Monthly Archives: June 2021

The Impersonator and 'Comrade Schmidt'

Suchetana Chattopadhyay ‘I forget his name Mr. Dange. In fact I forgot your address too.’ A forgotten moment in Bomabay’s history is recorded in the dossiers. In late 1923, when S. A. Dange was in jail awaiting trial in what became known as Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case (1924), a police Inspector of the city's (anti-)Bolshevik Branch impersonated him. The aim of this masquerade was to meet one ‘Comrade Schmidt’. Claiming to represent the Communist International, he was a sailor an[...]

The Photo of Nalini Gupta

101 years ago on the evening of Saturday 12 June 1920, Nalini Bhushan Dasgupta, a former student of the school at Bolpur was singing ‘the Santiniketan song’ at the London YMCA in honour of Rabindranath. A reception had been organised by Bengalis living in England at the time to celebrate the poet's visit. Nalini later landed in Moscow via Berlin during the Third Congress of the Comintern (1921) and became a trusted helper of M. N. Roy, volunteering to travel to India on behalf of the émigrÃ[...]