Latest news with #Chatto
Mint
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Book review: A tale of two forgotten revolutionaries from Bengal
The centenary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2020 occasioned a flurry of newspaper articles and social media posts recalling the organisation's early days. An editorial on M.N. Roy (1887-1954), published in Anandabazar Patrika, spoke about a visit to his ancestral village of Kheput in the (West) Medinipur district of West Bengal. Roy, who had founded the Communist Party of India in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, had returned to Kheput briefly in 1939 with activist and anti-colonial feminist, Evelyn Trent, his wife. The editorial lamented that although a local youth club had erected a humble monument in his memory a few years ago, its subsequent neglect accurately reflected the general indifference towards Roy's legacy. My dip into the newspaper archive was prompted by Kavitha Rao's recent book, Spies, Lies and Allies: The Extraordinary Lives of Chatto and Roy , where she paints vivid portraits of Virendranath Chattopadhyay (1880-1937) and M.N. Roy, two extraordinary lives that ran parallel through times of hope and turbulence. I wanted to think through two premises that animate Rao's project: first, that 'Chatto" and Roy were, in scholar Sudipta Kaviraj's words, 'magnificent failures"; second, that they are forgotten figures. Without lapsing into vague relativism, what could be the parameters for defining success or failure in these realms? And how do we identify the public—or indeed publics—which remembers, forgets and re-learns about such figures from history? With a self-conscious hat-tip to Frederick Forsyth's political thriller, The Day of the Jackal , Rao begins Spies, Lies and Allies with a man facing a firing squad. Her setting is Moscow, on 2 September 1937. Chatto, one of over 700,000 political opponents to be killed during Stalin's infamous purge, had been described by journalist and 'triple agent" Agnes Smedley as 'a revolutionary in a dozen different ways." Rao speculates evocatively about what must have been passing through Chatto's mind: his happy childhood, his homeland to which he had not returned in decades, his travels and travails in different parts of Europe at a singularly volatile time in history. Or did he think enviously, Rao wonders, 'of his fellow revolutionary, the dashing and charismatic M.N. Roy", who had, by securing Lenin's friendship, beaten Chatto in achieving his dream? The two parallel lives are traced in alternating chapters. Chatto's begins at their family home in Hyderabad, where secularism and learning were held in high regard. Drawing primarily on the memoirs of his siblings, the freedom fighter Sarojini Naidu and poet and actor Harindranath Chattopadhyay, the chapter focuses on the patriarch, Aghorenath, rather than Chatto. The notable exception is the initial episode, where notorious British police officer Charles Tegart ransacks their house in search of a compromising letter from Chatto. Roy's early days are told primarily through the region's political climate, reflected in the revolutionary zeal of figures like 'Bagha" Jatin, or Jatindranath Mukherjee. (The first chapters refer to Roy by his birth name, Narendranath Bhattacharya, which he changed after landing in the US while on the run.) Compared to her portrayal of the Chatto household, Rao's sketch of the Bengal landscape feels less immersive, despite being politically charged, perhaps owing to the nature of the archive the author relies on. One notices three distinct movements in the book. The first, beginning with the protagonists' youth, goes on to trace their formative years into the mid-1910s. These are marked by a distinct note of optimism, as Chatto and Roy encounter a fascinating cast of characters and collectives in their attempts to secure help for India's anti-colonial struggle. Chatto's path takes us to India House in London, where he meets its founder, Shyamji Krishna Varma, and a young V.D. Savarkar, among others, while Roy travels east to Japan, only to be disappointed by fellow revolutionary activist Rashbehari Bose's uncritical faith in Japan. A thrilling cat-and-mouse game ensues when Roy, on his way to China to secure arms from the German embassy, is tailed by the British police. Unable to convict him, they advise: 'There are many revolutions in these parts. Stay away from them." In the second movement, both Chatto and Roy begin to find footholds in unlikely political networks during and in the aftermath of World War I. Chatto begins to operate out of Berlin, where, aided by German lawyer and diplomat Max von Oppenheim, he becomes involved with the Berlin Committee (later, the Indian Independence Committee), and has a brush with the pan-Islamist movement. I found the chapter on Agnes Smedley one of the most nuanced in the book, as it opens up to scrutiny the problematic gender dynamics within revolutionary spaces from the perspective of a person with her own share of complexities. In fact, the book has a number of well-crafted cameos, like Bhikaji Cama, Jack Johnson and Oppenheim. The alternative vantage points afforded by these inclusions allows us to see the two protagonists from different perspectives and perhaps, more significantly, sheds light on a frenetic internationalist moment of many potential solidarities, which often falls by the wayside in mainstream narratives of India's freedom movement. Meanwhile, Roy, thinly disguised as a Tamil student on his way to Paris, lands in New York, amid a 'teeming nest of Indian revolutionaries". A question from the audience at a public lecture by Lala Lajpat Rai prompts him to reassess his understanding of Indian independence: was the discourse around independence overlooking the hope of a truly revolutionary class struggle? Rao describes Roy's dive into Marxist philosophy at the New York Public library and his involvement with the Ghadar Movement, leading to his arrest in 1917. The journey continues in revolutionary Mexico, where Roy meets Mikhail Borodin a couple of years later. This 'internationalist" phase sees him representing the Mexican Communist Party at the 1920 Comintern (or IIIrd International), and founding a Communist Party of India in Tashkent, along with Abani Mukherjei and others. The pace becomes feverish in the third movement, as a frantic race to secure Russian support for the Indian cause ensues. Roy beats Chatto to secure Lenin's support, although he disagrees with the latter's insistence on working with the Indian National Congress (INC). Roy eventually meets Stalin and ends up on a doomed mission to China with Borodin, from which he escapes narrowly. Chatto, who had hoped that the INC would work with workers' and peasants' organisations, finds his relations with Jawaharlal Nehru failing disastrously. Nehru, believing Chatto to be unmoored from the ground reality, favoured INC solidarity above all else. Roy would return to India and spend over five years in jail, before founding his new philosophy of Radical Humanism. Chatto would face the firing squad eventually, unbeknownst even to his family and friends. Rao's positioning of these two charismatic individuals as forgotten figures piqued my curiosity because, in my experience, Roy is a household name within left-leaning or indeed politically aware circles in India. (Roy even had his own first day cover in 1987.) So is Chatto, though to a lesser degree. How then do we understand the amnesia around them in their native village, in their family or, for that matter, within mainstream political discourses? Despite their commitment and brilliance, Roy and Chatto have fallen between the cracks of narratives that later coalesced as 'history" in the public imagination. They were conducting their own experiments with truth as—to recall Antonio Gramsci's words—the old world lay dying and a new one was struggling to be born. Their faith in ideas, ideals and ideological solidarities may have seemed justified at the time but the nationalist movement in India took its own course, particularly in the aftermath of World War II, which got in the way of their vision bearing fruit in the political realm. Rao's book, which speaks disparagingly of Nehru and M.K. Gandhi's 'mealy-mouthed compromises with the British" intervenes by carving out a space for two forgotten individuals within public history. Read as two biographies, it leaves one wishing for a deeper dive into the people themselves, but through the juxtaposition of the lives, Rao achieves a good deal more. The book is a reminder of those phases in history that are pregnant with the possibility of multiple worlds; what becomes the 'public" narrative is retroactively constructed from the vantage point of the new world that emerges eventually, often at the cost of other memories. It is that forgetting which Rao sets out to address here. While her admirable effort did leave me wondering if a closer engagement with primary archives (alongside autobiographies, biographies and scholarly work) could have made the history feel more tangible, Spies, Lies and Allies succeeds in establishing the importance of including those who 'failed" and were 'forgotten" within the grand narrative of the nationalist movement. Sujaan Mukherjee is a Kolkata-based researcher, translator and curator.
Telegraph
14-03-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The best independent garden centres to visit this spring
Our gardening habits are shifting, and so too is the way we are shopping for our outdoor spaces. The recent news of widespread closures of garden centres owned by national chains including Homebase and Dobbies is perhaps not surprising to gardeners with a planet-friendly philosophy, who generally don't want to see endless shelves of harmful, wildlife-depleting chemicals or incongruous lifestyle collections when shopping for plants. Instead, we want plants and accessories that echo how tastes have evolved – and those tend to be available from independent businesses, some family-run, others recent start-ups, and often helmed by those with a passion for plants. The garden centre is still a destination for many of us, especially over the next couple of months, as we get our gardens ready for the new season, but we will be spending time in stylish nurseries where the shop and café is as much of a draw as the stellar plant list. Beth Chatto Plants & Gardens, Essex Beth Chatto's trail-blazing gardens at Elmstead in Essex are adjoined by a bustling café, shop and plant nursery. As with its excellent online service, the quality of plants and advice here is second to none; plants are arranged following Chatto's well-worn philosophy of 'right plant, right place', with areas organised by their conditions. Surrounding the nursery are her famed gardens, where you can see that philosophy come to life in themed borders. Plants are propagated on-site from seeds, cuttings and divisions. Great Dixter House & Gardens, East Sussex As with Beth Chatto, you will find top-quality plants, propagated on site, that closely reflect the surrounding gardens at this superb nursery. Plants are grown in a loam-based compost blended in house so that plants get the best chance when transferred to borders. Founded by Christopher Lloyd in 1954, the nursery is also a charming place to while away an afternoon with shops (selling tools, seeds and hand-crafted accessories including chestnut hurdles, also made on site) close to the garden's café, where you can get delicious salads and sandwiches. Burford Garden Company, Oxfordshire Alongside the well-stocked selection of plants, shrubs and trees, there's a sprawling mecca of areas to browse in this Cotswolds stalwart: a fabulous and huge bookshop, acres of home and garden shopping and an unrivalled space for indoor plants and pots (with a huge selection of Bergs Potter designs) and beautifully styled, ready-made indoor planters and orchids. Alongside it all there is a busy (and award-winning) café and food halls. Originally opened in 1976, this family garden centre is as inspiring as it is joyful. Long Barn, Hampshire A beautiful and stylish garden centre, Long Barn is spread across two barns and adjoining lavender fields with more than 100 varieties, including the National Collection of Lavandula x intermedia. There's a bright and airy café and a fabulous lifestyle shop that sells pots and planters, ornaments, Niwaki tools and gifts, alongside larger items including outdoor furniture and parasols. It also offers fresh flower deliveries using local seasonal flowers from Hampshire-based growers Hortus Poeticus. O'Kells, Cheshire This independent garden centre has two sites, one in Tarporley and a recently-added, smaller neighbourhood site in Hoole to cater for a younger, more urban audience. This is browsing heaven, with stylish collections of accessories and homewares alongside an extensive selection of plants (O'Kells was a wholesale grower before it ventured into retail), including topiary. Both sites also have popular cafés. Daleside, Yorkshire This family-owned garden centre has been growing and selling a wide variety of plants including perennials, climbers, shrubs, trees, conifers and rhododendrons since the 1950s, and the nursery now spans 20 acres. There's a garden shop with pots, houseplants and accessories, and the on-site restaurant, Paradise, serves seasonal dishes from a previously Michelin-starred team. Petersham Nurseries, Richmond Arguably the original destination nursery, Petersham has a famed restaurant, a more informal tea room that segues into greenhouses, and expansive shopping areas packed with the most stylish selection of horticultural accessories alongside homewares and antiques. It set the bar for the garden lifestyle shop, and its signature details – bare hoggin floors, shabby-chic greenhouses, antique garden furniture and naturalistic details (including tree-stump tables) – are widely copied across the country, and beyond. David Austin, Shropshire This ever-popular nursery may be best known for its riotous rose gardens, but alongside those there is also one of the biggest collections of potted roses here, as well as perennials and climbers. There are rose experts on hand and seasonal workshops on rose pruning and care. There's also a restaurant serving lunch and afternoon tea, as well as a shop. Architectural Plants, West Sussex This specialist nursery in West Sussex is set within 32 acres overlooking the South Downs – a big backdrop to its dramatic sculptural and exotic plant selections that span topiary, palms, bananas and many rare trees, much of which is grown on site. You will find all the kit for sale too, including tools, tripod ladders, pots, irrigation and other accessories. There's also a well-established design and planting service. Holden Clough, Lancashire This almost century-old nursery in the beautiful Ribble Valley has dramatically expanded over the past decade under horticulturalist and grower John Foley, whose family first took over in 1978. Plants are propagated and raised outside in growing fields on site, so they should cope with the toughest conditions. The nursery stocks fruit trees, shrubs, perennials and topiary alongside perennials, bulbs and annual bedding, which is all laid out in the original Frame Yard with its 1920s growing frames. Via their Wonder Garden project, the team will tailor-make garden borders and ship all the plants. There are extensive areas of interior accessories, indoor plants, tools and seeds, along with a busy café and workshops. Place for Plants, Suffolk Rupert and Sara Eley took over this fourth-generation garden in pretty East Bergholt in 1995, and opened a nursery the following year. Set across 20 inspiring acres, there are large collections of camellias, rhododendrons, magnolias, flowering dogwood and rambling roses, and an arboretum (there are often open days and garden tours here too). The extensive nursery is sited in the two-acre walled garden, which also houses a café with seating indoors and out. Hillier, Hampshire Visitors to the Chelsea Flower Show will be familiar with Hillier's fabulous displays: it is the most successful exhibitor, with 74 consecutive gold medals. The company, which was founded in 1864, is also a royal warrant holder for ornamental trees and shrubs. The fifth-generation family business now has 22 centres, but the original site is in Winchester, close to the growing fields; it is the largest grower of semi-mature trees in the country. The nursery's plant offering reflects that, with huge variety, including the many favourites that have been introduced by the company's breeding programme over the years. Old Court Nurseries, Herefordshire Almost all the plant stock is propagated on site and potted using peat-free compost at this family-run nursery in the stunning Malvern Hills. There's no café here, but there's a one-and-a-half-acre garden with woodland and herbaceous borders that is also home to the National Collection of Michaelmas daisies, with more than 400 varieties blooming through September and October, which makes this a destination for plant lovers. Cambo Walled Garden, Fife The 2.5-acre walled garden is reason enough to visit the glorious Cambo estate on the stunning east coast of Fife. There's almost year-round interest here, from the National Collection of snowdrops through the transporting prairie planting that lights up the borders in late summer and autumn, and the stellar planting also inspires the imaginative selection of plants for sale. The excellent on-site café serves seasonal vegetarian and vegan food. Wildegoose Nursery, Shropshire The perfectly positioned tea room (serving cakes and light lunches on Burleigh pottery) at this charming plant nursery in the Shropshire Hills gives far-reaching views from the vibrant planting across the inspiring borders and to the bucolic surrounding countryside. Set in a restored Georgian walled garden complete with renovated curvilinear glasshouses, the nursery began life specialising in hardy perennial violas but has since diversified into perennials and grasses of the new perennial movement, which is where the planted borders here take their inspiration. Almost all of the plants are propagated on site from seeds, cutting and divisions without the use of any herbicides or pesticides, and using peat-free compost. Duchy of Cornwall Nursery, Cornwall This destination garden centre was originally a slate quarry and started out supplying forest trees in the 1960s, becoming a plant nursery the following decade under the leadership of plantsman Eric Baker. The plant list is extensive but also reflects the particular conditions of Cornwall, which has a mild maritime climate that is perfect for growing all sorts of rare and tropical plants that came to the country with the plant hunters of the 19th and 20th centuries. Plants are no longer propagated on site but brought in from many local growers. There is a stylish shop and a large selection of pots here – a nod to the King's own obsession with terracotta vessels. A big draw is the café and the newer Orangery restaurant, where lunch and afternoon tea are served.
