What do you think?
Rate this book
Spies, Lies and Allies: The Extraordinary Lives of Chatto and Roy
About the Book
Chatto and Roy. Virendranath Chattopadhyaya and M.N. Roy. Two revolutionaries, one goal—India’s Independence.
Spies, Lies and Allies is a thrilling tale about two forgotten revolutionaries who led lives that defy belief. It takes the reader on a ride through Kolkata, Hyderabad, London, Paris, Berlin, Mexico City and Moscow. Chatto and Roy meet spies, dictators, femme fatales, assassins, revolutionaries and bomb makers. They encounter Lala Lajpat Rai, Veer Savarkar, Vladimir Lenin, Sun Yat Sen, Chiang Kai Shek, Joseph Stalin, Gandhi and Nehru. They travel in disguise and survive assassination attempts by the British secret service. They have tumultuous love affairs with suspected Communist spies. They flirted with anarchism, then became communists, and Roy would eventually end up founding his own humanism.
Chatto’s famous sister Sarojini would distance herself from his path, and his friend Nehru would eventually follow the Gandhian path. Roy would be ignored in newly independent India. But if Chatto and Roy were failures, they were magnificent ones. They battled for their ideas, and their ideas lived on, even if they died forgotten. In this compelling dual biography, the bestselling author of Lady Doctors follows the threads of the converging and diverging lives of two extraordinary figures.
About the Author
Kavitha Rao is a London-based author and journalist. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, South China Morning Post, Mint, The Hindu and various other publications. She is the bestselling author of Lady Doctors.
Spies, Lies and Allies is her fourth book. She is available on www.kavitharao.net and @kavitharao on X.
Chatto and Roy. Virendranath Chattopadhyaya and M.N. Roy. Two revolutionaries, one goal—India’s Independence.
Spies, Lies and Allies is a thrilling tale about two forgotten revolutionaries who led lives that defy belief. It takes the reader on a ride through Kolkata, Hyderabad, London, Paris, Berlin, Mexico City and Moscow. Chatto and Roy meet spies, dictators, femme fatales, assassins, revolutionaries and bomb makers. They encounter Lala Lajpat Rai, Veer Savarkar, Vladimir Lenin, Sun Yat Sen, Chiang Kai Shek, Joseph Stalin, Gandhi and Nehru. They travel in disguise and survive assassination attempts by the British secret service. They have tumultuous love affairs with suspected Communist spies. They flirted with anarchism, then became communists, and Roy would eventually end up founding his own humanism.
Chatto’s famous sister Sarojini would distance herself from his path, and his friend Nehru would eventually follow the Gandhian path. Roy would be ignored in newly independent India. But if Chatto and Roy were failures, they were magnificent ones. They battled for their ideas, and their ideas lived on, even if they died forgotten. In this compelling dual biography, the bestselling author of Lady Doctors follows the threads of the converging and diverging lives of two extraordinary figures.
About the Author
Kavitha Rao is a London-based author and journalist. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, South China Morning Post, Mint, The Hindu and various other publications. She is the bestselling author of Lady Doctors.
Spies, Lies and Allies is her fourth book. She is available on www.kavitharao.net and @kavitharao on X.
298 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 17, 2025
4 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
About the author
Kavitha Rao
4 books19 followersKavitha Rao is a writer and a journalist, who writes on current affairs, arts, culture, people, and places. Her writings have been published in several national as well as international papers, including The National Time, The Guardian, New York Times, Elle India, Vogue India, and many more. For The Guardian, she writes a popular column titled Terra India, for which she won Asian Environmental Journalism Award. She is also a representative of a media training company that provides training for speaking in media.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 30, 2025
SPIES, LIES AND ALLIES : The Extraordinary Lives of Chatto and Roy by Kavitha Rao
A few years back, I read Revolutionaries by Sanjeev Sanyal - a book about the armed struggle for Indian independence and its main players. One character that stayed with me was M.N. Roy—a Bengali revolutionary who traveled the world, started Mexico’s first communist party, and impressed Lenin so much he was made part of the Comintern. But in the end, his efforts didn’t work out, and Stalin kicked him out of the party. Still, his journey was incredible.
In a world full of racism, Roy managed to do so much as a brown man. Along the way, he met people who changed him—like Jack Johnson, the Black American boxer living in Mexico to escape U.S. segregation. In Moscow, he befriended John Reed, the American communist who’d been part of the 1917 revolution. Roy admired how the Russians treated all races as equals, unlike the British. That’s why so many Indian revolutionaries, like Roy and Veerendranath Chattopadhyay (Chatto), looked up to Russia back then.
Chatto, another revolutionary in the book, was a communist who worked with the Berlin Indians to free India while living in exile. Called a “magnificent failure” in the book, he met a sad end in Russia, the country he’d dreamed of.
Through Roy and Chatto’s stories, I learned about other fascinating figures like Agnes Smedley, another American radical. It’s wild to think an American (John Reed) was part of the mob that stormed the Winter Palace! Roy was amazed by him—just like he’d been inspired earlier by Jack Johnson.
If you’re interested in India’s freedom struggle beyond Gandhi, global revolutionaries, and forgotten histories, give this book a read. Roy’s life alone—from Bengal to Mexico to Moscow—is worth it.
A few years back, I read Revolutionaries by Sanjeev Sanyal - a book about the armed struggle for Indian independence and its main players. One character that stayed with me was M.N. Roy—a Bengali revolutionary who traveled the world, started Mexico’s first communist party, and impressed Lenin so much he was made part of the Comintern. But in the end, his efforts didn’t work out, and Stalin kicked him out of the party. Still, his journey was incredible.
In a world full of racism, Roy managed to do so much as a brown man. Along the way, he met people who changed him—like Jack Johnson, the Black American boxer living in Mexico to escape U.S. segregation. In Moscow, he befriended John Reed, the American communist who’d been part of the 1917 revolution. Roy admired how the Russians treated all races as equals, unlike the British. That’s why so many Indian revolutionaries, like Roy and Veerendranath Chattopadhyay (Chatto), looked up to Russia back then.
Chatto, another revolutionary in the book, was a communist who worked with the Berlin Indians to free India while living in exile. Called a “magnificent failure” in the book, he met a sad end in Russia, the country he’d dreamed of.
Through Roy and Chatto’s stories, I learned about other fascinating figures like Agnes Smedley, another American radical. It’s wild to think an American (John Reed) was part of the mob that stormed the Winter Palace! Roy was amazed by him—just like he’d been inspired earlier by Jack Johnson.
If you’re interested in India’s freedom struggle beyond Gandhi, global revolutionaries, and forgotten histories, give this book a read. Roy’s life alone—from Bengal to Mexico to Moscow—is worth it.
March 23, 2025
History has always found a way to judge failure, particularly those grand, luminous failures that, for a time, burned with the intensity of genuine ambition. Kavitha Rao’s Spies, Lies, and Allies undertakes the formidable task of recovering the lives of two revolutionaries whose extraordinary trajectories, despite their ideological fervour and relentless political engagement, have largely been relegated to the peripheries, and is a long overdue resurrection of Roy and Chatto. Theirs was a life of convergence and divergence—of forging and dismantling ideological convictions, momentary alliances and enduring betrayals, exile and return, and ultimately, of erasure. Both were men of contradictions, thinkers, and agitators whose trajectories refused to align with the dominant narrative. Rao masterfully captures their ambitions and failures with a rare blend of historical rigour and literary finesse. She writes with the precision of a historian, yet never allows the weight of analysis to stifle the vitality of her prose. To Rao’s credit, as always, is her depth of research—an achievement made all the more remarkable given the paucity of archival material. Restlessness is the defining motif of both their lives, both physical and intellectual, that propels them across continents and ideological spectrums. Yet, for all the brilliance of Rao’s reconstruction, she never loses sight of the fundamental tragedy of her characters. In doing so, she also explains the tragedy of India, reminding us, through Roy’s declaration in My Crime, that their greatest transgression was to “claim the right of independent thinking.”
Full review for Deccan Herald: https://www.deccanherald.com/features...
Full review for Deccan Herald: https://www.deccanherald.com/features...
September 16, 2025
Kavitha Rao’s Spies, Lies and Allies is, on its surface, a biography of two extraordinary men: M. N. Roy and Virendranath Chattopadhyay (Chatto), but the book is also something larger: a window that opens into those times, an excavation of an internationalist world where ideas, loyalties, and betrayals moved across borders as easily as ships and letters.
Roy and Chatto belonged to a generation of Indian revolutionaries who understood the fight against empire not as an isolated struggle but as part of a worldwide battle against domination. They worked with communists, anarchists, and fellow exiles; they argued bitterly with each other, debated with Lenin in Moscow, negotiated with German agents during the First World War, collaborated with writers and journalists, led liberal yet crushing love lives, and were pushed to erasure on different levels by Stalin. They existed on the edge of the nationalist mainstream, too unorthodox for Gandhi’s spiritual politics, too open-minded to follow Savarkar's descent from impressive rationalism into divisive politics which directly or indirectly helped the British divide and rule policy, too internationalist for Nehru’s cautious nationalism, and too uncompromising for Bose’s impatient urgency, but whose militaristic path would end up being an extension of their internationalist thoughts.
Rao’s achievement is to bring them back into view, not as sepia-toned revolutionaries but as men living precarious, contradictory lives. Chatto’s tragic end in Stalin’s purges and Roy’s eventual intellectual estrangement from both Moscow and the Indian mainstream remind us that revolutions rarely deliver safe resting places. Yet these stories are not simply about the past.
To read them today is to glimpse ourselves. Then, as now, the state marks dissenters as traitors and spies. Then, as now, political imagination was narrowed by the demand for loyalty. The label of “foreign agent” that shadowed Roy and Chatto resonates uncomfortably with our present, where writers, activists, and students are still accused of being tools of outside forces when they question the state’s authoritarian ways.
Well known historical figures like Lenin, Stalin, Gandhi, Nehru, and Bose in the narrative, embody the constant negotiation between ideals and power. Lenin encouraged revolution but demanded conformity; Stalin extinguished comrades in the name of loyalty or was it his anxiety? Gandhi sought freedom but distrusted the unruly internationalism of exiles like Chatto; Nehru respected and collaborated with both Roy and Chatto, but his practical approach placed him at odds with both of them at different points in time. Each of these figures framed the choices available to men like Roy and Chatto, choices that always came at a cost.
By recovering these entangled lives, Rao reminds us that India’s freedom was never born of a single path. It was a polyphony of conflicting visions, some spiritual, some pragmatic, some uncompromisingly radical. To forget Roy and Chatto is not only to forget two lives but to forget that dissent, experiment, ideological multiplicity and disagreements were once central to imagining India’s future.
And this is why Spies, Lies and Allies matters now. It warns us that the suspicion of dissent, the reduction of politics to loyalty tests, the silencing of inconvenient voices, these are not new developments. They are patterns woven deep into the fabric of modern India. What we are living through is not unprecedented; it is the return of an old anxiety.
Rao’s book, then, is more than history. It is an uneasy reminder, that the invisible line between an ally and an enemy, truth and propaganda, loyalty and betrayal, has always been perilously thin in Indian politics. The task of remembering Roy and Chatto is not only about honoring forgotten revolutionaries but also about recognizing how fragile, and how necessary, dissent remains.
Roy and Chatto belonged to a generation of Indian revolutionaries who understood the fight against empire not as an isolated struggle but as part of a worldwide battle against domination. They worked with communists, anarchists, and fellow exiles; they argued bitterly with each other, debated with Lenin in Moscow, negotiated with German agents during the First World War, collaborated with writers and journalists, led liberal yet crushing love lives, and were pushed to erasure on different levels by Stalin. They existed on the edge of the nationalist mainstream, too unorthodox for Gandhi’s spiritual politics, too open-minded to follow Savarkar's descent from impressive rationalism into divisive politics which directly or indirectly helped the British divide and rule policy, too internationalist for Nehru’s cautious nationalism, and too uncompromising for Bose’s impatient urgency, but whose militaristic path would end up being an extension of their internationalist thoughts.
Rao’s achievement is to bring them back into view, not as sepia-toned revolutionaries but as men living precarious, contradictory lives. Chatto’s tragic end in Stalin’s purges and Roy’s eventual intellectual estrangement from both Moscow and the Indian mainstream remind us that revolutions rarely deliver safe resting places. Yet these stories are not simply about the past.
To read them today is to glimpse ourselves. Then, as now, the state marks dissenters as traitors and spies. Then, as now, political imagination was narrowed by the demand for loyalty. The label of “foreign agent” that shadowed Roy and Chatto resonates uncomfortably with our present, where writers, activists, and students are still accused of being tools of outside forces when they question the state’s authoritarian ways.
Well known historical figures like Lenin, Stalin, Gandhi, Nehru, and Bose in the narrative, embody the constant negotiation between ideals and power. Lenin encouraged revolution but demanded conformity; Stalin extinguished comrades in the name of loyalty or was it his anxiety? Gandhi sought freedom but distrusted the unruly internationalism of exiles like Chatto; Nehru respected and collaborated with both Roy and Chatto, but his practical approach placed him at odds with both of them at different points in time. Each of these figures framed the choices available to men like Roy and Chatto, choices that always came at a cost.
By recovering these entangled lives, Rao reminds us that India’s freedom was never born of a single path. It was a polyphony of conflicting visions, some spiritual, some pragmatic, some uncompromisingly radical. To forget Roy and Chatto is not only to forget two lives but to forget that dissent, experiment, ideological multiplicity and disagreements were once central to imagining India’s future.
And this is why Spies, Lies and Allies matters now. It warns us that the suspicion of dissent, the reduction of politics to loyalty tests, the silencing of inconvenient voices, these are not new developments. They are patterns woven deep into the fabric of modern India. What we are living through is not unprecedented; it is the return of an old anxiety.
Rao’s book, then, is more than history. It is an uneasy reminder, that the invisible line between an ally and an enemy, truth and propaganda, loyalty and betrayal, has always been perilously thin in Indian politics. The task of remembering Roy and Chatto is not only about honoring forgotten revolutionaries but also about recognizing how fragile, and how necessary, dissent remains.
August 4, 2025
Spies, Lies and Allies by Kavitha Rao reveals many lesser-known facts about Virendranath Chattopadhyay and Manabendra Nath Roy. However, if you’re expecting a full-length biography, then you may be disappointed. As the author herself acknowledges, that for detailed knowledge of Roy and Chattopadhyay, you should turn to the biographies by Shibnarayan Ray (on Roy) and Nirode K. Barua (on Chattopadhyay). This book is not a biography but a concise narration of Roy and Chattopadhyay’s life stories. For example, think of Ray’s and Barua’s works as feature films, with Rao’s volume serving as a well-crafted teaser that ignites your desire for the trailer and the full movie.To today’s younger generation, the names Roy and Chattopadhyay seem almost alien, and even those who studied history at school or university often have only a vague sense of these two remarkable men. They were utterly dedicated to their ideals, never compromising for comfort or fortune, with Chattopadhyay enduring a relentless, around-the-clock struggle. Unlike Roy, who was fortunate enough to return to India and spend his final years in anonymity but in peace compared to Chattopadhyay, who spent much of his life on the move, travelling across Europe yet shunning luxury as his heart continually ached for the freedom his motherland. Far from a hagiography, the book balances praise with candid, sometimes completely unknown anecdotes; Rao does not shy away from the protagonists’ flaws or from episodes that might invite criticism. Credit of this must go to her for maintaining such a measured tone. Beyond its two central figures, the book briefly introduces other activists and associates who crossed paths with Roy and Chattopadhyay. This book underlines one key point, that these men (Chatto and Roy) were genuine communists, true advocates of free thought rather than hypocrite.
March 4, 2025
I’ve always been fascinated by the lives of Virendranath Chattopadhyay [“Chatto”] and M.N. Roy, two of the revolutionaries who struggled for India’s freedom, and whom history has largely forgotten (Chatto far more than Roy). Kavitha Rao’s book takes a look at their intertwined lives, tracing their separate and overlapping trajectories in alternate chapters. Along with the lives of these individuals, she also opens up a window into the world-spanning revolutionary politics of the 1920s and 1930s, from the United States to India, from Berlin to Moscow.
Alongside Ole Birk Laursen’s biography of M.P.T. Acharya, Anarchy or Chaos, we now have studies of three of the great Indian internationalist and left-wing revolutionaries of the era, whose stories (and the movement they were a part of) have been submerged for too long. Rao’s book paints vivid portraits of two remarkable - but deeply flawed - men (the story of M.N. Roy’s disastrous Comintern-sponsored intervention into the Chinese Revolution was particularly poignant), who endured great hardship and privations in their commitment to combining internationalist left-wing politics with the struggle for India’s freedom. The result was death for one (Chatto was executed in Stalin’s great purge) and obscurity for the other (Roy found himself marginalised from Indian politics on his return to the contrary). So we have books like Rao’s to thank for excavating the stories of these people for us.
Alongside Ole Birk Laursen’s biography of M.P.T. Acharya, Anarchy or Chaos, we now have studies of three of the great Indian internationalist and left-wing revolutionaries of the era, whose stories (and the movement they were a part of) have been submerged for too long. Rao’s book paints vivid portraits of two remarkable - but deeply flawed - men (the story of M.N. Roy’s disastrous Comintern-sponsored intervention into the Chinese Revolution was particularly poignant), who endured great hardship and privations in their commitment to combining internationalist left-wing politics with the struggle for India’s freedom. The result was death for one (Chatto was executed in Stalin’s great purge) and obscurity for the other (Roy found himself marginalised from Indian politics on his return to the contrary). So we have books like Rao’s to thank for excavating the stories of these people for us.
July 15, 2025
A fantastic chronicle of two lesser known India revolutionaries. Chatto and Roy were truly global citizens and fascinating characters - trotting the world, narrowly escaping the British secret service, spies and local police at every turn, getting involved in fiery love affairs, sometime living in penury, sometimes hobnobbing with high society. When you think of Indian freedom fighters with communist leanings, something feels off - but that's exactly what these gentlemen were. They were also flawed humans who often mistreated their spouses. They were also not very successful with their grandiose plans - but boy, did they try!
This is an absolute marvel of a book covering 3 decades at breakneck speed describing their escapades across over half a dozen countries during the tumultuous times of WWI and II. And the best part is that the supporting cast of characters is astonishing - Nehru, Sarojini Naidu (Chatto's sister), Bagha Jatin, Savarkar, Lenin, Stalin, Rash Behari Bose, Sun Yat-Sen, Lala Lajpat Roy, Carranza - Chatto and Roy met and worked with all these at some point in time.
Kavitha Rao weaves in every significant world event happening in the background into the adventures of Chatto and Roy. And this opens endless rabbit-holes for us readers to get into. It is a shame that I had never comes across Chatto and Roy. Highly recommended for Indian history buffs.
This is an absolute marvel of a book covering 3 decades at breakneck speed describing their escapades across over half a dozen countries during the tumultuous times of WWI and II. And the best part is that the supporting cast of characters is astonishing - Nehru, Sarojini Naidu (Chatto's sister), Bagha Jatin, Savarkar, Lenin, Stalin, Rash Behari Bose, Sun Yat-Sen, Lala Lajpat Roy, Carranza - Chatto and Roy met and worked with all these at some point in time.
Kavitha Rao weaves in every significant world event happening in the background into the adventures of Chatto and Roy. And this opens endless rabbit-holes for us readers to get into. It is a shame that I had never comes across Chatto and Roy. Highly recommended for Indian history buffs.
May 11, 2025
A tale of restless men who lived through restless times in global history.
This book introduces the readers to the wider landscape of the Indian anti-colonial revolutionary movement abroad. Centred around two characters- Virendranath Chattooadhyaya and M.N. Roy, who are pushed into obscurity under the shadow of the Gandhian movement, this book underlines the trials and tribulations of two men, who are deeply flawed but fought for the cause of Indian Independence till the end. One of them, M.N. Roy, who founded communist parties in two countries (Mexico and India), later escaped Stalin's 'Great Purge', and tried to make his mark on the trajectory of the Indian freedom struggle, and attempted to influence Indian politics through Radical Humanism.
They travelled across continents, lived amidst the key global moments, had numerous affairs and were shaped by the times. This book also introduces the readers to a plethora of other characters who also lived interesting lives: Bagha Jatin, Bhikaiji Cama, MPT Acharya, Wilhelm Munzenberg, etc. Rao tells in simple language the story of two extraordinarily complex men. She also implicitly suggests the wider gap in the literature about the revolutionary movement in India. A must-read.
This book introduces the readers to the wider landscape of the Indian anti-colonial revolutionary movement abroad. Centred around two characters- Virendranath Chattooadhyaya and M.N. Roy, who are pushed into obscurity under the shadow of the Gandhian movement, this book underlines the trials and tribulations of two men, who are deeply flawed but fought for the cause of Indian Independence till the end. One of them, M.N. Roy, who founded communist parties in two countries (Mexico and India), later escaped Stalin's 'Great Purge', and tried to make his mark on the trajectory of the Indian freedom struggle, and attempted to influence Indian politics through Radical Humanism.
They travelled across continents, lived amidst the key global moments, had numerous affairs and were shaped by the times. This book also introduces the readers to a plethora of other characters who also lived interesting lives: Bagha Jatin, Bhikaiji Cama, MPT Acharya, Wilhelm Munzenberg, etc. Rao tells in simple language the story of two extraordinarily complex men. She also implicitly suggests the wider gap in the literature about the revolutionary movement in India. A must-read.
August 11, 2025
The book told an astonishing and an incredible story. It was packed with interlinkages with well known events in history, the personalities protagonists intermingled with, the atmosphere of the times was relayed wonderfully with spot on reasonings (the multitude curious 'why' that a reader would have had in mind while reading were diligently reasoned in the text itself) and the cast of lesser known names intertwined with interesting short background to them to contextualize them within the main thread of story was quite interesting as well. Thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and whichever way you look at it, the lives of Chatto and Roy were indeed extraordinary.
April 16, 2025
This book is a great service to two freedom fighters who dedicated their entire life (and eventual death) to Independence. Both independently circumvented almost the entire globe, from the far east to Mexico, battling enemies both within and without. they lead thrilling lives with death scarcely far away.
My grouse is that the book is quite academic in nature, I would perhaps have preferred the platform of historical fiction to know about the extraordinary MN Roy and Chatto as they evaded their enemies and survived across continents.
My grouse is that the book is quite academic in nature, I would perhaps have preferred the platform of historical fiction to know about the extraordinary MN Roy and Chatto as they evaded their enemies and survived across continents.
June 19, 2025
A long overdue tribute to two of India's prolific, dedicated revolutionaries. Whose claim to their forgotten histories lie in their offence of independent thinking and the refusal to sink to opportunism.
Kavita Rao masterfully weaves together two tales in parallel untill they meet. The historical details can overwhelm at some points, I'd suggest reading the book in bits and pieces leisurely over many days, living Chatto's and Roy's days with them.
Kavita Rao masterfully weaves together two tales in parallel untill they meet. The historical details can overwhelm at some points, I'd suggest reading the book in bits and pieces leisurely over many days, living Chatto's and Roy's days with them.
December 26, 2025
I really enjoyed Kavitha Rao's first book Lady Doctors and so picked this one up. It doesn't disappoint. And the best part of Rao's writing is that it doesn't seem like boring non fiction about lives of historical characters. Rao has a way of making the story engaging and thrilling and you forget that these were real and remarkable characters in history and get so caught up in their stories. Loved it
May 1, 2025
The topic of the book is really interesting and I've heard the author talk about in a really interesting way. I did feel that the narrative could have been structured better. Still an intriguing page turner
July 5, 2025
A thriller, easy to get lost in characters if one wants to reconstruct.
What stands out are the potted histories of the different kinds of Communism across the world - China, India, Russia, Europe etc. but they all end in mass murders - Classic Communism exactly how the communists love it.
What stands out are the potted histories of the different kinds of Communism across the world - China, India, Russia, Europe etc. but they all end in mass murders - Classic Communism exactly how the communists love it.
October 20, 2025
A gripping, well researched exploration of the lives of two intriguing men from the freedom struggle.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews