definitely excluded
from the Comintern in 1929.

PART II
GERMANY, INDIA

The Stations of East Berlin
roll past, dulled by the night,

the last station before
the town's Western border,

So hard to cross in the past.

Today the crossing from East to West
is imperceptible,

to the soft, swaying rhythm
of the train.

Could M. N. Roy have imagined

That the dream of freedom
he cherished with his Comrades

Was going to end in the building
of a wall,

Cutting through the town,
his well-loved town Berlin

Berlin, where he joined his Comrades

Heinrich Brandler
and August Thalheimer,

within the KPO,
Kommunistiche Partei Opposition,

the Communist opposition to Stalin
created in November 1928.

Berlin, whose effervescence,
intellectual and political he tasted

as well as moral freedom.

He continues his relationship
with Louise Geissler,

the escape from Moscow,

his companion since the
China adventure,

at the same time as he falls in love
with Ellen Gotschalk,

a left-wing militant,
24 year old,

born in Paris of an American father
and a German mother

and who he marries
in Bombay in 1937.

Dr. Theodor Bergmann is one of the
last eyewitnesses

of the anti-Stalin and anti-Nazi
engagement,

by the Communist Opposition,
and M. N. Roy,

conscious of an imminnent German
catastrophe,

after which nothing would be
as before.

Theodor Bergmann joined the KPO
in 1929,

while he was still an adolescent.

I meet him in Stuttgart,
76 years later.

"Land of Poets and Thinkers"

Then I meet Kris Manjapra,

a Canadian historian
of Indian origin

come to discuss his research subject
with Dr. Bergmann:

Indian revolutionaries in Berlin
in the 20's and 30's.

I realised to whay extent
Roy's position was original then:

inventing the third-wworld in advance

while rejecting both the Communist
dogma and the nationalist impulse.

M. N. Roy knows what he's risking.

Despite Brandler and
Thalheimer's attempts to keep him

he leaves Berlin for Istanbul
reaching Baghdad

then Karachi by road

and Bombay
where he arrived in December 1930

The British don't take long to spot
and arrest him.

At the Kanpur Court,

he is condemnted to 12 years
imprisonment

for communist conspiracy against
the Empire.

Calcutta, Moscow,
Tashkent, Peking...

Some of Roy's lost worlds
appear on the twinkling screen

as my aeroplane is due to land

at the International airport
Indira Gandhi in Delhi.

India, where the story
of a free man begins and ends:

Manabendra Nath Roy.

I'm not very good with faces:
will I recognise Hari Vasudevan

this Indian historian, the first
to talk to me of Roy

and show me his photo?

He's arranged for us to meet
at the Indian International Centre

a sort of dormant club, with
undefine activities

a1nd ideal decor for a Spy novel.

Could he be this gentleman
in the grey suit?

No I don't know that face.

But here comes Hari hurting in.
I've no trouble recognising him,

as he greets me with
a "hello Volodia!"

thundered in Russian,

before leading us
towards the dining room.

I'm quite pleased to reminisce
about M. N. Roy

In a place with such English manners...

Excuse me Madam,

...that he wouldn't have denied...

Please Sir,

...In his inevitable gentleman's style

that doesn't diminish the bohemian
cosmopolite of Mexico,

nor the restrictive Bolshevik

nor the modesty of his lifestyle
in India after leaving prison.

I come back the next day
to the Indian International Centre,

to talk this time to Dr. Sareen,

historian of Indian revolutionary
movements abroad.

Virendranath Chattopadhyay, one of
the leaders of the Indians in Berlin,

Abani Mukherjee, companion in the
battles in Tashkent and Moscow,

Crushed by Stalin's machine

While Roy will be confined in India.

Among his prison writings

there is one I think of when
I visit the tomb of Humayun,

2nd emperor of the Mughal dynasty.

In this short essay,
"The Historical Role of Islam",

M. N. Roy exposes the civilising
importance of the Muslim invasions

thanks to it Scholars
and philosopher precusors

Of spectical, materialistic,
even rationalist thinking

which confirms on Islam its true
historic role according to Roy:

to undermine the basis
of all religion!

Armed with his heretical Paradox,

he refused to favour either Indian
Hindus or Muslims

urging them to take from Islam
its Enlightment's humanist lesson,

rather than its dogmatic and
obscurantist decline.

To say the least,
Roy was barely heard.

Modern India will be born in
the blood of inter-communal fights

between Hindus and Muslims

Which, in 1947, will cause more than
250,000 death,

and force almost 10 million people
into exodus,

Of the newly-created Pakistani
frontier.

Religious conflicts that up to today
threaten the country's stability

as much internally,

with frequent provocations
by the extremists of both sides,

as externally

tensions with Pakistan have already
provided the pretext for 3 wars,

In 1949, 1965 and 1971.

For now, India is at peace

and celebrates, a few days
Republic Day,

Commemorating the declaration
of the Indian Republic

On 26 January 1950.

But it's another anniversary
that causes me to leave Delhi

and arrive, after a night train
at the town of Dehradun

Wherer on 25 January 1954
Roy died, exactly 50 years ago.

I was hoping for a gathering
some sort of commemoration

In vain

I question the employee at the
Dehradun tourist office

Who has obviously never heard
of a M. N. Roy

and takes me for a Crank.

In the public garden
in the town centre

the statue of the Nation's
Father take pride of place.

And, a few paths away

stands the statue of another
of Roy's political opponents,

Subhash Chandra Bose,
leader of the Congress Party,

Who, while he also opposed Gandhi
on non-violence,

took a position opposed
to Roy's during the 2nd World War

Creating an Indian Liberation Army

for which he obtain support from
Japan, Nazi Germany

and Italian fascists.

Neither and orange flower garland
nor a chubby statue of M. N Roy:

the hermit of Dehradun no longer
exist for anyone here.

I end up finding his address
on an outlying Street, Mohini Road

then his house,

No. 13, at the end of a garden.

That's where he moved in 1938 with
Ellen Gottschalk,

now Ellen Roy,

and where he lived
to the end of his life.

The house's current occupant
welcomes me warmly.

He introduces himself:
S. N. Puri.

I ask him if know
M. N. Roy's story.

He Smiles and leads me
to the terrace of this white house

that I recognize with emotion
from the photo I've seen

the only truly identified home
of a Vagabond life.

Despite his 98 years,

The Royist enthusiasm of S. N. Puri

has remained as vigorous as during
their first meeting in 1936.

S. N. Puri's grandson,
a young entrepreneur has joined us.

He'd like to turn the house

formerly headquarters of
the "Renaissance Institute"

created by M. N. Roy

Into a computing school.

He tries to convince me that
he's interested in Roy's philosophy

In so far as it is constitutes
a new fascism

a fascism where all would not be
as bad as they say.

I am stunned

and try in vain to refute
an assertion so contrary

to Roy's commitments

In his prison writings,

He was already wary on
the complicity between fascist ideology

and Hindu "spiritual nationalism".

He wrote

"Hitler's Germany has almost all
the spiritual characteristics

"to guarantee it has sympathisers

"among the most orthodox
nationalist Indians"

The small white house on Mohini Road
suddenly seems fragile to me,

its well-kept garden and
the memories that still haunt it

but for how long?

Those of Roy and Ellen Gottschalk,
tireless humanist militants

those of the dear friends
who came here, like Ruth Fischer,

figure of German communism

Who posed on the terrace
with one of the house's many cats.

On Bengal and Calcutta road
I stop at Banares

the scared city on the banks
of the Ganges.

The evening,
I walk along the ghats there

I enter the backstreets and cross
the hurried funeral processions,

carrying the bare corpses,
swaddled in bright colours

to the cremation logs.

On Dasasvamedha road
there's a more frenzied procession:

decorated tanks,
followed by young men dancing

brusque and slender.

I don't know where to take shelter
from all this fervour,

that scares me a bit,

and I land up in a restaurant

Perched on the roof of a house
along the Ganges.

Like a secret talisman
for crossing the exalted crowds

I recall M. N. Roy's brutal phrases
regarding Hinduism,

described as the
"ideology of social slavery"

whose so-called spiritual heritage

had resulted in "political slavery
for nearly a 1000 Years,

"economic backwardness, intellectual
inertia and cultural degradation."

The ignorant and repressed people

are the "product of a decayed
civilization

"awaiting a much delayed burial."

Roy continues:

"This country needs a kemal Pasha,

"to chop off the ridiculous
tufts on the heads;

"to make the wearing of mustaches
punishable as culpable homicide;

"to prohibit the irritating chanting
of rigmarole

"in a language which few understand."

But who in India was ready to listen?

Today what still strike me,
and above all here in Banares,

Is the feeling of a lack of history:

the rite that spreads to all
that surrounds it,

The bodies, gestures, attitudes,

the way of dressing.

From his youth
as a nationalist conspirator,

he retained this taste for solitude
and intrigue

Choosing these cremation places
for his long meditative walks

as for the secret meeting places
of his groups of insurgents.

An over-worldly revolutionary
in Mexico,

a Bolshevik, far too out of control
in Mexico,

a communist, trough anti-Stalin
in Berlin,

member of the Congress Party

but anti-nationalist and
anti-Gandhi, in India:

Roy's position had always
condemned him to isolation.

This solitude,

Which while it can be that
of poets, philosophers, fools,

was no doubt incompatible
with the ample political,

democratic and radical movement

that Roy planned to found
on his release from prison in 1936.

A Peaceful but absolute reforms
of Indian society that M. N. Roy,

despite the strict restrictions imposed
on him for reading and writing,

had drawn up, during his
6 year in detention

with the European Renaissance and
Enlightment as his horizons.

This man,
alone in a huge country,

Would he be heard by history
and age-old traditions?

I arrived at the time given
by Hari Vasudevan

In front of the
"Renaissance publishers" shop sign

formerly headquarters of Roy's
Renaissance Institute.

I find the door closed.

So I go to the Indian Coffee House

where Roy often dropped by

he, the connoisseur of large cafes,
since Sanborn's in Mexico

or the Romanische Cafe in Berlin.

Here, he found collaborators
and friends

including Samaren Roy,

who was 20 year old in 1939
when they met

during a discussion on the Theory
of Relativity.

Samaren, surprised that a political
leader was interested in physics,

heard Ellen Roy reply,

that Albert Einstein was a friend
in the Berlin years.

He was one of those
with Nehru and Henri Barbusse,

who protested to
the British authorities

against, Roy's prison conditions.

it's in his house in Behala, near Calcutta

where I meet Samaren Roy.

I'm accompanied by Jharna Bose.

It was with Jharna in Paris that
I met Hari Vasudevan

and heard of M. N. Roy
for the first time.

1940: M. N. Roy supports
the "anti-fascist war" and the British.

And here's the famous photo again.

What I discover for the first time,
however,

is this version of the escape
from Moscow,

that Samaren Roy had
from Louise Geissler's sister:

At the larger book fair in Calcutta,
I daren't believe it:

but I come across a
"Renaissance Publishers" stand,

with a fantastic selection.

Besides the most recent works,
like Samaren Roy's studies

or Roy's last biography
to date by Sibnarayan Ray,

copies of "The Marxian Way"
are on sale,

a Royist quarterly
published between 1945 and 1949

and even a tract by the
Radical Democratic Party

for the 1946 election.

I buy a load of dusty books,
that I buy into straight away.

And the political plan conceived
by M. N. Roy

appears to me in all its excess.

In a country where the social classes
seem fixed foreve,

made immutable by an ancestral
caste system,

he imagines a fully participative
democracy,

animated by Citizens Committees,
elected in each locality.

Organs of discussion and power,

the committees would be places for
the political education of citizens,

invited to fill the
decision-making roles,

with no consideration of class,
cast or religion.

Persuaded that the end of the war

Would be quickly followed
by Indian Independence

In 1944 he drafts
a constitutional plan for India,

and works on a plan for economic
development

The "People's plan";
socialist Inspired.

To carry out his reforms, he leaves
the left-wing of the Congress Party

and found the
Radical democratic party

But the Royist failure in
the 1946 general elections

and the brutality of
the Independence process in 1947,

end the hopes of an institutional
overthrow of the established order.

Disillusioned with political actions,
Roy dissolved his party in 1948

and began his last battle
intellectual and philosophical.

He created the Radical
Huminist Movement,

placing educational and liberty
for the individual

as a precondition, and Central to
the project for social emancipation.

I hadn't expected such a Russian
ambience in the home of Purobi Roy

historian of Soviet Indian relations

Who welcomes us in her house
in the centre of Calcutta.

We drink tea there
served with jam like at the datcha.

and while she tells me her memories
of the putsch attempt in August 1991.

that give power to Boris Yeltsin,

I realise that the place he
occupied opposite Gorbachev

Isn't unlike that of Subhas Chandra Bose
opposite Roy:

On the one side decisive politics,

Sometimes brutal,
cynical but popular;

On the other the Idealist which
in fact will never be forgiven

for attacking the institutional
values and power as and just as it was.

Ah, but there's Bose! There's still Bose!
there's lot of them!

It's a fan club!

He seems a little military,
all the same.

My mother adored him.

But women adore Bose?
it's extraordinary!

- No, it is not extra ordinary. it's normal!
- yes?

Oh, I must have lost a pearl.

Oh! just now, do you think?

A. Viswanathan, film director
asks if I can come and help

to rehearse the Russian replies
of Tom stoppard's "Travesties".

I don't resist the pressure
of meeting a Bengali Lenin.

It is the same 20th century,

That we have lived,
from one continent to the other?

And if learning has
a Bengali action here,

Roy himself become
the most germanic of Indians

as confirmed to me by Sibnarayan Ray,
writer and essayist,

Collaborator and friend of Roy
then of Ellen

Who starts our interview with a quote
by Eric formm,

Psychoanalyst, close to
the Frankfurt School.

We agreed, with Samaren Roy

for him to show us the places
of Roy's youth,

at the time when
he was still called N. Batthacharya

Son of a Brahmin
of the Calcutta region.

But Samaren couldn't make it.
He entrusted me to a friend,

Who took his place as a guide.

I slowly discovered that the friend
only vaguely knew our itinerary

and nothing on Roy's history.

So we drove across
suburbs and dusty villages

asking our way to
uncertain destinations

that we miraculously
ended up reaching.

A group of village people,
neighbours, passes by

everyone come to help me.

They showed me a street, a house:

Is that where Roy was born?
where he lived?

No one knew,
but all had something to say.

And I hardly believe my eyes when
we reached Harinabhi's School

The place of young Narendranath's
first engagements.

In 1905 he organised a demonstration

against the partition of
Bengal by the British

Which had him immediately expelled.

Of these years, he later wrote:

"When, as a schoolboy boy of 14 years,
I started my political life

"I wanted to be free.

"Independence, complete and absolute,
is a modern idea.

The old-style revolutionaries
thought in terms of Liberty.

"At that time, we had not read Marx.

We knew nothing of the
proletariat's existence.

"However, lots of ended our life
in prison or at the gallows.

"And it wasn't the proletariat who
pushed them forward.

"They were not conscious of
the class struggle.

"They did not dream of communism.

"But they reponded to an ardent
desire for revolt

"against the intolerable
living condition.

"It's with this with spirit that I started
my political life.

"That's where I draw my inspiration

"rather than from 3 volumes of Capital
or the 300 volumes of Karl Marx."

I've returned to Delhi
for a last meeting.

I must meet V. M. Tarkunde,
magistrate and lawyer

former leader of Roy's Radical
Democratic Party

and co-signatory of his people's plan
for Economic Development.

Staunch defender of rights

he remains faithful to the preceps
of Radical Humanism

and welcomes me with great kindness

accompanied by his sister and
a family friend.

In his theoretical summary
"Reason, Romanticism and Revolution"

Roy writes:

"History is a record of human activities.

"Political institutions were
created by man.

"Yet these creations of man
have reduced man to nothingness.

"The complete subordination of
the creative to his creation

"is the core of the present crisis.

"Therefore, a humanist revival,

"that is the restoration of man

"in his proper place of
primary and sovereighty,

"is the only way out of the crisis."

In Delhi, I visit the observatory
of Jai Singh,

enligtened Sovereign and reputable
astronomer

Who built several fantastic
structures in the 18th century,

borrowing from the Muslim and western
astronomical knowledge of his time.

Today, few know there exact use

Other than the children who use
them as carrousels.

Roy's struggle dreaming of an
emancipated humanity

lost or not, forgotten or not,

still call for new fighters.

Jai Singh's ramps
and mysterious sundial

as well as our current telescopes

Observe the same stars,
unreachable,

but which light our nights with
the same fire.

transcribed by rforrudy