Mandayam Parthasarathi Tirumal Acharya was an Indian nationalist, communist and ⁣anarchist who was among the founding members of the Communist Party of India.⁣
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M.P.T. Acharya was born in 1887 in Chennai into a Bhramin family. He was exposed to nationalism from childhood, with his family playing a prominent role in the rise of Indian nationalism in South India. Faced with the threat of persecution, he made up his mind to leave India. In 1907, he left for Britain. ⁣
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He soon joined the Indian House with V.D Savarkar, Madan Lal Dhingra and other Indian nationalists. He helped produce nationalist pamphlets and publications including The Indian Sociologist, Bande Mataram and Talvar. When in 1909 Dhingra assassinated Sir William Hutt Curzon Wyllie the Indian House soon disintegrated.⁣
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By September 1907, The Indian Sociologist, published by the India House, was deemed “seditious literature” and was banned in India. It was at India House that Acharya was introduced to V.D. Savarkar.⁣
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In next few years he visited Berlin, Munich and in November 1911 was in Constantinople to gain Muslim support against the British. In 1912 he moved to New York and in 1914 to San Fransisco, where he edited the Tamil edition of Gadar Party’s periodical. . ⁣
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Acharya spent the World War period in Middle East. He along with Har Dayal soght to establish the Indian Volunteer Corps with Indian prisoners of war from the battlefields of Mesopotamia and Europe.⁣
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In 1917, with Virendranath Chattopadhyay, he attended a socialist peace conference in Stockholm. Where he met prominent Bolshevik leaders and in 1919 met Lenin.
In 1920 in Tashkent Acharya helped form and became Chairman of the Communist Party in exile, with M.N.Roy as Secratary ⁣but differences with M.N. Roy led to divisions which ultimately saw him leave the party.⁣
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When he returned to India in 1935, he also started writing for Indian publications, including Gandhi’s Harijan. ⁣
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Acharya set up the Libertarian Socialist Institute and published many anarchist classics and new material in Bombay.