M. N. Roy

From Philosopedia

Roy, M(anabendra) N(ath) (21 March 1887 – 24 January 1954)

Narendra Nath Bhattacharya was the son of Dinabandhu Bhattacharjee, a teacher of Sanskrit in Arbelia Village of 24 Parganas, West Bengal.

After attending school in Arbelia, he moved with his family to Kodalia in 1898, where he studied at the Harinavi Anglo-Sanskrit School until 1905. As a young man, he organised a volunteer group to nurse the sick, particularly those suffering from epidemics and famines. He was inspired by the writings of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and Swami V iveknanda. At the time of Bengal's partition, he came in contact with militant nationalists. In 1905, he was suspended from school for attending a meeting addressed by Surendranath Banerjea, in violation of an order by the school's headmaster. Later on he was introduced to the Anushilan Samiti of Aurobindo Ghosh.

Contents 1 The Young Revolutionary With Many Names 2 Roy's First Marriage and Flight to Mexico 3 The Roys in Russia and On to Germany 4 Roy's Break With Communism 5 Gandhi and Roy 6 Ellen Gottschalk, His Second Wife 7 Bibliography 8 Ramendra Nath on Roy 9 Views of Roy by Innaiah Narisetti 10 His Last Days

The Young Revolutionary With Many Names

After passing the Entrance Examination of the newly started National University (started by Aurobindo). he studied engineering and chemistry in the Bengal Technical Institute. With his underground group, he experimented in bomb-making and practiced shooting in the Sundarbans. The group robbed extensively for revolutionary purposes.

At the age of 18, Narendra joined a revolutionary underground movement that fought for Indian national liberation and became an associate of Jatindranath Mukherjee or Begha Jatin (Jatindra Nath Mukhopadhyay), a legendary Indian revolutionary. In 1910, involved in underground activities in Howrah-Sibpur, he and his group were arrested and charged in what became known as the Howrah-Sibpur Conspirace Case, 1910-1911. The trial took over a year, both Jatin and Narendra were placed in confinement, and when allowed to leave Narendra travelled in the garb of a sanyasi until 1914. The revolutionary organizations extended their activities to the Far East, the western part of the United States, and Germany, forming various revolutionary committees.

A 1915 armed insurrection against the British failed, and during the First World War he left for Batavia (by using the fictitious name Charles A. Martin - other of his fictitious names were C. Martin, Hari Sing, Mr. White, D. Garcia, Dr. Mahmood, and Mr. Banerjee). He then fled to Shanghai where he sought German arms for Indian revolutionaries. That also was unsuccessful, so he toured in Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Philippines, and America in search of armed assistance for the Indian revolution. In Palo Alto, California, he changed his name from Charles A. Martin to Manabendra Nath Roy to evade British intelligence.

Traveling to Japan as Mr White, he met Rashbehari Bose in Tokyo. He also met the exiled Chinese President Dr Sun Yat-Sen, who helped arrange that he would receive ammunition supplies from two Chinese governors near the Assam border that would be paid by German sources. He went to China and the German Ambassador in Peking decided to send him to Berlin to sign the contract with German authorities. He arranged a passport in the name of Father Charles Martin in order that he would go to France, then to the United States in order to study theology at Notre Dame University.

On 14 June 1916, Narendra arrived in San Francisco, newspapers declaring that "a dangerous Hindu revolutionary, German spy, lands in USA." He quickly left his hotel and went to Stanford University to meet Professor Dhanagopal Mukherjee, the younger brother of a co-revolutionary, who changed Naren's name, introducing him to Dr. David Jordan, the university's progressive president, as Manabendra Nath Roy.

Roy's First Marriage and Flight to Mexico

At Dr. Jordan's house, Roy met his future bride, Evelyn Trent. Later, they married in New York and lived in the house of Lala Lajpat Rai, where he met American revolutionaries and studied Marxism in the city's public libraries.

In 1917 when America declared war on Germany and Indian revolutionaries were rounded up as possible German spies, the Roys fled to Mexico with an introductory letter from Dr. Jordan. There, he met Mexico's War Minister, the President of the Republic, and leading Mexican intellectuals. Delivering lectures and writing articles on India and the Monroe Doctrine, he learned to speak Spanish, French, and German. Agreeing with Mexican President Venustiano Carranza's anti-U.S. stand, Roy became the president's non-official advisor. By August 1918, Roy had organized the Socialist Party Conference.

When Michael Borodin, an emissary of Lenin, was sent to the Americas, he contacted the Roys, who introduced him to President Carranza, leading to the setting up of diplomatic relations between Mexico and the USSR. Consequently, Borodin communicate with Moscow and briefed Lenin in detail about Roy's activities. Lenin then invited Roy to participate in the Second World Congress of the Communist International (CI), to be held in Moscow during July-August 1920. Roy reached Berlin on his way to Moscow and, during his stay in Berlin, he learned about the conflicts within the ideology of Marxism, foreseeing the defeat of the German Communist Party and the rise of militarism.

The Roys in Russia and On to Germany

Roy joined Third World Congress of Communist International in August 1921. In 1922, His India in Transition was published in four languages, and he founded Toiler's University in Moscow.

In 1923, shifting his headquarter to Berlin, he started a pen-revolution for India. He published periodicals titled The Vanguard, about Indian Independence, and he sent copies to India, where the journals were immediately banned by the Indian government. He then changed the title to Advanced Guard, which also was banned. Next, he published The Masses, which also was banned.

While in Berlin, Roy wrote Revolution and Counter-Revolution in China and Decline and Fall of British Empire in German.

During the lifetime of Lenin, Roy attained all the top positions of the Communist International, maintaining his influence for three years after Lenin's death in 1924. As a joint-secretary of Chinese Commission of Communist International he was sent to China to settle a dispute between the Communists and Kuo Minh Tung. Roy had differences of opinion with Borodin and the Chinese Communist party in settling the dispute. Ultimately, Chiang Kai Sheik ruthlessly suppressed the Communist movement. On his return to Moscow, Roy fell ill and was taken to Berlin for treatment. In December 1929, in his absence, he was placed outside the Communist International, for contributing to a Communist opposition newspaper.

Roy's Break With Communism

For having opposed policies of the Communist International that its 6th Congress had adopted, Roy returned to India. He arrived under the name of Dr. Mahmud in 1930, but in July 1931 he was captured in Bombay, tried on charges of sedition, placed in a Kanpur Jail, and sentenced to be jailed for 12 years, which, on appeal, was reduced to 6 years hard labor in jail.

During the period from 1932 to 1936, he compiled a multi-volumed work under the title Philosophical Consequences of Modern Science.

From jail in 1937 to 1945, he wrote Materialism, 'The Historical Role of Islam, Heresies of 20th Century, Science and Superstition, Man and Nature, From Savagery to Civilization, Nationalism: An Antiquated Cult, The Philosophy of Fascism, The Ideal of Indian Womanhood, Letters from Jail, Memoir of a Cat, Science and Philosophy, and India's Message.

On his release in November 1936, Roy joined the Indian National Congress (INA), organizing the League of Radical Congressman. He supported Subhas Chandra Bose to become the President of the Indian National Congress. His differences on war policy with the Congress High Command made him and his followers resign from Congress and form the Radical Democratic Party. He supported the Allied Powers in World War II and vigorously supported war efforts because he considered declining imperialism a lesser evil to Fascism, which to him was a menace to mankind.

In 1937 started the journal, Independent India.

Between 1940 and 1946, Roy wrote India and War, Alphabet of Fascist Economy, Draft Constitution of Free India, People's Freedom, Poverty or Plenty, The Problems of Freedom, INA and the August Revolution, Jawaharlal Nehru: The Last Battle for Freedom. He conducted study camps at Dehradun in 1940 and wrote The Scientific Politics. In 1946, after another study camp, he wrote New Orientation, advocatin that elections be held on a non-party basis to form Constituent Assembly, one that would frame the constitution of Independent India on a federal basis and recognise the rights of the minority communities and the regions. He advocated complete decentralisation of power and the prevention of corruption.

In a 1947 book, The Russian Revolution, Roy critically analysed the events of USSR since 1917.

In 1948, he revised Marxism in his two books, Beyond Marxism and New Humanism. Also in 1948, he abolished the Radical Democratic Party and founded Radical Humanist Association. He also founded the Indian Renaissance Institute and edited the quarterly journal The Humanist Way, which originally was named as The Marxian Way. He also wrote Reason, Romanticism and Revolution. He was unable to complete writing his memoirs.

Roy, in 1940, founded the Radical Democratic Party, which was intended as an alternative, among others, to the Communists. In the 1950s, he was a correspondent (India) for The Humanist, and he edited in India the Radical Humanist. Also, he was on the first Board of Directors in 1952 of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), addressing the group at their initial Congress in Amsterdam.

Gandhi and Roy

Gandhi and Roy had different views about religion and politics. Gandhi believed that the two cannot be separated. Critics point out that his hope for the building up of a Ramarajya led to the formation of a separate Muslim state, considered by many to have happened with negative results.

Gandhi was more in accord with Roy's Radical Humanism view that political and economic power should be decentralized - critics found that Roy, however, was more rational and scientific in stating the ways in which the decentralization could be put into effect.

Ellen Gottschalk, His Second Wife

A German by birth, Gottschalk was one of the leaders in India of a radical or secular humanism. She wrote Radical Democracy and, with Sib Narayan Ray, In Man’s Own Image.

While Roy was in prison, she provided him with books, and his letters to her from jail, subsequently published as Letters From Jail (1943) reveal his thoughts during those years. After his release from jail on 20 November 1936, she joined him in Bombay in March 1937 and the two were married that month.

On a 1955 visit to New York City, she was entertained by New York University Professor George Axtelle, spoke of her editorship of the weekly The Radical Humanist, and confided that she regretted having been unable to have voted for Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Party nominee for President, whom she admired for his philosophic outlook.

Roy, who broke a story about the Communist (Chinese) invasion, was murdered soon afterwards. At one time the Communists were an important radical force in the country, and some suspected she had been murdered by them. However, a police investigation ruled at the time that she was murdered by a common thief attracted by her artificial jewelry.

Bibliography

• India in Transition (1922)
• The Future of Indian Politics (1926)
• Revolution and Counter-revolution in China (1930)
• India and War
• Alphabet of Fascist Economy
• Draft Constitution of Free India
• People's Freedom
• Poverty or Plenty
• The Problems of Freedom
• INA and the August Revolution
• Jawaharlal Nehru: The Last Battle for Freedom
• Radical Democracy
• The Scientific Politics
• New Orientation
• The Russian Revolution
• Beyond Communism (1987)
• New Humanism
• Reason, Romanticism and Revolution (1989)

Ramendra Nath on Roy

A journalist and Russellian from Rochester, New York, Phil Ebersole, reviewed Ramendra Nath's M. N. Roy's New Humanism and Materialism, writing the following in the May 2004 issue of The Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly:

Dr. Ramendra Nath. M.N. Roy’s New Humanism and Materialism. Buddhiwadi Foundation (216-A, Sri Khrisnapuri, Patna-800001, India), 2001. Pp. 144. 100 rupees/US $5.

Bertrand Russell is a fascinating subject for study because he was not only a significant thinker in his own right, but was also involved with so many of the controversies and key people of his time. The same might be said of the Indian thinker M.N. Roy (1887-1954).

Roy’s intellectual odyssey took him from militant Hindu nationalist to communist to humanist and radical democrat. He was acquainted with Einstein and Gramsci, collaborated with Lenin, inspired Nehru, and was a political opponent of Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek and Gandhi. I confess I was ignorant of Roy’s life and ideas until I read Dr. Ramendra Nath’s new book, M.N. Roy’s New Humanism and Materialism, published by the Buddhiwadi Foundation.

M.N. Roy’s New Humanism and Materialism provides a succinct and clear exposition of Roy’s thought and a brief but fascinating sketch of his life. Roy became an active nationalist at the age of 14 and left India in 1915 in a quest to buy arms for a planned uprising against British rule. He wandered through most of eastern Asia and then came to the United States, where he discovered the thought of Karl Marx in the New York Public Library. In 1919, he was in Mexico and participated in the founding of the Mexican Communist Party. He was invited to Russia in 1920 for the second conference of the Communist International (Comintern), where Lenin asked him to present his own thesis on national liberation movements. By 1926, Roy was a member of all four policy-making bodies of the Comintern - the Presidium, the Political Secretariat, the Executive Committee, and the World Congress.

The Comintern sent him to China in 1927 with the mission to forge an alliance between the communists and the Kuomintang nationalists. His arrival coincided with the massacre of the communists by the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek. He returned to Russia in disfavor, and was expelled from the Communist International in 1929. He said the real reason he was expelled was his claim to the right of independent thought.

He returned to India in 1930, and was jailed in 1931. While in prison, he wrote some of his major works, in which he tried to work out a humanist and democratic philosophy appropriate to Indian conditions. He joined the Indian National Congress when he was released in 1936, but resigned in 1940 because he opposed Gandhi’s Quit India campaign. Roy’s view was that the war against the Axis powers temporarily took priority over the independence struggle.

In 1944, Roy prepared a draft constitution for India, emphasizing decentralization, devolution of power and a kind of syndicalism or Jeffersonian democracy, consistent with his humanistic desire to restore sovereignty to the individual in society. He founded the Indian Renaissance Institute in 1946, and published New Humanism: A Manifesto, whose 22 theses are included as an appendix to Dr. Ramendra’s book. Roy rejected both Communism and capitalism, and put forth a philosophy of decentralized “radical democracy” as an alternative to parliamentary democracy.

In 1948, he launched the Radical Humanist Movement, a nonpartisan political movement, to make India what he considered a true democracy. He was a founding vice president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU); the Radical Humanist Movement was one of the original IHEU member organizations. The IHEU has in his honor created the M.N Roy Human Development Campus in Mumbai (Bombay).

Dr. Ramendra places Roy’s ideas in the context of the history of materialist philosophy, including a tantalizingly brief mention of Lokayat or Charvaka, an ancient Indian school of materialist thought. While Roy opposed the glorification of India’s so-called spiritual heritage, he favored a rational and critical study of ancient Indian philosophy. He thought it might do for India what the rediscovery of ancient Greek thought did for Europe in the Renaissance.

Roy’s version of materialism was an ethical philosophy. He believed that human beings have the power to make free and rational choices, and that they have a duty to do this without debasing themselves before imaginary supernatural beings.

Dr. Ramendra explains how Roy’s thought differed from Marxian materialism. According to Roy, Marxian determinism did not allow for human freedom and it neglected ethics. Like Bertrand Russell, Roy perceived there is no logical connection between Marx’s philosophical materialism (there is no supernatural reality) and his historical materialism (everything in history has economic causes).

Roy preferred to call his philosophy “physical realism,” meaning that the physical world comprises all of reality, and a supposed supernatural or spiritual realm is not necessary to explain the world. He did not think the discoveries of modern physics invalidate physical realism. The universe may not be mechanistic, but it is still understandable through rational inquiry, according to Roy.

Dr. Ramendra points out there is the same logical disjunction within M.N. Roy’s thought that Roy observed in Karl Marx, in that physical realism neither contradicts nor supports Roy’s new humanist political philosophy. While this is true, I would add that there is a psychological, if not a logical, connection between the two aspects of Roy’s ideas. The person who is able to reject supernatural beliefs and apply his own understanding to the physical world is a person likely to desire political freedom and the right to apply his own understanding to society.

Dr. Ramendra deserves credit not only as a writer but as a publisher. He and his wife, Dr. Kawaljeet Kaur, together with relatives and friends, founded the Buddhiwadi Samaj (the Bihar Rationalist Society or BRS) in 1985, following a wave of religious riots and killings sparked by the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh guards. They have persevered through the years to give a voice to humanism. One can only guess at the difficulty of their effort.

They launched the Buddhiwadi Foundation in 1996 as an independent affiliate of the BRS. The foundation publishes books and newsletters in Hindi and English, and maintains a humanist library and research center. At present Dr. Ramendra and Dr. Kawaljeet are collaborating on a new work – Rationalist, Humanist and Atheistic Trends in Twentieth Century Indian Thought, a study of seven leading Indian thinkers.

The Buddhiwadi Foundation web site at is well worth a look. It contains, among other things, 10 online essays by Dr. Ramendra and two by Dr. Kawaljeet in English. Dr. Ramendra is very much in the Bertrand Russell tradition. He says in his online essay “Is God Dead?” that Bertrand Russell is his favorite philosopher. His Ph.D. thesis was on the ethics of Bertrand Russell, and is available from the Buddhiwadi Foundation. A briefer essay on Russell’s ethics is available online. Another online essay, “Why I Am Not a Hindu,” was partly inspired by Russell’s “Why I Am Not a Christian.”

I would particularly recommend the essay, “Why I Am Not a Hindu,” to North American humanists. We North American humanists sometimes think of Indian philosophy in terms of swamis and yogis, and to give them the benefit of the doubt which we do not extend to the Christian religion. Dr. Ramendra’s book on M.N. Roy reminds us that there is another tradition in Indian philosophy, one which it would behoove us to learn about.

Views of Roy by Innaiah Narisetti

Dr. Innaiah Narisetti, the author of "Unbelief in India” in the Encyclopedia of Unbelief, translated into Telugu several of Roy’s works.

In 1992, Innaiah, who was teaching at Osmania University, wrote to Warren Allen Smith about Roy.

India missed the Renaissance movement during British rule. When the nationalist spirit was at its peak, the fundamentalist revivalism swept the minds of intellectuals. At that juncture M. N. Roy raised the Renaissance slogan in 1938, but it went unheard. Later, after independence, he launched the Renaissance movement for the attainment of a rational and humanist society. His attempt was against the religious flow, and he had hard times swimming against the current.

Roy trained a few intellectuals to further the cause of rationalism in India, dying in 1955, but seeds of his thought are slowly but firmly growing in India. The Indian constitution has incorporated the need for scientific temper as a fundamental duty of the citizens.

M. N. Roy started his youth as a national-terrorist against Britishers, and in his attempt to acquire German arms he landed in the United States of America in 1916. There, he met Evelyn Trent at Stanford University, who helped transform him from a nationalist to an internationalist. The two married in New York in 1917, lived in New York’s Greenwich Village for a time, but eventually were forced to flee to Mexico. There, they played a historical role and were invited to Moscow for the Second International Communist Congress.

While working with Lenin, both Roys trained young communists for Asian revolution and also established an emigré Indian Communist Party. In 1926 and 1927, Stalin sent him to China to help advise the movement there. Later, Roy differed with the Russian leaders, resenting their bossism. While working with Brandleir, he was expelled from the party.

Returning to India, he was arrested by the British rulers and jailed for six years. During that time, he studied and developed his ideas and wrote volumes about rationalism. Thereafter, he never looked back and pleaded with others to adopt the scientific study of history. History, philosophy, and theology in India had been full of myths and stories, and Roy believed such subjects should use the historical method of reasoning as their method. Indian society at that time was absorbed with religion, from birth to death. The very idea of secularism was alien to Hindus. Roy discussed the problem thoroughly, defining secularism as being based upon the separation of state and church.

Roy’s stand ultimately led to non-religious society in public life. The Indian constitution incorporated secular ideas, which were never implemented inasmuch as the rulers continued to be afraid of the nation’s fundamentalists. Religious codes have yet to be replaced with uniform civil codes. Ambedkar, the depressed class leader who once studied at Columbia University and who was an ardent admirer of Roy’s ideas, fought in vain for a uniform civil code. Roy went through the irrational politics of parties and decided that politics are possible without such parties. He therefore abolished his own Radical Democratic Party and in 1948 commenced India’s humanist movement.

Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society (1955) recommended Roy’s Reason, Romanticism, and Revolution in order to understand the European renaissance. In that book, Roy developed a philosophy which was scientific and which was the first of its kind in India inasmuch as he used the scientific method as his tool. Roy’s rationalism, scientific to the core, inspired certain intellectuals to study philosophy, theology, history, and sociology using rationalism and the scientific method.

Laxman Sastri Joshi, for example, studied Indian philosophy and produced volumes using such a rationalist approach. Similarly, Shib Narayan Ray wrote on Indian literature. V. M. Tarkunde developed thoughts on secularism, civil liberties, and human rights. Gora, the atheist, conducted a movement against irrational theology, acknowledging his indebtedness to Roy’s thoughts but facing many hardships.

In addition to writing several books, Roy also edited journals such as The Humanist Way, The Radical Humanist, and Independent India. His articles found enthusiastic readers among the young. Placing man in the center of his New Humanism, he developed a value system without religion, giving the utmost importance to freedom and saying that other values flow from freedom. A person need not be afraid of supernatural forces, he taught, because they are creations of man. Humans can be rational and cooperative as well as moral in a natural way, without benefit of the divine. He derived his premises on the basis of the physical and the biological sciences. In addition, he tried to connect law with man’s rationality.

Although the late A. B. Shah did not agree with Roy’s logic, he accepted the essential nature of man as being rationally based. In India, Roy’s attempts to build a philosophical system along scientific lines represented a first, and his general outlook is gaining a gradual acceptance in academic circles. He evolved twenty-two theses as the basic principles of his Integral Humanism, saying that as the scientific progress takes place philosophy must remain subject to scientific scrutiny and that principles which cannot stand the test should be discarded rather than retained. He disapproved of ‘ultimate truths’ and tried to reconcile determinism with the new quantum theory. The laws of probability, he felt, yield results which are proof for causality in the broad sense. But his writing, between 1931 and 1936, has not been updated and in light of new findings deserves to be edited.

His Last Days

“In his last days,” continued Narisetti, Roy “was associated with the International Humanist and Ethical Union, being its vice president from the IHEU’s inception. He laid firm foundations in his lifetime for humanist, rationalist, secularist, and atheist movements in India, training hundreds of persons in study camps. Although these movements are still weak, they have been built on solid philosophic grounds and most surely will one day have a bright future.”

In June of 1952, Roy met a serious accident. He fell fifty feet down while walking along a hill track. He was moved to Dehradun for treatment. On 25 August, he had an attack of cerebral thrombosis resulting in a partial paralysis of the right side. The accident prevented the Roys from attending the inaugural congress of the IHEU, which was held in August 1952 at Amsterdam. The congress, however, elected M.N. Roy, in absentia, as one of its vice-presidents and made the Indian Radical Humanist Movement one of the founder-members of the IHEU. On 15 August 1953, Roy had the second attack of cerebral thrombosis, which paralyzed the left side of his body. Roy's last article dictated to Ellen Roy for the Radical Humanist was about the nature and organization of the Radical Humanist Movement. This article was published in the Radical Humanist on 24 January 1954. On 25 January 1954, ten minutes before midnight, M. N. Roy died of a heart attack. He was nearly 67 at that time.

Norwegian philosopher Finngeir Hiorth has called Roy one of India’s best-known atheists, along with Gora, Periyar, and A. B. Shah.

(See entry for Ramendra. Also, see letters about humanism from Ellen Roy.)

{FUK; HNS; HNS2; WAS, 1992}