Kalmyk Project
Encyclopedia
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
and other Himalayan buffer states in 1919-1920. It was a part of Soviet plans for destabilising Britain and the Western European powers through unrest in the Colonial Empire. British Indian intelligence sent agents, among them F. M. Bailey, to Central Asia to trace early Bolshevik designs on India.
Soviet Russia intended to nurture political upheaval in British India in its strategy against British imperialism. In 1919, she sent a diplomatic mission headed by an "orientalist" by the name of N.Z. Bravin. This was at the time that Afghanistan had seen a coup d'état that placed young prince Amanullah Khan
Amanullah Khan
Amanullah Khan was the King of the Emirate of Afghanistan from 1919 to 1929, first as Amir and after 1926 as Shah. He led Afghanistan to independence over its foreign affairs from the United Kingdom, and his rule was marked by dramatic political and social change...
in power and precipitated the Third Anglo-Afghan war
Third Anglo-Afghan War
The Third Anglo-Afghan War began on 6 May 1919 and ended with an armistice on 8 August 1919. It was a minor tactical victory for the British. For the British, the Durand Line was reaffirmed as the political boundary between the Emirate of Afghanistan and British India and the Afghans agreed not to...
. Bravin proposed to Amanullah a military alliance against British India and a campaign for which Soviet Turkestan would bear the costs. These negotiations however failed to reach concrete conclusions, and the Soviet advances were also detected by British Indian intelligence. Among other works, this Bravin expedition established links at Herat with the Austrian and German remnants of the Niedermayer-Hentig expedition
Niedermayer-Hentig Expedition
The Niedermayer-Hentig Expedition was a diplomatic mission sent by the Central Powers to Afghanistan in 1915-1916. The purpose was to encourage Afghanistan to declare full independence from the United Kingdom, enter World War I on the side of the Central Powers, and attack India. The expedition was...
, and also liaised with the Indian revolutionaries of the Provisional Government of India
Provisional Government of India
Provisional Government of India was a provisional government-in-exile established by Indian Nationalists in Afghanistan during World War I with support from the Central Powers. Its purpose was to enroll support from both the Afghan Emir, as well as Tsarist Russia, China and Japan for the Indian...
in Kabul.
A later plan considered by the soviets intended to raise a force of nearly forty thousand cavalry from Turkestan or the Urals which would advance to India through Afghanistan, with help from Afghan tribes who may rally against Amanullah. However, these plans presented their own problems. Amongst other routes to India that were explored were plans to foment unrest in Tibet and the Himalayan buffer states of Bhutan
Bhutan
Bhutan , officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People's Republic of China...
, Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayan mountains...
, Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
and Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
and Burma through the Buddhist Kalmyk
Kalmyk people
Kalmyk people is the name given to the Oirats, western Mongols in Russia, whose descendants migrated from Dzhungaria in 1607. Today they form a majority in the autonomous Republic of Kalmykia on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Kalmykia is Europe's only Buddhist government...
people, and use these places as a staging ground for revolution in India and the shortest route to Bengal which was the centre of the revolutionary movement in India. This was to proceed under the cover of a scientific expedition under Indologist Fyodor Shcherbatskoy
Fyodor Shcherbatskoy
Fyodor Ippolitovich Shcherbatskoy or Stcherbatsky , often referred to in the literature as F. Th. Stcherbatsky, was a Russian Indologist who, in large part, was responsible for laying the foundations in the Western world for the scholarly study of Buddhist philosophy...
, and would arm the indigenous people in the North-East Indian region with modern weaponry before a regular supply could be arranged. The Kalmyk project may have been the brainchild of Raja Mahendra Pratap
Raja Mahendra Pratap
Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh was a freedom fighter, journalist, writer and revolutionary social reformist of India. He was popularly known as the Aryan Peshwa. He was born in Thenua gotra Jat Hindu princely family of state of Mursan in Hathras District of Uttar Pradesh on 1 December 1886. He was...
who had led the Niedermayer-Hentig Expedition
Niedermayer-Hentig Expedition
The Niedermayer-Hentig Expedition was a diplomatic mission sent by the Central Powers to Afghanistan in 1915-1916. The purpose was to encourage Afghanistan to declare full independence from the United Kingdom, enter World War I on the side of the Central Powers, and attack India. The expedition was...
into Afghanistan in 1915 and subsequently established the nationalist Provisional Government of India
Provisional Government of India
Provisional Government of India was a provisional government-in-exile established by Indian Nationalists in Afghanistan during World War I with support from the Central Powers. Its purpose was to enroll support from both the Afghan Emir, as well as Tsarist Russia, China and Japan for the Indian...
at Kabul in December that year. Pratap liased with the Nascent Bolshevik Government and the Kaiser after 1917 to explore the scopes of a joint Soviet-German invasion of India through Afghanistan. The most notable of these meetings was Pratap's audience with Lenin arranged by People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in 1919 when he met the latter with a group of Indian revolutionaries from the Berlin Committee
Berlin Committee
The Berlin Committee, later known as the Indian Independence Committee after 1915, was an organisation formed in Germany in 1914 during World War I by Indian students and political activists residing in the country. The purpose of the Committee was to promote the cause of Indian Independence...
. The project had the approval of Lenin. Pratap himself had a strong obsession with Tibet, and made efforts as early as 1916 to penetrate into the Himalayan Kingdom to cultivate anti-British propaganda. His efforts were resumed after his return from Moscow in 1919. He was close to Fyodor Shcherbatskoy
Fyodor Shcherbatskoy
Fyodor Ippolitovich Shcherbatskoy or Stcherbatsky , often referred to in the literature as F. Th. Stcherbatsky, was a Russian Indologist who, in large part, was responsible for laying the foundations in the Western world for the scholarly study of Buddhist philosophy...
and Sergey Oldenburg
Sergey Oldenburg
Sergey Fyodorovich Oldenburg was a Russian orientalist who specialized in Buddhist studies. He is remembered as the founder of Russian Indology and the teacher of Fyodor Shcherbatskoy....
, and intended to participate in People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs' planned expeditions to Tibet in summer 1919, and was privy to the organisation's designs in the region.
However, the project was ultimately curtailed following the Czech uprising in the Trans-Siberian railway. Pratap himself set out alone to unsuccessfully pursue his goal in Tibet.