On February 10, 1926, forty-three anticolonialists, socialists, pacifists, and radicals — foreigners and Germans — met at the Rathauskeller, a restaurant in Berlin’s city hall, to organise an international conference against colonialism and imperialism. It was led by the German communist Willi Münzenberg, and one of its most prominent delegates was the veteran Indian revolutionary Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (known as Chatto). At the time, Chatto was a central figure among Indian and global radical networks in Berlin.
The Rathauskeller conference led to the formation of the League Against Colonial Oppression (LACO) and the decision to prepare for a larger, global anticolonial congress to be held in Brussels a year later.
When 174 delegates from across the colonial and semi-colonial worlds convened in Brussels from February 10-15, 1927, Chatto had invited several other Indians from Berlin and elsewhere in Europe, including Jawaharlal Nehru of the Indian National Congress (INC), the veteran Indian revolutionary, Muhammed Barkatullah of the Ghadar Party, and Monindra Kumar Sen and Jaya Surya Naidu (Chatto’s nephew and son of Sarojini Naidu), both students in Berlin. Supported by the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow, the Brussels congress led to the formation of the League Against Imperialism (LAI), with its headquarters in Berlin, with Chatto as its international secretary.
Although it existed for only 10 years and was often marred by internal disagreements and external pressures, the LAI had a profound impact on anticolonial leaders and on their politics and visions for independent nations. As Nehru became a vital link between India and the LAI, Chatto operated in the background from Berlin.
Berlin’s importance was not coincidental. Not only was the Comintern’s headquarters based in the city, but the German capital was also, as historian Fredrik Petersson puts it, the “hub of the anti-imperialist movement.” Mahdi Ali Mirza, who lived in Berlin from 1924 to 1931, recalled that “during this period, Berlin was the intellectual hub of Europe.” This combination of global revolutionary politics, anti-imperialism, and intellectual engagement attracted Indians to Berlin rather than London or Paris, and became the foundation of the LAI.
Indeed, there was a vibrant and radical community of about 200 Indians in the German capital at the time — most of them students, some of them experienced revolutionaries, many of them living in the Charlottenburg district of Western Berlin. At its centre was Chatto.
Revolutionary news from Berlin
By the time of the Brussels Congress in February 1927, Chatto had already been in exile for 25 years and been involved in the revolutionary movement for 20 of them, moving across Britain, France, Germany, and Sweden, with brief excursions into Switzerland and Russia, and was part of a global radical network. During the First World War, he was one of the principal figures in the Indian Independence Committee, which collaborated with the Germans to instigate a revolution in India. In Weimar-era Berlin, he associated frequently with international anarchists and communists, but remained dedicated to the Indian freedom struggle.
In the spring of 1921, Chatto set up the Indian News Service and Information Bureau (INSIB) with his brother-in-law, ACN Nambiar, and Agnes Smedley, an American radical journalist and anti-imperialist. Nambiar, who was married to Chatto’s younger sister Suhasini, had recently arrived in Berlin, as had Smedley, who soon fell in love with Chatto.
Located in the Halensee area of the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, the INSIB provided assistance to Indians seeking to come to Berlin. It also published a monthly magazine — The Indo-German Commercial Review, later renamed the Industrial and Trade Review for India — with information about Germany, cultural news, and business information. More radical, Bhupendranath Datta and Surendra Nath Kar, both veteran Indian revolutionaries in exile, published the Indian Independence in December 1922. In 1924, however, the British prevailed upon the German authorities to ban both the INSIB’s publication and Indian Independence.
In the late summer of 1924, the British Government became so concerned about the activities of Indians in Berlin that it contacted the German authorities with a view to deporting several Indians from Germany, including Chatto, Datta, Chempakaraman Pillai, MPT Acharya, and MN Roy — all experienced Indian revolutionaries with anarchist or communist leanings, except for Pillai. After lengthy discussions with the Germans, the British abandoned the deportation request. The British had realised that it was better to know that these Indians were in Berlin and let the Germans deal with them rather than to let them loose elsewhere.
Although their publications were banned, the Indians in Berlin continued to disseminate news through some of the major Indian newspapers, including The Hindu, Bombay Chronicle, Advance, People, and Forward, many of which featured weekly ‘News from Berlin’ sections.
When the INSIB dissolved in early 1925, most of its members already belonged to the Hindusthan Association of Central Europe (HACE). Set up in 1921 as a student association, the HACE agreed to admit all Indians by 1923. Soon after, as Mirza explained in his memoirs, the HACE was “run by the students under the guidance of the revolutionaries.”
The association organised social events, including regular summer and winter parties that brought together Indians, Chinese, Persians, Russians, and Koreans; there was an Indian Sports Club that organised cricket and table tennis matches; they organised lectures with German and foreign speakers; later they organised movie screenings of new Indian films; and hosted prominent Indian visitors to Berlin, including Jawaharlal Nehru, G Sethi, Sarojini Naidu, Srinivasa Iyengar, RD Karve, Rabindranath Tagore, and VJ Patel.
HACE meeting in the Alexander von Humboldt-Haus, Fasanenstrasse 23, 6 May
1930, to protest the arrest of Gandhi. (Wikimedia Commons)
At the same time, the HACE did not shy away from political activities. For example, in the summer of 1926, when the German animal dealer John Hagenbeck put around 100 Indians on display in the Berlin Zoo, performing the roles of fakirs, snake charmers, and so-called everyday life to a fascinated German audience, the local Indian community and the HACE organised several public protests. Not only did they protest to the German authorities, but they also wrote extensively about the case in German and Indian newspapers.
From Brussels, shortly after the LAI Congress, Chatto, Nambiar, and Smedley published a letter in the Bombay Chronicle: “We will not have our people shown in European Zoological Gardens or any part thereof without protest.” Although the general German audience was sympathetic to their complaints, the German authorities dismissed the HACE and the Indians.
A few months after the LAI Congress in Brussels, Indians in Berlin convened at the new HACE headquarters in the Alexander von Humboldt-Haus in Fasanenstrasse to hear Naidu’s report and decide whether the HACE should formally join the LAI or leave that decision to individual members. Naidu had attended the Brussels congress as a delegate of the HACE. After some debate, however, the Indians voted for the latter option: anyone could join the LAI individually, but the HACE would not join as an organisation.
Chatto continued his work unabated and, from 1928, spearheaded the Anti-Imperialist Review, the official organ of the LAI that brought together diverse voices against imperialism in all its guises.
Eating, praying, and loving in Berlin
Khwaja Abdul Hamied, who was supposed to join the HACE delegates to the LAI Congress in Brussels but remained in Berlin, straddled many circles in the German capital. Hamied was a close friend of Zakir Husain, the future President of India, who had arrived in Berlin in 1923 and became secretary of the HACE after the untimely death of Surendra Nath Kar later that year.
Hamied was also a frequent visitor to the newly built Berlin Mosque. Its foundation stone had been laid in 1924, and Barkatullah and Hamied spoke at the official opening of the Mosque in 1926. Two years later, Hamied married Luba Derczanska, a Lithuanian-Jewish communist, at the Mosque, and Hamied now moved among Indians, Muslims, and communists in the German capital. The Mosque also served as a social space for the Indian Muslims in Berlin. Prayers were performed, Eid celebrations were observed, Urdu lessons were given, and conversions to Islam were frequent.
But from the late 1920s, the Indians in Berlin had another venue to convene. In August 1929, the ‘Hindustan House’ restaurant opened in Uhlandstrasse, a prominent street in Western Berlin. Until then, the Indians had patronised some of the Chinese restaurants such as the ‘Tientsin’ or ‘Nanking’ on Kantstrasse, but now they could get a proper Indian meal for little money. Upstairs was a boarding house, where Indian students enrolled at the local Technical University lodged.
One of the frequent visitors to ‘Hindustan House’ was Soumyendranath Tagore, the great-grand-nephew of Rabindranath Tagore, who had arrived in Berlin in September 1928 after attending the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International in Moscow. Tagore is known to have held court at the restaurant, regaling local Germans with fascinating stories of India couched in communist rhetoric. British authorities now feared that ‘Hindustan House’ was a front for communist activities.
Perhaps their fears were not entirely unfounded: the new proprietor was Nalini Gupta, one of the founders of the Communist Party of India. However, after a brief German investigation, it quickly became clear that most patrons came for a cheap meal rather than communist indoctrination.
The last roars from the twenties
By the late 1920s, the political landscape for Indians in Berlin was changing. In February 1929, Chatto and Nambiar revived the INSIB as the Indian Information Bureau, now with financial support from Nehru and the INC. But when Chatto tried to bring the Indian Information Bureau under the control of the LAI, Nehru withdrew his support, and the bureau was terminated in 1930 for lack of funding.
Shortly afterwards, Chatto was summoned to Moscow to account for his wartime activities and for accusations that he was a nationalist rather than a proper communist.
The HACE was also under pressure. Many of the younger students and new arrivals were not interested in the revolutionary politics of the old vanguard. To address this, the Indian Student Association was established in the late 1920s, this time only for students, not revolutionaries.
Political events in both India and Germany increasingly influenced the exiles. The Simon Commission, the Round Table Conferences in London, and the INC’s demand for complete independence were frequently debated among Indians in Berlin. Gandhi’s Salt March in the spring of 1930 gained considerable attention, and when Gandhi was arrested on May 4, 1930, the HACE organised a protest meeting at its headquarters in the Alexander von Humboldt-Haus two days later. The meeting was widely covered in German newspapers, and a photo from the event shows Tagore speaking, and Acharya and Naidu in attendance.
Into the fascist thirties
The political situation in Germany now increasingly dominated the fate of the Indians. Worried about increasing racism and Adolf Hitler’s declaration in favour of British rule in India, Chempakaraman Pillai wrote to Hitler in December 1931, demanding answers about the official position of the Nazis towards India. Pillai’s letter was published widely in German newspapers, but Hitler dismissed his demand and repeated that British rule in India was essential to ward off communist influences.
As the Nazis seized power in late 1932, the situation became even worse. The day after the Reichstag Fire on February 27, 1933, German Stormtroopers arrested both Nambiar and Naidu on suspicion of being communists. Perhaps the suspicion was not entirely unfounded. Both Nambiar and Naidu had travelled in anarchist and communist circles in Berlin, mostly by association with Chatto and Smedley, but neither of them was a committed Bolshevik.
They were beaten up by the Nazis, and their personal belongings and any suspicious material were confiscated. Naidu was released after a week, while Nambiar was released and expelled from Germany at the end of March 1933.
The following month, in April 1933, Monindra Kumar Sen and some of the Indian lodgers at the ‘Hindustan House’ boarding house were assaulted by the Nazis outside the restaurant. The Indians had witnessed a brawl outside and tried to intervene. Instead, the entire mob of around 400 people turned against Indians, verbally abusing them and beating four of the lodgers. At least, according to Sen.
Devendra Nath Bannerjea, the secretary of the Indian Student Association, who had ingratiated himself with the German authorities, told the police that it was merely a brawl between three Indians and four Germans over a woman. The true story remains uncertain, but Sen was soon expelled from Germany.
That same month, as he was returning to Germany from a retreat in Italy, Tagore was arrested by the Nazis as he crossed the border into Bavaria. The charge was plotting to assassinate Hitler. It was probably not true, but upon his release four days later, Tagore fled to Paris and now wrote extensively about the dangers of Nazism in Germany.
By the end of 1933, five more Indians had been expelled from Germany, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to remain in Berlin. The LAI also moved its headquarters away from the city and finally terminated in 1937.
For 15 years, Berlin had been at the centre of the Indian freedom struggle in exile. From this vibrant community emerged anticolonial organisations, radical student associations, and global networks that contested the British Empire from afar. The most important and radical of these was the LAI, a global anti-imperial organisation that became the biggest threat to the empire ever seen.
But the rise of Nazism also spelled the end of this lively Indian community abroad, though new alliances between Indians and Germans were on the horizon by the mid-1930s.
But that is a different story.
Further reading:
Daniel Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal Imperialism and the Surveillance of Anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945, Oxford University Press, 2017
Gerdien Jonker, On the Margins: Jews and Muslims in Interwar Berlin, Brill, 2020
Ole Birk Laursen, Anarchy or Chaos: M. P. T. Acharya and the Indian Struggle for Freedom, Hurst, 2023
Michele Louro, Comrades against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism, Cambridge University Press, 2018
Fredrik Petersson, “Hub of the Anti-imperialist Movement”, Interventions, 16:1 (2014): 49–71. DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2013.776222
Ole Birk Laursen is Research Communicator at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), Berlin, and author of the book ‘The Indian Revolutionary Movement in Europe’
Indian delegates at the Brussels congress of the League Against Imperialism, 10–15
February 1927. (Das
Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont (Berlin, 1927), p. 174.) 
Virendranath Chattopadhyay (Wikimedia Commons)
HACE meeting in the Alexander von Humboldt-Haus, Fasanenstrasse 23, 6 May
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