The Indian anticolonial revolutionary M. P. T. Acharya (1887–1954) charted different intellectual paths towards freedom than any other anticolonial revolutionary and becameIndia’s foremost – and internationally well-known – proponent of anarchism. At our Online Talk #Chaos2Anarchy, historian Dr Ole Birk Laursen explores his fascinating life and travels, his revolutionary activities across India, Europe, the United States, Russia, and Germany, and his attempts to introduce anarchism into India’s independence struggle.

About the speaker

Dr Ole Birk Laursen is a historian of South Asia at Lund University, Sweden. He focuses on exile, anticolonialism, and anarchism in the twentieth century. He is the author of Anarchy or Chaos: M. P. T. Acharya and the Indian Struggle for Freedom (Penguin India, 2023).