Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

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Subhas Chandra Bose
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Subhas Chandra Bose
Head of State and Government (Prime Minister) of the Provisional Government of Free India (Undivided India) (Ārzī Hukūmat-e-Āzād Hind)
In office: 21 October 1943 – 18 August 1945
Preceded by: Office created
Succeeded by: Office abolished
President of the Indian National Congress
In office: 1938–1939
Preceded by: Jawaharlal Nehru
Succeeded by: Rajendra Prasad
Personal details
Born: Subhas Chandra Bose, 23 January 1897, Cuttack, British India
Died: 18 August 1945 (aged 48), Taihoku, Japanese Taiwan (present-day Taipei)
Political party: Indian National Congress; Forward Bloc (1939–1940)
Spouse(s): Emilie Schenkl
Children: Anita Bose Pfaff
Mother: Prabhavati Dutt
Father: Janakinath Bose
Education: Ravenshaw Collegiate; Scottish Church College
Alma mater: University of Calcutta; Fitzwilliam College
Known for: Indian nationalism

Subhas Chandra Bose (23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945)[1][a] was an Indian nationalist whose defiant patriotism made him a hero in India,[2][ b][3][c][4][d] but whose attempt during World War II to rid India of British rule with the help of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan left a troubled legacy.[5][e][6][f][2][g] The honorific Netaji (Hindustani: "Respected Leader"), first applied in early 1942 to Bose in Germany by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin, was later used throughout India.[7][h]

Bose had been a leader of the younger, radical, wing of the Indian National Congress in the late 1920s and 1930s, rising to become Congress President in 1938 and 1939.[8][ i] However, he was ousted from Congress leadership positions in 1939 following differences with Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress high command.[9] He was subsequently placed under house arrest by the British before escaping from India in 1940.[10]

Bose arrived in Germany in April 1941, where the leadership offered unexpected, if sometimes ambivalent, sympathy for the cause of India's independence, contrasting starkly with its attitudes towards other colonised peoples and ethnic communities.[11][12]

Freda married BPL on June 12, 1933, at the Oxford Registrar’s Office. She was twenty-two and he was twenty-six….

Their creative, radical Oxford days were over. Both Freda and BPL received their degrees and a whole new life beckoned. It was not what Freda had imagined. She had successfully lined up a job as a cub reporter on the Derby Telegraph, her first stepping stone to Fleet Street (as she had intended). Instead she went to Germany with her new husband, who had won a Humboldt scholarship at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, to research a PHD in Political Science.

“Bedi was concerned about the rise of Hitler, but he thought that as long as he didn’t get a chance to rant in Parliament, it would be all right. He was going to keep a very keen eye on the situation,” she said. She was not to see her homeland again for fourteen years….

By the time Freda reached Berlin, she was pregnant, and delighted with the prospect of motherhood. BPL somewhat protectively decided that she should not work, but instead live quietly in the charming little cottage they had found on the bank of Lake Wannsee. “It was really a lovely place, with a beautiful garden, and we had some very happy months there preparing for the child,” she said. She busied herself with making baby clothes, but could not resist going to Berlin University to study Hindi with a Punjabi professor – a necessary preparation, she thought, for a life on the subcontinent, and to counteract the full-on domesticity she found herself in….

BPL refrained from any political activity in Germany, although he was keeping up-to-date with the Free India movement in India. A frequent visitor to their lakeside cottage was Subhas Chandra Bose, who went on to become one of the most prominent and controversial leaders of the independence movement. Bose was educated at Cambridge and also had a European wife – Emilie Schenkl, an Austrian. He made it a point to visit sympathetic Indian students living in Europe, and the couple had much in common with Freda and BPL Bedi.

“We came to know Bose intimately, and a deep friendship grew,” said BPL. Bose was a hard-core communist, a great admirer of the Soviet Union, who maintained that only an authoritarian state, not democracy, would be able to reshape India. (Later he was forced to resign as present of the Indian National Congress because his platform of violent resistance clashed with Gandhi’s peaceful pathway.)

In Germany, however, Bose, won the young BPL over completely. “Freda and I were both fired up with the patriotic zeal of liberating the motherland from British imperialism,” BPL said. “While we were in Berlin, an eminent journalist asked me what was my agenda for India. ‘Live dangerously,’ I replied. ‘Live dangerously for every form of exploitation of man by man. Live dangerously for every form of injustice. Live dangerously for any violation of human dignity.’”

On May 13, 1934, Freda gave birth to a son after just a four-hour labor….They named him Ranga after the Indian statesman who had defeated the political opposition to their marriage, ten months previously….

BPL had not joined any political club at Berlin University, nor was he taking part in any political activities, but he sensed that tension was mountain. He was friendly with many of the Indian students living in the International Houses, which were being increasingly dominated by Nazi representatives.

In August 1934, Hitler was made fuhrer. The morning the news broke, BPL put down his paper and announced, “Tomorrow we get on the train and go to Geneva. It’s not safe here anymore.”

“He knew that Hitler could swoop down on the Indian students, which was precisely what happened,” said Freda. The life of drama and danger that she pledged to share with Bedi had begun. “You can imagine the state I was in, having to pack up everything in one day, and with BPL having to get the visas for Switzerland. But the next morning we were on the train!” she said

After their hasty exit, they spent a few pleasant weeks staying in accommodations that had been arranged by their old Oxford professor, Alfred Zimmern [Professor Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, whose name is associated with the founding of the League of Nations], who ran a school there. In October 1934, they finally made the decision to go to India and make it their permanent home. They sailed on the SS Conte Verde from northern Italy to Bombay, a journey of three weeks.

-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie


In November 1941, with German funds, a Free India Centre was set up in Berlin, and soon a Free India Radio, on which Bose broadcast nightly. A 3,000-strong Free India Legion, comprising Indians captured by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, was also formed to aid in a possible future German land invasion of India.[13] By spring 1942, in light of Japanese victories in southeast Asia and changing German priorities, a German invasion of India became untenable, and Bose became keen to move to southeast Asia.[14] Adolf Hitler, during his only meeting with Bose in late May 1942, suggested the same, and offered to arrange for a submarine.[15] During this time Bose also became a father; his wife, [16] or companion,[17][j] Emilie Schenkl, whom he had met in 1934, gave birth to a baby girl in November 1942.[16][11] Identifying strongly with the Axis powers, and no longer apologetically, Bose boarded a German submarine in February 1943.[18][19] In Madagascar, he was transferred to a Japanese submarine from which he disembarked in Japanese-held Sumatra in May 1943.[18]

With Japanese support, Bose revamped the Indian National Army (INA), then composed of Indian soldiers of the British Indian army who had been captured in the Battle of Singapore.[20] To these, after Bose's arrival, were added enlisting Indian civilians in Malaya and Singapore. The Japanese had come to support a number of puppet and provisional governments in the captured regions, such as those in Burma, the Philippines and Manchukuo. Before long the Provisional Government of Free India, presided by Bose, was formed in the Japanese-occupied Andaman and Nicobar Islands.[20][21][k] Bose had great drive and charisma—creating popular Indian slogans, such as "Jai Hind,"—and the INA under Bose was a model of diversity by region, ethnicity, religion, and even gender. However, Bose was regarded by the Japanese as being militarily unskilled,[22][l] and his military effort was short-lived. In late 1944 and early 1945 the British Indian Army first halted and then devastatingly reversed the Japanese attack on India. Almost half the Japanese forces and fully half the participating INA contingent were killed.[23][m] The INA was driven down the Malay Peninsula, and surrendered with the recapture of Singapore. Bose had earlier chosen not to surrender with his forces or with the Japanese, but rather to escape to Manchuria with a view to seeking a future in the Soviet Union which he believed to be turning anti-British. He died from third degree burns received when his plane crashed in Taiwan.[24][n] Some Indians, however, did not believe that the crash had occurred,[4][o] with many among them, especially in Bengal, believing that Bose would return to gain India's independence.[25][p][26][q][27][r]

The Indian National Congress, the main instrument of Indian nationalism, praised Bose's patriotism but distanced itself from his tactics and ideology,[28][s] especially his collaboration with fascism.[29] The British Raj, though never seriously threatened by the INA,[30][t][31][u] charged 300 INA officers with treason in the INA trials, but eventually backtracked in the face both of popular sentiment and of its own end.[32][v][29][2]

Biography

1897–1921: Early life


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Subhas Bose, standing, extreme right, with his family of 14 siblings in Cuttack, ca. 1905.

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Subhas Bose (standing, right) with friends in England, 1920

Subhas Chandra Bose was born on 23 January 1897 (at 12.10 pm) in Cuttack, Orissa Division, Bengal Province, to Prabhavati Dutt Bose and Janakinath Bose, an advocate belonging to a Kayastha[33][w] family.[34] He was the ninth in a family of 14 children. His family was well to do.[33]

He was admitted to the Protestant European School (presently Stewart High School) in Cuttack, like his brothers and sisters, in January 1902. He continued his studies at this school which was run by the Baptist Mission up to 1909 and then shifted to the Ravenshaw Collegiate School. Here, he was ridiculed by his fellow students because he knew very little Bengali. The day Subhas was admitted to this school, Beni Madhab Das, the headmaster, understood how brilliant and scintillating his genius was. After securing the second position in the matriculation examination in 1913, he got admitted to the Presidency College where he studied briefly.[35] He was influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna after reading their works at the age of 16. He felt that his religion was more important than his studies.[33]

In those days, the British in Calcutta often made offensive remarks to the Indians in public places and insulted them openly. This behavior of the British as well as the outbreak of World War I began to influence his thinking.[33]

His nationalistic temperament came to light when he was expelled for assaulting Professor Oaten(who had manhandled some Indian students[33]) for the latter's anti-India comments. He was expelled although he appealed that he only witnessed the assault and did not actually participate in it.[33] He later joined the Scottish Church College at the University of Calcutta and passed his B.A. in 1918 in philosophy.[36] Bose left India in 1919 for England with a promise to his father that he would appear in the Indian Civil Services (ICS) examination. He went to study in Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and matriculated on 19 November 1919. He came fourth in the ICS examination and was selected, but he did not want to work under an alien government which would mean serving the British. As he stood on the verge of taking the plunge by resigning from the Indian Civil Service in 1921, he wrote to his elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose: "Only on the soil of sacrifice and suffering can we raise our national edifice."[37]

He resigned from his civil service job on 23 April 1921 and returned to India.[38]

1921–1932: Indian National Congress

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Bose at the inauguration of the India Society in Prague in 1926.

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Subhas Bose, General Officer Commanding, Congress Volunteer Corps (in military uniform) with Congress president, Motilal Nehru, taking the salute. Annual meeting, Indian National Congress, December 29, 1928.

He started the newspaper Swaraj and took charge of publicity for the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee.[39] His mentor was Chittaranjan Das who was a spokesman for aggressive nationalism in Bengal. In the year 1923, Bose was elected the President of All India Youth Congress and also the Secretary of Bengal State Congress. He was also the editor of the newspaper "Forward", founded by Chittaranjan Das.[40] Bose worked as the CEO of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation for Das when the latter was elected mayor of Calcutta in 1924.[41] In a roundup of nationalists in 1925, Bose was arrested and sent to prison in Mandalay, where he contracted tuberculosis.[42]

In 1927, after being released from prison, Bose became general secretary of the Congress party and worked with Jawaharlal Nehru for independence. In late December 1928, Bose organised the Annual Meeting of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta.[43] His most memorable role was as General Officer Commanding (GOC) Congress Volunteer Corps.[43] Author Nirad Chaudhuri wrote about the meeting:

Bose organized a volunteer corps in uniform, its officers were even provided with steel-cut epaulettes ... his uniform was made by a firm of British tailors in Calcutta, Harman's. A telegram addressed to him as GOC was delivered to the British General in Fort William and was the subject of a good deal of malicious gossip in the (British Indian) press. Mahatma Gandhi is a sincere pacifist vowed to non-violence, did not like the strutting, clicking of boots, and saluting, and he afterward described the Calcutta session of the Congress as a Bertram Mills circus, which caused a great deal of indignation among the Bengalis.[43]


A little later, Bose was again arrested and jailed for civil disobedience; this time he emerged to become Mayor of Calcutta in 1930.[42]

1933–1937: Illness, Austria, Emilie Schenkl

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Bose with Emilie Schenkl, in Bad Gastein, Austria, 1936.

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Bose, INC president-elect, center, in Bad Gastein, Austria, December 1937, with (left to right) A. C. N. Nambiar (Bose's second-in-command, Berlin, 1941–1945), Heidi Fulop-Miller, Schenkl, and Amiya Bose.

During the mid-1930s Bose travelled in Europe, visiting Indian students and European politicians, including Benito Mussolini. He observed party organisation and saw communism and fascism in action. In this period, he also researched and wrote the first part of his book The Indian Struggle, which covered the country's independence movement in the years 1920–1934. Although it was published in London in 1935, the British government banned the book in the colony out of fears that it would encourage unrest.[44]

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-- Mein Kampf: My Struggle, by Adolf Hitler


1937–1940: Indian National Congress

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Bose, president-elect, INC, arrives in Calcutta, 24 January 1938, after two-month vacation in Austria.[x][y]

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Bose arriving at the 1939 annual session of the Congress, where he was re-elected, but later had to resign after disagreements with Gandhi and the Congress High Command.

By 1938 Bose had become a leader of national stature and agreed to accept nomination as Congress President.He stood for unqualified Swaraj (self-governance), including the use of force against the British. This meant a confrontation with Mohandas Gandhi, who in fact opposed Bose's presidency,[47] splitting the Indian National Congress party. Bose attempted to maintain unity, but Gandhi advised Bose to form his own cabinet. The rift also divided Bose and Nehru. Bose appeared at the 1939 Congress meeting on a stretcher. He was elected president again over Gandhi's preferred candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya.[48] U. Muthuramalingam Thevar strongly supported Bose in the intra-Congress dispute. Thevar mobilised all south India votes for Bose.[49] However, due to the manoeuvrings of the Gandhi-led clique in the Congress Working Committee, Bose found himself forced to resign from the Congress presidency.

On 22 June 1939 Bose organised the All India Forward Bloc a faction within the Indian National Congress,[50] aimed at consolidating the political left, but its main strength was in his home state, Bengal. U Muthuramalingam Thevar, who was a staunch supporter of Bose from the beginning, joined the Forward Bloc. When Bose visited Madurai on 6 September, Thevar organised a massive rally as his reception.

When Subash Chandra Bose was heading to Madurai, on an invitation of Muthuramalinga Thevar to amass support for the Forward Bloc, he passed through Madras and spent three days at Gandhi Peak. His correspondence reveals that despite his clear dislike for British subjugation, he was deeply impressed by their methodical and systematic approach and their steadfastly disciplinarian outlook towards life. In England, he exchanged ideas on the future of India with British Labour [Labor] Party leaders and political thinkers like Lord Halifax, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, Arthur Greenwood, Harold Laski, J.B.S. Haldane, Ivor Jennings, G.D.H. Cole, Gilbert Murray and Sir Stafford Cripps.

He came to believe that an independent India needed socialist authoritarianism, on the lines of Turkey's Kemal Atatürk, for at least two decades. For political reasons Bose was refused permission by the British authorities to meet Atatürk at Ankara. During his sojourn in England Bose tried to schedule appointments with several politicians, but only the Labour [Labor] Party and Liberal politicians agreed to meet with him. Conservative Party officials refused to meet him or show him courtesy because he was a politician coming from a colony. In the 1930s leading figures in the Conservative Party had opposed even Dominion status for India. It was during the Labour [Labor] Party government of 1945–1951, with Attlee as the Prime Minister, that India gained independence.


On the outbreak of war, Bose advocated a campaign of mass civil disobedience to protest against Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's decision to declare war on India's behalf without consulting the Congress leadership. Having failed to persuade Gandhi of the necessity of this, Bose organised mass protests in Calcutta calling for the 'Holwell Monument' commemorating the Black Hole of Calcutta, which then stood at the corner of Dalhousie Square, to be removed.[51] He was thrown in jail by the British, but was released following a seven-day hunger strike. Bose's house in Calcutta was kept under surveillance by the CID.[52]

1941–1943: Nazi Germany

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Bose greeting Heinrich Himmler (right), the Nazi Minister of Interior, head of the SS, and the Gestapo, 1942.

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Subhas Bose meeting Adolf Hitler

Bose's arrest and subsequent release set the scene for his escape to Germany, via Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. A few days before his escape, he sought solitude and, on this pretext, avoided meeting British guards and grew a beard. Late night 16 January 1941, the night of his escape, he dressed as a Pathan (brown long coat, a black fez-type coat and broad pyjamas) to avoid being identified. Bose escaped from under British surveillance from his Elgin Road house in Calcutta about 01:25AM on 17 January 1941, accompanied by his nephew Sisir Kumar Bose in a German-made Wanderer W24 Sedan car, which would take him to Gomoh Railway Station in then state of Bihar, India. The car (Registration No. BLA 7169) was bought by Subhash Chandra Bose's elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose in 1937. The car is now on display at his Elgin Road home in Calcutta, India.[53][54][55][56]

He journeyed to Peshawar with the help of the Abwehr, where he was met by Akbar Shah, Mohammed Shah and Bhagat Ram Talwar. Bose was taken to the home of Abad Khan, a trusted friend of Akbar Shah's. On 26 January 1941, Bose began his journey to reach Russia through British India's North West frontier with Afghanistan. For this reason, he enlisted the help of Mian Akbar Shah, then a Forward Bloc leader in the North-West Frontier Province. Shah had been out of India en route to the Soviet Union, and suggested a novel disguise for Bose to assume. Since Bose could not speak one word of Pashto, it would make him an easy target of Pashto speakers working for the British. For this reason, Shah suggested that Bose act deaf and dumb, and let his beard grow to mimic those of the tribesmen. Bose's guide Bhagat Ram Talwar, unknown to him, was a Soviet agent.[55][56][57]

Supporters of the Aga Khan III helped him across the border into Afghanistan where he was met by an Abwehr unit posing as a party of road construction engineers from the Organization Todt who then aided his passage across Afghanistan via Kabul to the border with Soviet Russia. After assuming the guise of a Pashtun insurance agent ("Ziaudddin") to reach Afghanistan, Bose changed his guise and travelled to Moscow on the Italian passport of an Italian nobleman "Count Orlando Mazzotta". From Moscow, he reached Rome, and from there he travelled to Germany.[55][56][58] Once in Russia the NKVD transported Bose to Moscow where he hoped that Russia's traditional enmity to British rule in India would result in support for his plans for a popular rising in India. However, Bose found the Soviets' response disappointing and was rapidly passed over to the German Ambassador in Moscow, Count von der Schulenburg. He had Bose flown on to Berlin in a special courier aircraft at the beginning of April where he was to receive a more favourable hearing from Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Foreign Ministry officials at the Wilhelmstrasse.[55][56][59]

In Germany, he was attached to the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz which was responsible for broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio.[60] He founded the Free India Center in Berlin, and created the Indian Legion (consisting of some 4500 soldiers) out of Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa prior to their capture by Axis forces. The Indian Legion was attached to the Wehrmacht, and later transferred to the Waffen SS. Its members swore the following allegiance to Hitler and Bose: "I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhas Chandra Bose". This oath clearly abrogates control of the Indian legion to the German armed forces whilst stating Bose's overall leadership of India. He was also, however, prepared to envisage an invasion of India via the USSR by Nazi troops, spearheaded by the Azad Hind Legion; many have questioned his judgment here, as it seems unlikely that the Germans could have been easily persuaded to leave after such an invasion, which might also have resulted in an Axis victory in the War.[58]

In all, 3,000 Indian prisoners of war signed up for the Free India Legion. But instead of being delighted, Bose was worried. A left-wing admirer of Russia, he was devastated when Hitler's tanks rolled across the Soviet border. Matters were worsened by the fact that the now-retreating German army would be in no position to offer him help in driving the British from India. When he met Hitler in May 1942, his suspicions were confirmed, and he came to believe that the Nazi leader was more interested in using his men to win propaganda victories than military ones. So, in February 1943, Bose turned his back on his legionnaires and slipped secretly away aboard a submarine bound for Japan. This left the men he had recruited leaderless and demoralised in Germany.[58][61]

Bose lived in Berlin from 1941 until 1943. During his earlier visit to Germany in 1934, he had met Emilie Schenkl, the daughter of an Austrian veterinarian whom he married in 1937. Their daughter is Anita Bose Pfaff.[62] Bose's party, the Forward Bloc, has contested this fact.[63]

1943–1945: Japanese-occupied Asia

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The crew of Japanese submarine I-29 after the rendezvous with German submarine U-180 300 sm southeast of Madagascar; Bose is sitting in the front row (28 April 1943).

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Bose speaking in Tokyo in 1943.

In 1943, after being disillusioned that Germany could be of any help in gaining India's independence, he left for Japan. He travelled with the German submarine U-180 around the Cape of Good Hope to the southeast of Madagascar, where he was transferred to the I-29 for the rest of the journey to Imperial Japan. This was the only civilian transfer between two submarines of two different navies in World War II.[55][56]

The Indian National Army (INA) was the brainchild of Japanese Major (and post-war Lieutenant-General) Iwaichi Fujiwara, head the Japanese intelligence unit Fujiwara Kikan and had its origins, first in the meetings between Fujiwara and the president of the Bangkok chapter of the Indian Independence League, Pritam Singh Dhillon, and then, through Pritam Singh's network, in the recruitment by Fujiwara of a captured British Indian army captain, Mohan Singh on the western Malayan peninsula in December 1941; Fujiwara's mission was "to raise an army which would fight alongside the Japanese army."[64][65] After the initial proposal by Fujiwara the Indian National Army was formed as a result of discussion between Fujiwara and Mohan Singh in the second half of December 1941, and the name chosen jointly by them in the first week of January 1942.[66]

This was along the concept of—and with support of—what was then known as the Indian Independence League, headed by expatriate nationalist leader Rash Behari Bose. The first INA was however disbanded in December 1942 after disagreements between the Hikari Kikan and Mohan Singh, who came to believe that the Japanese High Command was using the INA as a mere pawn and propaganda tool. Mohan Singh was taken into custody and the troops returned to the prisoner-of-war camp. However, the idea of an independence army was revived with the arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose in the Far East in 1943. In July, at a meeting in Singapore, Rash Behari Bose handed over control of the organisation to Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose was able to reorganise the fledgling army and organise massive support among the expatriate Indian population in south-east Asia, who lent their support by both enlisting in the Indian National Army, as well as financially in response to Bose's calls for sacrifice for the independence cause. INA had a separate women's unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment (named after Rani Lakshmi Bai) headed by Capt. Lakshmi Swaminathan, which is seen as a first of its kind in Asia.[67][68]

Even when faced with military reverses, Bose was able to maintain support for the Azad Hind movement. Spoken as a part of a motivational speech for the Indian National Army at a rally of Indians in Burma on 4 July 1944, Bose's most famous quote was "Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom!" In this, he urged the people of India to join him in his fight against the British Raj.[citation needed] Spoken in Hindi, Bose's words are highly evocative. The troops of the INA were under the aegis of a provisional government, the Azad Hind Government, which came to produce its own currency, postage stamps, court and civil code, and was recognised by nine Axis states — Germany, Japan, Italian Social Republic, the Independent State of Croatia, Wang Jingwei regime in Nanjing, China, a provisional government of Burma, Manchukuo and Japanese-controlled Philippines. Recent researches[which?] have shown that the USSR too had diplomatic contact with the "Provisional Government of Free India".[citation needed] Of those countries, five were authorities established under Axis occupation. This government participated in the so-called Greater East Asia Conference as an observer in November 1943.[citation needed]

The INA's first commitment was in the Japanese thrust towards Eastern Indian frontiers of Manipur. INA's special forces, the Bahadur Group, were extensively involved in operations behind enemy lines both during the diversionary attacks in Arakan, as well as the Japanese thrust towards Imphal and Kohima, along with the Burmese National Army led by Ba Maw and Aung San.[citation needed]

The Japanese also took possession of Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 1942 and a year later, the Provisional Government and the INA were established in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands with Lt Col. A.D. Loganathan appointed its Governor General. The islands were renamed Shaheed (Martyr) and Swaraj (Independence). However, the Japanese Navy remained in essential control of the island's administration. During Bose's only visit to the islands in early 1944, apparently in the interest of shielding Bose from attaining a full knowledge of ultimate Japanese intentions, Bose's Japanese hosts carefully isolated him from the local population. At that time the island's Japanese administration had been torturing the leader of the island's Indian Independence League, Dr. Diwan Singh, who later died of his injuries in the Cellular Jail. During Bose's visit to the islands several locals attempted to alert Bose to Dr. Singh's plight, but apparently without success. During this time Lt. Col Loganathan became aware of his lack of any genuine administrative control and resigned in protest as Governor General, later returning to the Government's headquarters in Rangoon.[69][70]

On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolour, modelled after that of the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in the town of Moirang, in Manipur, in north-eastern India. The adjacent towns of Kohima and Imphal were then encircled and placed under siege by divisions of the Japanese Army, working in conjunction with the Burmese National Army, and with Brigades of the INA, known as the Gandhi and Nehru Brigades. This attempt at conquering the Indian mainland had the Axis codename of Operation U-Go.

During this operation, On 6 July 1944, in a speech broadcast by the Azad Hind Radio from Singapore, Bose addressed Mahatma Gandhi as the "Father of the Nation" and asked for his blessings and good wishes for the war he was fighting. This was the first time that Gandhi was referred to by this appellation.[71] The protracted Japanese attempts to take these two towns depleted Japanese resources, with Operation U-Go ultimately proving unsuccessful. Through several months of Japanese onslaught on these two towns, Commonwealth forces remained entrenched in the towns. Commonwealth forces then counter-attacked, inflicting serious losses on the Axis led forces, who were then forced into a retreat back into Burmese territory. After the Japanese defeat at the battles of Kohima and Imphal, Bose's Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever.

Still the INA fought in key battles against the British Indian Army in Burmese territory, notable in Meiktilla, Mandalay, Pegu, Nyangyu and Mount Popa. However, with the fall of Rangoon, Bose's government ceased to be an effective political entity.[citation needed] A large proportion of the INA troops surrendered under Lt Col Loganathan. The remaining troops retreated with Bose towards Malaya or made for Thailand. Japan's surrender at the end of the war also led to the surrender of the remaining elements of the Indian National Army. The INA prisoners were then repatriated to India and some tried for treason.

18 August 1945: Death

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The last aeroplane journeys of Subhas Chandra Bose.

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A memorial to Subhas Chandra Bose in the Renkōji Temple, Tokyo. Bose's ashes are stored in the temple in a golden pagoda.

In the consensus of scholarly opinion, Subhas Chandra Bose's death occurred from third-degree burns on 18 August 1945 after his overloaded Japanese plane crashed in Japanese-ruled Formosa (now Taiwan).[1][4] However, many among his supporters, especially in Bengal, refused at the time, and have refused since, to believe either the fact or the circumstances of his death.[1][25][26] Conspiracy theories appeared within hours of his death and have thereafter had a long shelf life,[1][z] keeping alive various martial myths about Bose.[2]

In Taihoku, at around 2:30 pm as the bomber with Bose on board was leaving the standard path taken by aircraft during take-off, the passengers inside heard a loud sound, similar to an engine backfiring.[72][73] The mechanics on the tarmac saw something fall out of the plane.[74] It was the portside engine, or a part of it, and the propeller.[74][72] The plane swung wildly to the right and plummeted, crashing, breaking into two, and exploding into flames.[74][72] Inside, the chief pilot, copilot and Lieutenant-General Tsunamasa Shidei, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Japanese Kwantung Army, who was to have made the negotiations for Bose with the Soviet army in Manchuria,[75] were instantly killed.[74][76] Bose's assistant Habibur Rahman was stunned, passing out briefly, and Bose, although conscious and not fatally hurt, was soaked in gasoline.[74] When Rahman came to, he and Bose attempted to leave by the rear door, but found it blocked by the luggage.[76] They then decided to run through the flames and exit from the front.[76] The ground staff, now approaching the plane, saw two people staggering towards them, one of whom had become a human torch.[74] The human torch turned out to be Bose, whose gasoline-soaked clothes had instantly ignited.[76] Rahman and a few others managed to smother the flames, but also noticed that Bose's face and head appeared badly burned.[76] According to Joyce Chapman Lebra, "A truck which served as ambulance rushed Bose and the other passengers to the Nanmon Military Hospital south of Taihoku."[74] The airport personnel called Dr. Taneyoshi Yoshimi, the surgeon-in-charge at the hospital at around 3 pm.[76] Bose was conscious and mostly coherent when they reached the hospital, and for some time thereafter.[77] Bose was naked, except for a blanket wrapped around him, and Dr. Yoshimi immediately saw evidence of third-degree burns on many parts of the body, especially on his chest, doubting very much that he would live.[77] Dr. Yoshimi promptly began to treat Bose and was assisted by Dr. Tsuruta.[77] According to historian Leonard A. Gordon, who interviewed all the hospital personnel later,

A disinfectant, Rivamol, was put over most of his body and then a white ointment was applied and he was bandaged over most of his body. Dr. Yoshimi gave Bose four injections of Vita Camphor and two of Digitamine for his weakened heart. These were given about every 30 minutes. Since his body had lost fluids quickly upon being burnt, he was also given Ringer solution intravenously. A third doctor, Dr. Ishii gave him a blood transfusion. An orderly, Kazuo Mitsui, an army private, was in the room and several nurses were also assisting. Bose still had a clear head which Dr. Yoshimi found remarkable for someone with such severe injuries.[78]


Soon, in spite of the treatment, Bose went into a coma.[78][74] A few hours later, between 9 and 10 PM (local time) on Saturday 18 August 1945, Bose died aged 48.[78][74]

Bose's body was cremated in the main Taihoku crematorium two days later, 20 August 1945.[79] On 23 August 1945, the Japanese news agency Do Trzei announced the death of Bose and Shidea.[74] On 7 September a Japanese officer, Lieutenant Tatsuo Hayashida, carried Bose's ashes to Tokyo, and the following morning they were handed to the president of the Tokyo Indian Independence League, Rama Murti.[80] On 14 September a memorial service was held for Bose in Tokyo and a few days later the ashes were turned over to the priest of the Renkōji Temple of Nichiren Buddhism in Tokyo.[81][82] There they have remained ever since.[82]

Among the INA personnel, there was widespread disbelief, shock, and trauma. Most affected were the young Tamil Indians from Malaya and Singapore, both men and women, who comprised the bulk of the civilians who had enlisted in the INA.[29] The professional soldiers in the INA, most of whom were Punjabis, faced an uncertain future, with many fatalistically expecting reprisals from the British.[29] In India the Indian National Congress's official line was succinctly expressed in a letter Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi wrote to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur.[29] Said Gandhi, "Subhas Bose has died well. He was undoubtedly a patriot, though misguided."[29] Many congressmen had not forgiven Bose for quarrelling with Gandhi and for collaborating with what they considered was Japanese fascism. The Indian soldiers in the British Indian army, some two and a half million of whom had fought during the Second World War, were conflicted about the INA. Some saw the INA as traitors and wanted them punished; others felt more sympathetic. The British Raj, though never seriously threatened by the INA, tried 300 INA officers for treason in the INA trials, but eventually backtracked.[29]

Legacy

Bose was featured on the stamps in India from 1964, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2016 and 2018.[83] Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport at Kolkata, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Island, formerly Ross Island and many other institutions in India are named after him. On 23 August 2007, Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzō Abe visited the Subhas Chandra Bose memorial hall in Kolkata.[84][85] Abe said to Bose's family "The Japanese are deeply moved by Bose's strong will to have led the Indian independence movement from British rule. Netaji is a much respected name in Japan.[84][85]

The following words are inscribed on a brass shield in front of the chair.

"Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in order to free India from the shackles of British imperialism organized the Azad Hind Government from outside the country on October 21, 1943. Netaji set up the Provisional Government of Independent India (Azad Hind) and transferred its headquarter at Rangoon on January 7, 1944. On the 5th April, 1944, the "Azad Hind Bank" was inaugurated at Rangoon. It was on this occasion that Netaji used this chair for the first time. Later the chair was kept at the residence of Netaji at 51, University Avenue, Rangoon, where the office of the Azad Hind Government was also housed. Afterwards, at the time of leaving Burma, the Britishers handed over the chair to the family of Mr. A.T. Ahuja, the well known business man of Rangoon. The chair was officially handed over to the Government of India in January 1979. It was brought to Calcutta on the 17th July, 1980. It has now been ceremonially installed at the Red Fort on July 7, 1981."


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Bose on a 1964 stamp of India

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Bose on a 1964 stamp of India
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Ideology

Bose advocated complete unconditional independence for India, whereas the All-India Congress Committee wanted it in phases, through Dominion status. Finally at the historic Lahore Congress convention, the Congress adopted Purna Swaraj (complete independence) as its motto. Gandhi was given rousing receptions wherever he went after Gandhi-Irwin pact. Subhas Chandra Bose, travelling with Gandhi in these endeavours, later wrote that the great enthusiasm he saw among the people enthused him tremendously and that he doubted if any other leader anywhere in the world received such a reception as Gandhi did during these travels across the country. He was imprisoned and expelled from India. Defying the ban, he came back to India and was imprisoned again.[citation needed]

Bose was elected president of the Indian National Congress for two consecutive terms, but had to resign from the post following ideological conflicts with Mohandas K. Gandhi and after openly attacking the Congress' foreign and internal policies. Bose believed that Gandhi's tactics of non-violence would never be sufficient to secure India's independence, and advocated violent resistance. He established a separate political party, the All India Forward Bloc and continued to call for the full and immediate independence of India from British rule. He was imprisoned by the British authorities eleven times.

His stance did not change with the outbreak of the Second World War, which he saw as an opportunity to take advantage of British weakness. At the outset of the war, he left India, travelling to the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, seeking an alliance with each of them to attack the British government in India. With Imperial Japanese assistance, he re-organised and later led the Azad Hind Fauj or Indian National Army (INA), formed with Indian prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from British Malaya, Singapore, and other parts of Southeast Asia, against British forces. With Japanese monetary, political, diplomatic and military assistance, he formed the Azad Hind Government in exile, and regrouped and led the Indian National Army in failed military campaigns against the allies at Imphal and in Burma.

His political views and the alliances he made with Nazi and other militarist regimes at war with Britain have been the cause of arguments among historians and politicians, with some accusing him of fascist sympathies, while others in India have been more sympathetic towards the realpolitik that guided his social and political choices.

Subhas Chandra Bose believed that the Bhagavad Gita was a great source of inspiration for the struggle against the British.[86] Swami Vivekananda's teachings on universalism, his nationalist thoughts and his emphasis on social service and reform had all inspired Subhas Chandra Bose from his very young days. The fresh interpretation of the India's ancient scriptures had appealed immensely to him.[87] Many scholars believe that Hindu spirituality formed the essential part of his political and social thought throughout his adult life, although there was no sense of bigotry or orthodoxy in it.[88] Subhas who called himself a socialist, believed that socialism in India owed its origins to Swami Vivekananda.[89] As historian Leonard Gordon explains "Inner religious explorations continued to be a part of his adult life. This set him apart from the slowly growing number of atheistic socialists and communists who dotted the Indian landscape.".[90]

Bose first expressed his preference for "a synthesis of what modern Europe calls socialism and fascism" in a 1930 speech in Calcutta.[91] Bose later criticized Nehru's 1933 statement that there is "no middle road" between communism and fascism, describing it as "fundamentally wrong." Bose believed communism would not gain ground in India due to its rejection of nationalism and religion and suggested a "synthesis between communism and fascism" could take hold instead.[92] In 1944, Bose similarly stated, "Our philosophy should be a synthesis between National Socialism and communism."[93]

Bose's correspondence (prior to 1939) reflects his deep disapproval of the racist practices of, and annulment of democratic institutions in Nazi Germany: "Today I regret that I have to return to India with the conviction that the new nationalism of Germany is not only narrow and selfish but arrogant."[94] However, he expressed admiration for the authoritarian methods (though not the racial ideologies) which he saw in Italy and Germany during the 1930s, and thought they could be used in building an independent India.[51]

Bose had clearly expressed his belief that democracy was the best option for India.[95] The pro-Bose thinkers believe that his authoritarian control of the Azad Hind was based on political pragmatism and a post-colonial doctrine rather than any anti-democratic belief.[citation needed] However, during the war (and possibly as early as the 1930s), Bose seems to have decided that no democratic system could be adequate to overcome India's poverty and social inequalities, and he wrote that a socialist state similar to that of Soviet Russia (which he had also seen and admired) would be needed for the process of national re-building.[aa][96] Accordingly, some suggest that Bose's alliance with the Axis during the war was based on more than just pragmatism, and that Bose was a militant nationalist, though not a Nazi nor a Fascist, for he supported empowerment of women, secularism and other liberal ideas; alternatively, others consider he might have been using populist methods of mobilisation common to many post-colonial leaders.[51]

His most famous quote was "Give me blood and I will give you freedom".[97] Another famous quote was Dilli Chalo ("On to Delhi)!" This was the call he used to give the INA armies to motivate them. Jai Hind, or, "Glory to India!" was another slogan used by him and later adopted by the Government of India and the Indian Armed Forces. Another slogan coined by him was "Ittehad, Etemad, Qurbani" (Urdu for "Unity, Agreement, Sacrifice"). INA also used the slogan Inquilab Zindabad, which was coined by Maulana Hasrat Mohani.[98]

In popular media

• In 2004, Shyam Benegal directed the biographical film, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero depicting his life in Nazi Germany (1941–1943), in Japanese-occupied Asia (1943–1945) and the events leading to the formation of Azad Hind Fauj.[99]The film received critical acclaim at the BFI London Film Festival, and has garnered the National Film Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration, and the National Film Award for Best Production Design for that year.[100][101]
• In 2017, ALTBalaji and BIG Synergy Media, released a 9-episode web series, Bose: Dead/Alive, which is a dramatised version of the book India's Biggest Cover-up written by Anuj Dhar, which starred Bollywood actor Rajkummar Rao as Subhas Chandra Bose and Anna Ador as Emilie Schenkl. The series was praised by both audience and critics, for its plot, performance and production design.[102]

See also

• The Indian Struggle
• Indian Independence Movement
• Indian National Army

Footnotes

Notes


1. ^ "If all else failed (Bose) wanted to become a prisoner of the Soviets: 'They are the only ones who will resist the British. My fate is with them. But as the Japanese plane took off from Taipei airport its engines faltered and then failed. Bose was badly burned in the crash. According to several witnesses, he died on 18 August in a Japanese military hospital, talking to the very last of India's freedom. British and Indian commissions later established convincingly that Bose had died in Taiwan. These were legendary and apocalyptic times, however. Having witnessed the first Indian leader to fight against the British since the great mutiny of 1857, many in both Southeast Asia and India refused to accept the loss of their hero. Rumours that Bose had survived and was waiting to come out of hiding and begin the final struggle for independence were rampant by the end of 1945.[1]
2. ^ "His romantic saga, coupled with his defiant nationalism, has made Bose a near-mythic figure, not only in his native Bengal, but across India."[2]
3. ^ "Bose's heroic endeavor still fires the imagination of many of his countrymen. But like a meteor which enters the earth's atmosphere, he burned brightly on the horizon for a brief moment only."[3]
4. ^ "Subhas Bose might have been a renegade leader who had challenged the authority of the Congress leadership and their principles. But in death he was a martyred patriot whose memory could be an ideal tool for political mobilization."[4]
5. ^ "The most troubling aspect of Bose's presence in Nazi Germany is not military or political but rather ethical. His alliance with the most genocidal regime in history poses serious dilemmas precisely because of his popularity and his having made a lifelong career of fighting the 'good cause'. How did a man who started his political career at the feet of Gandhi end up with Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo? Even in the case of Mussolini and Tojo, the gravity of the dilemma pales in comparison to that posed by his association with Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The most disturbing issue, all too often ignored, is that in the many articles, minutes, memorandums, telegrams, letters, plans, and broadcasts Bose left behind in Germany, he did not express the slightest concern or sympathy for the millions who died in the concentration camps. Not one of his Berlin wartime associates or colleagues ever quotes him expressing any indignation. Not even when the horrors of Auschwitz and its satellite camps were exposed to the world upon being liberated by Soviet troops in early 1945, revealing publicly for the first time the genocidal nature of the Nazi regime, did Bose react."[5]
6. ^ "To many (Congress leaders), Bose's programme resembled that of the Japanese fascists, who were in the process of losing their gamble to achieve Asian ascendancy through war. Nevertheless, the success of his soldiers in Burma had stirred as much patriotic sentiment among Indians as the sacrifices of imprisoned Congress leaders.[6]
7. ^ "Marginalized within Congress and a target for British surveillance, Bose chose to embrace the fascist powers as allies against the British and fled India, first to Hitler's Germany, then, on a German submarine, to a Japanese-occupied Singapore. The force that he put together ... known as the Indian National Army (INA) and thus claiming to represent free India, saw action against the British in Burma but accomplished little toward the goal of a march on Delhi. ... Bose himself died in an aeroplane crash trying to reach Japanese-occupied territory in the last months of the war. ... It is this heroic, martial myth that is today remembered, rather than Bose's wartime vision of a free India under the authoritarian rule of someone like himself."[2]
8. ^ "Another small, but immediate, issue for the civilians in Berlin and the soldiers in training was how to address Subhas Bose. Vyas has given his view of how the term was adopted: 'one of our [soldier] boys came forward with "Hamare Neta". We improved upon it: "Netaji"... It must be mentioned, that Subhas Bose strongly disapproved of it. He began to yield only when he saw our military group ... firmly went on calling him "Netaji"' (Alexander) Werth also mentioned adoption of 'Netaji' and observed accurately, that it '... combined a sense both of affection and honour ...' It was not meant to echo 'Fuehrer' or 'Duce', but to give Subhas Bose a special Indian form of reverence and this term has been universally adopted by Indians everywhere in speaking about him."[7]
9. ^ "Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose were among those who, impatient with Gandhi's programmes and methods, looked upon socialism as an alternative for nationalistic policies capable of meeting the country's economic and social needs, as well as a link to potential international support."[8]
10. ^ "Although we must take Emilie Schenkl at her word (about her secret marriage to Bose in 1937), there are a few nagging doubts about an actual marriage ceremony because there is no document that I have seen and no testimony by any other person. ... Other biographers have written that Bose and Miss Schenkl were married in 1942, while Krishna Bose, implying 1941, leaves the date ambiguous. The strangest and most confusing testimony comes from A. C. N. Nambiar, who was with the couple in Badgastein briefly in 1937, and was with them in Berlin during the war as second-in-command to Bose. In an answer to my question about the marriage, he wrote to me in 1978: 'I cannot state anything definite about the marriage of Bose referred to by you, since I came to know of it only a good while after the end of the last world war ... I can imagine the marriage having been a very informal one ...'... So what are we left with? ... We know they had a close passionate relationship and that they had a child, Anita, born November 29, 1942, in Vienna. ... And we have Emilie Schenkl's testimony that they were married secretly in 1937. Whatever the precise dates, the most important thing is the relationship."[17]
11. ^ "Tojo turned over all his Indian POWs to Bose's command, and in October 1943 Bose announced the creation of a Provisional Government of Azad ("Free") India, of which he became head of state, prime minister, minister of war, and minister of foreign affairs. Some two million Indians were living in Southeast Asia when the Japanese seized control of that region, and these emigrees were the first "citizens" of that government, founded under the "protection" of Japan and headquartered on the "liberated" Andaman Islands. Bose declared war on the United States and Great Britain the day after his government was established. In January 1944 he moved his provisional capital to Rangoon and started his Indian National Army on their march north to the battle cry of the Meerut mutineers: "Chalo Delhi!"[21]
12. ^ "At the same time that the Japanese appreciated the firmness with which Bose's forces continued to fight, they were endlessly exasperated with him. A number of Japanese officers, even those like Fujiwara, who were devoted to the Indian cause, saw Bose as a military incompetent as well as an unrealistic and stubborn man who saw only his own needs and problems and could not see the larger picture of the war as the Japanese had to."[22]
13. ^ "Gracey consoled himself that Bose's Indian National Army had also been in action against his Indians and Gurkhas but had been roughly treated and almost annihilated; when the survivors tried to surrender, they tended to fall foul of the Gurkhas' dreaded kukri."[23]
14. ^ "The good news Wavell reported was that the RAF had just recently flown enough of its planes into Manipur's capital of Imphal to smash Netaji ("Leader") Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army (INA) that had advanced to its outskirts before the monsoon began. Bose's INA consisted of about 20,000 of the British Indian soldiers captured by the Japanese in Singapore, who had volunteered to serve under Netaji Bose when he offered them "Freedom" if they were willing to risk their "Blood" to gain Indian independence a year earlier. The British considered Bose and his "army of traitors" no better than their Japanese sponsors, but to most of Bengal's 50 million Indians, Bose was a great national hero and potential "Liberator." The INA was stopped before entering Bengal, first by monsoon rains and then by the RAF, and forced to retreat, back through Burma and down its coast to the Malay peninsula. In May 1945, Bose would fly out of Saigon on an overloaded Japanese plane, headed for Taiwan, which crash-landed and burned. Bose suffered third-degree burns and died in the hospital on Formosa."[24]
15. ^ "The retreat was even more devastating, finally ending the dream of gaining Indian independence through military campaign. But Bose still remained optimistic, thought of regrouping after the Japanese surrender, contemplated seeking help from Soviet Russia. The Japanese agreed to provide him transport up to Manchuria from where he could travel to Russia. But on his way, on 18 August 1945 at Taihoku airport in Taiwan, he died in an air crash, which many Indians still believe never happened."[4]
16. ^ "There are still some in India today who believe that Bose remained alive and in Soviet custody, a once and future king of Indian independence. The legend of 'Netaii' Bose's survival helped bind together the defeated INA. In Bengal it became an assurance of the province's supreme importance in the liberation of the motherland. It sustained the morale of many across India and Southeast Asia who deplored the return of British power or felt alienated from the political settlement finally achieved by Gandhi and Nehru.[25]
17. ^ "On 21 March 1944, Subhas Bose and advanced units of the INA crossed the borders of India, entering Manipur, and by May they had advanced to the outskirts of that state's capital, Imphal. That was the closest Bose came to Bengal, where millions of his devoted followers awaited his army's "liberation." The British garrison at Imphal and its air arm withstood Bose's much larger force long enough for the monsoon rains to defer all possibility of warfare in that jungle region for the three months the British so desperately needed to strengthen their eastern wing. Bose had promised his men freedom in exchange for their blood, but the tide of battle turned against them after the 1944 rains, and in May 1945 the INA surrendered in Rangoon. Bose escaped on the last Japanese plane to leave Saigon, but he died in Formosa after a crash landing there in August. By that time, however, his death had been falsely reported so many times that a myth soon emerged in Bengal that Netaji Subhas Chandra was alive—raising another army in China or Tibet or the Soviet Union—and would return with it to "liberate" India.[26]
18. ^ "Subhas Bose was dead, killed in 1945 in a plane crash in the Far East, even though many of his devotees waited—as Barbarossa's disciples had done in another time and in another country—for their hero's second coming."[27]
19. ^ "The thrust of Sarkar's thought, like that of Chittaranjan Das and Subhas Bose, was to challenge the idea that 'the average Indian is indifferent to life', as R. K. Kumaria put it. India once possessed an energised, Machiavellian political culture. All it needed was a hero (rather than a Gandhi-style saint) to revive the culture and steer India to life and freedom through violent contentions of world forces (vishwa shakti) represented in imperialism, fascism and socialism."[28]
20. ^ "The (Japanese) Fifteenth Army, commanded by ... Maj.-General Mutuguchi Renya consisted of three experienced infantry divisions — 15th, 31st and 33rd — totalling 100,000 combat troops, with the 7,000 strong 1st Indian National Army (INA) Division in support. It was hoped the latter would subvert the Indian Army's loyalty and precipitate a popular rising in British India, but in reality the campaign revealed that it was largely a paper tiger."[30]
21. ^ "The real fault, however, must attach to the Japanese commander-in-chief Kawabe. Dithering, ... prostrated with amoebic dysentery, he periodically reasoned that he must cancel Operation U-Go in its entirety, but every time he summoned the courage to do so, a cable would arrive from Tokyo stressing the paramount necessity of victory in Burma, to compensate for the disasters in the Pacific. ... Even more incredibly, he still hoped for great things from Bose and the INA, despite all the evidence that both were busted flushes."[31]
22. ^ "The claim is even made that without the Japanese-influenced 'Indian National Army' under Subhas Chandra Bose, India would not have achieved independence in 1947; though those who make claim seem unaware of the mood of the British people in 1945 and of the attitude of the newly-elected Labour government to the Indian question."[32]
23. ^ "Janakinath was a lawyer of a Kayastha family and was wealthy enough to educate his children well.He recalls being laughed at by his fellow studentsbecause he knew so little Bengali. At the age of fifteen, he first read the works of Swami Vivekananda and found a goal for his life-spiritual salvation foroneself and service to humanity.[33]
24. ^ "On November 4, 1937, Subhas sent a letter to Emilie in German, saying that he would probably travel to Europe in the middle of November. "Please write to Kurhaus Hochland, Badgastein," he instructed her, "and enquire if I (and you also) can stay there" He asked her to mention this message only to her parents, not to reply, and wait for his next airmail letter or telegram. On November 16, he sent a cable: "Starting aeroplane arriving Badgastein twenty second arrange lodging and meet me. ... He spent a month and a half—from November 22, 1937, to January 8, 1938—with Emilie at his favourite resort of Badgastein."[45]
25. ^ "On December 26, 1937, Subhas Chandra Bose secretly married Emilie Schenkl. Despite the obvious anguish, they chose to keep their relationship and marriage a closely guarded secret."[46]
26. ^ "Rumours that Bose had survived and was waiting to come out of hiding and begin the final struggle for independence were rampant by the end of 1945."[1]
27. ^ "The Fundamental Problems of India" (An address to the Faculty and students of Tokyo University, November 1944): "You cannot have a so-called democratic system, if that system has to put through economic reforms on a socialistic basis. Therefore we must have a political system – a State – of an authoritarian character. We have had some experience of democratic institutions in India and we have also studied the working of democratic institutions in countries like France, England and United States of America. And we have come to the conclusion that with a democratic system we cannot solve the problems of Free India. Therefore, modern progressive thought in India is in favour of a State of an authoritarian character"[96]

References

1. ^ :a b c d e f Bayly & Harper 2007, p. 2.
2. ^ :a b c d e f Metcalf & Metcalf 2012, p. 210.
3. ^ :a b Kulke & Rothermund 2004, p. 311.
4. ^ :a b c d e Bandyopādhyāẏa 2004, p. 427.
5. ^ :a b Hayes 2011, p. 165.
6. ^ :a b Stein 2010, pp. 345.
7. ^ :a b Gordon 1990, pp. 459–460.
8. ^ :a b Stein 2010, pp. 305,325.
9. ^ Low 2002, p. 297.
10. ^ Low 2002, p. 313.
11. ^ :a b Hayes 2011, pp. 65–67.
12. ^ Hayes 2011, p. 152.
13. ^ Hayes 2011, p. 76.
14. ^ Hayes 2011, pp. 87–88.
15. ^ Hayes 2011, pp. 114–116.
16. ^ :a b Hayes 2011, p. 15.
17. ^ :a b Gordon 1990, pp. 344–345.
18. ^ :a b Hayes 2011, pp. 141–143.
19. ^ Bose 2005, p. 255.
20. ^ :a b Low 1993, pp. 31–31.
21. ^ :a b Wolpert 2000, p. 339.
22. ^ :a b Gordon 1990, p. 517.
23. ^ :a b McLynn 2011, pp. 295–296.
24. ^ :a b Wolpert 2009, p. 69.
25. ^ :a b c Bayly & Harper 2007, p. 22.
26. ^ :a b c Wolpert 2000, pp. 339–340.
27. ^ :a b Chatterji 2007, p. 278.
28. ^ :a b Bayly 2012, p. 283.
29. ^ :a b c d e f g Bayly & Harper 2007, p. 21.
30. ^ :a b Moreman 2013, pp. 124–125.
31. ^ :a b McLynn 2011, p. 429.
32. ^ :a b Allen 2012, p. 179.
33. ^ :a b c d e f g Lebra 2008a, pp. 102—103.
34. ^ Getz 2002, p. 7.
35. ^ Jesudasen 2006, p. 57.
36. ^ Patil 1988.
37. ^ Mercado 2002, p. 73.
38. ^ Vas 2008, p. 27.
39. ^ Toye 2007.
40. ^ Chakraborty & Bhaṭṭācārya 1989.
41. ^ Vas 2008, p. 32.
42. ^ :a b Vipul 2009, p. 116.
43. ^ :a b c Gordon 1990, p. 190.
44. ^ Bose & Bose 1997.
45. ^ Bose 2011, p. 127.
46. ^ Bose 2011, pp. 129–130.
47. ^ Josh 1992.
48. ^ Chattopadhyay 1989.
49. ^ Phadnis 2009, p. 185.
50. ^ Padhy 2011, p. 234.
51. ^ :a b c Sen 1999.
52. ^ Durga Das Pvt. Ltd 1985.
53. ^ Loiwal 2017a.
54. ^ Loiwal 2017b.
55. ^ :a b c d e Talwar 1976.
56. ^ :a b c d e Markandeya 1990.
57. ^ James 1997, p. 554.
58. ^ :a b c Thomson 2004.
59. ^ Majumdar 1997, pp. 10–14.
60. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica 2016.
61. ^ Hauner 1981, pp. 28–29.
62. ^ Ramakrishnan 2001.
63. ^ Bhattacharjee 2012.
64. ^ Fay 1995, pp. 74–75.
65. ^ Lebra 2008a, pp. 21–23.
66. ^ Lebra 2008a, pp. 24–25.
67. ^ Bose 2002.
68. ^ Tarique.
69. ^ Singh, p. 249.
70. ^ Bayly & Harper 2007, p. 325.
71. ^ "Father of Our Nation" (Address to Mahatma Gandhi over the Rangoon Radio on 6 July 1944) Bose & Bose 1997a, pp. 301–2
72. ^ :a b c Gordon 1990, p. 540.
73. ^ Fay 1995, p. 384.
74. ^ :a b c d e f g h i j Lebra 2008a, pp. 196–197.
75. ^ Lebra 2008a, pp. 195–196.
76. ^ :a b c d e f Gordon 1990, p. 541.
77. ^ :a b c Gordon 1990, pp. 541–542.
78. ^ :a b c Gordon 1990, p. 542.
79. ^ Gordon 1990, p. 543.
80. ^ Gordon 1990, p. 544–545.
81. ^ Lebra 2008a, pp. 197–198.
82. ^ :a b Gordon 1990, p. 545.
83. ^ Media related to Subhas Chandra Bose on stamps at Wikimedia Commons
84. ^ :a b Roche 2007.
85. ^ :a b The Hindu 2007.
86. ^ Narangoa & Cribb 2003.
87. ^ Bose et al. 1996.
88. ^ Chaudhuri 1987.
89. ^ Bhuyan 2003.
90. ^ Gordon 1990.
91. ^ Pasricha 2008, pp. 64–65.
92. ^ Bose 2011, p. 98.
93. ^ Shanker Kapoor 2017.
94. ^ Bose to Dr. Thierfelder of the Deutsche Academie, Kurhaus Hochland, Badgastein, 25 March 1936 Bose & Bose 1997a, p. 155
95. ^ Roy 2004, pp. 7–8.
96. ^ :a b Bose & Bose 1997a, pp. 319–20.
97. ^ Kumar 2010b.
98. ^ Roy 1996, pp. 51ff.
99. ^ Salam 2005.
100. ^ Pandohar 2005.
101. ^ The Guardian 2005.
102. ^ Gauri 2017.

Bibliography

• Allen, Louis (2012), "The Campaigns in Asia and the Pacific", in John Gooch, Decisive Campaigns of the Second World War, London: Routledge, pp. 162–191, ISBN 978-1-136-28888-3
• Bandyopādhyāẏa, Śekhara (2004), From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India, Orient Blackswan, ISBN 978-81-250-2596-2
• Bhattacharjee, CS (23 January 2012), "World believes Netaji was married, but not his party", The Sunday Indian, Kolkata, retrieved 13 February 2016
• Bayly, Christopher Alan (2012), Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-139-50518-5
• Bayly, Christopher; Harper, Timothy (2007), Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-02153-2
• Bhuyan, P. R. (2003), Swami Vivekananda, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors
• Bose, Madhuri (10 February 2014), "Emilie Schenkl, Mrs Subhas Chandra Bose", Outlook, retrieved 28 December 2018
• Bose, Sarmila (2005), "Love in the Time of War: Subhas Chandra Bose's Journeys to Nazi Germany (1941) and towards the Soviet Union (1945)", Economic and Political Weekly, 40 (3): 249–56, JSTOR 4416082
• Bose, Sisir; Bose, Sugata (1997), "The India Struggle", Hindustan Times, archived from the original on 10 April 2012, retrieved 6 February 2016
• Bose, Sisir; Bose, Sugata, eds. (1997a), The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Delhi: Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780195648546
• Bose, Sisir; Werth, Alexander; Jog, Narayan Gopal; Ayer, Subbier Appadurai (1996), Beacon Across Asia: A Biography of Subhas Chandra Bose, Orient Blackswan
• Bose, Subhas (2002), Bose, Sisir; Bose, Sugata, eds., Azad Hind: writings and speeches, 1941–1943, Netaji Research Bureau, ISBN 8178240343
• Bose, Sugata (2011), His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle against Empire, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-04754-9
• Chakraborty, Phani Bhusan; Bhaṭṭācārya, Brajendrakumāra (1989), News behind newspapers: a study of the Indian press, Minerva Associates (Publications), ISBN 978-81-85195-16-2
• Chatterji, Joya (2007), The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-139-46830-5
• Chattopadhyay, Subhas Chandra (1989), Subhas Chandra Bose: man, mission, and means, Minerva Associates
• Chaudhuri, Nirad C. (1987), Thy Hand, Great Anarch!: India, 1921–1952, Chatto & Windus
• Durga Das Pvt. Ltd (1985), Eminent Indians who was who, 1900–1980, also annual diary of events, Durga Das Pvt. Ltd.
• The Editors of the Encyclopædia Britannica (2016), "Suhas Chandra Bose", Encyclopædia Britannica Online
• Fay, Peter Ward (1995), The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942–1945, University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0-472-08342-8
• Gauri, Gayatri (21 November 2017), "Bose: Dead/Alive review", showsha.com, Firstpost, retrieved 19 July 2018
• Getz, Marshall J. (2002), Subhas Chandra Bose: A Biography, McFarland, ISBN 978-0-7864-1265-5
• Gordon, Leonard A. (1990), Brothers against the Raj: a biography of Indian nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose, Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-07442-1
• The Guardian (9 May 2005), "Biopic of Indian revolutionary sparks protest", The Guardian, retrieved 2 May 2016
• Hauner, M (1981), India in Axis Strategy: Germany, Japan, and Indian Nationalists in the Second World War, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta
• Hayes, Romain (2011), Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany: Politics, Intelligence and Propaganda 1941–1943, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-932739-3
• The Hindu (24 August 2007), "Shinzo Abe visits Netaji Bhavan, sees notion of a 'Broader Asia'", The Hindu, retrieved 16 October 2009
• James, L (1997), Raj, the Making and Unmaking of British India, London: Abacus
• Jesudasen, Yasmine (2006), Voices of Freedom Movement, Sura Books, ISBN 978-81-7478-555-8
• Josh, Bhagwan (1992), Struggle for hegemony in India, 1920–47: the colonial state, the left, and the national movement. 1934–41, Sage, ISBN 978-81-7036-295-1
• Kulke, Hermann; Rothermund, Dietmar(2004), A History of India, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-32919-4
• Kumar, Anu (2010b), Subhas Chandra Bose: Great Freedom Fighter, Penguin Books Limited, ISBN 978-81-8475-312-7
• Kumar, Dr. Ravindra (15 October 2010a), "Vithalbhai J. Patel: A Great Freedom Fighter and Parliamentarian", NewsBlaze, retrieved 23 January 2019
• Lebra, Joyce Chapman (2008a) [1977], The Indian National Army and Japan, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, ISBN 978-981-230-806-1
• Loiwal, Manogya (18 January 2017a), President Pranab Mukherjee unveils Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's 1937 Wanderer W24 in Kolkata, India Today, retrieved 20 February 2017
• Loiwal, Manogya (19 January 2017b), Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's favourite car restored; unveiled in Kolkata, India Today, retrieved 20 February 2017
• Low, D. A. (1993), Eclipse of Empire, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-45754-5
• Low, D. A. (2002), Britain and Indian Nationalism: The Imprint of Amibiguity 1929–1942, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-89261-2
• Majumdar, Sisir K. (1997), "Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany", South Asia Forum Quarterly, Chery Chase, Maryland, 10 (1), retrieved 6 February 2016
• Markandeya, Subodh (1990), Subhas Chandra Bose: Netaji's passage to im[m]ortality, Arnold Publishers
• McLynn, Frank (2011), The Burma Campaign: Disaster Into Triumph, 1942–45, New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-17162-4
• Mercado, Stephen C. (2002), The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army's Elite Intelligence School (illustrated ed.), Potomac Books, Inc., ISBN 978-1-57488-443-2
• Metcalf, Barbara D.; Metcalf, Thomas R.(2012), A Concise History of Modern India, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-107-02649-0
• Moreman, Tim (2013), The Jungle, Japanese and the British Commonwealth Armies at War, 1941–45: Fighting Methods, Doctrine and Training for Jungle Warfare, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-135-76456-2
• Narangoa, Li; Cribb, R. B. (2003), Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 1895–1945, Routledge
• Padhy, K.S. (2011), Indian Political Thought, PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd., ISBN 978-81-203-4305-4
• Pandohar, Jaspreet (16 May 2005), "Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero (2005)", BBC Homepage: Entertainment: Film, BBC, retrieved 2 May 2016
• Pasricha, Ashu (2008), "The Political Thought Of Subhas Chandra Bose", Encyclopaedia Eminent Thinkers, 16, Concept Publishing Company
• Patil, V.S. (1988), Subhas Chandra Bose, his contribution to Indian nationalism, Sterling Publishers
• Phadnis, Aditi (2009), Business Standard Political Profiles of Cabals and Kings, Business Standard Books, ISBN 978-81-905735-4-2
• Rajani, Muskan (22 August 2017), "Ever Wondered Why Subhash Chandra Bose's Marriage Was A Secret Ceremony?", Dailyhunt, retrieved 28 December 2018
• Ramakrishnan, T (25 February 2001), "Memories of a brave heart", The Hindu, retrieved 13 February 2016
• Roche, Elizabeth (24 August 2007), "訪印中の安倍首相、東京裁判のパール判事の息子らと面会", Elizabeth Roche, AFPBB News, retrieved 31 July 2018
• Roy, Meenu (1996), India Votes, Elections 1996: A Critical Analysis, Deep & Deep Publications, ISBN 817100900X
• Roy, Dr R.C. (2004), Social, Economic and Political Philosophy of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 3 November 2006, retrieved 6 April 2006
• Salam, Ziya Us (20 May 2005), "Celluloid tribute to a national hero", The Hindu, retrieved 2 May 2016
• Santhanam, Kausalya (1 March 2001), Wearing the mantle with grace, The Hindu, retrieved 31 December 2013
• Sen, Satadru (1999), Subhas Chandra Bose 1897–1945, Archived from the original on 5 March 2005, retrieved 6 February 2016
• Sengupta, Hindol (2018), The Man Who Saved India, Penguin Random House India Private Limited, ISBN 9789353052003
• Shanker Kapoor, Ravi (2017), "There is No Such Thing As Hate Speech", Bloomsbury Publishing
• Singh, Iqbal, The Andaman Story
• Stein, Burton (2010), A History of India, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-1-4443-2351-1
• Talwar, Bhagat Ram (1976), The Talwars of Pathan Land and Subhas Chandra's Great Escape, People's Publishing House
• Tarique, Mohammad, Modern Indian History, Tata McGraw-Hill Education, ISBN 0070660301
• Thomson, Mike (23 September 2004), Hitler's secret Indian army, BBC News
• Toye, Hugh (2007), Subhas Chandra Bose, Jaico Publishing House, ISBN 978-81-7224-401-9
• Vas, Eric A. (2008), Subhas Chandra Bose: The Man and His Times, Lancer Publishers, ISBN 978-81-7062-243-7
• Vipul, Singh (2009), Longman History & Civics Icse 10, Pearson Education India, ISBN 978-81-317-2042-4
• Wolpert, Stanley A. (2000), A New History of India, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-512877-2
• Wolpert, Stanley (2009), Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-539394-1
Further reading
• Aldrich, Richard J. (2000), Intelligence and the War Against Japan: Britain, America and the Politics of Secret Service, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-64186-9
• Bayly, Christopher; Harper, Timothy (2005), Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-01748-1
• Brown, Judith Margaret (1994), Modern India: the origins of an Asian democracy, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-873112-2
• Chauhan, Abnish Singh (2006), Speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose: A Comparative Study, Prakash Book Depot, ISBN 9788179771495
• Copland, Ian (2001), India, 1885–1947: the unmaking of an empire, Longman, ISBN 978-0-582-38173-5
• Gordon, Leonard A. (2006), "Legend and Legacy: Subhas Chandra Bose", India International Centre Quarterly, 33 (1): 103–12, JSTOR 23005940
• Lebra, Joyce Chapman (2008b), Women Against the Raj: The Rani of Jhansi Regiment, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, ISBN 978-981-230-809-2
• Marston, Daniel (2014), The Indian Army and the End of the Raj, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-89975-8
• Pelinka, Anton (2003), Democracy Indian Style: Subhas Chandra Bose and the Creation of India's Political Culture, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 978-1-4128-2154-4
• Talbot, Ian (2016), A History of Modern South Asia: Politics, States, Diasporas, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-19694-8

External links

Subhas Chandra Boseat Wikipedia's sister projects
• Media from Wikimedia Commons
• Quotations from Wikiquote
• Texts from Wikisource
• Data from Wikidata
• Netaji Research Bureau
• Declassified papers at the National Archives of India
• Subhas Chandra Bose family Tree
• Works by or about Subhas Chandra Bose at Internet Archive
• Subhas Chandra Bose on IMDb
• Newspaper clippings about Subhas Chandra Bose in the 20th Century Press Archivesof the German National Library of Economics (ZBW)
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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Tue Mar 26, 2019 12:19 am

Emilie Schenkl
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/25/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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Image
Emilie Schenkl
Emilie Schenkl with Subhas Chandra Bose
Born: Emilie Schenkl, 26 December 1910, Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died: 13 March 1996 (aged 85), Vienna, Austria
Nationality: Austro-Hungarian (1910–18); Austro-German (1918–19); Austrian (1919–96)
Occupation: Stenographer
Spouse(s): Subhas Chandra Bose (1937–1945; his death)
Children: Anita Bose Pfaff (b. 1942)

Emilie Schenkl (26 December 1910 – 13 March 1996) was the wife[1] (or companion)[2][a] of Subhas Chandra Bose—a major leader of Indian nationalism—and the mother of their daughter, Anita Bose Pfaff (born 29 November 1942).[1][3] Schenkl, an Austrian, and her baby daughter were left without support in wartime Europe by Bose, following his departure for Southeast Asia in February 1943 and death in 1945.[4] In 1948, both were met by Bose's brother Sarat Chandra Bose and his family in Vienna in an emotional meeting.[5] In the post-war years, Schenkl worked shifts in the trunk exchange and was the main breadwinner of her family, which included her daughter and her mother. [6]

Early life

Emilie Schenkl was born in Vienna on 26 December 1910 in an Austrian Catholic family.[7] Paternal granddaughter of a shoemaker and the daughter of a veterinarian, she started primary school late—towards the end of the Great war—on account of her father's reluctance for her to have formal schooling.[7] Her father, moreover, became unhappy with her progress in secondary school and enrolled her in a nunnery for four years.[7] Schenkl decided against becoming a nun and went back to school, finishing when she was 20.[7] The Great Depression had begun in Europe; consequently, for a few years she was unemployed.[7]

She was introduced to Bose through a mutual friend, Dr. Mathur, an Indian physician living in Vienna.[7] Since Schenkl could take shorthand and her English and typing skills were good, she was hired by Bose, who was writing his book, The Indian Struggle.[7] They soon fell in love and were married in a secret Hindu ceremony in 1937,[1][2] but without a Hindu priest, witnesses, or civil record. Bose went back to India and reappeared in Nazi Germany during April 1941–February 1943.

Berlin during the war

Soon, according to historian Romain Hayes, "the (German) Foreign Office procured a luxurious residence for (Bose) along with a butler, cook, gardener, and an SS-chauffeured car. Emilie Schenkl moved in openly with him. The Germans, aware of the nature of the relationship, refrained from any involvement."[3] However, most of the staff in the Special Bureau for India, which had been set up to aid Bose, did not get along with Emilie.[8] In particular Adam von Trott, Alexander Werth and Freda Kretschemer, according to historian Leonard A. Gordon, "appear to have disliked her intensely. They believed that she and Bose were not married and that she was using her liaison with Bose to live an especially comfortable life during the hard times of war" and that differences were compounded by issues of class.[8] In November 1942, Schenkl gave birth to their daughter. In February 1943, Bose left Schenkl and their baby daughter and boarded a German submarine to travel, via transfer to a Japanese submarine, to Japanese-occupied southeast Asia, where with Japanese support he formed a Provisional Government of Free India and revamped an army, the Indian National Army, whose goal was to gain India's independence militarily with Japanese help. Bose's military effort, however, was unsuccessful.[9]

Later life

Schenkl and her daughter survived the war.[4][10] During their nine years of marriage, Schenkl and Bose spent less than three years together, putting strains on Schenkl.[6] In the post-war years, Schenkl worked shifts in the trunk exchange and was the main breadwinner of her family, which included her daughter and her mother.[6] Although some family members from Bose's extended family, including his brother Sarat Chandra Bose, welcomed Schenkl and her daughter and met with her in Austria, Schenkl never visited India. According to her daughter, Schenkl was a very private woman and tight-lipped about her relationship with Bose.[6] Schenkl died in 1996.

Notes

1. Gordon comments: "Although we must take Emilie Schenkl at her word (about her secret marriage to Bose in 1937), there are a few nagging doubts about an actual marriage ceremony because there is no document that I have seen and no testimony by any other person. ... Other biographers have written that Bose and Miss Schenkl were married in 1942, while Krishna Bose, implying 1941, leaves the date ambiguous. The strangest and most confusing testimony comes from A. C. N. Nambiar, who was with the couple in Badgastein briefly in 1937, and was with them in Berlin during the war as second-in-command to Bose. In an answer to my question about the marriage, he wrote to me in 1978: 'I cannot state anything definite about the marriage of Bose referred to by you, since I came to know of it only a good while after the end of the last world war ... I can imagine the marriage having been a very informal one ...' ... So what are we left with? ... We know they had a close passionate relationship and that they had a child, Anita, born 29 November 1942, in Vienna. ... And we have Emilie Schenkl's testimony that they were married secretly in 1937. Whatever the precise dates, the most important thing is the relationship."[2]

Citations

1. Hayes 2011, p. 15.
2. Gordon 1990, pp. 344–345.
3. Hayes 2011, p. 67.
4. Bose 2005, p. 255.
5. Gordon 1990, p. 595–596.
6. Santhanam 2001.
7. Gordon 1990, p. 285.
8. Gordon 1990, p. 446.
9. Gordon 1990, p. 543.
10. Hayes 2011, p. 144.

References

• Bose, Sarmila (2005), "Love in the Time of War: Subhas Chandra Bose's Journeys to Nazi Germany (1941) and towards the Soviet Union (1945)", Economic and Political Weekly, 40 (3): 249–256, JSTOR 4416082
• Bose, Sugata (2011), His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle against Empire, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-04754-9, retrieved 22 September 2013
• Gordon, Leonard A. (1990), Brothers against the Raj: a biography of Indian nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose, Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-07442-1, retrieved 17 November 2013
• Hayes, Romain (2011), Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany: Politics, Intelligence and Propaganda 1941-1943, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-932739-3, retrieved 22 September 2013
• Pelinka, Anton (2003), Democracy Indian Style: Subhas Chandra Bose and the Creation of India's Political Culture, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 978-1-4128-2154-4, retrieved 17 November 2013
• Santhanam, Kausalya (1 March 2001), Wearing the mantle with grace, The Hindu, retrieved 31 December 2013
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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Tue Mar 26, 2019 1:07 am

Alfred Eckhard Zimmern
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/25/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


"It was a very quiet little student who came up to St. Hugh's [College, Oxford University] and wore the long exhibition gown to the lectures," Freda conceded. Oxford opened the doors of the world to her. At St. Hugh's she drew to her a small group of girls who were to go on to become some of the most powerful figures of their time. They stayed friends for years. From this time on, Freda was to mingle effortlessly with the great and the good from all cultures and ways of life.

Leading the pack was the inimitable, feisty Barbara Betts, later better known as Barbara Castle, the first woman to become First Secretary of State under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and hailed as one of the most important Labor politicians of the twentieth century. She was a major influence on Freda's life, steering her away from her provincial upbringing into an infinitely bolder, more sophisticated life.

"Barbara brought with her a flavor of the north of England, where I was brought up, as well as the sturdy atmosphere of the great pioneers of English socialism," commented Freda. There was also Olive Salt Gorton, who became a pillar of the BBC and broke down class barriers by introducing regional accents to the airwaves to balance the clipped tones of "received pronunciation." "Olive brought the people of England into the BBC with programs like 'Underneath the Arches.' She took the microphone onto the pavements." And there was Olive Chandler, whom Freda was particularly fond of and with whom she maintained a lifelong correspondence: "She was a quiet little nun of a girl with a dove-like quality who was like my good conscience. When she saw me getting too excited with outside activities, she used to bring me back to my books and look after me."

***

She joined just about every society, from the League of Nations to the Ornithological Club.

***

Inevitably, like many Oxbridge intellectuals of her day, she became increasingly left wing, joined the Labor Club along with Barbara Castle and Michael Foot (the future Labor prime minister), and began to class herself as one of the "Burning Socialists." She meant it. Freda's idealism about a fairer world never left her....

"My belief in the charter of human rights was very strong, so that I saw Marxism not as a cheap political stunt, but in a deep,direct way." Freda rapidly learned German in order to be able to read and study Hegel, Marx, and the German philosophers in the original.

Her spiritual life was not forgotten, however, and was running smoothly along parallel lines. Every Sunday she went to church to take Communion and would pop into chapel if there was Bach concert. Any hint of Eastern thought drew her like a magnet. She devoured "The Light of Asia," subtitled "The Great Renunciation," by Sir Edwin Arnold -- an epic poem describing the life of Prince Siddhartha, who became the Buddha. And she rushed to attend a lecture by Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali Nobel Prize-winning poet, philosopher, songwriter, and educator, and was immediately entranced.

"I first saw him at Oxford lecturing on the highest philosophy before some of the greatest savants and philosophers in the West. He sat on a low platform with the rare light of the late evening falling on his face and making a complete aureole around his white head. I was very moved by his understanding, his dignity, the way in which he seemed to distill the essence of India into the small hall and with it the essence of all that is highest and universal in man. At that time my knowledge of India was superficial and I did not know it was to be my home, but my response to Tagore and what he was saying was immediate. I believe that Tagore, more than any other Indian, has been able to interpret the East, and her aspirations, and make them understood in the West. ...

***

Initially the glue was their shared admiration of communism and socialist ideals, so fashionable among the Oxbridge intellectuals of their day, who were eager to build a better, fresher world after the devastation of World War I. Cambridge, in particular, became a famous, well-documented breeding ground for communist gentlemen spies. Revolution was in the air, first in Russia then in China, overthrowing the old order, making way for the new. It was exhilarating. The Suffragettes were on the march too, chaining themselves to rails, throwing themselves under horses, and going on hunger strikes to obtain equal rights with men. The atmosphere was electric....

Freda married BPL on June 12, 1933, at the Oxford Registrar’s Office. She was twenty-two and he was twenty-six….

Their creative, radical Oxford days were over. Both Freda and BPL received their degrees and a whole new life beckoned. It was not what Freda had imagined. She had successfully lined up a job as a cub reporter on the Derby Telegraph, her first stepping stone to Fleet Street (as she had intended). Instead she went to Germany with her new husband, who had won a Humboldt scholarship at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, to research a PHD in Political Science.

“Bedi was concerned about the rise of Hitler, but he thought that as long as he didn’t get a chance to rant in Parliament, it would be all right. He was going to keep a very keen eye on the situation,” she said. She was not to see her homeland again for fourteen years….

By the time Freda reached Berlin, she was pregnant, and delighted with the prospect of motherhood. BPL somewhat protectively decided that she should not work, but instead live quietly in the charming little cottage they had found on the bank of Lake Wannsee. “It was really a lovely place, with a beautiful garden, and we had some very happy months there preparing for the child,” she said. She busied herself with making baby clothes, but could not resist going to Berlin University to study Hindi with a Punjabi professor – a necessary preparation, she thought, for a life on the subcontinent, and to counteract the full-on domesticity she found herself in….

BPL refrained from any political activity in Germany, although he was keeping up-to-date with the Free India movement in India. A frequent visitor to their lakeside cottage was Subhas Chandra Bose, who went on to become one of the most prominent and controversial leaders of the independence movement. Bose was educated at Cambridge and also had a European wife – Emilie Schenkl, an Austrian. He made it a point to visit sympathetic Indian students living in Europe, and the couple had much in common with Freda and BPL Bedi.

“We came to know Bose intimately, and a deep friendship grew,” said BPL. Bose was a hard-core communist, a great admirer of the Soviet Union, who maintained that only an authoritarian state, not democracy, would be able to reshape India. (Later he was forced to resign as present of the Indian National Congress because his platform of violent resistance clashed with Gandhi’s peaceful pathway.)

In Germany, however, Bose, won the young BPL over completely. “Freda and I were both fired up with the patriotic zeal of liberating the motherland from British imperialism,” BPL said. “While we were in Berlin, an eminent journalist asked me what was my agenda for India. ‘Live dangerously,’ I replied. ‘Live dangerously for every form of exploitation of man by man. Live dangerously for every form of injustice. Live dangerously for any violation of human dignity.’”

On May 13, 1934, Freda gave birth to a son after just a four-hour labor….They named him Ranga after the Indian statesman who had defeated the political opposition to their marriage, ten months previously….

BPL had not joined any political club at Berlin University, nor was he taking part in any political activities, but he sensed that tension was mountain. He was friendly with many of the Indian students living in the International Houses, which were being increasingly dominated by Nazi representatives.

In August 1934, Hitler was made fuhrer. The morning the news broke, BPL put down his paper and announced, “Tomorrow we get on the train and go to Geneva. It’s not safe here anymore.”

“He knew that Hitler could swoop down on the Indian students, which was precisely what happened,” said Freda. The life of drama and danger that she pledged to share with Bedi had begun. “You can imagine the state I was in, having to pack up everything in one day, and with BPL having to get the visas for Switzerland. But the next morning we were on the train!” she said

After their hasty exit, they spent a few pleasant weeks staying in accommodations that had been arranged by their old Oxford professor, Alfred Zimmern [Professor Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, whose name is associated with the founding of the League of Nations], who ran a school there. In October 1934, they finally made the decision to go to India and make it their permanent home. They sailed on the SS Conte Verde from northern Italy to Bombay, a journey of three weeks.....

Almost immediately they joined both the Socialist and Communist parties. Freda took on the extra work of organizing the All India Civil Liberties Union of the Punjab. BPL happily set to work organizing demonstrations ...

-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie


Image
Alfred Eckhard Zimmern
Born 26 January 1879
Surbiton, Surrey, U.K.
Died 24 November 1957
Avon, Connecticut, U.S.
Education Winchester College
Alma mater New College, Oxford
Occupation Classical scholar, historian

Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern (1879–1957) was an English classical scholar and historian, and political scientist writing on international relations.[1] His book The Third British Empire was among the first to apply the expression "British Commonwealth" to the British Empire.[2] He is also credited with the phrase "welfare state",[3][4][5] which was made popular a few years later by William Temple.[6]

Early life and background

Zimmern was born on 26 January 1879 in Surbiton, Surrey, UK. His father was a naturalised British citizen, born in Germany. The writers, translators and suffragettes Helen Zimmern and Alice Zimmern were his cousins.

Alfred was brought up a Christian and later an active participant in the World Council of Churches. However, later in life he also became a supporter of Zionism.[7] He was educated at Winchester College, and read classics at New College, Oxford, where he won the Stanhope essay prize in 1902.[8] At Berlin University, he came under the influence of Wilamowitz and Meyer.

The fifth essay is again by Flaig, and is called "Towards Rassenhygiene: Wilamowitz and the German New Right." Flaig first examines Wilamowitz's Staat und Gesellschaft (1910; 2nd.edn., 1923). He finds that in this work Wilamowitz is inconsistent in his use of the notion of race; in the first part of the work he conceives of race in a biological sense, arguing that both Greeks and Phoenicians owed their exceptional vivacity to the mixing of races, but in the second part he argues that the unique spirit of the Greeks has nothing to do with "racial purity." But in Der Glaube der Hellenen, Flaig argues, Wilamowitz operates with a peculiar conception of "faith," an individual religion of the heart believed in by an elite and distinct from the religion of the masses with its cult and the bond among its members; Wilamowitz carried to extreme lengths the belief common to Droysen and Harnack that Christian religion owed more to Greece than to Israel. Like Walter F. Otto, Flaig claims, Wilamowitz believed in the real existence of the Greek gods, but at the same time he believed in a specially Greek monotheism different from that of Judaism, to which he was profoundly hostile. Using the vocabulary of the new "eugenics," he argues, Wilamowitz was advocating a kind of Rassenhygiene akin to that later associated with National Socialism.

Flaig is not the first to have regarded Wilamowitz as a proto-Nazi. On pp. 56-79 of Wilamowitz nach 50 Jahren (edd. W.M. Calder III, H. Flashar and T. Lindken, 1985), L. Canfora anticipates Flaig by setting out to prove Wilamowitz to have been a kind of National Socialist avant la lettre. In a review of the book in which Canfora's piece appeared (Classical Review 36 [1986], 400-1 = Academic Papers, 1990, ii 400-1)), I dealt briefly with his thesis. I remarked that Wilamowitz belonged to the Prussian aristocracy of his time, which had a strong strain of nationalism and militarism and that he did all he could to promote the German cause in the First World War. But I pointed out that though Wilamowitz, like many persons of his type, may have thrown out the odd remark that sounded anti-Semitic, he was certainly not anti-Semitic in his practice and that a letter published in the same book as Canfora's piece (p.612) showed his utter contempt for racial theories about Aryanism. I wrote that "he would have despised Hitler as a socialist and a guttersnipe, and, though he would have derived pleasure, had he lived on, from the triumphs of 1939-41, July 1944 would have found him in full sympathy with the conspirators, who were indeed people of his own kind."


-- Ingo Gildenhard, Martin Ruehl, Out of Arcadia: Classics and Politics in Germany in the Age of Burckhardt, Nietzsche and Wilamowitz. BICS, Suppl. 79. London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2003. Pp. vii, 208.


The German philhellenists of the Enlightenment era imagined Greek antiquity as a kind of pastoral idyll.1 Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, scholars and poets enthused about the innocent beauty of the ancients, glorified the 'noble simplicity' and 'calm grandeur' (Winckelmann)2 of Hellenic art, and posited an elective affinity between the glory that was Greece and the future achievements of a German Kulturnation. Schiller's poem 'The gods of Greece' (1788) held up the harmonious word of pagan antiquity as a moral and aesthetic model for a disenchanted, alienated modernity. The educational reforms initiated by Wilhelm von Humboldt between 1809-10 moved this model to the centre of school and university curricula. For members of the educated middle class (Bildungsburger), classical philology became an integral part of their self-cultivation or Bildung. Through their identification with ancient Greece, however, many of them expressed hopes not just of cultural, but also political transformation. In the age of Winckelmann and Humboldt, Graecophilia was associated with a lofty (and often vaguely defined ) liberalism.3 Yet from the start, there were voices of doubt. In Faust II (1832), Goethe questioned the viability of a marriage between Romantic Germany and classical Greece -- as well as the emancipatory elements of Graecophilia; Euphorion, product of Faust's union with Helen of Troy and an allegory of Byron's fateful commitment to the cause of Greek independence, met a significantly premature death in the play.4

-- Out of Arcadia, by Martin Ruehl, 2003 Institute of Classical Studies. School of Advanced Studies, University of London, 22 February 2011


Academic career

Zimmern was Lecturer in Ancient History, New College, Oxford (1903), and Fellow and tutor, New College (1904–1909). Subsequently, he was a staff inspector, Board of Education (1912–1915) and a member of the Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department (1918–1919).

He then became Wilson Professor of International Politics, and as such the first Professor of International Politics (also known as International Relations) in the world, at the University College of Wales (1919–1921); having left Aberystwyth, he taught at Cornell University in 1922 and 1923.[9][10]

He was the inaugural Montague Burton Professor of International Relations, Oxford University (1930–1944), and co-founder of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1919). He was for a short time a member of the Round Table Group (1913–1923) and would provide the insider source of information for conspiracy theorist Carroll Quigley.



Internationalism

Zimmern has been classified as a utopian and idealist thinker on international relations.[11][12] He is cited often, in this perspective, in E. H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939); Carr and Zimmern are characterised[13] as at opposite ends of the theoretical and political spectrum.

Zimmern contributed to the founding of the League of Nations Society and of UNESCO.[14] He was Deputy Director of the Institute for Intellectual Co-operation, in Paris, in the mid-1920s;[15] after tension with the Director, the French historian Julien Luchaire, both left.[16] He was nominated in 1947 for the Nobel Peace Prize,[17] in connection with his UNESCO work.

Within UK politics, Zimmern joined the Labour Party in 1924, and was Labour candidate for Carnarvon Boroughs against David Lloyd George in the 1924 general election. A close friend of Ramsay MacDonald, Zimmern followed him in 1931 when MacDonald moved to head a National Government; he became an active member of the National Labour Organisation and frequently wrote articles for its journal, the News-Letter. Zimmern was one of five writers who contributed to a book "Towards a National Policy: being a National Labour Contribution" in April 1935. He died at Avon, Connecticut on 24 November 1957.

Works

• Henry Grattan, (1902)
• Nationality and Government with other war-time essays (1919)
• "Greek Political Thought", an essay in The Legacy of Greece (1921)
• Europe in Convalescence (1922)
• America and Europe
• Prospects of Democracy & Other Essays
• The Greek Commonwealth: Politics and Economics in Fifth Century Athens, 1911; 5th edition 1931, Oxford, reprint 1977
• The Economic Weapon Against Germany, London: Allen & Unwin, 1918
• The Third British Empire (1926; 3rd edition 1934), London: Oxford University Press
• The League of Nations and the Rule of Law 1918–1935 (1936)
• "The Ethical Presuppositions of a World Order", an essay in The Universal Church and the World of Nations (1938).

Further reading

• Jeanne Morefield (2004), Covenants Without Swords: Idealist Liberalism and the Spirit of Empire, on Zimmern and Gilbert Murray

Notes

1. Donald Markwell (1986), "Sir Alfred Zimmern Revisited: Fifty Years On", Review of International Studies. Donald Markwell, "Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004. [1]
2. Discussed in J. D. B. Miller, "The Commonwealth and World Order: The Zimmern Vision and After" (1979), Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 8: p. 162.
3. welfare state
4. Book extract
5. Kathleen Woodroofe, "The Making of the Welfare State in England: A Summary of Its Origin and Development", Journal of Social History, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer, 1968), pp. 303–324.
6. Oxford English Dictionary, from 1941.
7. Noam Pianko, "The True Liberalism of Zionism”: Horace Kallen, Jewish Nationalism, and the Limits of American Pluralism, American Jewish History, 94(4), December 2008.
8. "University intelligence". The Times (36770). London. 17 May 1902. p. 11.
9. Cornell University Information Database Archived 7 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine
10. Time magazine comments.
11. In addition to Dickinson, the list of contributors to this utopian literature included Nicholas Murray Butler, James T. Shotwell, Alfred Zimmern, Norman Angell, and Gilbert Murray.[2]Archived 13 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine
12. Idealism (or 'utopianism') and power (or 'realism') are often portrayed as mutually exclusive and contradictory philosophies or attitudes to global affairs.... When the intellectual roots of the leaders of Chatham House (Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr, Arnold Toynbee, Alfred Zimmern) and the Council on Foreign Relations(Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Whitney Hart Shepardson, Russell Cornell Leffingwell) are examined, it is clear that each category of their thought may be interpreted as a combination of idealism and power.[3][permanent dead link]
13. 2001 edition of the Crisis, introduction by Michael Cox, note p. xciii.
14. Richard Toye – | UNESCO.ORG
15. PDF, p. 22.
16. Duncan Wilson, Gilbert Murray, p. 357.
17. Nomination database

External links

• Works by Alfred Eckhard Zimmern at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Alfred Eckhard Zimmern at Internet Archive
• Biography
• Donald Markwell, 'Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004. [4]
• Book extract
• (in German) Biographical page
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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

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Order of the Star of India
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/25/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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Image
Most Exalted Order of the Star of India
Insignia of a Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India
Awarded by
Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom.svg
Sovereign of the United Kingdom
Type Order of chivalry
Established 1861
Motto Heaven's light our guide
Awarded for At the monarch's pleasure
Status Last appointment in 1947
Dormant order since 2009
Founder Victoria
Sovereign Elizabeth II
Grades
Knight Grand Commander (GCSI)
Knight Commander (KCSI)
Companion (CSI)
Former grades Knight Companion
Precedence
Next (higher) Order of the Bath
Next (lower) Order of St Michael and St George
ImperialOrderCrownIndiaRibbon.gif
Ribbon bar of the Star of India

The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India is an order of chivalry founded by Queen Victoria in 1861. The Order includes members of three classes (regardless of gender):

1. Knight Grand Commander (GCSI)
2. Knight Commander (KCSI)
3. Companion (CSI)

No appointments have been made since the 1948 New Year Honours, shortly after the Partition of India in 1947. With the death in 2009 of the last surviving knight, the Maharaja of Alwar, the order became dormant.

The motto of the order was Heaven's light our guide. The "Star of India", the emblem of the order, also appeared on the flag of the Viceroy of India and other flags used to represent British India.

The order is the fifth most senior British order of chivalry, following the Order of the Garter, Order of the Thistle, Order of St Patrick and Order of the Bath. It is the senior order of chivalry associated with the British Raj;
junior to it is the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, and there is also, for women only, the Imperial Order of the Crown of India.

History

Several years after the Indian Mutiny and the consolidation of Great Britain's power as the governing authority in India, it was decided by the British Crown to create a new order of knighthood to honour Indian Princes and Chiefs, as well as British officers and administrators who served in India. On 25 June 1861, the following proclamation was issued by the Queen:

The Queen, being desirous of affording to the Princes, Chiefs and People of the Indian Empire, a public and signal testimony of Her regard, by the Institution of an Order of knighthood, whereby Her resolution to take upon Herself the Government of the Territories in India may be commemorated, and by which Her Majesty may be enabled to reward conspicuous merit and loyalty, has been graciously pleased, by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to institute, erect, constitute, and create, an Order of Knighthood, to be known by, and have for ever hereafter, the name, style, and designation, of "The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India"[1]


Image
The flag of the Viceroy of India displayed the Star of the Order beneath the Tudor Crown.

Recipients

The first appointees were:

• HRH The Prince Consort[1]
• HRH The Prince of Wales[1]
• The Rt Hon Earl Canning, GCB, Governor-General of India and Grand Master of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India[1]
• HH Maharaja Shri Sir Vaghji Thakor Morvi State (KCSI) for representing Kathiyawar on the day of Victoria's Jubilee Ceremony given by Queen Victoria for this honor HH Sir Vaghaji Thakor make them Sister.
• HH Nawab Mir Tahniat Ali Khan Bahadur, Afzal ad-Dawlah, Asaf Jah V, the Nizam of Hyderabad[1]
• HH Jayajirao Scindia, Maharaja of Gwalior[1]
• HH Raja Bahadur Bindeshwari Prasad Singh Deo, Raja of Udaipur state in Chota Nagpur States.
• HH Maharaja Duleep Singh, former Maharaja of the Sikh Empire[1]
• HH Ranbir Singh, Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir[1]
• HH Tukojirao Holkar, Maharaja of Indore[1]
• HH Narendra Singh, Maharaja of Patiala[1]
• HH Khanderrao Gaekwad, Maharaja of Baroda[1]
• HRH Maharaja Bir Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana of Nepal
• HH Nawab Sikander Begum, Nawab Begum of Bhopal[1]
• HH Yusef Ali Khan Bahadur, Nawab of Rampur[1]
• The Rt Hon Viscount Gough, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army[1]
• The Rt Hon Lord Harris, Governor of Madras[1]
• The Rt Hon Lord Clyde, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army[1]
• Sir George Russell Clerk, Governor of Bombay[1]
• Sir John Laird Mair Lawrence, Bt, GCB, Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab[1]
• Sir James Outram, Bt, GCB, Member of the Viceroy's Council[1]
• Sir Hugh Henry Rose, GCB, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army[1]
• HEH Nizam Sir Mir Osman Ali Khan Siddiqi Bayafandi Asaf Jah VII, 7th Nizam of Hyderabad

The Order of the Indian Empire, founded in 1877, was intended to be a less exclusive version of the Order of the Star of India; consequently, many more appointments were made to the latter than to the former. The last appointments to the orders relating to the British Empire in India were made in the 1948 New Year Honours, some months after the Partition of India in August 1947. The orders have never been formally abolished, and Elizabeth II succeeded her father George VI as Sovereign of the Orders when she ascended the throne in 1952. She remains Sovereign of the Order to this day. However, there are no living members of the order.

• There were only three female members of the Order: Sultan Shah Jahan, Begum of Bhopal and her daughter, Hajjah Nawab Begum Dame Sultan Jahan, and Mary of Teck.
• The last Grand Master of the Order, Admiral of the Fleet The Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900–1979), was assassinated by the Provisional IRA on 27 August 1979.
• The last surviving Knight Grand Commander, HH Maharaja Sree Padmanabhadasa Sir Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma GCSI, GCIE, Maharajah of Travancore (1912–1991); died 19 July 1991 in Trivandrum.[2]
• The last surviving Knight Commander, HH Maharaja Sir Tej Singh Prabhakar Bahadur KCSI (1911–2009), Maharaja of Alwar, died on 15 February 2009 in New Delhi.
• The last surviving Companion of the Order, Vice-Admiral Sir Ronald Brockman CSI (1909–1999), died on 3 September 1999 in London.

Composition

Image
Sayajirao Gaekwad III, Maharaja of Baroda, wearing the sash and star of a GCSI, as well as the star of a GCIE. 1919

Image
Ashutosh Mukherjee,The Tiger of Bengal

The British Sovereign was, and still is, Sovereign of the Order. The next most senior member was the Grand Master, a position held ex officio by the Viceroy of India. When the order was established in 1861, there was only one class of Knights Companion, who bore the postnominals KSI. In 1866, however, it was expanded to three classes. Members of the first class were known as "Knights Grand Commander" (rather than the usual "Knights Grand Cross") so as not to offend the non-Christian Indians appointed to the Order. All those surviving members who had already been made Knights Companion of the Order were retroactively known as Knights Grand Commander.

Former viceroys and other high officials, as well as those who served in the Department of the Secretary of State for India for at least thirty years were eligible for appointment. Rulers of Indian Princely States were also eligible for appointment. Some states were of such importance that their rulers were almost always appointed Knights Grand Commanders; such rulers included the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Maharaja of Mysore, the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, the Maharaja of Baroda, the Maharajas of Gwalior, the Nawab of Bhopal, the Maharaja of Indore, the Maharana of Udaipur, the Maharaja of Travancore, the Maharana of Jodhpur and the Maharao of Cutch.

Kashi Naresh Prabhu Narayan Singh of Benares and Sir Azizul Haque were appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) in 1892 and 1941 respectively, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (GCIE) in 1898, and Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India (GCSI) for his services in the First World War in the 1921 New Year Honours.[3]

Rulers of other nations in Asia and the Middle East, including the Emir of Kuwait, the Maharajas of the Rana dynasty, the Khedive of Egypt, the King of Bhutan and the rulers of Zanzibar, Bahrain and Oman were also appointed to the Order. Like some rulers of princely states, some rulers of particular prestige, for example the Maharajas of the Rana dynasty or the Sultans of Oman, were usually appointed Knights Grand Commanders.

Women, save the princely rulers, were ineligible for appointment to the order. They were, unlike the habit of many other orders, admitted as "Knights", rather than as "Dames" or "Ladies". The first woman to be admitted to the order was HH Nawab Sikandar Begum Sahiba, Nawab Begum of Bhopal; she was created a Knight Companion at the Order's foundation in 1861. The order's statutes were specially amended to permit the admission of Queen Mary as a Knight Grand Commander in 1911.

Vestments and accoutrements

Image
'Investiture of the Star of India, Delhi' (detail), by George Jacomb-Hood. King George V is depicted awarding the GCSI to Ganga Singh, Maharaja of Bikaner, at the 1911 Delhi Durbar.

Image
Mantle of the Order

Image
Representation of the star of the order on the mantle

Image
Charles Hardinge, Viceroy of India, in the robes of the Order.

Members of the Order wore elaborate costumes on important ceremonial occasions:

• The mantle, worn only by Knights Grand Commanders, was made of light blue satin lined with white silk. On the left side was a representation of the star (see below).
• The collar, also worn only by Knights Grand Commanders, was made of gold. It was composed of alternating figures of lotuses, red and white roses and palm branches, with an imperial crown in the centre.

On certain "collar days" designated by the Sovereign, members attending formal events wore the order's collar over their military uniform, formal day dress, or evening wear. When collars were worn (either on collar days or on formal occasions such as coronations), the badge was suspended from the collar.

At less important occasions, simpler insignia were used:

• The star, worn only by Knights Grand Commanders and Knights Commanders, included a sunburst, with twenty-six large rays alternating with twenty-six small rays; it was in gold and circular for Knights Grand Commanders, and in silver and eight-pointed for Knights Commanders. In the centre of the sunburst was a light blue ring bearing the motto of the Order. Within the ribbon was a five-pointed star, decorated with diamonds for Knights Grand Commanders.
• The badge was worn by Knights Grand Commanders on a white-edged light blue riband, or sash, passing from the right shoulder to the left hip, and by Knights Commanders and Companions from a white-edged light blue ribbon around the neck. It included an oval, containing the effigy of the Sovereign, surrounded by a light blue ring bearing the motto of the Order; the oval was suspended from a five-pointed star, which may be decorated with diamonds depending on class.

Unlike the insignia of most other British chivalric orders, the insignia of the Order of the Star of India did not incorporate crosses, as they were deemed unacceptable to the Indian Princes appointed to the Order.

Precedence and privileges

Members of all classes of the Order were assigned positions in the order of precedence. Wives of members of all classes also featured on the order of precedence, as did sons, daughters and daughters-in-law of Knights Grand Commanders and Knights Commanders. (See order of precedence in England and Wales for the exact positions.)

Knights Grand Commanders used the post-nominal initials "GCSI", Knights Commanders "KCSI" and Companions "CSI". Knights Grand Commanders and Knights Commanders prefixed "Sir" to their forenames. Wives of Knights Grand Commanders and Knights Commanders could prefix "Lady" to their surnames. Such forms were not used by peers and Indian princes, except when the names of the former were written out in their fullest forms.

Knights Grand Commanders were also entitled to receive heraldic supporters. They could, furthermore, encircle their arms with a depiction of the circlet (a circle bearing the motto) and the collar; the former is shown either outside or on top of the latter. Knights Commanders and Companions were permitted to display the circlet, but not the collar, surrounding their arms. The badge is depicted suspended from the collar or circlet.

Image
The Maharaja of Cochin wearing the mantle of the Order for the occasion of King Edward VII's Delhi Durbar of 1903

See also

• List of Knights Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India

References

1. "No. 22523". The London Gazette. 25 June 1861. p. 2622.
2. "Dreamwater Free Web Space". 4dw.net. Retrieved 4 December 2010.
3. "No. 32178". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 January 1921. p. 5.

External links

• Media related to Order of the Star of India at Wikimedia Commons
• Proclamation founding the Order of the Star of India, london-gazette.co.uk, 25 June 1861.
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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Tue Mar 26, 2019 2:00 am

Edwin Arnold
by Theosophy Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/25/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


The third wife of Sir Edwin Arnold was Tama Kurokawa, whom he married in 1897, and she inherited all of his available estate, which probably included his copyrights. The estate of Dame Tama Arnold has not, however, been traced. The will of Sir Edwin Arnold (probate London, 21 April 1904) also refers to the marriage settlements with his first wife Katherine Elizabeth Biddulph (mentioning two children: Edwin Lester Arnold and Lilian Katherine Earle) and with his second wife Fannie Channing (mentioning another son: Gilbert Emmerson Arnold). The UK WATCH Office has also found the will of an Edwin Lester Gilbert Arnold (probate Brighton, 21 June 1973), who may have been a grandson but would not necessarily have been an heir.

-- Contact for Edwin Arnold, Sir 1832-1904, by University of Reading, WATCH


Image
Edwin Arnold

Sir Edwin Lester Arnold, M.A., K.C.I.E., C.S.I.(June 10, 1832 – March 24, 1904) was an English poet and journalist, who is most known for his poetic story of Gautama Buddha, The Light of Asia. He mastered Sanskrit, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian languages and was a skilled artist.

Personal life and career

Edwin Lester Arnold was born at Gravesend, Kent, on June 10, 1932, as the second son of a Sussex magistrate, Robert Coles Arnold. The young Arnold was educated at King's School, Rochester, King's College in London, and University College, Oxford. He won Oxford's prestigious Newdigate Prize in 1852, for a poem called "Belshazzar's Feast."

Arnold took a position as a schoolmaster at King Edward's School, Birmingham for several years. In 1855, he married Catharine Elizabeth Biddulph (1831-1864), and the couple had four children - Edwin [Edwin Lester Arnold], Julian [Julian B. Arnold-Lindon], Katharine [Lilian Katherine Earle], and Arthur. In 1856 he accepted a post in India as Principal of the Government Sanskrit College at Poona and served there for seven years, returning to England with his wife because of her ill health. [1]

Catharine died in 1864 shortly after Arthur's birth. His next wife was Jennie Fanny M. S. Channing (1837-1889) of Boston, with whom he had two more sons - William and Gilbert Emerson. The family lived in Kensington during these year. Son Emerson Arnold wrote of this period:

Obliged by circumstances to remain under grey Western skies and labor for more than forty years in London on the staff of the Daily Telegraph, his heart remained in India and every moment of his scanty leisure was devoted to the study of her languages, religions and philosophy.[2]


After returning to England, Arnold worked as a journalist at the Daily Telegraph, eventually becoming editor-in-chief during a forty-year career. He is credited with arranging for his newspaper to work with the New York Herald to sponsor the journey of H. M. Stanley to discover the course of the Congo in Africa. In 1874, Arnold first suggested a transcontinental railroad for Africa, using the phrase "a Cape to Cairo railway" subsequently popularized by Cecil Rhodes.

Queen Victoria named Arnold in 1888 as Knight Commander of the Indian Empire.
The next year, Fanny passed away. Arnold spent some time in Japan, where he met his third wife, Tama Kurokawa (1869-1962), whom he brought back to London. Sir Edwin died on March 24, 1904.

Image
Edwin Arnold

Association with Theosophists

Early Theosophists greeted the publication of The Light of Asia in July, 1879 with glowing reviews. Madame Blavatsky herself wrote at length in the first issue of the Theosophical Society's journal The Theosophist in October, 1879. Other reviews, analyses, and quotations followed.

Arnold knew Helena P. Blavatsky well and expressed his admiration for her extraordinary mental attainments; he recalled an occasion when he asked if she knew the date of a Sanskrit grammarian and she was able to give it without hesitation.[3]


When Arnold was asked in an interview, "Are Esoteric Buddhists and Theosophists the same?", he answered:

That depends upon what you mean by Theosophists. if you mean the Theosophists of the school of Blavatsky, Sinnett and Olcott, I will say that they are so closely connected with Buddhism that the Buddhist Scriptures ought to be their text-books, and I don't seen how you can do this without a knowledge of Sanskrit. I knew Madame Blavatsky very well and am acquainted with Col. Olcott and A. P. Sinnett, and I believe there is no doubt that the Theosophical movement has had an excellent effect upon humanity. It has made a large number of people understand what all India always understood, and that is the importance of invisible things. The real universe is that which you do not see, and the commonest Indian peasant knows that to be true by inheritance. The Theosophists have impressed upon the present generation the necessity of admitting the existence of the invisible. The senses are very limited, and everybody ought to know that behind them lies an illimitable field of development.[4]


Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, President-Founder of the Theosophical Society, met Arnold in 1884. He gave this account shortly after Arnold's death in 1905:

I made his personal acquaintance at London in the year 1884, at the hospitable board of Mrs. Tennant... I lunched with him at his house and he kindly presented me with some of the original MS. of his world-famous Buddhist book. Later, when he revisited India, coming via Ceylon I organised, at the request of the high priest, Sumangala, his reception at Colombo, and drafted the address of the High Priest. His feelings towards me were cordial, and I may almost say that in him, I have lost a personal friend. His poetised translations from the Sanskrit most ably render the sense of the ancient books. He must have had a great faculty of concentration, for he told me, at his house, that he had written the most touching passages of The Light of Asia in the compartment of a railway carriage, in the company of some dealers of Billingsgate market, who were loudly discussing between themselves, the price of fish.[5]


In a biographical sketch, Boris de Zirkoff wrote,

Judging by his works and his philosophy of life, Sir Edwin Arnold formed an integral part of the widespread spiritual Movement which was regenerated in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In part, his work paralleled that of the Theosophical Society, helping to make the religion and philosophy of Buddhism and Hinduism known and appreciated by the western world. The Light of Asia and The Song Celestial undoubtedly led to widespread interest in these subjects and helped to create an attitude in which theosophical ideas would be found congenial. We are all indebted to this great scholar.[6]


Founding of Maha Bodhi Society

In 1885, Arnold published articles in Daily Telegraph drawing attention to the Buddha Gaya (Bodh Gaya) Temple, site of Gautama Buddha's enlightenment. The temple had been abandoned and was in deplorable condition. On January 22, 1891, the Anagarika Dharmapala, accompanied by Japanese priest Kozen Gunaratna, visited the site, and felt a tremendous urge to take action. On May 31, 1891, the Budh-Gaya Mahabodhi Society was formed, with Arnold as one of the founding members. The High Priest of Ceylon, H. Sumangala was President, Col. Olcott was Director and Chief Advisor, and Dharmapala was General Secretary. The new Society solicited contributions to maintain a staff at the Buddha Gaya site, and the Society convened an International Buddhist conference at the site in October, 1891. The temple complex was gradually restored, and the Maha Bodhi Society continues to be active in India and several other countries.

Vegetarianism

Arnold was very active in support of vegetarianism. He founded a Vegetarian Club in Bayswater with Dr. Josiah Oldfield, who shared rooms with Mohandas K. Gandhi for a time. Oldfield served as president, Arnold as vice-president, and Gandhi as secretary.

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Cover of 1879 American Caldwell edition.

The Light of Asia

The most famous of Arnold's works is The Light of Asia, a book-length poem depicting the life of Gautama Buddha. Published in July, 1879 in London and also by two companies in New York, the book immediately caught the attention of Theosophists. A lengthy review was printed in the very first issue of The Theosophist, in October 1879. The book was praised by the reviewer, Madame Blavatsky, for its literary qualities and for its treatment of the subject. The reviewer wrote, "if any Western poet has earned the right to grateful remembrance by Asiatic nations and is destined to live in their memory, it is the author of the "Light of Asia."[7]

Madame Blavatsky requested that each year on the anniversary of her death, her friends should gather and read from The Light of Asia and the Bhagavadgītā.[8] That tradition continues to this day among Theosophists around the world, and is known as White Lotus Day.


Dozens of editions and translations have been produced since 1879, and the work is widely available in libraries worldwide.

Other writings

• "Belshazzar's Feast" - poem written while in college in 1852; won the Newdigate Prize for English Verse.
• "Griselda, a Tragedy" - poem published in 1856.
• Works of Herodotus - translation from Greek in 1861.
• The Book of Good Counsels - translation from the Sanskrit of the Indian classic "Hitopadeça." 1861.
• Education in India. 1862
• A History of the Administration in India under the Late Marquis of Dalhousie. 1862–64.
• The Poets of Greece - a collection of fine passages. 1869.
• Mahābhārata. 1881.
• Pearls of the Faith; or, Islam’s Rosary Being the Ninety-nine Beautiful Names of Allah, with Comments in Verse from Various Oriental Source. (1883).
• The Secret of Death. (1885).
• The Song Celestial. (1885). A poetic rendering of the Bhagavadgītā.
• Sa’di in the Garden; or, The Book of Love. 1888. This is a poem on a part of the "Bôstâni" of the Persian poet Sa’di.
• Poems National and Non-Oriental. 1888.
• Light of the World. 1891. This is an epic poem about the life of Jesus Christ.
• India Revisited. 1891. Prose.
• Potiphar’s Wife, and Other Poems. 1892.
• The Iliad and Odyssey of Asia. 1892.
• Seas and Lands. 1893. Prose.
• Japonica. 1983. Prose describing Japan.
• Tiphar's Wife. 1892.
• Adzuma, the Japanese Wife: a Play in Four Acts. 1893.
• The Tenth Muse and Other Poems. 1895.
• The Queen’s Justice. 1899. Dedicated to his Japanese wife Tama Kurokawa.

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Julian B. Arnold

Sons Julian and Emerson as Theosophists

Sir Edwin's son Julian Tregenna Biddulph Arnold (1860-1954) was active in the American Theosophical Society:

In a recent number of The Messenger, I [the editor, A. P. Warrington] mentioned a series of lectures which Mr. J. B. Lindon, one of our members residing in Chicago, had given at Besant Hall under the designation "Twilight Talks." These lectures were so successful and drew such large audiences that a program of a new series of historical lectures has been announced by the same lecturer, which by the time this issue reaches the mails will be well on the way.

Our members no doubt have learned from recent newspaper accounts that Mr. Lindon is none other than Mr. Julian B. Arnold, the son of the late Sir Edwin Arnold, the illustrious poet, scholar and interpreter of Indian ideals, whom Theosophists the world over have loved and revered for his immortal work.

When Mr. Julian B. Arnold came to America seven years ago he launched out in the chemical business, and for that and other reasons he adopted an old family name, so that he became known as J. B. Lindon. Owing to the encouragement which he received in his recent venture in the lecturing field, he has felt that he should no longer suppress his real identity.

I am sure that all Theosophists will join me in the hope that Mr. Arnold may some day become widely traveled as a lecturer throughout our country, where we hope he will always feel that he has a true home.[9]


Julian B. Lindon was admitted to the American Theosophical Society on November 23, 1910, sponsored by Minna Kunz and Mrs. Kochersberger of the Adyar Lodge of Chicago. After July 16, 1915, he was known as Julian B. Arnold, according to membership records.[10] He wrote at least thirteen articles for Theosophical journals. As Warrington hoped, Arnold did go on to a career as a lecturer.[11]

Edwin Gilbert Emerson Arnold (1872-????), M.D., M.R.C.P., a medical officer in Fiji, also called himself a Theosophist. He wrote of the evocative quality of his father's "pen-pictures of Indian life":

To anyone who, like myself, is a convinced student of Theosophy and Oriental occultism the phenomenon is all the more striking. For his works reveal an expert and deep knowledge of Eastern philosophy which is amazing.

I hold the view very strongly myself that the explanation lies in previous Indian incarnations. My father, although very patriotic and intensely British in many ways, was always a semi-Oriental; in outlook, tastes, manners and thoughts, and even in appearance. I believe that his brief visit to India resuscitated the subconscious memories of former lives spent there and that these gave him his wonderful knowledge and insight and his love for and attraction to Eastern life and philosophy.[12]


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Plaque at 31 Bolton Gardens, Kensington

Awards and legacy

While at university in 1852, Arnold won the Newdigate Prize for his poem "Belshazzar's Feast."

In recognition of Light of Asia, Arnold was decorated by the King of Siam with the Order of the White Elephant. The Turkish Sultan conferred on him the Imperial Order of Osmanli. The Shah of Iran awarded the Order of the Lion and Sun for Sa’di in the Garden and the Emperor of Japan awarded the Order of the Rising Sun.[13]

In 1888 he was created Knight Commander of the Indian Empire by Queen Victoria.

Arnold was an honorary member of the International Buddhist Society. When he revisited Indian and Ceylon, "he was received with much honor and, above all, was ceremoniously presented at Kandy with the yellow robe and begging-bowl of a Buddhist priest."[14]


Explorer H. M. Stanley named a mountain in Africa after Edwin Arnold.

At Oxford University, his ashes and a plaque have been installed in a University College Chapel memorial, and the Sir Edwin Arnold Memorial Scholarship was established to encourage study of Oriental languages and literature.

A blue plaque has been placed at 31 Bolton Gardens, Kensington, where the Arnold family lived for many years.[15]

Other resources

The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists over 80 articles by or about Edwin Arnold. Many are simply quotations of his works.
• Papers of Sir Edwin Arnold (1832-1904) at University College Archives at Oxford University.
• Warner, C.D. Warner, et al. "Sir Edwin Arnold (1832–1904)." The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917. At bBrtleby.com.</ref>

Notes

1. Ted G. Davy, "Arnold, Edwin," Theosophical Encyclopedia (Quezon City, Philippines: Theosophical Publishing House, 2006), 49. Available at Theosopedia.
2. Emerson Arnold, "Edwin Arnold," World Theosophy v2 (1932), 978.
3. Ted G. Davy, "Arnold, Edwin," Theosophical Encyclopedia (Quezon City, Philippines: Theosophical Publishing House, 2006), 49. Available at Theosopedia. Original source was "An Evening with Sir Edwin Arnold" in A Year Under the Shadows of St. Paul's by E. C. Paget, published in Calgary, Alberta in 1908.
4. Boris de Zirkoff, "Arnold, Sr. Edwin," Collected Writings Volume 12 (Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House, 19xx), 722. Reprinting an Alliance Forum interview reported in The Lamp of December, 1895.
5. Henry S. Olcott, "Sir Edwin Arnold," Supplement to The Theosophist 25.7 (April, 1904), xviii-xix.
6. Boris de Zirkoff, "Arnold, Sr. Edwin," Collected Writings Volume 12 (Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House, 19xx), 717.
7. "'The Light of Asia' as Told in Verse by an Indian Buddhist,"The Theosophist 1.1 (October, 1879), 20-25.
8. Sylvia Cranston, H. P. B.: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky, (New York: Putnam, 1993), 429.
9. Anonymous [A. P. Warrington, editor], "Sir Edwin Arnold's Son," The Messenger 2.12 (May, 1915), 510.
10. Membership Ledger Cards. Microfilm roll 1. Theosophical Society in America Archives.
11. 1940 US Census.
12. Emerson Arnold, "Edwin Arnold," World Theosophy v2 (1932), 978.
13. C.D. Warner et al, "Sir Edwin Arnold (1832–1904)," The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917. At bBrtleby.com.
14. Emerson Arnold, "Edwin Arnold," World Theosophy v2 (1932), 978.
15. English Heritage web page Accessed August 18, 2012.
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World Council of Churches logo

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide inter-church organization founded in 1948. Its members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, most jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar, the Old Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, most mainline Protestant churches (such as the Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Moravian and Reformed) and some evangelical Protestant churches (such as the Baptist and Pentecostal).[1] Notably, the Catholic Church is not a member, although it sends accredited observers to meetings.[2] The WCC arose out of the ecumenical movement and has as its basis the following statement:

The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the scriptures, and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of the one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It is a community of churches on the way to visible unity in one faith and one eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and in common life in Christ. It seeks to advance towards this unity, as Jesus prayed for his followers, "so that the world may believe." (John 17:21) [3]


The WCC describes itself as "a worldwide fellowship of 349 global, regional and sub-regional, national and local churches seeking unity, a common witness and Christian service."[4] It is based at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland.[5] The organization's members include denominations which claim to collectively represent some 590 million people across the world in about 150 countries, including 520,000 local congregations served by 493,000 pastors and priests, in addition to elders, teachers, members of parish councils and others.[6]

History

The Ecumenical Movement met with initial successes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 (chaired by future WCC Honorary President John R. Mott). In 1920, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Germanus V of Constantinople, wrote a letter "addressed 'To all the Churches of Christ, wherever they may be', urging closer co-operation among separated Christians, and suggesting a 'League of Churches', parallel to the newly founded League of Nations".[7] Church leaders agreed in 1937 to establish a World Council of Churches, based on a merger of the Faith and Order Movement (under Charles Brent of the Episcopal Church of the United States) and Life and Work Movement (under Nathan Söderblom of the Lutheran Church of Sweden) organisations.

Its official establishment was deferred with the outbreak of World War II until August 23, 1948. Delegates of 147 churches assembled in Amsterdam to merge the Faith and Order Movement and Life and Work Movement.[8] This was consolidated by a second meeting at Lund in 1950, for which the British Methodist Robert Newton Flew edited an influential volume of studies, The Nature of the Church.[9] Subsequent mergers were with the International Missionary Council in 1961 and the World Council of Christian Education, with its roots in the 18th century Sunday School movement, in 1971.

WCC member churches include most of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches; the Anglican Communion; some Old Catholic churches; and numerous Protestant churches, including some Baptists, many Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian and other Reformed, a sampling of united and independent churches, and some Pentecostal churches.

Many churches who refused to join the WCC joined together to form the World Evangelical Alliance.[10]

Delegates sent from the member churches meet every seven or eight years in an Assembly, which elects a Central Committee that governs between Assemblies. A variety of other committees and commissions answer to the Central Committee and its staff. Assemblies have been held since 1948.

The "human rights abuses in communist countries evoked grave concern among the leaders of the World Council of Churches."[11] However, historian Christopher Andrew claims that, during the Cold War, a number of important WCC representatives of the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe had been working for the KGB, and that they influenced the policy of the WCC.[12] From 1955 to 1958, Robert S. Bilheimer co-chaired a WCC international commission to prepare a document addressing the threat of nuclear warfare during the Cold War.[13]

At the 1961 conference, a 32-year-old Russian Orthodox Bishop named Aleksey Ridiger was sent as delegate to the assembly, and then appointed to the WCC's central committee. He was later elected as Russian patriarch in 1990 as Alexei II.[14]

The ninth assembly took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil in February 2006, under the theme "God, in your grace, transform the world".[15] During the first Assemblies, theologians Vasileios Ioannidis and Amilkas Alivizatos contributed significantly to the debates that led to the drafting of the "Toronto Statement", a foundational document which facilitated Eastern Orthodox participation in the organization and today it constitutes its ecclesiological charter.[16]

The 10th Assembly was held in Busan, Republic of Korea, from 30 October to 8 November 2013.[17]

In 2013 Dr. Agnes Abuom of Nairobi, from the Anglican Church of Kenya, was elected as moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches; she is the first woman and the first African to hold this position.[18]

Events and presidents

Assemblies


The World Council of Churches held 10 Assemblies to date, starting with the founding assembly in 1948:[19]

• Amsterdam, Netherlands, 22 August – 4 September 1948
• Evanston, Illinois, United States, 15–31 August 1954
• New Delhi, India, 19 November – 5 December 1961
• Uppsala, Sweden, 4–20 July 1968
• Nairobi, Kenya, 23 November – 10 December 1975
• Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 24 July – 10 August 1983
• Canberra, ACT, Australia, 7–21 February 1991[20]
• Harare, Zimbabwe, 3–14 December 1998
• Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 14–23 February 2006
• Busan, South Korea, 30 October – 8 November 2013

Presidents

Presidents of the current 10th Assembly are:[21]

• Africa: The Rev. Dr. Mary-Anne Plaatjies van Huffel (Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa)
• Asia: The Rev. Dr. Chang Sang (Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea)
• Europe: Archbishop Anders Wejryd (Church of Sweden)
• Latin America and Caribbean: The Rev. Gloria Nohemy Ulloa Alvarado (Presbyterian Church in Colombia)
• North America: The Rt Revd Mark L. MacDonald (Anglican Church of Canada)
• Pacific: The Rev. Dr. Mele'ana Puloka (Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga)
• Eastern Orthodox: John X of Antioch (Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch)
• Oriental Orthodox: Karekin II (Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church)
Former presidents of the World Council of Churches include:
• Rev. Martin Niemöller, the famous Protestant anti-Nazi theologian
• T. C. Chao, Chinese theologian

General secretaries

Since the World Council of Churches was officially founded in 1948, the following men have served as general secretary:[22]

Years / Name / Churches / Nationality

1948–1966 W. A. Visser 't Hooft Reformed Churches in the Netherlands/Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches, Geneva Netherlands
1966–1972 Eugene Carson Blake United Presbyterian Church (USA) United States
1972–1984 Philip A. Potter Methodist Church Dominica
1985–1992 Emilio Castro Evangelical Methodist Church of Uruguay Uruguay
1993–2003 Konrad Raiser Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) Germany
2004–2009 Samuel Kobia Methodist Church in Kenya Kenya
2010–present Olav Fykse Tveit Church of Norway Norway


Commissions and teams

There are two complementary approaches to ecumenism: dialogue and action. The Faith and Order Movement and Life and Work Movement represent these approaches.[23] These approaches are reflected in the work of the WCC in its commissions, these being:

• Echos- Commission on Youth (ages 18–30)
• Commission of the Churches on Diakonia and Development
• Commission on Education and Ecumenical Formation
• Commission of the Churches on International Affairs
• Commission on Justice, Peace and Creation
• Commission on World Mission and Evangelism
• Faith and Order Plenary Commission and the Faith and Order Standing Commission
• Joint Consultative Group with Pentecostals
• Joint Working Group WCC – Catholic Church (Vatican)
• Reference Group on the Decade to Overcome Violence
• Reference Group on Inter-Religious Relations
• Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC

Diakonia and development and international relations commissions

The WCC acts through both its member churches and other religious and social organizations to coordinate ecumenical, evangelical, and social action.

Current WCC programs include a Decade to Overcome Violence, an international campaign to combat AIDS/HIV in Africa and the Justice, Peace and Creation initiative.

Faith and Order Commission

WCC's Faith and Order Commission has been successful in working toward consensus on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, on the date of Easter, on the nature and purpose of the church (ecclesiology), and on ecumenical hermeneutics.

Texts

• Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper No. 111, the “Lima Text”; 1982)[24]
• The Churchː Towards a Common Vision (Faith and Order Paper no. 214; 2013[25]) after The Nature and Mission of the Church – A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement (Faith and Order Paper no. 198; 2005[26]) and The Nature and Purpose of the Church(Faith and Order Paper no. 181; 1998[27])
• Towards a Common Date of Easter[28]

Justice, Peace and Creation Commission

Justice, Peace and Creation has drawn many elements together with an environmental focus. Its mandate is:

To analyze and reflect on justice, peace and creation in their interrelatedness, to promote values and practices that make for a culture of peace, and to work towards a culture of solidarity with young people, women, Indigenous Peoples and racially and ethnically oppressed people.[29]


Focal issues have been globalization and the emergence of new social movements (in terms of people bonding together in the struggle for justice, peace, and the protection of creation).[30]

Attention has been given to issues around:

• economy[31]
• environment[32]
• Indigenous Peoples[33]
• peace[34]
• people with disabilities[35]
• racism[36]
• women[37]
• youth[38]

Relations with the Catholic Church

The largest Christian body, the Catholic Church, is not a member of the WCC, but has worked closely with the Council for more than three decades and sends observers to all major WCC conferences as well as to its Central Committee meetings and the Assemblies (cf. Joint Working Group).

The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity also nominates 12 members to the WCC's Faith and Order Commission as full members. While not a member of the WCC, the Catholic Church is a member of some other ecumenical bodies at regional and national levels, for example, the National Council of Churches in Australia and the National Council of Christian Churches in Brazil (CONIC).

Pope Pius XI stated in 1928, that the only means by which the world Christian community was to return to faith, was to return to Roman Catholic Worship. In this regard, there was the idea that the Papacy had rejected, to a great extent; the participation of the Catholic Church within the World Council of Churches. Pius XI stated that the ‘One true Church’ was that of the Roman Catholic denomination, and therefore there was the implication that the Catholic Church was not permitted at this stage to engage with other denominations, which the Papacy considered to be irrelevant. The Catholic Church therefore did not attend the 1948 meeting of the WCC, in addition to the idea that all members of the church were barred from attending WCC conferences.

Pope St. John XXIII took a different stance however, and in 1958 he was elected as the head of the Catholic Church. Ecumenism was a new element of catholic ideology which had been permitted, which was signified to a great extent, when John XXIII met with the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher. This was the first meeting between an Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Pope in the Vatican for 600 years. John XXIII later developed the office of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity; which symbolised a dramatic shift in support for the ecumenical movement, from the Catholic Church, led from the Vatican. 1961 saw Catholic members attend the Delhi conference of the WCC, which masked a significant shift in attitude toward the WCC from the Papacy. There was the idea in addition to this, that the Pope invited non-Catholics to attend the Vatican II council. This new approach to inter-denominational relations was marked within the Unitatis Redintegratino.

This document marked several key reforms within the Catholic approach:

I. ‘Separated brethren’ was the new term for non-catholics, as opposed to the previously used ‘heretics’

II. Both catholic and non- catholic elements are held responsible for the schism between Catholicism and the Protestant movement

III. Non-catholics are recognised to the contributions that they make to Christian belief overall

Further reforms have been enacted with regard to the nature of the Catholic Church on the world stage, for instance the 1965 union with the Patriarch of Constantinople, whereby the 1054 schism was undermined. In addition to this, Michael Ramsay, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, received an episcopal ring in 1966; a mark of union which had not been seen since prior to the reformation. Moreover, the Anglican, Roman-Catholic International Committee was additionally established as a means of promoting communication and cohesion between the two denominations. This has since marked a new level of participation of the Catholic Faith in the aforementioned ecumenical movement, and therefore is the basis for increased participation from the faith, in the WCC.

Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC

A Special Commission was set up by the eighth Harare Assembly in December 1998 to address Orthodox concerns about WCC membership and the Council's decision-making style, public statements, worship practices, and other issues. It issued its final report in 2006.[39] Specific issues that it clarified were that the WCC does not formulate doctrine, does not have authority to rule on moral issues, nor does it have any ecclesiastical authority. Such authority is entirely internal to each individual member church. It proposed that the WCC adopt a consensus method of decision making. It proposed that Orthodox members be brought in parity with non-Orthodox members. It further proposed clarification that inter-confessional prayer at WCC events is not worship, particularly "it should avoid giving the impression of being the worship of a church", and confessional and inter-confessional prayer each be specifically identified as such at WCC events. It also clarified that the so-called "Lima Liturgy" is not an interfaith eucharistic service: 'the WCC is not 'hosting' a eucharist'.

Peace journalism

The WCC is also a prominent supporter and practitioning body for Peace journalism: journalism practice that aims to avoid a value bias in favor of violence that often characterizes coverage of conflict.[40]

Spin-offs and related organizations

The ACT Alliance, bringing together over 100 church-backed relief and development organizations worldwide, was born out of the merger of ACT International (Action by Churches Together International) and ACT Development (Action by Churches Together for Development) in March 2010. Both ACT International, established in 1995, and ACT Development (2007) were created through the leadership of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The two bodies coordinated the work of agencies related to the member churches of the WCC and the Lutheran World Federation in the areas of humanitarian emergencies and poverty reduction respectively.[41]

The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance was officially founded in December 2000 at a meeting convened by the WCC. There are currently 73 churches and Christian organizations that are members of the Alliance, from Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox and Protestant traditions. These members, representing a combined constituency of tens of millions of people around the world, are committed to working together in public witness and action for justice on defined issues of common concern. Current campaigns are on Food and on HIV and AIDS.[42]

The Ecumenical Church Loan Fund (ECLOF) was founded in 1946 as one of the world's first international micro-credit institutions in the service of the poor. Willem Visser 't Hooft, then general secretary of the "WCC in process of formation" played an important role in founding ECLOF. It was he who sketched the prospects and challenges for the proposed institution and gave specific ideas on potential sources of funds. His inspiration and teamwork marked the beginning of a long and fruitful cooperation between ECLOF and the WCC.[43]

The Ecumenical Development Cooperative Society U.A (now known as Oikocredit) was developed from discussions at the 1968 Uppsala 4th Assembly, regarding church divestment from financial institutions supporting apartheid-era South Africa and the war in Vietnam. After several years of planning, the cooperative society was founded in 1975 in the Netherlands to provide an alternative ethical investment vehicle to church institutions, by providing credit to productive enterprises serving economically disadvantaged populations. Originally organized for large institutional members of the WCC, by 1976 local congregations developed Support Associations to enable congregations as well as individuals to participate. EDCS became independent from the WCC in 1977.[44]

Ecumenical News International (ENI) was launched in 1994 as a global news service reporting on ecumenical developments and other news of the churches, and giving religious perspectives on news developments worldwide. The joint sponsors of ENI, which was based at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, are the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the Conference of European Churches, which also have their headquarters at the Ecumenical Centre.[45] A shortage of funds led to the suspension of the work of ENI in 2012.[46] As of 2015 ENI remains closed.

Regional/national councils

The WCC has not sought the organic union of different Christian denominations, but it has, however, facilitated dialogue and supported local, national, and regional dialogue and cooperation.

Membership in a regional or national council does not mean that the particular group is also a member of the WCC.

• Africa – All Africa Conference of Churches[47]
• Organization of African Instituted Churches[48]
• Asia (including Australia and New Zealand) – Christian Conference of Asia (CCA),[49] Hong Kong
• National Council of Churches in Australia
• National Council of Churches in the Philippines
• Caribbean – Caribbean Conference of Churches
• Europe – Conference of European Churches,[50] Geneva, Switzerland
• Latin America – Latin American Council of Churches[51]
• Middle East – Middle East Council of Churches[52]
• North America
• Canadian Council of Churches
• National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
• Pacific – Pacific Conference of Churches,[53] Suva, Fiji

Criticism

Alleged neglect of suffering church in Eastern Europe


Many historians, the U.S. State Department and former KGB officers themselves have alleged and provided corroborating evidence that the KGB's influence directly, or through lobbying by means of a front organization, the Christian Peace Conference, resulted in the WCC's failure to recognize or act on calls for help from persecuted East European Christians at the 1983 Vancouver General Assembly.[54][55]:647–8

Claims of infiltration and influence by the KGB

It is claimed the KGB has infiltrated and influenced past WCC councils and policy.[12] In 1992, Father Gleb Yakunin, a vice Chairman of a Russian parliamentary commission that investigated the activities of the KGB, citing verbatim KGB reports, claimed that its Fifth Directorate was actively involved in influencing WCC policy from 1967 to 1989.[54][56] For example, in the 1983 WCC General Assembly in Vancouver, one cited document described the presence and activities of 47 KGB agents to secure the election of an "acceptable" candidate as General Secretary.[56][57] The Mitrokhin Archive reveals more about the depth of the penetration and influence wielded by the KGB over the WCC.[55] Metropolitan Nikidim was a KGB agent, codenamed ADAMANT, who served as one of six WCC Presidents from 1975 until his death.[55]:729[58] His earlier intervention had resulted in the WCC making no comment on the invasion of Czechoslovakia.[55]:636 As a result of his influence and that of other agents, it is claimed the USSR was rarely publicly criticised.[55]:637 In 1989, copies of the KGB documents claim "the WCC executive and central committee adopted public statements (eight) and messages (three)" which corresponded to its own political direction.[55]:637 Appeals from suffering dissidents both from within the Russian Orthodox Church and Protestants were ignored in 1983.[55]:647–8 Metropolitan Aleksi Ridiger of Tallinn and Estonia was repeatedly alleged to be a KGB agent codenamed DROZDOV, who in 1988 was awarded an honorary citation for services to the KGB by its chairman.[55]:650[59][60] Despite official disavowals, The Guardian described the evidence as "compelling".[61] In 1990 he became Aleksi II, the 15th Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. Upon his death in 2008, the WCC's official tribute, by its Council officers, described him as "courageous", "supportive and constructive" and the recipient of "abundant blessing", no reference was made to the allegations.[62][63]

Attitude towards Israel

The World Council of Churches has been described as taking an adversarial position toward the state of Israel.[64] It has also been claimed the council has focused particularly on activities and publications criticizing Israel in comparison with other human rights issues.[65][66] Because the WCC never opposed or had any official comments on the destruction of Jewish religious sites in the Middle East, but has constantly complained about Israel's alleged crimes towards Christian sites in Israel, Israel has pointedly ignored the WCC for 50 years and often stated that the WCC's opinions on Israel are hypocritical to the point of being bankrupt. It is similarly claimed that it downplayed appeals from Egyptian Copts about human rights abuses under Sadat and Mubarak, in order to focus on its neighbour.[64] In 2009, the Council called for an international boycott on goods produced in Israeli settlements, which it described as 'illegal, unjust' and 'incompatible with peace'.[67] In 2013, the General Secretary was reported to claim in Cairo, "We support the Palestinians. The WCC supports the Palestinians, because they are in the right."[68] The WCC's Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) has been criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews for promoting "an inflammatory and partisan programme at the expense of its interfaith relations".[69] The WCC secretariat was involved in preparing and helped disseminate the Kairos Palestine Document, which declares “the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity because it deprives the Palestinians of their basic human rights”, and in the view of one critic, its "authors want to see a single state".[70] On the other hand, the WCC claims "Antisemitism is sin against God and man".[71]

Opposition to Christian Zionism

Christian Zionism, which has long represented a substantial proportion of historic and contemporary Protestants,[72][73] is characterised as a view which "distort(s) the interpretation of the Word of God" and "damage(s) intra-Christian relations".[74]

In this context, what is a source of concern is that Islamic fundamentalisms are giving rise to a counter reaction of other religious fundamentalisms, the most dangerous of which is Jewish fundamentalism which exploits the Islamic fundamentalist phenomenon to justify before western societies the distasteful aberrations of Zionism in Palestine.

— WCC working paper, Lebanon, May 2013[75]


See also

• John R. Mott
• John Romanides
• Joseph Oldham
• Nathan Soderblom
• Charles Henry Brent
• Christian ecumenism
• Conference of Secretaries of World Christian Communions
• Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians
• World Summit of Religious Leaders
• Programme to Combat Racism
• Authorship of the Bible
• List of the largest Protestant bodies

References

Citations


• "Member list — World Council of Churches". oikoumene.org. 2014. Retrieved 2014-11-12.
• ^ Cross & Livingstone The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church OUP(1974) art.
• ^ "About us — World Council of Churches". oikoumene.org. 2017. Retrieved 2017-12-27.
• ^ single. Publications.oikoumene.org. Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
• ^ World Council of Churches — World Council of Churches. Oikoumene.org (2013-08-04). Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
• ^ "Who are we?". World Council of Churches. 2003. Retrieved 2007-04-10.
• ^ Ware, Kallistos (29 April 1993). The Orthodox Church. Penguin Adult. p. 322. ISBN 9780140146561. From the beginning of the twentieth century the Ecumenical Patriarchate has shown a special concern for Christian reconciliation. At his accession in 1902, Patriarch Joachim III sent an encyclical letter to all the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Churches, asking in particular for their opinion on relations with other Christian bodies. In January 1920 the Ecumenical Patriarchate followed this up with a bold and prophetic letter addressed 'To all the Churches of Christ, wherever they may be', urging closer co-operation among separated Christians, and suggesting a 'League of Churches', parallel to the newly founded League of Nations. Many of the ideas in this letter anticipate subsequent developments in the WCC. Constantinople, along with several of the other Eastern Orthodox Churches, was represented at the Faith and Order Conferences at Lausanne in 1927 and at Edinburgh in 1937. The Ecumenical Patriarchate also participated in the first Assembly of the WCC at Amsterdam in 1948, and has been a consistent supporter of the work of the WCC ever since.
• ^ "WCC Assemblies 1948 - today". World Council of Churches. Archived from the original on 2011-09-08. Retrieved 2011-08-22.
• ^ Flew's ODNB entry: Retrieved 18 September 2011. Subscription required.
• ^ "WEA - World Evangelical Alliance Est 1846". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ Forsythe, David P. (2009). Encyclopedia of Human Rights, Volume 1. Oxford University Press. p. 277. ISBN 978-0195334029.
• ^ Jump up to:a b Christopher Andrew, "KGB Foreign Intelligence from Brezhnev to the Coup"', in: Wesley K. Wark (ed), Espionage: past, present, future?, Routledge, 1994, p. 52: "One recently declassified document of 1969 describes the work of five KGB agents on the WCC Central Committee and the appointment of another to a 'high WCC post'. A similar report from 1989 claims that, as a result of agent operations to implement 'a plan approved by the KGB leadership', the WCC Executive and Central Committee adopted public statements (eight) and messages (three) which corresponded to the political course of Socialist [Communist] countries'. While it would be naive to take such boasting entirely a face value, there can be little doubt about the reality of Soviet penetration of the WCC."
• ^ Jonathan Gorry (2013). Cold War Christians and the Spectre of Nuclear Deterrence, 1945-1959. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 194. ISBN 978-1137334244.
• ^ John Gordon Garrard et al., Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia., p. 37 f. Google books preview here [1].
• ^ "Official Report of the Ninth Assembly of the World Council of Churches" (PDF). World Council of Churches. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "WCC General Secretary Welcome Speech of the Official Visit of His Beatitude Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and of All Greece to the World Council of Churches, 29 May 2006". World Council of Churches. Retrieved 2011-05-03.
• ^ "10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "allAfrica.com: Kenya: First Woman and African Moderator Elected to the WCC Central Committee". allAfrica.com. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ Timeline | | World Council of Churches. Oikoumene.org. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
• ^ 10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches — WCC 10th Assembly. WCC-Assembly.info (2012-10-29). Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
• ^ Press Center | World Council of Churches. Oikoumene.org. Retrieved on 2014-01-13.
• ^ WCC general secretaries since 1948 | | World Council of Churches. Oikoumene.org. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
• ^ "World Council of Churches — World Council of Churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper no. 111, the "Lima Text")". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ Archive index at the Wayback Machine
• ^ Archive index at the Wayback Machine
• ^ Archive index at the Wayback Machine
• ^ "Towards a Common Date for Easter". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "World Council of Churches — World Council of Churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ Schmitthenner, Ulrich (1999). Contributions of churches and civil society to justice, peace and the integrity of creation: a compendium (with CD-ROM). Frankfurt, Germany: IKO. ISBN 978-3-88939-491-0.
• ^ "JPC Concerns - economy". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "World Council of Churches — World Council of Churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "World Council of Churches — World Council of Churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "JPC Concerns - Peace". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ World Council of Churches — World Council of Churches. Wcc-coe.org (2013-08-04). Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
• ^ "World Council of Churches — World Council of Churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "World Council of Churches — World Council of Churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "World Council of Churches — World Council of Churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ World Council of Churches (14 February 2006). "Final report of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC". World Council of Churches. World Council of Churches. Retrieved 2014-08-30.
• ^ "Living Letters visits to churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "WCC press release: Churches launch major humanitarian alliance (24/03/2010)". oikoumene.org. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
• ^ "WCC press release: Christian alliance for advocacy marks successes, future challenges (09/12/2010)". oikoumene.org. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
• ^ "ECLOF press release: Happy Birthday WCC! (Dec. 1998)". eclof.org. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
• ^ Oikocredit. "History of Oikocredit". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "eni.ch". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "Ecumenical News International Suspends Operations". christianpost.com. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
• ^ "All Africa Conference of Churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "Organization of African Instituted Cburches". Berkley Centre for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. Georgetown University. Retrieved 2017-02-13.
• ^ "Index". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "www.cec-kek.org". cec-kek.org. Archived from the originalon 2005-07-14. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
• ^ "clailatino.org". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "Middle East Council of Churches". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ "Pacificforum.com - Stay Tuned!". Archived from the original on 2007-10-10. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
• ^ Jump up to:a b "Soviet Influences: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda 1986-7" (PDF). US State Department Report. August 1987. p. 12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-02-27. Retrieved 2015-02-27.
• ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili (1999). The Mitrokhin Archive. London: Penguin. ISBN 9780140284874.
• ^ Jump up to:a b Yakunin, Gleb (January 1992). "Argumenty i Fakty article cited in 'Soviet Active Measures in the "Post-Cold War" Era 1988-1991' - for the United States House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations by the United States Information Agency". Argumenty i Fakty (published June 1992). Retrieved 2015-02-26.
• ^ Polosin, Vyacheslav (Chair Russian Supreme Soviet's Committee on Denominations and Freedom of Religion), Megapolis Ekspress, January 21, 1992.
• ^ Besier, Gerhard; Boyens, Armin; Lindemann, Gerhard (1999). Nationaler Protestantismus und ökumenische Bewegung : kirchliches Handeln im Kalten Krieg (1945-1990). Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. p. 1074. ISBN 9783428100323.
• ^ Felix Corley (8 December 2008). "Patriarch Alexy II: Priest who stayed close to the Kremlin while guiding the Russian Orthodox Church into the post-Soviet era". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 2008-12-07. Retrieved 2008-12-06.
• ^ "Confirmed: Russian Patriarch Worked with KGB". Catholic World News citing Keston Institute. 2000-09-22. Archived from the original on 2015-03-03. Retrieved 2015-03-03.
• ^ "Russian Patriarch "was KGB spy"]". The Guardian. 1999-02-12. Archived from the original on 2015-03-03.
• ^ "Tributes from the General Secretary". World Council of Churhces. Archived from the original on 2015-02-27. Retrieved 2015-02-28.
• ^ "Patriarch Alexy II: a powerful voice, constructive and critical". World Council of Churches. 2008-12-05. Archived from the original on 2015-02-27. Retrieved 2015-02-28.
• ^ Jump up to:a b Merkley, Paul (March 1, 2007). Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel. Montreal: Mcgill Queens Univ Press. p. 284. ISBN 9780773532557.
• ^ Vermaat, J.A.Emerson (November 1984), "The World Council of Churches, Israel and the PLO", Mid-Stream: 3–9
• ^ Rottenberg, Isaac (1989). The Turbulent Triangle: Christians-Jews-Israel: A Personal-Historical Account. Hawley, Pa.: Red Mountain Associates. pp. 61–2. ISBN 9780899627465.
• ^ "Statement on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory". World Council of Churches website. 2009-09-02. Archived from the original on 2015-08-11. Retrieved 2015-08-11.
• ^ "World Council of Churches condemns Israeli occupation". World Bulletin. 2013-04-24. Archived from the original on 2015-02-20. Retrieved 2015-02-20.
• ^ "Board of Deputies statement on the Synod EAPPI vote". Jewish Chronicle. 2012-07-12. Retrieved 2014-08-02.
• ^ Lowe, Malcolm (April 2010). "The Palestinian KairosDocument: A Behind-the-Scenes Analysis". New English Review. Archived from the original on 2015-02-25.
• ^ "Rosh Ha-Shanah greetings 2015 — World Council of Churches". oikoumene.org. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
• ^ "A Wesley 'Zionist' Hymn? Charles Wesley's hymn, published in 1762 and included by John Wesley in his 1780 hymn-book, A Collection of Hymns for the use of the People called Methodists". The Wesley Fellowship. 2010-07-01. Archived from the original on 2014-07-05. Retrieved 2014-07-05.
• ^ Lewis, Donald (2 January 2014). The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury And Evangelical Support For A Jewish Homeland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 380. ISBN 9781107631960.
• ^ "Statement on Christian presence and witness in the Middle East". World Council of Churches and The Middle East Council of Churches International. 2013-05-25. Archived from the original on 2015-02-21. Retrieved 2015-02-21.
• ^ "World Council of Churches - Middle East Council of Churches International & Ecumenical Conference "Christians in the Middle East: Presence and Witness"" (PDF). World Council of Churches website. 25 May 2013. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2015-02-20. Retrieved 2015-02-20.

Sources

• World Council of Churches. Members by country and by church Retrieved 2010-03-31.

Further reading

• W. A. Visser 't Hooft, The Genesis of the World Council of Churches, in: A History of The Ecumenical Movement 1517–1948, R. Rose, S. Ch. Neill (ed.), London: SPCK 1967, second edition with revised bibliography, pp. 697–724.

External links

• Official website
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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

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Letter to Allen W. Dulles, Director Central Intelligence Agency, from Samuel McCrea Cavert, The United States Conference for the WORLD COUNCIL of CHURCHES
December 2, 1957
Letter from Allen W. Dulles, Director Central Intelligence Agency, to Samuel McCrea Cavert, The United States Conference for the WORLD COUNCIL of CHURCHES
3 January 1958

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Approved for Release 2002/03/29: CIA-RDP80B01676R0038000300092-9

3 January 1958

Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert
Executive Secretary in the United States
World Council of Churches
156 Fifth Avenue
New York 10, New York

Dear Dr. Cavert:

I have your letter of 2 December 1957, and wish to add my word to the many you are receiving in appreciation for the constructive contribution you have made in your years of active service in the World Council of Churches.

I know your successor well, and shall be glad to be of any possible assistance to him.

Faithfully yours,

Allen W. Dulles

AWD/ji

***

The United States Conference for the WORLD COUNCIL of CHURCHES
156 Fifth Avenue, New York 10, N.Y.
Tel. WAtkins 4-8551 – Cable Address: WORCIL

December 2, 1957

Mr. Allen W. Dulles
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Dulles:

As I retire from active service in the World Council of Churches at the end of this month, I find myself thinking gratefully of you and the other friends who year after year have given their loyal support in prayer and thought and money. Looking back over the forty years during which I have been associated with the movement for a greater Christian unity, I am grateful to God for the encouraging developments that have taken place both in this country and around the world. As I look ahead I have no doubt that the coming years will see a much greater advance toward a truly united Church. On the human side, it is such help as faithful friends like yourself have given that has made all this possible.

During these last weeks in which I shall have any official responsibility for the finances of the U.S. Conference for the World Council, I am especially anxious that we should come to December 31st with a balanced budget. I therefore hope that you will want to renew your usual contribution toward the Council’s work in this country.

For my successor, Rev. Dr. Roswell P. Barnes, who will become the Executive Secretary in the U.S.A. on January 1st, I can wish nothing happier and better than that he should have the same kind of friendly interest and support which you have shown during my years of service.

Faithfully yours,

Samuel McCrea Cavert
Executive Secretary in the United States

Officers and Staff

Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill, D.D., Chairman
Rev. Franklin Clark Fry, D.D., Vice Chairman
Rev. Samuel McCrea Cavert, D.D., Executive Secretary
Mr. W. Rodman Parvin (Vice President, Guaranty Trust Company), Treasurer
Miss Eleanor Kent Browne, Secretary for Administration and Assistant Treasurer
Miss Betty Thompson, Secretary for Public Relatinos
Miss Antonia H. Froendt, Secretary for Promotion

Staff Consultants

Rev. Philip Potter, Secretary of the Youth Department in North America

Rev. O. Frederick Nolde, D.D., Director of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs

Rev. Richard M. Fagley, D.D., Executive Secretary of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs

Friends of the World Council of Churches, Inc.

Mr. Charles P. Taft, Chairman
Rev. Henry Smith Leiper, D.D., Secretary
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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Tue Mar 26, 2019 9:45 am

The Gospel According to Whom?: A Look at the National and World Councils of Churches
by 60 Minutes
January 23, 1983 7:00 PM

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Approved For Release 2007/05/21 : CIA-RDP88-01070R000100540010-5

"RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068

FOR: PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF

PROGRAM: 60 Minutes

STATION: WDVM TV, CBS Network

DATE: January 23, 1983 7:00 PM

CITY: Washington, DC

SUBJECT: National and World Councils of Churches

MORLEY SAFER: Religion, money, revolutionary politics. There is no more explosive mixture. Our report, "The Gospel According to Whom," has equal measures of all three. It is a look at the National Council and World Council of Churches. Long before this report was completed, it was condemned from the pulpit, and the National Council suggested we'd succumbed to pressure from the religious right.

The National Council is an association of the major American Protestant denominations: the Episcopal Church, the United Methodists, United Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, 32 in all. Most of those churches are also members of the World Council of Churches. Each week American Protestants who belong to those churches put $150 million into their collection plates.

Do the people in the pews go along with their leadership on how that money is spent?

A fairly typical Sunday morning in a fairly typical town. Americans are still among the most church-going people in the world. About half the population regularly attends services. The congregation is the First United Methodist Church of Logansport, Indiana; Pastor Michael Lusseau presiding.

Logansport is middle America and proud of it. Its major vice, in fact, may be the pride it holds in the Berries, its high school baseball team.

But this weekend, Pastor Lusseau has more on his mind than his son's batting average. His concern is the money in the collection plate. Americans give more to their churches than any other charity, and this congregation is as generous as any: money to do God's work at home and abroad.

But what if some of that money is doing this man's work, or these people? If it surprises you, it may surprise these Methodists even more, for that act of Christian charity this Sunday in Logansport may end up feeding a starving child. That they know. Maybe the gift of literacy to someone somewhere. That they know. Or maybe the price of a brand new Soviet assault rifle. That they may not know.

It is near impossible to follow church money in any precise way. When Pastor Lusseau and his parishoners tried to, they found that it was being absorbed into the coffers, committees and ad hoc committees of the United Methodist Church, National Council of Churches and the World Council, and then surfacing in some surprising places. They found some of it was being spent on causes that seemed more political than religious, on causes that seemed closer to the Soviet-Cuban view of the world than Logansport, Indiana's, and they didn't like it.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: The World Council, in particular, has become a political organization and not, as they set out, to be a fellowship of Christian organizations who accept Jesus Christ as our God and savior.


UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We don't feel -- that is, the people in our church that have discussed it -- that the Methodists belong in an organization which permits the use of money to accomplish political objectives. Why should we support one group rather than another in Africa any more than we should in the United States?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I think most of our parishioners feel that their outcries of total frustration are falling on deaf ears. I think there's a bureaucracy there that maybe it's so large, that we can't get to it.

SAFER: The bureaucracy they're concerned about, indeed what many American Protestants are concerned about, is largely headquartered, 475 Riverside Drive in New York City. This building is officially known as the Inter-Church Center. The people who work in it call it the God Box. It's the home of the National Council of Churches. It's also the national headquarters for dozens of agencies attached to the United Methodists, the United Presbyterians and other Protestant churches. It's also the U.S. headquarters of the World Council of Churches, which is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. All these agencies claim a strict independence from each other, but, in fact, there's a constant exchange of programs and personnel. And although they may be technically independent, they do work in concert and are often hard to distinguish, one from the other. What all the agencies have in common is that they get most of their budgets from the people in the pews, a small percentage of each Sunday's collection plate.

The annual budgets are: the United Methodists, $70 million; the United Presbyterians, 35 million; the National Council of Churches, $44 million, and $12 million from American contributions alone to the World Council of Churches.

All that money is sent on a very complex maze of programs by groups and organizations in the thousands that touch people's religious and social and their political lives as well.

There are bureaucracies within bureaucracies in this building, and often one hand does not know what the other's up to.

Bishop James Armstrong is president of the National Council of Churches. He's also United Methodist Bishop for Indiana and is a delegate to the next assembly of the World Council of Churches.

Well, are you going to represent some of those grassroots' voices that have strong reservations about what the church is doing in what they regard as political areas?

BISHOP JAMES ARMSTRONG: A long time ago, Martin Luther said that his conscience was bound to the word of God. I will certainly be sensitive to what people in the churches are feeling and saying and thinking.

SAFER: That hasn't answered the question. Are you going to speak for those people?

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: That is not my primary concern. My primary concern is to be faithful to the gospel, as I understand it.

SAFER: But do you feel a sense of responsibility to those people?

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: Of course I do. And I will attempt, as best I can, to respond on the basis of my understanding of them.

SAFER: Bishop Armstrong feels that too much emphasis is placed by outsiders on the political activities of the churches.

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: I don't understand why we're never asked about international Sunday school lessons. I don't understand why we're never asked about five billion pounds of clothing and foodstuffs and medicine that have gone to every part of the world to relieve every form of human misery. These are things that don't seem to come into these conversations.

SAFER: Well, I think -- I think most people do assume that a religious organization is doing good works, is spreading the world of God, is helping the hungry. What they don't assume is that it's so active in politics.

We read Bishop Armstrong a passage from a World Council publication.

But would you agree, for example, with a statement that says "The international capitalistic economic system is repugnant to the Christian concept of justice. It's a denial of the lordship of Christ, therefore an abomination to the creator."

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: No. No. Nor do I believe that the capitalist system, nor the socialist system, is beyond the judgment of God. We don't belong to Karl Marx. We don't belong to Adam Smith. We belong to Jesus Christ. We must. That's our identity.


SAFER: A great deal, though, of the National -- of the World Council would seem to not exactly belong to the Marxist system, but speak in much the same language.

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: Well, you're asking me to speak in the language of the United States government. I won't.

SAFER: Few would doubt Bishop Armstrong's sincerity, but critics feel that the National and the World Council lean toward Karl Marx when it comes to giving certain financial support.

Among the things they object to: money to NACLA, the North American Congress on Latin America, based in New York. Money from the Presbyterian Hunger Program helped NACLA publish this book, Agribusiness in the Americas, an indictment of capitalism and American agricultural corporations.

Two million dollars from the World Council went to buy heavy equipment and materials for new economic zones in Vietnam. Critics claim new economic zones are little more than forced labor camps.

After the Cuban supported revolution in Grenada, the National Council contributed money to publish a primer on the island. What was produced was a tribute to the revolution.

Another item. For a center in Nicaragua that would, quote, "serve the revolutionary reality in Latin America," unquote, $60,000 from the United Methodists.

The Cuba Resource Center received heavy financial support from the National Council member churches. It produced blatantly pro-Castro publications. And a continuing theme was to redefine Christianity in Marxist revolutionary terms.

Another item. To the Nicaraguan literacy program, $1-1/2 million from the World Council. The purpose was to raise political awareness while teaching reading. The teachers were Cuban; American teachers were not welcome.


Another item. The Conference in Solidarity with the Liberation Struggles of Southern Africa in New York was funded and organized by the United Methodists. But when it took place, according to FBI documents, it was run by the U.S. Communist Party and was entirely manipulated by the Soviet Union. The only Methodist official on the platform was the one who gave the invocation.

We asked Bishop Armstrong about a few of those examples.

Are you familiar with the Cuba Resource Center?

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: No.

SAFER: Have you ever seen their publication?

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: No.

SAFER: It claims to be a newsletter, an information letter about the clergy in Cuba. And in fact, it's a propaganda tract that shouts out the glories of the revolution.

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: No, I have no knowledge of it.

I want it to be known that my first responsibility in the National Council of Churches is not to dig around in the corners and move into the closets, but to deal with those things I consider supremely important.

SAFER: There was an anti-apartheid meeting called at Columbia University in New York that was, in effect, run by the American Communist Party. Your name was on the preparatory committee.

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: But I was not contacted. There was no permission for that.

SAFER: Well, how did it get there?

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: I have no idea.

SAFER: So somebody's trying to manipulate.

BISHOP ARMSTRONG: I would say so.

SAFER: Richard Newhouse is a Lutheran pastor; Ed Robb, a Methodist minister. They claim to represent middle-of-the-road Protestants and, through their organization, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, which is funded by some conservative foundations, they've been putting some tough questions to the World and National Councils.

REVEREND ED ROBB: I have the opportunity of preaching all over the country. And I have found that in every geographical area of this nation, people are concerned, many are aroused about the radical left-wing views of the National Council of Churches, and also the views expressed by the bureaucracies of the main line denominations. And then I noticed a pattern of support of totalitarian leftist regimes across the country -- across the world, and an apology for this type of oppression.

SAFER: Can you give me one good, hard example?

REVEREND ROBB: ETHICA, which is funded by the National Council of Churches, has a booklet out about the colonialism of the United States in Puerto Rico.

SAFER: ETHICA is run by Philip -- the Reverend Philip Wheaton, correct?

REVEREND ROBB: That's correct. And they have a crusade on about U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico. And of course the Puerto Rican people have voted time and again to remain a part of the United states as a commonwealth. It seems ridiculous. But why should National Council of Churches' money be spent for such dubious causes as that?


SAFER: Philip Wheaton, who runs that, would describe himself as a dedicated Christian.

REVEREND ROBB: He comes across as a revolutionary.

SAFER: The Reverend Philip Wheaton is an Episcopalian priest who heads a group called ETHICA, which promotes liberation theology in Latin America. ETHICA gets $15,000 a year from the National Council of Churches, and Wheaton acts an an adviser on Latin America and the Caribbean.

REVEREND PHILIP WHEATON: My feeling, Morley, is that colonialism is dead, that dictatorial rule has the writing on the wall, if not moving out of existence and style, that the whole previous concept of the United states as an empire is under very strong attack.

SAFER: You say you fellow the people. Do you fellow the people when they choose violence, terrorism? When they've aligned themselves with godless Marxism, do you still follow them?

REVEREND WHEATON: I really object, Morley, to the use of the word "terrorist," because it's not only a catchword, but it's a propagandistic word. And if you look at 90% of the terror that's going on in Central America, it is being created not only by the ruling juntas and the paramilitary forces, but by U.S. aid and support going to those regimes.


SAFER: You get financial support from the National Council of Churches. Do you think the people who put their dollar bills into the collection plate on Sunday morning go along with your ideas?

REVEREND WHEATON: People throughout the churches in the United States, in relationship to Central America and the Caribbean, are reading our materials, are using our materials regularly for study programs. The Methodist Church has a regular program of bringing students into Washington, D.C., and they bring me in to present an analysis of Central America.

So my answer is that certainly a portion of the churches find our work very helpful, very useful.

PASTOR RICHARD NEWHOUSE: In El Salvador, you'll find that the National Council of Churches and the main line denominational bureaucracies have consistently supported the FDR, the Marxist guerrillas. But when you challenge them, they'll say, well, show us a resolution where we are supporting the FDR? And there is no resolution. But if you read all their materials, if you see where their money is being spent, you'll find that all of their sympathies are with the FDR.

SAFER: As an example of the churches showing a political bias, critics point to this film strip on the war in El Salvador, produced by the United Methodist Church, in cooperation with the National Council of Churches.

NARRATOR: Many of the FMLN have been branded communists, but everywhere I walked I saw the cross of Christ. The Christian symbol of death and resurrection was worn around the neck along with the bullets. To our Western minds and hearts, to see this juxtaposition of the cross and the gun is a shock. But in our own history through the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, we have frequently sought God's help in fighting the forces of injustice.

PASTOR NEWHOUSE: There're certainly many people in the churches who will quite frankly say that they are committed to the world -- to the global revolution, of which they believe the antithesis is the United States and the United States influence in the world.

SAFER: The National Council, World Council would argue that what they spend in the areas you're critical of is really just a tiny part of their entire budget.

REVEREND ROBB: Well, that's true. It is a small part. I would say that it's far too much. Any money is too much. But that only represents a small part of what we're concerned about. Staff involvement is another thing. And then another thing is the education, or reeducation of people. We've had a study booklet on Cuba lifted up as the model for Latin America. Well, this could not be money that was given to a pro-Marxist cause, but it was propaganda, we believe, for a pro-Marxist cause.

PASTOR NEWHOUSE: And it was held up as a model, Ed, not only for Latin America or for China, but also for the United States.

People, just very understandably, cannot follow through the whole track of where that dollar goes. They have to trust their leadership to a large extent, that when they say, you know, this is an appeal to meet human needs and the suffering of hungry people, or whatever, that that's how the money's going to be used. And I think, for the most part, that is how the money's used. But it is also true that, today, the crisis that this whole conversation is about is created by a lot of instances in which people found that that isn't the case, in which they found that things were being supported and promoted which they had no intention of endorsing whatsoever, and nobody asked them.

SAFER: One is careful in this kind of report to not make the suggestion of guilt by association, to not use what are generally described as McCarthy tactics. But whether it is by design or mischance or deliberate manipulation from outside the churches, church money and the churches themselves are found to be supporting highly political movements.

CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, set up to support the cause of the FDR guerrillas in the United States, is an example. The National Council could fairly say that this is not a group it officially supports. Yet an ad hoc committee, made up of various member denominations, working out of National Council headquarters, helped CISPES get started. And the denominations give it money and support services.

When CISPES released some controversial documents that it claimed were confidential State Department memoranda on American involvement in El Salvador, the very same documents were also released by a group called the Washington Office on Latin America, which is funded by the National Council and member churches. The FBI says this document is a forgery, precisely the same forgery the KGB tried to circulate earlier in Central America. The New York Times, having quoted from the document, later admitted it had been duped.


But Pastor Newhouse has other concerns.

PASTOR NEWHOUSE: What worries me most, indeed outrages me most, is when the church starts telling lies, when we start just sheer telling lies, and when we start telling lies about countries where people are being imprisoned and tortured and slaughtered, as in Indochina, for example, after the American withdrawal, and we paint a rosy picture of this and pretend it isn't happening. And then the height of hypocrisy is to pretend that in painting a rosy picture of the sufferings of the poor and making excuses for those who oppress the poor, that one is speaking on behalf of the poor.

So we have religious leaders who go to countries which are massively repressive regimes, in which Christians are in jail, are being tortured, have been killed by the thousands, and they go to those countries, and our religious dignitaries consort with the persecutors of the church of Christ. This is evil. This is wrong. This discredits the church as social witness. It undermines any elementary notion of justice. We have to turn this around.

SAFER: We'll be back with the second part of "The Gospel According to Whom" in a moment.

* * *

SAFER: In this second part of "The Gospel According to Whom," we concentrate mostly on the World Council of Churches, the international community of churches that includes American Protestant denominations, plus churches in over 100 other countries.

The World Council spends, on the average, about $85 million, again for relief work, for missionary work, operating expenses, and on political action as well. Among its member churches is the United Methodists, and that includes Logansport, Indiana.

Last spring at the regional conference of the United Methodists, Pastor Lusseau and his parishioners proposed that the nine million strong United Methodists withdraw support from the World Council. What had troubled Pastor Lusseau and many others most of all was one particular arm of the World Council, the Special Fund of the Program to Combat Racism.

The Program to Combat Racism, PCR, was funded, according to the Central Committee of the World Council, for the churches to, quote, "Move beyond charity to relevant and sacrificial action, to become agents for the radical reconstruction of society. There can be no justice without a transfer of economic resources to undergird the redistribution of political power."

The fund was set up in 1970. It gave cash grants to armed guerrilla groups in southern Africa. The World Council requests that the money go for humanitarian purposes, but exercises no control over it.

Since 1970, the World Council has raised about $5-1/2 million worldwide in special appeals to help groups like FERLIMO in Mozambique, the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, SWAPD in Namibia, and guerrillas in Angola, all when they were openly violent. Critics point out that these church-supported guerrillas who have come to power have, for the most part, not been guarantors of either political or religious freedom.


For many Christians, the openly political nature of the Program to Combat Racism was just too much.

PASTOR LUSSEAU: If we are people of peace, it is time to send a message to the decision-makers of the World Council of Churches that we will not be guilty by association in the killing and murder of human beings under the disguise of eliminating racism.

SAFER: Pastor Lusseau's petition was soundly defeated. But he was not the only one concerned. Just a year earlier, the 2,000,000 member Salvation Army withdrew from active participation in the World Council. Commissioner John Needham, head of the Army in the United States, told us why.

COMMISSIONER JOHN NEEDHAM: I think the support of a good many extremely radical causes around the world. I think the straw that broke the camel's back was finally the actual gifts of money to the guerrillas who were operating in Zimbabwe. And some of our people were being killed, for that matter.

SAFER: In fact, the World Council gave a grant of $85,000 to the Patriotic Front fighting the Smith regime in Rhodesia just two months after eight Christian missionaries, including two from the Salvation Army, were murdered. Most believe the guerrillas did it. The World Council says Rhodesian troops were responsible.


COMMISSIONER NEEDHAM: Now we serve -- we've been serving in Zimbabwe, Rhodesia before that, for over 80 years. So there's no sense in which we separate ourselves from the needs of the common man. That's where the Army was born. But we're not about to get involved in anything that has any violent overtones as we go about our work.

SAFER: Did the World Council try to justify this kind of deep political involvement?

COMMISSIONER NEEDHAM: It's an interpretation of the Christian gospel that you should be a part of any means to better the lot of the common man.

SAFER: But this determination to help the common man could mean money for weapons.

COMMISSIONER NEEDHAM: That's right. Of course the suggestion was that, of course, monies from the World Council was being given to feed, to take care of medicines, that sort of program. But after all, the end result was there were guerrillas about their work, you know, which resulted in death and violence.

SAFER: The question of whether money from American contributions pays for guns or is misdirected in other ways goes to the very heart of the matter. Just how does the World Council see itself in relation to the concerns of the Salvation Army? And what is its role in the secular world?

We went to its headquarters in Geneva and talked to Dr. Philip Potter, a prominent West Indian clergymen who's been General Secretary of the World Council since 1972.

DR. PHILIP POTTER: The question of whether aid and the support for justice can be left apart is a serious problem to the Salvation Army. I know it speaks about soup, soap and salvation. But soup and soap is not enough. The causes for the need for soup and soap are deeply important. And it is the question of when you speak about the causes and the structures of those societies which bring about oppression and bring about poverty, these are the things we have challenged.

Now the Salvation Army depends for its aid work, its work of mercy from large contributions from powerful groups that are involved economically and militarily in these countries.

COMMISSIONER NEEDHAM: You know, an article just came out in some magazine that said one source said that the Army left the World Council of Churches because of pressure of large corporations. Nothing could be farther. There's never been anybody that's ever talked to us. We've never related to, never had any suggestions from, you know, any corporation, that because the World Council is political we should withdraw. Nothing. That kind of stuff -- I don't know where people get those kinds of ideas.

DR. POTTER: Is it enough just to -- when people are down in the gutter, is it enough just to go and try and lift them up? Or is it important for us who are part of the system to do something to change that situation? And when Christ came, he spoke very firmly about all those things that prevented human beings from having their dignity. He acted as well as spoke.

SAFER: And in the practical world, that may mean supplying these oppressed with guns.

DR. POTTER: We have not done that, and it's never been proved that we did that.


SAFER: But you're convinced that the people in SWAPO who receive money from World Council have this fine distinction about what they'll do with the money, because the World Council gives it without strings.

DR. POTTER: We give the money and base it on the basis of the requests made, which are according to the criteria we have laid down. When we give it, we show an act of faith and confidence in people. And they know that if they misuse it, their whole credibility ....

SAFER: But you wouldn't know if they misused it.

DR. POTTER: We do know.

SAFER: But you wouldn't know if they did.

DR. POTTER: Nor have you been able to prove that they've used it for arms.

SAFER: A criticism often heard of the World Council is the relative ease with which it denounces human rights' violations in the West but rarely does it point out the policies of oppression that exist in the Soviet dominated world. As an example, a World Council task force that visited Australia to look into the treatment of aborigines. It was led by a Pakistani, Dr. Anwar Barket, head of the Program to Combat Racism.

In less than three days there, or three days, Dr. Barket announces that the Australian government is practicing genocide. I wonder if genocide is the right word for a terribly complicated historical situation.

DR. POTTER: Dr. Barket was not speaking for the World Council of Churches. Naturally, anybody working for the World Council of Churches would have to watch what he or she says, because it will be conceived as speaking for the World Council. The only bodies that can speak for the World Council are its Assembly, its Central Committee, its Executive Committee, its officers and myself.

And -- however, the word "genocide" is, of course, a strong word. But what it does convey this this, that when people come in as colonists and the indigenous people's customs are not observed, you know, and they are pushed aside, they lose the sense of the wholeness of their life, and they die out. You know, they take to drink and all the other things. And that is -- is -- is -- is the phrase that is used by sociologists as ethnic -- ethnic genocide.

SAFER: I understand that. A good part of the population of Australia, of the non-aboriginal part of the population, is perfectly aware and has been trying to do something about it. I wonder if the arrival of a World Council delegation spouting genocide enhances the Australian awareness of the problem.

DR. POTTER: Actually -- actually that group was invited by the Council of Churches of Australia and by the churches for the very simple reason that the Australian people's consciousness was not sufficiently aware of that situation there.

SAFER: Another member of that delegation was Madame Adler, who said that Marxist analysis should be used to examine Australian racism; this from an East German whose entire nation is enclosed by barbed-wire. Marxist analysis coming out of the mouth of the World Council of Churches?

DR. POTTER: Well, first of all, the barbed-wire is rather strange, because we had our Central Committee in Dresden last year in August, in which 400 people, including a lot of journalists, over 100 journalists, were able to visit nearly 100 parishes on a Sunday and were able to mingle for several hours with the people in Eastern Europe, in East Germany.

So the barbed-wire question is a bit much, isn't it?

SAFER: No, it's not, because how many of those parishioners would be allowed to come and visit here in Geneva?

DR. POTTER: Well, that -- that is a problem. There is a problem. But don't call it barbed-wire in that sense.

SAFER: Well, if you've been to that border, because it is barbed-wire.

DR. POTTER: Okay. There is barbed-wire in Berlin, yes.

SAFER: No, right across the border of East Germany, not just Berlin.

DR. POTTER: Yes, but I also want to point the fact that it is possible to be in contact with people and for a lot of people to meet them and to speak to them. However ....

SAFER: But I should think that a Marxist analysis would be anathema to anyone representing the World Council of Churches.

DR. POTTER: Miss Adler spoke for herself. But I would say that Marxist analysis -- Marxist analysis of -- of the causes of -- of poverty and of oppression has been a very useful analysis. But Christians use that analysis very critically in terms of our own faith.


SAFER: A motto of the Salvation Army is to change the world one life at a time. A recurring theme of the World Council of Churches is the redistribution of power.

What exactly does redistribution of power mean?

COMMISSIONER NEEDHAM: Well, I think it's a changing of the structures of society thereafter.
There is a difference in the world amongst religious people, obviously. There are the liberals and the conservatives; the liberals believing that you do, in fact, in changing the structures of society, you bring about salvation. We rather think you make a better man and you get a better world.

SAFER: There is some indication that many American Protestants would agree with Commissioner Needham. The National Council, in analyzing a survey on Americans and religion, found that three-quarters of its members consider themselves either moderate or conservative. In its report, the National Council cautions that the results of the survey should not be given wide distribution. It states "Although we may all agree that public opinion does not set our marching orders, there are those who will see some of these findings as showing how out of step the National Council is with its own constituency and censure us for it. To those who are hunting for such ammunition, we need not supply a silver bullet.

"This is not intended to be a broadly disseminated document for the general public."
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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

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Part 1 of 2

Hindu–German Conspiracy [Hindu-Germany Mutiny] [Indo-German Plot]
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The Hindu–German Conspiracy(Note on the name) was a series of plans between 1914 and 1917 by Indian nationalist groups to attempt Pan-Indian rebellion against the British Raj during World War I, formulated between the Indian revolutionary underground and exiled or self-exiled nationalists who formed, in the United States, the Ghadar Party, and in Germany, the Indian independence committee, in the decade preceding the Great War.[1][2][3] The conspiracy was drawn up at the beginning of the war, with extensive support from the German Foreign Office, the German consulate in San Francisco, as well as some support from Ottoman Turkey and the Irish republican movement. The most prominent plan attempted to foment unrest and trigger a Pan-Indian mutiny in the British Indian Army from Punjab to Singapore. This plot was planned to be executed in February 1915 with the aim of overthrowing British rule over the Indian subcontinent. The February mutiny was ultimately thwarted when British intelligence infiltrated the Ghadarite movement and arrested key figures. Mutinies in smaller units and garrisons within India were also crushed.

Other related events include the 1915 Singapore Mutiny, the Annie Larsen arms plot, the Jugantar–German plot, the German mission to Kabul, the mutiny of the Connaught Rangers in India, as well as, by some accounts, the Black Tom explosion in 1916. Parts of the conspiracy included efforts to subvert the British Indian Army in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I.

The Indo-German alliance and the conspiracy were the target of a worldwide British intelligence effort, which was successful in preventing further attempts. American intelligence agencies arrested key figures in the aftermath of the Annie Larsen affair in 1917. The conspiracy resulted in the Lahore conspiracy case trials in India as well as the Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial—at the time the longest and most expensive trial ever held in the United States.[1]

This series of events was consequential to the Indian independence movement. Though largely subdued by the end of World War I, it came to be a major factor in reforming the Raj's Indian policy.[4] Similar efforts were made during World War II in Germany and in Japanese-controlled Southeast Asia, where Subhas Chandra Bose formed the Indische Legion and the Indian National Army respectively, and in Italy where Mohammad Iqbal Shedai formed the Battaglione Azad Hindoustan.

Background

Nationalism had become more and more prominent in India throughout the last decades of the 19th century as a result of the social, economic and political changes instituted in the country through the greater part of the century.[5][6][7][8][9] The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, developed as a major platform for loyalists' demands for political liberalisation and for increased autonomy. The nationalist movement grew with the founding of underground groups in the 1890s. It became particularly strong, radical and violent in Bengal and in Punjab, along with smaller but nonetheless notable movements in Maharashtra, Madras and other places of South India.[10] In Bengal the revolutionaries more often than not recruited the educated youth of the urban middle-class Bhadralok community that epitomised the "classic" Indian revolutionary, while in Punjab the rural and military society sustained organised violence.[11]

Indian revolutionary underground

Image
Rash Behari Bose, key leader of the Delhi–Lahore Conspiracy and, later, of the February plot

The controversial 1905 partition of Bengal had a widespread political impact. Acting as a stimulus for radical nationalist opinion in India and abroad, it became a focal issue for Indian revolutionaries.[12][13][14] Revolutionary organisations like Jugantar and Anushilan Samiti had emerged in the 20th century. Several significant events took place. These included assassinations and attempted assassinations of civil servants, prominent public figures and Indian informants, including one in 1907 aiming to kill the Bengal Lieutenant-Governor Sir Andrew Fraser. Matters came to a head when the 1912 Delhi–Lahore Conspiracy, led by erstwhile Jugantar member Rash Behari Bose, attempted to assassinate the then Viceroy of India, Charles Hardinge. In the aftermath of this event, the British Indian police made concentrated police and intelligence efforts to destroy the Bengali and Punjabi revolutionary underground. Though the movement came under intense pressure for some time, Rash Behari successfully evaded capture for nearly three years. By the time World War I had begun in Europe in 1914, the revolutionary movement had revived in Punjab and Bengal. In Bengal the movement, with a safe haven in the French base of Chandernagore, had sufficient strength to all but paralyse the state administration.[15][16][17] The earliest mention of a conspiracy for armed revolution in India appears in Nixon's Report on Revolutionary Organisation, which reported that Jatin Mukherjee (Bagha Jatin) and Naren Bhattacharya had met the Crown Prince of Germany during the latter's visit to Calcutta in 1912, and obtained an assurance that they would receive supplies of arms and ammunition.[18] At the same time an increasingly strong pan-Islamic movement started developing, mainly in the north and north-west regions of India. With the onset of the war in 1914, the members of this movement formed an important component of the conspiracy.[19]

See also: Sinn Féin, Roger Casement, and John Devoy

At the time of the partition of Bengal, Shyamji Krishna Varma founded India House in London and received extensive support from notable expatriate Indians including Madam Bhikaji Cama, Lala Lajpat Rai, S. R. Rana, and Dadabhai Naoroji. The organisation – ostensibly a residence for Indian students – in reality sought to promote nationalist opinion and pro-independence work. India House drew young radical activists of the likes of M. L. Dhingra, V. D. Savarkar, V. N. Chatterjee, M. P. T. Acharya and Lala Har Dayal.[20][21][22] It developed links with the revolutionary movement in India and nurtured it with arms, funds and propaganda. The authorities in India banned Indian Sociologist and other literature published by the House as "seditious". Under V. D. Savarkar's leadership, the House rapidly developed as a centre for intellectual and political activism and as a meeting- ground for radical revolutionaries among Indian students in Britain,[23][24][25] earning the moniker "The most dangerous organisation outside India" from Valentine Chirol.[26][27] In 1909 in London M. L. Dhingra fatally shot Sir W. H. Curzon Wyllie, political aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India. In the aftermath of the assassination, the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office rapidly suppressed India House.[28] Its leadership fled to Europe and to the United States of America. Some (like Chatterjee) moved to Germany; Har Dayal and many others moved to Paris.[20][21]

Organisations founded in the United States and in Japan emulated the example of London's India House.[29] Krishna Varma nurtured close interactions with Turkish and Egyptian nationalists and with Clan na Gael in the United States. The joint efforts of Mohammed Barkatullah, S. L. Joshi and George Freeman founded the Pan-Aryan Association — modelled after Krishna Varma's Indian Home Rule Society — in New York in 1906.[30] Barkatullah himself had become closely associated with Krishna Varma during a previous stay in London, and his subsequent career in Japan put him at the heart of Indian political activities there.[30] Myron Phelps [Myron H. Phelps, a Broadway (New York) lawyer)], an acquaintance of Krishna Varma and an admirer of Swami Vivekananda, founded an "India House" in Manhattan in New York in January 1908.[30] Amidst a growing Indian student population, erstwhile members of the India House in London succeeded in extending the nationalist work across the Atlantic. The Gaelic American reprinted articles from the Indian Sociologist, while liberal press-laws allowed free circulation of the Indian Sociologist. Supporters could ship such nationalist literature and pamphlets freely across the world.[30] New York increasingly became an important centre for the Indian movement, such that Free Hindustan— a political revolutionary journal closely mirroring the Indian Sociologist and the Gaelic American published by Taraknath Das—[1] moved in 1908 from Vancouver and Seattle to New York. Das established extensive collaboration with the Gaelic American with help from George Freeman before it was proscribed in 1910 under British diplomatic pressure.[31] This Irish collaboration with Indian revolutionaries resulted in some of the early but failed efforts to smuggle arms into India, including a 1908 attempt on board a ship called the SS Moraitis which sailed from New York for the Persian Gulf before it was searched at Smyrna.[32][33] The Irish community later provided valuable intelligence, logistics, communication, media, and legal support to the German, Indian, and Irish conspirators. Those involved in this liaison, and later involved in the plot, included major Irish republicans and Irish-American nationalists like John Devoy, Joseph McGarrity, Roger Casement, Éamon de Valera, Father Peter Yorke and Larry de Lacey.[1] These pre-war contacts effectively set up a network which the German foreign office tapped into as war began in Europe.[1]

Ghadar Party

Image
An immigrant Punjabi family in America. c. 1900s

See also: Har Dayal, Sohan Singh Bhakna, and Tarak Nath Das

Large-scale Indian immigration to the Pacific coast of North America took place in the 20th century, especially from Punjab, which faced an economic depression. The Canadian government met this influx with legislation aimed at limiting the entry of South Asians into Canada and at restricting the political rights of those already in the country. The Punjabi community had hitherto been an important loyal force for the British Empire and the Commonwealth. The community had expected that its commitment would be honoured with the same welcome and rights which the British and colonial governments extended to British and white immigrants. The restrictive legislation fed growing discontent, protests and anti-colonial sentiments within the community. Faced with increasingly difficult situations, the community began organising itself into political groups. Many Punjabis also moved to the United States, but they encountered similar political and social problems.[17] Meanwhile, India House and nationalist activism of Indian students had begun declining on the east coast of North America towards 1910, but activity gradually shifted west to San Francisco. The arrival at this time of Har Dayal from Europe bridged the gap between the intellectual agitators in New York and the predominantly Punjabi labour workers and migrants in the west coast, and laid the foundations of the Ghadar movement.[31]

Image
Ghadar di gunj, an early Ghadarite compilation of nationalist and socialist literature, was banned in India in 1913.

The Ghadar Party, initially the 'Pacific Coast Hindustan Association', was formed in 1913 in the United States under the leadership of Har Dayal, with Sohan Singh Bhakna as its president. It drew members from Indian immigrants, largely from Punjab.[17] Many of its members were also from the University of California at Berkeley including Dayal, Tarak Nath Das, Kartar Singh Sarabha and V.G. Pingle. The party quickly gained support from Indian expatriates, especially in the United States, Canada and Asia. Ghadar meetings were held in Los Angeles, Oxford, Vienna, Washington, D.C., and Shanghai.[34]

Ghadar's ultimate goal was to overthrow British colonial authority in India by means of an armed revolution. It viewed the Congress-led mainstream movement for dominion status modest and the latter's constitutional methods as soft. Ghadar's foremost strategy was to entice Indian soldiers to revolt.[17] To that end, in November 1913 Ghadar established the Yugantar Ashram press in San Francisco. The press produced the Hindustan Ghadar newspaper and other nationalist literature.[34]

Towards the end of 1913, the party established contact with prominent revolutionaries in India, including Rash Behari Bose. An Indian edition of the Hindustan Ghadar essentially espoused the philosophies of anarchism and revolutionary terrorism against British interests in India. Political discontent and violence mounted in Punjab, and Ghadarite publications that reached Bombay from California were deemed seditious and banned by the Raj. These events, compounded by evidence of prior Ghadarite incitement in the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy of 1912, led the British government to pressure the American State Department to suppress Indian revolutionary activities and Ghadarite literature, which emanated mostly from San Francisco.[35][36]

Germany and the Berlin Committee

With the onset of World War I, an Indian revolutionary group called the Berlin Committee (later called the Indian Independence Committee) was formed in Germany. Its chief architects were C. R. Pillai and V. N. Chatterjee.[37][38] The committee drew members from Indian students and erstwhile members of the India House including Abhinash Bhattacharya, Dr. Abdul Hafiz, Padmanabhan Pillai, A. R. Pillai, M. P. T. Acharya and Gopal Paranjape. Germany had earlier opened the Intelligence Bureau for the East headed by archaeologist and historian Max von Oppenheim.

Max (Freiherr) von Oppenheim (15 July 1860 in Cologne – 17 November 1946 in Landshut) was a German lawyer, diplomat, ancient historian, and archaeologist. He was a member of the Oppenheim banking dynasty. Abandoning his career in diplomacy, he discovered the site of Tell Halaf in 1899 and conducted excavations there in 1911-13 and again in 1929. Bringing many of his finds to Berlin, he exhibited them in a private museum. This was destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II. However, most of the findings were recently restored and have been exhibited again at Berlin and Bonn.

Oppenheim was a controversial figure before and during World War I because he was considered a spy by the French and British. He did in fact engage in anti-Allied propaganda, aimed at stirring up the Muslim populations of the Allied-controlled territories against their colonial masters.

-- Max von Oppenheim, by Wikipedia


Oppenheim and Arthur Zimmermann, the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs of the German Empire, actively supported the Berlin committee, which had links with Jatin Mukherjee— a Jugantar Party member and at the time one of the leading revolutionary figures in Bengal.[15][20][39][40] The office of the t25-member committee at No.38 Wielandstrasse was accorded full embassy status.[41]

The German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg authorised German activity against British India as World War I broke out in September 1914. Germany decided to actively support the Ghadarite plans.[37] Using the links established between Indian and Irish residents in Germany (including Irish nationalist and poet Roger Casement) and the German Foreign Office, Oppenheim tapped into the Indo-Irish network in the United States. Har Dayal had helped organise the Ghadar party before his arrest in the United States in 1914. He however jumped bail and made his way to Switzerland, leaving the party and publications in the charge of Ram Chandra Bharadwaj, who became the Ghadar president in 1914. The German consulate in San Francisco was tasked to make contact with Ghadar leaders in California. A naval lieutenant by the name of Wilhelm von Brincken with the help of the Indian nationalist journalist Tarak Nath Das and an intermediary by the name of Charles Lattendorf established links with Bharadwaj. Meanwhile, in Switzerland the Berlin committee was able to convince Har Dayal that organising a revolution in India was feasible.[2]

Conspiracy

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Punjabi Sikhs aboard the Komagata Maru in Vancouver's English Bay, 1914. The Canadian government banned the passengers from landing in Canada and the ship was forced to return to India. The events surrounding the Komagata Maru incident served as a catalyst for the Ghadarite cause.

In May 1914, the Canadian government refused to allow the 400 Indian passengers of the ship Komagata Maru to disembark at Vancouver. The voyage had been planned by Gurdit Singh Sandhu as an attempt to circumvent Canadian exclusion laws that effectively prevented Indian immigration. Before the ship reached Vancouver, German radio announced its approach, and British Columbian authorities prepared to prevent the passengers from entering Canada. The incident became a focal point for the Indian community in Canada which rallied in support of the passengers and against the government's policies. After a two-month legal battle, 24 of them were allowed to immigrate. The ship was escorted out of Vancouver by the Protected cruiser HMCS Rainbow and returned to India. On reaching Calcutta, the passengers were detained under the Defence of India Act at Budge Budge by the British Indian government, which made efforts to forcibly transport them to Punjab. This caused rioting at Budge Budge and resulted in fatalities on both sides.[42] Ghadar leaders like Barkatullah and Taraknath Das used the inflammatory passions surrounding the Komagata Maru event as a rallying point and successfully brought many disaffected Indians in North America into the party's fold.[43]

The British Indian Army, meanwhile, was contributing significantly to the Allied war effort in World War I. Consequently, a reduced force, estimated to have been 15,000 troops in late 1914, was stationed in India.[44] It was in this scenario that concrete plans for organising uprisings in India were made.

In September 1913 a Ghadarite named Mathra Singh visited Shanghai to promote the nationalist cause amongst Indians there, followed by a visit to India in January 1914 when Singh circulated Ghadar literature amongst Indian soldiers through clandestine sources before leaving for Hong Kong. Singh reported that the situation in India as favourable for revolution.[43][45]

By October 1914, many Ghadarites had returned to India and were assigned tasks like contacting Indian revolutionaries and organisations, spreading propaganda and literature, and arranging to get arms into the country.[46] The first group of 60 Ghadarites led by Jawala Singh, left San Francisco for Canton aboard the steamship Korea on 29 August. They were to sail on to India, where they would be provided with arms to organise a revolt. At Canton, more Indians joined, and the group, now numbering about 150, sailed for Calcutta on a Japanese vessel. They were to be joined by more Ghadarites arriving in smaller groups. During September and October, about 300 Indians left for India in various ships like SS Siberia, Chinyo Maru, China, Manchuria, SS Tenyo Maru, SS Mongolia and SS Shinyo Maru.[37][45][46] Although the Korea's party itself was uncovered and arrested on arrival at Calcutta, a successful underground network was established between the United States and India, through Shanghai, Swatow, and Siam. Tehl Singh, the Ghadar operative in Shanghai, is believed to have spent $30,000 for helping the revolutionaries to get into India.[47] The Ghadarites in India were able to establish contact with sympathisers within the British Indian Army as well as build networks with underground revolutionary groups.


East Asia

Efforts had begun as early as 1911 to procure arms and smuggle them into India.[48] When a clear idea of the conspiracy emerged, more earnest and elaborate plans were made to obtain arms and to enlist international support. Herambalal Gupta, who had arrived in the United States in 1914 at the Berlin Committee's directives, took over the leadership of American wing of the conspiracy after the failure of the SS Korea mission. Gupta immediately began efforts to obtain men and arms. While men were in plentiful supply with more and more Indians coming forward to join the Ghadarite cause, obtaining arms for the uprising proved to be more difficult.[49]

The revolutionaries started negotiations with the Chinese government through James Dietrich, who held Sun Yat-sen's power of attorney, to buy a million rifles. However, the deal fell through when it was realised that the weapons offered were obsolete flintlocks and muzzle loaders. From China, Gupta went to Japan to try to procure arms and to enlist Japanese support for the Indian independence movement. However, he was forced into hiding within 48 hours when he came to know that the Japanese authorities planned to hand him over to the British.[49] Later reports indicated he was protected at this time by Toyama Mitsuru right-wing political leader and founder of the Genyosha nationalist secret society.[50]

The Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, a strong supporter of Pan-Asianism, met Japanese premier Count Terauchi and Count Okuma, a former premier, in an attempt to enlist support for the Ghadarite movement.
[51] Tarak Nath Das urged Japan to align with Germany, on the grounds that American war preparation could actually be directed against Japan.[51] Later in 1915, Abani Mukherji— a Jugantar activist and associate of Rash Behari Bose— is also known to have tried unsuccessfully to arrange for arms from Japan. The ascendancy of Li Yuanhong to Chinese Presidency in 1916, led to the negotiations reopening through his former private secretary who resided in the United States at the time. In exchange for allowing arms shipments to India via China's borders, China was offered German military assistance and the rights to 10% of any material shipped to India via China. The negotiations were ultimately unsuccessful due to Sun Yat Sen's opposition to an alliance with Germany.[52]

Europe and United States

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Franz von Papen, later the Chancellor of Germany briefly before Hitler's rise to power. Papen was key in organising the arms shipments.

The Indian nationalists then in Paris had, with Egyptian revolutionaries, made plans to assassinate Lord Kitchener as early as 1911. These plans were however not implemented.][53] After the war began, this plan was revived, and Har Dayal's close associate Gobind Behari Lal visited Liverpool in March 1915 from New York to put this plan in action. He may also have intended at this time to bomb the docks in Liverpool. However, these plans ultimately failed.[53] Chattopadhyaya also attempted at this time to revive links with the remnants of India House that survived in London, and through Swiss, German and English sympathisers then resident in Britain. Among them were Meta Brunner (a Swiss woman), Vishna Dube (an Indian man) and his common law German wife Anna Brandt, and Hilda Howsin (an English woman in Yorkshire). Chattopadhyaya's correspondences were however traced by censor, leading to the arrest of the cell.[54] Among other plans that were considered at the time were large scale conspiracies in June 1915 to assassinate the Foreign Secretary Lord Grey and War minister Lord Kitchener. In addition, they also intended to target the French President Raymond Poincaré and Prime Minister René Viviani, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his Prime Minister Antonio Salandra. These plans were coordinated with the Italian anarchists, with explosives manufactured in Italy. Barkatullah, by now in Europe and working with the Berlin Committee, arranged for these explosives to be sent to the German consulate in Zurich, from where it was expected to be taken charge of by an Italian anarchist named Bertoni. However, British intelligence was able to infiltrate this plot, and successfully pressed Swiss police to expel Abdul Hafiz.[54]

In the United States, an elaborate plan and arrangement was made to ship arms from the country and from the Far East through Shanghai, Batavia, Bangkok and Burma.[49] Even while Herambalal Gupta was on his mission in China and Japan, other plans were explored to ship arms from the United States and East Asia.
The German high command decided early on that assistance to the Indian groups would be pointless unless given on a substantial scale.[55] In October 1914, German Vice Consul E.H von Schack in San Francisco approved the arrangements for funds and armaments. $200,000 worth of small arms and ammunition were acquired by the German military attaché Captain Franz von Papen through Krupp agents, and arranged for its shipment to India through San Diego, Java, and Burma. The arsenal included 8,080 Springfield rifles of Spanish–American War vintage, 2,400 Springfield carbines, 410 Hotchkiss repeating rifles, 4,000,000 cartridges, 500 Colt revolvers with 100,000 cartridges, and 250 Mauser pistols along with ammunition.[55] The schooner Annie Larsen and the sailing ship SS Henry S were hired to ship the arms out of the United States and transfer it to the SS Maverick. The ownership of ships were hidden under a massive smokescreen involving fake companies and oil business in south-east Asia. For the arms shipment itself, a successful cover was set up to lead British agents to believe that the arms were for the warring factions of the Mexican Civil War.[2][47][56][57][58][59][60] This ruse was successful enough that the rival Villa faction offered $15,000 to divert the shipment to a Villa-controlled port.[2]

Although the shipment was meant to supply the mutiny planned for February 1915, it was not dispatched until June of that year, by which time the conspiracy had been uncovered in India and major leaders had been arrested or gone into hiding. The plot for the shipment itself failed when disastrous co-ordination prevented a successful rendezvous off Socorro Island with the Maverick. The plot had already been infiltrated by British intelligence through Indian and Irish agents linked closely with the conspiracy. Upon returning to Hoquiam, Washington after several failed attempts, the Annie Larsen's cargo was promptly seized by US customs.
[59][60] The cargo was sold at an auction despite the German Ambassador Count Johann von Bernstoff's attempts to take possession, insisting they were meant for German East Africa.[61] The Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial opened in 1917 in the United States on charges of gun running and at the time was one of the lengthiest and most expensive trials in American legal history.[1] Franz von Papen attempted to sabotage rail lines in Canada and destroy the Welland Canal. He also attempted to supply rifles and dynamite to Sikhs in British Columbia to blast railway bridges. These plots in Canada did not materialise. Among other events in the United States that have been linked to the conspiracy is the Black Tom explosion when, on the night of 30 July 1916, saboteurs blew up nearly 2 million tons of arms and ammunition at the Black Tom terminal at New York harbour awaiting shipment in support of the British war effort. Although blamed solely on German agents at the time, later investigations by the Directorate of Naval Intelligence in the aftermath of the Annie Larsen incident unearthed links between the Black Tom explosion and Franz von Papen, the Irish movement, the Indian movement as well as Communist elements active in the United States.[62][63]

Pan-Indian mutiny

See also: 1915 Singapore Mutiny and Ingress into India Ordinance, 1914

By the start of 1915, many Ghadarites (nearly 8,000 in the Punjab province alone by some estimates) had returned to India.[15][64] However, they were not assigned a central leadership and begun their work on an ad hoc basis. Although some were rounded up by the police on suspicion, many remained at large and began establishing contacts with garrisons in major cities like Lahore, Ferozepur and Rawalpindi. Various plans had been made to attack the military arsenal at Mian Meer, near Lahore and initiate a general uprising on 15 November 1914. In another plan, a group of Sikh soldiers, the manjha jatha, planned to start a mutiny in the 23rd Cavalry at the Lahore cantonment on 26 November. A further plan called for a mutiny to start on 30 November from Ferozepur under Nidham Singh.[65] In Bengal, the Jugantar, through Jatin Mukherjee, established contacts with the garrison at Fort William in Calcutta.[15][39] In August 1914, Mukherjee's group had seized a large consignment of guns and ammunition from the Rodda company, a major gun manufacturing firm in India. In December 1914, several politically motivated armed robberies to obtain funds were carried out in Calcutta. Mukherjee kept in touch with Rash Behari Bose through Kartar Singh and V.G. Pingle. These rebellious acts, which were until then organised separately by different groups, were brought into a common umbrella under the leadership of Rash Behari Bose in North India, V. G. Pingle in Maharashtra, and Sachindranath Sanyal in Benares.[15][39][40] A plan was made for a unified general uprising, with the date set for 21 February 1915.[15][39]

February 1915

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The public executions of convicted mutineers at Outram Road, Singapore, c. March 1915

In India, unaware of the delayed shipment and confident of being able to rally the Indian sepoy, the plot for the mutiny took its final shape. Under the plans, the 23rd Cavalry in Punjab was to seize weapons and kill their officers while on roll call on 21 February.[43] This was to be followed by mutiny in the 26th Punjab, which was to be the signal for the uprising to begin, resulting in an advance on Delhi and Lahore. The Bengal cell was to look for the Punjab Mail entering the Howrah Station the next day (which would have been cancelled if Punjab was seized) and was to strike immediately. However, Punjab CID successfully infiltrated the conspiracy at the last moment through a sepoy named Kirpal Singh.[43] Sensing that their plans had been compromised, D-Day was brought forward to 19 February, but even these plans found their way to the intelligence.[43] Plans for revolt by the 130th Baluchi Regiment at Rangoon on 21 January were thwarted. Attempted revolts in the 26th Punjab, 7th Rajput, 130th Baluch, 24th Jat Artillery and other regiments were suppressed. Mutinies in Firozpur, Lahore, and Agra were also suppressed and many key leaders of the conspiracy were arrested, although some managed to escape or evade arrest. A last-ditch attempt was made by Kartar Singh and V. G. Pingle to trigger a mutiny in the 12th Cavalry regiment at Meerut.[57] Kartar Singh escaped from Lahore, but was arrested in Varanasi, and V. G. Pingle was apprehended in Meerut. Mass arrests followed as the Ghadarites were rounded up in Punjab and the Central Provinces. Rash Behari Bose escaped from Lahore and in May 1915 fled to Japan. Other leaders, including Giani Pritam Singh, Swami Satyananda Puri and others fled to Thailand.[43][57]

On 15 February, the 5th Light Infantry stationed at Singapore was among the few units to mutiny successfully. Nearly eight hundred and fifty of its troops mutinied on the afternoon of the 15th, along with nearly a hundred men of the Malay States Guides. This mutiny lasted almost seven days, and resulted in the deaths of 47 British soldiers and local civilians. The mutineers also released the interned crew of the SMS Emden, who were asked by the mutineers to join them but refused and actually took up arms and defended the barracks after the mutineers had left (sheltering some British refugees as well) until the prison camp was relieved.[66] The mutiny was suppressed only after French, Russian and Japanese ships arrived with reinforcements.[67][68] Of 200 people tried at Singapore, 47 mutineers were shot in public executions,[69][70] the rest were transported for life to East Africa. Most of the rest were deported for life or given jail terms ranging between seven and twenty years.[67] In all 800 mutineers were either shot imprisoned or exiled[66] Some historians, including Hew Strachan, argue that although Ghadar agents operated within the Singapore unit, the mutiny was isolated and not linked to the conspiracy.[71] Others deem this as instigated by the Silk Letter Movement which became intricately related to the Ghadarite conspiracy.[19]

Christmas Day Plot

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Bagha Jatin, wounded after his final battle at the banks of Burha Balang, off Balasore. His enterprise was deemed one of the most significant threats to British India in autumn 1915.

In April 1915, unaware of the failure of the Annie Larsen plan, Papen arranged, through Krupp's American representative Hans Tauscher, a second shipment of arms, consisting of 7,300 Springfield rifles, 1,930 pistols, 10 Gatling guns and nearly 3,000,000 cartridges.[72][73] The arms were to be shipped in mid June to Surabaya in the East Indies on the Holland American steamship SS Djember. However, the intelligence network operated by Courtenay Bennett, the Consul General to New York, was able to trace the cargo to Tauscher in New York and passed the information on to the company, thwarting these plans as well.[72] In the meantime, even after the February plot had been scuttled, the plans for an uprising continued in Bengal through the Jugantar cohort under Jatin Mukherjee (Bagha Jatin). German agents in Thailand and Burma, most prominently Emil and Theodor Helferrich— brothers of the German Finance minister Karl Helfferich— established links with Jugantar through Jitendranath Lahiri in March that year. In April, Jatin's chief lieutenant Narendranath Bhattacharya met with the Helfferichs and was informed of the expected arrival of the Maverick with arms. Although these were originally intended for Ghadar use, the Berlin Committee modified the plans, to have arms shipped into India to the eastern coast of India, through Hatia on the Chittagong coast, Raimangal in the Sundarbans and Balasore in Orissa, instead of Karachi as originally decided.[73] From the coast of the Bay of Bengal, these would be collected by Jatin's group. The date of insurrection was fixed for Christmas Day 1915, earning the name "The Christmas Day Plot".[74] Jatin estimated that he would be able to win over the 14th Rajput Regiment in Calcutta and cut the line to Madras at Balasore and thus take control of Bengal.[73] Jugantar also received funds (estimated to be Rs 33,000 between June and August 1915) from the Helfferich brothers through a fictitious firm in Calcutta.[75] However, it was at this time that the details of the Maverick and Jugantar plans were leaked to Beckett, the British Consul at Batavia, by a defecting Baltic-German agent under the alias "Oren". The Maverick was seized, while in India, police destroyed the underground movement in Calcutta as an unaware Jatin proceeded according to plan to the Bay of Bengal coast in Balasore. He was followed there by Indian police and on 9 September 1915, he and a group of five revolutionaries armed with Mauser pistols made a last stand on the banks of the river Burha Balang. Seriously wounded in a gun battle that lasted seventy five minutes, Jatin died the next day in the town of Balasore.[15][76]

To provide the Bengal group enough time to capture Calcutta and to prevent reinforcements from being rushed in, a mutiny coinciding with Jugantar's Christmas Day insurrection was planned for Burma with arms smuggled in from neutral Thailand.[76][77][78] Thailand (Siam) was a strong base for the Ghadarites, and plans for rebellion in Burma (which was a part of British India at the time) had been proposed by the Ghadar party as early as October 1914, which called for Burma to be used as a base for subsequent advance into India.[76][78] This Siam-Burma plan was finally concluded in January 1915. Ghadarites from branches in China and United States, including Atma Ram, Thakar Singh, and Banta Singh from Shanghai and Santokh Singh and Bhagwan Singh from San Francisco, attempted to infiltrate Burma Military Police in Thailand, which was composed mostly of Sikhs and Punjabi Muslims. Early in 1915, Atma Ram had also visited Calcutta and Punjab and linked up with the revolutionary underground there, including Jugantar.[45][40] Herambalal Gupta and the German consul at Chicago arranged to have German operatives George Paul Boehm, Henry Schult, and Albert Wehde sent to Siam through Manila with the purpose of training the Indians. Santokh Singh returned to Shanghai tasked to send two expeditions, one to reach the Indian border via Yunnan and the other to penetrate upper Burma and join with revolutionary elements there.[65] The Germans, while in Manila, also attempted to transfer the arms cargo of two German ships, the Sachsen and the Suevia, to Siam in a schooner seeking refuge at Manila harbour. However, US customs stopped these attempts. In the meantime, with the help of the German Consul to Thailand Remy, the Ghadarite established a training headquarters in the jungles near the Thai-Burma border for Ghadarites arriving from China and Canada. German Consul General at Shanghai, Knipping, sent three officers of the Peking Embassy Guard for training and in addition arranged for a Norwegian agent in Swatow to smuggle arms through.[79] However, the Thai Police high command, which was largely British, discovered these plans and Indian police infiltrated the plot through an Indian secret agent who was revealed the details by the Austrian chargé d'affaires. Thailand, although officially neutral, was allied closely with Britain and British India. On 21 July, the newly arrived British Minister Herbert Dering presented Foreign Minister Prince Devawongse with the request for arrest and extradition of Ghadarites identified by the Indian agent, ultimately resulting in the arrest of leading Ghadarites in August. Only a single raid into Burma was launched by six Ghadarites, who were captured and later hanged.[76][79][80]

Also to coincide with the proposed Jugantar insurrection in Calcutta was a planned raid on the penal colony in the Andaman Islands with a German volunteer force raised from East Indies. The raid would release the political prisoners, helping to raise an expeditionary Indian force that would threaten the Indian coast.[75][81] The plan was proposed by Vincent Kraft, a German planter in Batavia who had been wounded fighting in France. It was approved by the foreign office on 14 May 1915, after consultation with the Indian committee, and the raid was planned for Christmas Day 1915 by a force of nearly one hundred Germans. Knipping made plans for shipping arms to the Andaman islands. However, Vincent Kraft was a double agent, and leaked details of Knipping's plans to British intelligence. His own bogus plans for the raid were in the meantime revealed to Beckett by "Oren", but given the successive failures of the Indo-German plans, the plans for the operations were abandoned on the recommendations of both the Berlin Committee and Knipping.[82]

Afghanistan and the Middle East

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Mahendra Pratap (centre) at the head of the Mission with the German and Turkish delegates in Kabul, 1915. Seated to his right is Werner Otto von Hentig.

Another arm of the conspiracy was directed at the Indian troops who were serving in Middle East, while efforts were directed at drawing Afghanistan into the war on the side of the Central Powers, which it was hoped would incite a nationalist or pan-Islamic uprising in India and destabilise the British recruiting grounds in Punjab and across India. After Russia's defeat in the 1905 Russo-Japanese war, her influence had declined, and it was Afghanistan that was at the time seen by Britain as the only power in the sub-continent capable of directly threatening India.[83]

In the spring of 1915, an Indo-German expedition was sent to Afghanistan via the overland route through Persia. Led by the exiled Indian prince Raja Mahendra Pratap, this mission sought to invite the Afghan Emir Habibullah Khan to break with Britain, declare his independence, join the war on the Central side, and invade British India. It managed to evade the considerable Anglo-Russian efforts that were directed at intercepting it in Mesopotamia and in the Persian deserts before it reached Afghanistan in August 1915.[84][85] In Afghanistan, it was joined in Kabul by members of the pan-Islamic group Darul Uloom Deoband led by Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi. This group had left India for Kabul at the beginning of the war while another group under Mahmud al-Hasan made its way to Hijaz, where they hoped to seek support from the Afghan Emir, the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Germany for a pan-Islamic insurrection beginning in the tribal belt of north-west India.[86][87] The Indo-German mission pressed Emir Habibullah to break from his neutral stance and open diplomatic relations with Germany, eventually hoping to rally the Emir to the German war effort.[88][89] Habibullah Khan vacillated on the mission's proposals through much of the winter of 1915, hoping to maintain his neutral stance till the course of the war offered a concrete picture. However, the mission opened at this time secret negotiations with the pro-German elements in the Emir's court and advisory council, including his brother Nasrullah Khan and son Amanullah Khan. It found support among Afghan intellectuals, religious leaders and the Afghan press which rallied with increasingly anti-British and pro-Central articles. By 1916 the Raj was forced to intercept copies of the Afghan newspaper Siraj al Akhbar sent to India.[90] It raised to the Emir a threat of a coup d'état in his country and unrest among his tribesmen, who were beginning to see him as subservient to British authority even as Turkey called for a pan-Islamic Jihad.

In December 1915, the Indian members founded the Provisional Government of India, which it was hoped would weigh on Habibullah's advisory council to aid India and force the Emir's hands. In January 1916, the Emir approved a draft treaty with Germany to buy time. However, the Central campaign in the Middle East faltered at around this time, ending hopes that an overland route through Persia could be secured for aid and assistance to Afghanistan. The German members of the mission left Afghanistan in June 1916, ending the German intrigues in the country.[91] Nonetheless, Mahendra Pratap and his Provisional Government stayed behind, attempting to establish links with Japan, Republican China and Tsarist Russia. After the Russian revolution, Pratap opened negotiations with the Soviet Union, visiting Trotsky in Red Petrograd in 1918, and Lenin in Moscow in 1919 and he visited the Kaiser in Berlin in 1918.[92] He pressed for a joint Soviet-German offensive through Afghanistan into India. This was considered by the Soviets for some time after the 1919 coup in Afghanistan in which Amanullah Khan was instated as the Emir and the third Anglo-Afghan war began. Pratap may also have influenced the "Kalmyk Project", a Soviet plan to invade India through Tibet and the Himalayan buffer states.[93][94]

In the Middle Eastern theatre, members of the Berlin Committee, including Har Dayal and M. P. T. Acharya, were sent on missions to Baghdad and Syria in the summer of 1915, tasked to infiltrate the Indian Expeditionary Force in southern Mesopotamia and Egypt and to attempt to assassinate British officers.[95] The Indian effort was divided into two groups, one consisting of a Bengali revolutionary P.N. Dutt (alias Dawood Ali Khan) and Pandurang Khankoje. This group arrived at Bushire, where they worked with Wilhelm Wassmuss and distributed nationalist and revolutionary literature among Indian troops in Mesopotamia and Persia. The other group, working with Egyptian nationalists, attempted to block the Suez Canal.[96] These groups carried out successful clandestine work in spreading nationalist literature and propaganda amongst the Indian troops in Mesopotamia, and on one occasion even bombed an officer's mess.[95] Nationalist work also extended at this time to recruiting Indian prisoners of war in Constantinople, Bushire, Kut-al-Amara.[19][97] M. P. T. Acharya's own works were directed at forming the Indian National Volunteer Corps with the help of Indian civilians in Turkey, and to recruiting Indian prisoners of war. He is further known to have worked along with Wilhelm Wassmuss in Bushire amongst Indian troops.[96][97] The efforts were, however, ultimately hampered by differences between the Berlin committee members who were predominantly Hindus, and Indian revolutionaries already in Turkey who were largely Muslims.[95] Further, the Egyptian nationalists distrusted the Berlin Committee, which was seen by the former as a German instrument.[96]

Nonetheless, in culmination of these efforts, Indian prisoners of war from France, Turkey, Germany, and Mesopotamia—especially Basra, Bushehr, and from Kut al Amara—were recruited, raising the Indian Volunteer Corps that fought with Turkish forces on many fronts.[98] The Deobandis, led by Amba Prasad Sufi, attempted to organise incursions to the western border of India from Persia, through Balochistan, to Punjab. Amba Prasad was joined during the war by Kedar Nath Sondhi, Rishikesh Letha and Amin Chaudhry. These Indian troops were involved in the capture of the frontier city of Karman and the detention of the British consul there, and also successfully harassed Percy Sykes' Persian campaign against the Baluchi and Persian tribal chiefs who were aided by the Germans.[99][100] The Aga Khan's brother was killed while fighting the rebels.[101] The rebels also successfully harassed British forces in Sistan in Afghanistan, confining them to Karamshir in Balochistan, and later moving towards Karachi. Some reports indicate they took control of the coastal towns of Gawador and Dawar. The Baluchi chief of Bampur, having declared his independence from British rule, also joined the Ghadarites. But the war in Europe turned for the worse for Turkey and Baghdad was captured by the British forces. The Ghadarite forces, their supply lines starved, were finally dislodged. They retreated to regroup at Shiraz, where they were finally defeated after a bitter fight during the siege of Shiraz. Amba Prasad Sufi was killed in this battle, but the Ghadarites carried on guerrilla warfare along with Iranian partisans until 1919.[100][102] By the end of 1917, divisions had begun appearing between the Ghadar Party in America on the one hand, and the Berlin Committee and the German high command on the other. Reports from German agents working with Ghadarites in Southeast Asia and the United States clearly indicated to the European wing a significant element of disorganisation, as well as unrealism in gauging public mood and support within the Ghadarite organisation. The failure of the February plot, the lack of bases in Southeast Asia following China's participation in the war in 1917, and the problems of supporting a Southeast Asian operation through the sea stemmed the plans significantly. Infiltration by British agents, change in American attitude and stance, and the changing fortunes of the war meant the massive conspiracy for revolution within India never succeeded.[103]

Counter intelligence

British intelligence began to note and track outlines and nascent ideas of the conspiracy by as early as 1911.[104] Incidents like the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy and the Komagata Maru incident had already alerted the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the existence of a large-scale network and plans for pan-Indian militant unrest. Measures were taken which focussed on Bengal—the seat of the most intense revolutionary terrorism at the time—and on Punjab, which was uncovered as a strong and militant base in the wake of Komagata Maru.[105][106] Har Dayal's extant group was found to have strong links with Rash Behari Bose, and were "cleaned up" in the wake of the Delhi bomb case.[106]

In Asia

See also: Charles Tegart, Oren, Vincent Kraft, and Kirpal Singh

At the outbreak of the war, Punjab CID sent teams to Hong Kong to intercept and infiltrate the returning Ghadarites, who often made little effort to hide their plans and objectives.[105] These teams were successful in uncovering details of the full scale of the conspiracy, and in discovering Har Dayal's whereabouts. Immigrants returning to India were double checked against a list of revolutionaries.[107]

In Punjab, the CID, although aware of possible plans for unrest, was not successful in infiltrating the conspiracy for the mutiny until February 1915. A dedicated force was formed, headed by the Chief of Punjab CID, and including amongst its members Liaqat Hayat Khan (later head of Punjab CID himself). In February that year, the CID was successful in recruiting the services of Kirpal Singh to infiltrate the plan. Singh, who had a Ghadarite cousin serving in the 23rd Cavalry, was able to infiltrate the leadership, being assigned to work in his cousin's regiment. Singh was soon under suspicion of being a spy, but was able to pass on the information regarding the date and scale of the uprising to British Indian intelligence.[108] As the date for the mutiny approached, a desperate Rash Behari Bose brought forward the mutiny day to the evening of 19 February, which was discovered by Kirpal Singh on the very day. No attempts were made by the Ghadarites to restrain him, and he rushed to inform Liaqat Hayat Khan of the change of plans. Ordered back to his station to signal when the revolutionaries had assembled, Singh was detained by the would-be mutineers, but managed to escape under the cover of answering the call of nature.[108]

The role of German or Baltic-German double-agents, especially the agent named "Oren", was also important in infiltrating and preempting the plans for autumn rebellions in Bengal in 1915 and in as scuttling Bagha Jatin's plans in winter that year. Another source was the German double agent Vincent Kraft, a planter from Batavia, who passed information about arms shipments from Shanghai to British agents after being captured. Maps of the Bengal coast were found on Kraft when he was initially arrested and he volunteered the information that these were the intended landing sites for German arms.[109] Kraft later fled through Mexico to Japan where he was last known to be at the end of the war.[76] Later efforts by Mahendra Pratap's Provisional Government in Kabul were also compromised by Herambalal Gupta after he defected in 1918 and passed on information to Indian intelligence.[110]

In Europe and the Middle East

See also: John Wallinger, Indian Political Intelligence Office, and East Persia Cordon

By the time the war broke out, the Indian Political Intelligence Office, headed by John Wallinger, had expanded into Europe. In scale this office was larger than those operated by the British War Office, approaching the European intelligence network of the Secret Service Bureau. This network already had agents in Switzerland against possible German intrigues. After the outbreak of the war Wallinger, under the cover of an officer of the British General Headquarters, proceeded to France where he operated from Paris, working with the French political police, the Sûreté.[111] Among Wallinger's recruits in the network was Somerset Maugham, who was recruited in 1915 and used his cover as author to visit Geneva while avoiding Swiss interference.[112][113] Among other enterprises, the European intelligence network attempted to eliminate some of the Indian leaders in Europe. A British agent named Donald Gullick was dispatched to assassinate Virendranath Chattopadhyaya while the latter was on his way to Geneva to meet Mahendra Pratap to offer Kaiser Wilhelm II's invitation. It is said that Somerset Maugham based several of his stories on his first-hand experiences, modelling the character of John Ashenden after himself and Chandra Lal after Virendranath. The short story "Giulia Lazzari" is a blend of Gullick's attempts to assassinate Virendranath and Mata Hari's story. Winston Churchill reportedly advised Maugham to burn 14 other stories.[114][115]

The Czech revolutionary network in Europe also had a role in the uncovering of Bagha Jatin's plans. The network was in touch with the members in the United States, and may have also been aware of and involved in the uncovering of the earlier plots.[116][117][118] The American network, headed by E. V. Voska, was a counter-espionage network of nearly 80 members who, as Habsburg subjects, were presumed to be German supporters but were involved in spying on German and Austrian diplomats. Voska had begun working with Guy Gaunt, who headed Courtenay Bennett's intelligence network, at the outbreak of the war and on learning of the plot from the Czech European network, passed on the information to Gaunt and to Tomáš Masaryk who further passed on the information the American authorities.[117][119]

In the Middle East, British counter-intelligence was directed at preserving the loyalty of the Indian sepoy in the face of Turkish propaganda and the concept of The Caliph's Jihad, while a particularly significant effort was directed at intercepting the Kabul Mission. The East Persian Cordon was established in July 1915 in the Sistan province of Persia to prevent the Germans from crossing into Afghanistan, and to protect British supply caravans in Sarhad from the Damani, Reki and Kurdish Baluchi tribal raiders who may have been tempted by German gold. Among the commanders of the Sistan force was Reginald Dyer who led it between March and October 1916.[120][121][122]

In the United States

See also: W. C. Hopkinson

In the United States, the conspiracy was successfully infiltrated by British intelligence through Irish and Indian channels. The activities of Ghadar on the Pacific coast were noted by W. C. Hopkinson, who was born and raised in India and spoke fluent Hindi. Initially Hopkinson had been despatched from Calcutta to keep the Indian Police informed about the doings of Taraknath Das.[123] The Home department of the British Indian government had begun the task of actively tracking Indian seditionists on the East Coast as early as 1910. Francis Cunliffe Owen, the officer heading the Home Office agency in New York, had become thoroughly acquainted with George Freeman alias Fitzgerald and Myron Phelps, the famous New York advocate, as members of the Clan-na-Gael. Owens' efforts were successful in thwarting the SS Moraitis plan.[124] The Ghadar Party was incidentally established after Irish Republicans, sensing infiltration, encouraged formation of an exclusively Indian society.[33]

Following this, several approaches were adopted, including infiltration through an Indian national named Bela Singh who successfully set up a network of agents passing on information to Hopkinson, and through the use of the famous American Pinkerton's detective agency.[33][125] Bela Singh was later murdered in India in the 1930s. Hopkinson was assassinated in a Vancouver courthouse by a Ghadarite named Mewa Singh, in October, 1914.[126] Charles Lamb, an Irish double agent, is said to have passed on the majority of the information that compromised the Annie Larsen and ultimately helped the construction of the prosecution. An Indian operative, codenamed "C" and described most likely to have been the adventurous Chandra Kanta Chakravarty (later the chief prosecution witness in the trial), also passed on the details of the conspiracy to British and American intelligence.[127]
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