In this interview excerpt from 1975, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay recalls the moment she realised that she wanted to fight against the colonial system. She spent a year studying in England from 1921 to 1922, and on her return journey she visited her husband’s brother who was politically exiled in Berlin. She tells interviewer Charles Allen that during this stay she came to understand how far-reaching the influence of the British Empire was, and grasped that she did not only want to fight for India’s independence – she also wanted to challenge the very concept and system of colonial power itself.

Who was Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay?

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay was an Indian social reformer, freedom fighter and activist, well known for her dedication to the Indian independence movement and advocacy for Indian women. She was a member of the Indian National Congress, and was actively involved in Gandhi’s salt satyagraha in 1930, despite women being officially excluded from the movement. She was also president of the All India Women’s Conference, the founding leader of the Indian Co-operative Union and a published author. Chattopadhyay was also an advocate of Indian art and culture. She established the Indian National Theatre in 1944 and promoted a revival of traditional Indian handicrafts.

About the British in India Oral Archive

These interviews were carried out between 1975 and 1976 to supplement the BBC's popular Plain Tales of the Raj radio series. The project was jointly conducted by the National Sound Archive (NSA), the India Office Library & Records (IOLR) and the School of Oriental and African Studies. The NSA and the IOLR became part of the British Library in the early 1980s and are now known as the British Library Sound Archive and the India Office Records respectively. The collection includes interviews conducted in the UK, India and Pakistan with a wide range of people, including Lord Mountbatten, B K Nehru and British civil servants. The interviews cover the role of the Viceroy, the royal family, missionary work, the police force, the Indian Civil Service in Burma, trade and shipping in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the Japanese invasion during the Second World War and the Nehru family. The interviews were conducted almost exclusively with those who had roles in the administration of the British government in India, and this is reflected in their content. The full recordings from the British in India Oral Archive are archived at the British Library Sound Archive, with collection reference C5.

KAMALADEVI CHATTOPADHYAY:

Well on my way back I stopped in Berlin. An elder brother of my husband’s was there and he was a political exile. He had been active in building up opposition to the British, and he had come to settle there. And around him had gathered a whole group of exiles. The time I spent there did make some impact on me because that was my first political education as such, in a wider context. The international involvements, that this was not just an isolated case of England versus India, but there is such a thing as imperialist rule, that there are ruling countries and colonies, that became much clearer to me.  They showed that it’s not - when we are fighting the British - it’s really a whole group power, because several of these exiles, when they came into other countries, the British would, you know, warn the administration there, and then they would be chased from there and they had to move from country to country. So those were various factors which I began to understand which I had not before. By the time I came back I was quite convinced these methods would not work. From the experience of these people, the isolation in which they now came to live. As against that was Gandhiji’s whole idea of a mass movement and the country rising, to me that was very clear. At no time was there any conflict in my mind as to the methods. Well, it’s not just a question of the moral or the ethics of it, but even from a purely political, practical point of view, I was quite convinced and this idea that the people should be involved, that had a great appeal to me.