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John William Kaye
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/22/20

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Sir John William Kaye KCSI (1814 – 24 July 1876) was a British military historian, civil servant and army officer. His major works on military history include a three-volume work on The History of the Sepoy War in India. This work was revised later by Colonel G. B. Malleson and published in six volumes in 1890 as Kaye and Malleson's History of the Indian Mutiny.

The second son of Charles Kaye, a solicitor, and Eliza, daughter of Hugh Atkins, he was born in London and baptized on 30 June 1814. He was educated at Eton College and at the Royal Military College, Addiscombe. From 1832 to 1841 he was an officer in the Bengal Artillery commissioned on 14 December 1832 as a Bengal artillery cadet, afterwards spending some years in literary pursuits both in India and in Britain.[1] He married Mary Catherine (1813-1893), daughter of Thomas Puckle of Surrey, in 1839. In 1841 he resigned from the army and began to write for newspapers such as the Bengal Harkaru. In 1844 he started the Calcutta Review while also writing a novel based in Afghanistan. In 1856 he entered the civil service of the East India Company, and when in 1858 the government of India was transferred to the British crown, he succeeded John Stuart Mill as secretary of the political and secret department of the India office. In 1871 he was made a KCSI. He died in London at his home at Rose Hill on 24 July 1876.[2][3] [2. Rapson, E. J. (revised by Roger T. Stearn) (2004). "Kaye, Sir John William (1814-1876)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15201; 3. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Kaye, Sir John William". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 703.]

KAYE, SIR JOHN WILLIAM (1814-1876), English military historian, was the son of Charles Kaye, a solicitor, and was educated at Eton and the Royal Military College, Addiscombe. From 1832 to 1841 he was an officer in the Bengal Artillery, afterwards spending some years in literary pursuits both in India and in England. In 1856 he entered the civil service of the East India Company, and when the government of India was transferred to the British crown succeeded John Stuart Mill as secretary of the political and secret department of the India office. In 1871 he was made a K.C.S.I. He died in London on the 24th of July 1876. Kaye’s numerous writings include History of the Sepoy War in India (London, 1864-1876), which was revised and continued by Colonel G. B. Malleson and published in six volumes in 1888-1889; History of the War in Afghanistan (London, 1851), republished in 1858 and 1874; Administration of the East India Company (London, 1853); The Life and Correspondence of Charles, Lord Metcalfe (London, 1854); The Life and Correspondence of Henry St George Tucker (London, 1854); Life and Correspondence of Sir John Malcolm (London, 1856); Christianity in India (London, 1859); Lives of Indian Officers (London, 1867); and two novels, Peregrine Pultney and Long engagements. He also edited several works dealing with Indian affairs; wrote Essays of an Optimist (London, 1870); and was a frequent contributor to periodicals.

-- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 6, "Justinian II." to "Kells" [1911]


Works

• Peregrine Pultuney; or, Life in India (1844), a novel in three volumes, published anonymously
• Long Engagements: A Tale of the Affghan Rebellion (1846), a novel in one volume, published anonymously
• 1851: History of the War in Afghanistan (London, 1851), republished in 1858 and 1874 (Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3)
• Sir John William Kaye (1853). The Administration of the East India Company: A History of Indian Progress. R. Bentley.
• John William Kaye (1854). The Life and Correspondence of Charles, Lord Metcalfe. Richard Bentley.
• John William Kaye (1854). The Life and Correspondence of Henry St. George Tucker. R. Bentley.
• 1856: Life and Correspondence of Sir John Malcolm (London, 1856) (Volume 1, Volume 2)
• Sir John William Kaye (1859). Christianity in India: An Historical Narrative. Smith, Elder.
• 1864: History of the Sepoy War in India (London, 1864-1876), which was revised and continued by Colonel G. B. Malleson and published in six volumes in 1888-1889. The full text of this later revised work History of the Indian Mutiny of 1857–8. is online at ibiblio.org (All six volumes in HTML form, complete, chapter-by-chapter, with all illustrations, footnotes and a combined index)
• 1867: Lives of Indian Officers (London, 1867) (Volume 1 Volume 2)
He also edited several works dealing with Indian affairs; wrote Essays of an Optimist (London, 1870); and was a frequent contributor to periodicals.

References

1. "Biographical Sketches No.3 - Lieut. J. W. Kaye". Calcutta Monthly Journal. Calcutta: Samuel Smith and Co. For the year 1838: 33–84. 1839.
2. Rapson, E. J. (revised by Roger T. Stearn) (2004). "Kaye, Sir John William (1814-1876)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15201.
3. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Kaye, Sir John William". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 703.

External links

• Works by John William Kaye at Project Gutenberg
• Thesis by Christina Lee Fairchild (2017) "Because we were too English:" John Kaye and the 1857 Indian Rebellion. University of Maryland.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

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John Stuart Mill
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/22/20

In 1841 [John William Kaye] resigned from the army and began to write for newspapers such as the Bengal Harkaru. In 1844 he started the Calcutta Review while also writing a novel based in Afghanistan. In 1856 he entered the civil service of the East India Company, and when in 1858 the government of India was transferred to the British crown, he succeeded John Stuart Mill as secretary of the political and secret department of the India office. In 1871 he was made a KCSI. He died in London at his home at Rose Hill on 24 July 1876.[2][3] [/b]
KAYE, SIR JOHN WILLIAM (1814-1876), English military historian, was the son of Charles Kaye, a solicitor, and was educated at Eton and the Royal Military College, Addiscombe. From 1832 to 1841 he was an officer in the Bengal Artillery, afterwards spending some years in literary pursuits both in India and in England. In 1856 he entered the civil service of the East India Company, and when the government of India was transferred to the British crown succeeded John Stuart Mill as secretary of the political and secret department of the India office. In 1871 he was made a K.C.S.I. He died in London on the 24th of July 1876. Kaye’s numerous writings include History of the Sepoy War in India (London, 1864-1876), which was revised and continued by Colonel G. B. Malleson and published in six volumes in 1888-1889; History of the War in Afghanistan (London, 1851), republished in 1858 and 1874; Administration of the East India Company (London, 1853); The Life and Correspondence of Charles, Lord Metcalfe (London, 1854); The Life and Correspondence of Henry St George Tucker (London, 1854); Life and Correspondence of Sir John Malcolm (London, 1856); Christianity in India (London, 1859); Lives of Indian Officers (London, 1867); and two novels, Peregrine Pultney and Long engagements. He also edited several works dealing with Indian affairs; wrote Essays of an Optimist (London, 1870); and was a frequent contributor to periodicals.

-- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 6, "Justinian II." to "Kells" [1911]

-- John William Kaye, by Wikipedia

[T]he more elite pre-1870 writers, with greater intellectual and social pretensions, often showed support for the Mormon Saints. Thomas Carlyle, one of the biggest names, was a warm admirer of Mormondom. So was his colleague, John Stuart Mill of the British East India Company. John Stuart Mill was the son of James Mill, who also claimed to be an economist. James Mill (1773-1836), a direct disciple of the satanic Jeremy Bentham, served for 18 years as the Examiner of Correspondence for the East India Company. This is another way of saying that he was one of the top bosses of British intelligence at that time. The elder Mill's job was to develop an intelligence picture based on the reports he received, and to promote policies to maximize profits and power, often with horrendous consequences for the people of India. The East India Company was much concerned with the manipulation of religious institutions, and systematically promoted the most backward and self-destructive tendencies in Hinduism and Islam, creating distortions which continue down to the present day. Others working for the British East India Company included the monetarist economist David Ricardo and the ideologue of genocide Thomas Malthus. [98]

After working for the British East India Company for 34 years, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) took over the post of Examiner of Correspondence. The younger Mill directed a vast program of British cultural warfare, with special attention for the United States, which was seen along with Russia as a threat to the British Empire. He sponsored the career of the Scottish feudalist, neo-pagan, and proto-fascist Thomas Carlyle, who in turn became the main guru for Ralph Waldo Emerson of Harvard, the luminary of the Transcendentalist school. Emerson was famous for his concept of "self-reliance," which later morphed into the "rugged individualism" of Herbert Hoover, and the "you're on your own" doctrine of the current Republican Party.

-- Just Too Weird: Bishop Romney and the Mormon Takeover of America: Polygamy, Theocracy, and Subversion, by Webster Griffin Tarpley, Ph.D., by Webster Griffin Tarpley, Ph.D.

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John Stuart Mill
Mill c. 1870
Member of Parliament for City and Westminster
In office: 25 July 1865 – 17 November 1868, Serving with Robert Grosvenor
Preceded by: De Lacy Evans
Succeeded by: William Henry Smith
Personal details
Born: 20 May 1806, Pentonville, London, England
Died: 7 May 1873 (aged 66), Avignon, France
Political party: Liberal
Spouse(s): Harriet Taylor (m. 1851; died 1858)
Alma mater: University College, London
Philosophy career
Era: 19th-century philosophy
Classical economics
Region: Western philosophy
School: Empiricism; Utilitarianism; Consequentialism; Psychologism; Classical liberalism
Main interests: Political philosophy, ethics, economics, inductive logic
Notable ideas: Public/private sphere, social liberty, hierarchy of pleasures in utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, classical liberalism, early liberal feminism, harm principle, Mill's Methods, direct reference theory, Millian theory of proper names
Influences: Plato Aristotle Socrates Demosthenes Epicurus Aquinas Hobbes Locke Hume Babbage[1] Berkeley Bentham Francis Place James Mill Harriet Taylor Mill Smith Senior Ricardo Tocqueville W. von Humboldt Goethe Bain Guizot[2] Auguste Comte Saint-Simon (Utopian Socialists) [3] Marmontel[4] Wordsworth[4] Coleridge[4] Herder[5] Sismondi
Influenced: Social liberalism[6]Rawls Russell Crisp Weber[7] Ortega y Gasset

John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873),[8] usually cited as J. S. Mill, was a British philosopher, political economist, and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century",[9] Mill's conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.[10]

Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain. Mill engaged in written debate with Whewell.[11]

A member of the Liberal Party and author of the early feminist work The Subjection of Women, he was also the second Member of Parliament to call for women's suffrage after Henry Hunt in 1832.[12][13]

Biography

John Stuart Mill was born at 13 Rodney Street in Pentonville, Middlesex, the eldest son of the Scottish philosopher, historian and economist James Mill, and Harriet Barrow. John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. His father, a follower of Bentham and an adherent of associationism, had as his explicit aim to create a genius intellect that would carry on the cause of utilitarianism and its implementation after he and Bentham had died.[14]

Mill was a notably precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography. At the age of three he was taught Greek.[15] By the age of eight, he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis,[15] and the whole of Herodotus,[15] and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato.[15] He had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic, physics and astronomy.

At the age of eight, Mill began studying Latin, the works of Euclid, and algebra, and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose poetry. One of Mill's earliest poetic compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time he also enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe.

His father's work, The History of British India was published in 1818; immediately thereafter, at about the age of twelve, Mill began a thorough study of the scholastic logic, at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original language. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his father, ultimately completing their classical economic view of factors of production. Mill's comptes rendus of his daily economy lessons helped his father in writing Elements of Political Economy in 1821, a textbook to promote the ideas of Ricardian economics; however, the book lacked popular support.[16] Ricardo, who was a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house for a walk in order to talk about political economy.

At the age of fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of Jeremy Bentham. The mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left a deep impression on him. In Montpellier, he attended the winter courses on chemistry, zoology, logic of the Faculté des Sciences, as well as taking a course in higher mathematics. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the renowned economist Jean-Baptiste Say, a friend of Mill's father. There he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including Henri Saint-Simon.

Mill went through months of sadness and contemplated suicide at twenty years of age. According to the opening paragraphs of Chapter V of his autobiography, he had asked himself whether the creation of a just society, his life's objective, would actually make him happy. His heart answered "no", and unsurprisingly he lost the happiness of striving towards this objective. Eventually, the poetry of William Wordsworth showed him that beauty generates compassion for others and stimulates joy.[17] With renewed joy he continued to work towards a just society, but with more relish for the journey. He considered this one of the most pivotal shifts in his thinking. In fact, many of the differences between him and his father stemmed from this expanded source of joy.

Mill had been engaged in a pen-friendship with Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism and sociology, since Mill first contacted Comte in November 1841. Comte's sociologie was more an early philosophy of science than we perhaps know it today, and the positive philosophy aided in Mill's broad rejection of Benthamism.[18]

As a nonconformist who refused to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, Mill was not eligible to study at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge.[19] Instead he followed his father to work for the East India Company, and attended University College, London, to hear the lectures of John Austin, the first Professor of Jurisprudence.[20] He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1856.[21]

Mill's career as a colonial administrator at the British East India Company spanned from when he was 17 years old in 1823 until 1858, when the Company was abolished in favor of direct rule by the British crown over India.[22] In 1836, he was promoted to the Company's Political Department, where he was responsible for correspondence pertaining to the Company's relations with the princely states, and in 1856, was finally promoted to the position of Examiner of Indian Correspondence. In On Liberty, A Few Words on Non-Intervention, and other works, Mill defended British imperialism by arguing that a fundamental distinction existed between civilized and barbarous peoples.[23] Mill viewed countries such as India and China as having once been progressive, but that were now stagnant and barbarous, thus legitimizing British rule as benevolent despotism, "provided the end is [the barbarians'] improvement."[24] When the crown proposed to take direct control over the colonies in India, he was tasked with defending Company rule, penning Memorandum on the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years among other petitions.[25] He was offered a seat on the Council of India, the body created to advise the new Secretary of State for India, but declined, citing his disapproval of the new system of rule.[25] [Lal, Vinay. "'John Stuart Mill and India', a review-article". New Quest, no. 54 (January–February 1998): 54–64.]


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Vinay Lal is Professor of History and Asian American Studies at UCLA. He writes widely on the history and culture of colonial and modern India, popular and public culture in India (especially cinema), historiography, the politics of world history, the Indian diaspora, global politics, contemporary American politics, the life and thought of Mohandas Gandhi, Hinduism, and the politics of knowledge systems.

Lal was born to an Indian foreign service officer in (Delhi) India in 1961 [Father's name nowhere to be found on the Internet: 5/22/20]. His father’s constant movement because of diplomatic career, he grew up in Delhi, Tokyo, Jakarta, and Washington, D.C. In Delhi he attended Springdales School. He spent four years in Tokyo, 1965–69, but has almost no memory of those years; and it is not until 1987 that he returned to Japan for a short visit, followed by a lengthier stay of four months in Osaka in 1999 when he was a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku).

He earned his BA and MA, both in 1982, from the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University and wrote his Master's thesis on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Indian philosophy. Lal then studied cinema in Australia and India on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship before commencing his graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a PhD with Distinction from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations in 1992. He was William Kenan Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University in 1992–93, and since 1993 has been on the faculty of history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he also holds a joint appointment in Asian American Studies.

-- Vinay Lal, by Wikipedia

In 1851, Mill married Harriet Taylor after 21 years of intimate friendship. Taylor was married when they met, and their relationship was close but generally believed to be chaste during the years before her first husband died in 1849. The couple waited two years before marrying in 1851. Brilliant in her own right, Taylor was a significant influence on Mill's work and ideas during both friendship and marriage. His relationship with Harriet Taylor reinforced Mill's advocacy of women's rights. J. S. Mill said that in his stand against domestic violence, and for women's rights he was “chiefly an amanuensis to my wife”. He called her mind a “perfect instrument”, and said she was “the most eminently qualified of all those known to the author”. He cites her influence in his final revision of On Liberty, which was published shortly after her death. Taylor died in 1858 after developing severe lung congestion, after only seven years of marriage to Mill.

Between the years 1865 and 1868 Mill served as Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews. At his inaugural address, delivered to the University on 1 February 1867, he made the now famous (but often wrongly attributed) remark that "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing".[26] During the same period, 1865–68, he was also a Member of Parliament for City and Westminster.[27][28] He was sitting for the Liberal Party. During his time as an MP, Mill advocated easing the burdens on Ireland. In 1866, Mill became the first person in the history of Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote, vigorously defending this position in subsequent debate. Mill became a strong advocate of such social reforms as labour unions and farm cooperatives. In Considerations on Representative Government, Mill called for various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially proportional representation, the single transferable vote, and the extension of suffrage. In April 1868, Mill favoured in a Commons debate the retention of capital punishment for such crimes as aggravated murder; he termed its abolition "an effeminacy in the general mind of the country."[29]

He was godfather to the philosopher Bertrand Russell.

In his views on religion, Mill was an agnostic and a skeptic.[30][31][32][33]

Mill died in 1873 of erysipelas in Avignon, France, where his body was buried alongside his wife's.

Works

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Portrait of Mill by George Frederic Watts (1873)

A System of Logic

Main article: A System of Logic

Mill joined the debate over scientific method which followed on from John Herschel's 1830 publication of A Preliminary Discourse on the study of Natural Philosophy, which incorporated inductive reasoning from the known to the unknown, discovering general laws in specific facts and verifying these laws empirically. William Whewell expanded on this in his 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time followed in 1840 by The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon their History, presenting induction as the mind superimposing concepts on facts. Laws were self-evident truths, which could be known without need for empirical verification. Mill countered this in 1843 in A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. In Mill's Methods of induction, like Herschel's, laws were discovered through observation and induction, and required empirical verification.[34]

Theory of liberty

Main article: On Liberty

Mill's On Liberty addresses the nature and limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. However Mill is clear that his concern for liberty does not extend to all individuals and all societies. He states that "Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians".[35]

Mill states that it is not a crime to harm oneself as long as the person doing so is not harming others. He favors the harm principle: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." [36] Mill excuses those who are "incapable of self-government" from this principle, such as young children or those living in "backward states of society".

Though this principle seems clear, there are a number of complications. For example, Mill explicitly states that "harms" may include acts of omission as well as acts of commission. Thus, failing to rescue a drowning child counts as a harmful act, as does failing to pay taxes, or failing to appear as a witness in court. All such harmful omissions may be regulated, according to Mill. By contrast, it does not count as harming someone if – without force or fraud – the affected individual consents to assume the risk: thus one may permissibly offer unsafe employment to others, provided there is no deception involved. (Mill does, however, recognise one limit to consent: society should not permit people to sell themselves into slavery). In these and other cases, it is important to bear in mind that the arguments in On Liberty are grounded on the principle of Utility, and not on appeals to natural rights.

The question of what counts as a self-regarding action and what actions, whether of omission or commission, constitute harmful actions subject to regulation, continues to exercise interpreters of Mill. It is important to emphasise that Mill did not consider giving offence to constitute "harm"; an action could not be restricted because it violated the conventions or morals of a given society.[37]

On Liberty involves an impassioned defense of free speech. Mill argues that free discourse is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. We can never be sure, he contends, that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth. He also argues that allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas. Second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma. It is not enough for Mill that one simply has an unexamined belief that happens to be true; one must understand why the belief in question is the true one. Along those same lines Mill wrote, "unmeasured vituperation, employed on the side of prevailing opinion, really does deter people from expressing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who express them."[38]

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John Stuart Mill and Helen Taylor. Helen was the daughter of Harriet Taylor and collaborated with Mill for fifteen years after her mother's death in 1858.

Social liberty and tyranny of majority

Mill believed that "the struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history".[39] For him, liberty in antiquity was a "contest ... between subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the government."[39] Mill defined "social liberty" as protection from "the tyranny of political rulers". He introduced a number of different concepts of the form tyranny can take, referred to as social tyranny, and tyranny of the majority.

Social liberty for Mill meant putting limits on the ruler's power so that he would not be able to use that power to further his own wishes and thus make decisions that could harm society. In other words, people should have the right to have a say in the government's decisions. He said that social liberty was "the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual". It was attempted in two ways: first, by obtaining recognition of certain immunities (called political liberties or rights) and second, by establishment of a system of "constitutional checks".

However, in Mill's view, limiting the power of government was not enough. He stated: "Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself."[40]

Liberty

John Stuart Mill's view on liberty, which was influenced by Joseph Priestley and Josiah Warren, is that the individual ought to be free to do as she/he wishes unless she/he harms others. Individuals are rational enough to make decisions about their well being. Government should interfere when it is for the protection of society. Mill explained:

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right ... The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.[41]


Freedom of speech

An influential advocate of freedom of speech, Mill objected to censorship. He says:

I choose, by preference the cases which are least favourable to me – In which the argument opposing freedom of opinion, both on truth and that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let the opinions impugned be the belief of God and in a future state, or any of the commonly received doctrines of morality ... But I must be permitted to observe that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less if it is put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions. However positive anyone's persuasion may be, not only of the faculty but of the pernicious consequences, but (to adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and impiety of opinion. – yet if, in pursuance of that private judgement, though backed by the public judgement of his country or contemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which it is most fatal.[42]


Mill outlines the benefits of 'searching for and discovering the truth' as a way to further knowledge. He argued that even if an opinion is false, the truth can be better understood by refuting the error. And as most opinions are neither completely true nor completely false, he points out that allowing free expression allows the airing of competing views as a way to preserve partial truth in various opinions.[43] Worried about minority views being suppressed, Mill also argued in support of freedom of speech on political grounds, stating that it is a critical component for a representative government to have in order to empower debate over public policy.[43] Mill also eloquently argued that freedom of expression allows for personal growth and self-realization. He said that freedom of speech was a vital way to develop talents and realise a person's potential and creativity. He repeatedly said that eccentricity was preferable to uniformity and stagnation.[43]

Harm principle

The belief that the freedom of speech will advance the society was formed with trust of the public's ability to filter. If any argument is really wrong or harmful, the public will judge it as wrong or harmful, and then those arguments cannot be sustained and will be excluded. Mill argued that even any arguments which are used in justifying murder or rebellion against the government shouldn't be politically suppressed or socially persecuted. According to him, if rebellion is really necessary, people should rebel; if murder is truly proper, it should be allowed. But, the way to express those arguments should be a public speech or writing, not in a way that causes actual harm to others. This is the harm principle.

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.[44]


At the beginning of the twentieth century, Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. made the standard of "clear and present danger" based on Mill's idea. In the majority opinion, Holmes writes:

The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.[45]


Holmes suggested that shouting out "Fire!" in a dark theatre, which makes people panic and gets them injured, would be such a case of speech that creates an illegal danger.[46] But if the situation allows people to reason by themselves and decide to accept it or not, any argument or theology should not be blocked.

Nowadays, Mill's argument is generally accepted by many democratic countries, and they have laws at least guided by the harm principle. For example, in American law some exceptions limit free speech such as obscenity, defamation, breach of peace, and "fighting words".[47]

Colonialism

Mill, an employee for the British East India Company from 1823 to 1858,[48] argued in support of what he called a "benevolent despotism" with regard to the colonies.[49] Mill argued that "To suppose that the same international customs, and the same rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between civilized nations and barbarians, is a grave error. ... To characterize any conduct whatever towards a barbarous people as a violation of the law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered the subject."[50] Mill justified the British colonization of India but he was concerned with the way that British rule of India was conducted.[51]

Racial equality

In 1850, Mill sent an anonymous letter (which came to be known under the title "The Negro Question"),[52] in rebuttal to Thomas Carlyle's anonymous letter to Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country in which Carlyle argued for slavery. Mill supported abolition in the United States.

In Mill's essay of 1869, The Subjection of Women, he expressed his opposition to slavery:

This absolutely extreme case of the law of force, condemned by those who can tolerate almost every other form of arbitrary power, and which, of all others, presents features the most revolting to the feeling of all who look at it from an impartial position, was the law of civilized and Christian England within the memory of persons now living: and in one half of Anglo-Saxon America three or four years ago, not only did slavery exist, but the slave trade, and the breeding of slaves expressly for it, was a general practice between slave states. Yet not only was there a greater strength of sentiment against it, but, in England at least, a less amount either of feeling or of interest in favour of it, than of any other of the customary abuses of force: for its motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised: and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated abhorrence.[53]


Mill corresponded with John Appleton, an American legal reformer from Maine, extensively on the topic of racial equality. Appleton influenced Mill's work on racial equality, especially swaying Mill on the optimal economic and social welfare plan for the antebellum south.[54][55][56] In a letter sent to Appleton in response to a previous letter, Mill expressed his view on antebellum integration:

I cannot look forward with satisfaction to any settlement but complete emancipation—land given to every negro family either separately or in organized communities under such rules as may be found temporarily necessary—the schoolmaster set to work in every village & the tide of free immigration turned on in those fertile regions from which slavery has hitherto excluded it. If this be done, the gentle & docile character which seems to distinguish the negroes will prevent any mischief on their side, while the proofs they are giving of fighting powers will do more in a year than all other things in a century to make the whites respect them & consent to their being politically & socially equals.[54]


Women's rights

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"A Feminine Philosopher". Caricature by Spy published in Vanity Fair in 1873.

Mill's view of history was that right up until his time "the whole of the female" and "the great majority of the male sex" were simply "slaves". He countered arguments to the contrary, arguing that relations between sexes simply amounted to "the legal subordination of one sex to the other – [which] is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality." With this, Mill can be considered among the earliest male proponents of gender equality. His book The Subjection of Women (1861, published 1869) is one of the earliest written on this subject by a male author.[57] In The Subjection of Women Mill attempts to make a case for perfect equality.[58] He talks about the role of women in marriage and how it needed to be changed. There, Mill comments on three major facets of women's lives that he felt are hindering them: society and gender construction, education, and marriage. He argued that the oppression of women was one of the few remaining relics from ancient times, a set of prejudices that severely impeded the progress of humanity.[53][59]

As a Member of Parliament, Mill introduced an unsuccessful amendment to the Reform Bill to substitute the word "person" in place of "man".[60]

Utilitarianism

Main article: Utilitarianism (book)

The canonical statement of Mill's utilitarianism can be found in Utilitarianism. This philosophy has a long tradition, although Mill's account is primarily influenced by Jeremy Bentham and Mill's father James Mill.

John Stuart Mill believed in the philosophy of Utilitarianism. He would describe Utilitarianism as the principle that holds "that actions are right in the proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." By happiness he means, "intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure".[61] It is clear that we do not all value virtues as a path to happiness and that we sometimes only value them for selfish reasons. However, Mill asserts that upon reflection, even when we value virtues for selfish reasons we are in fact cherishing them as a part of our happiness.

Jeremy Bentham's famous formulation of utilitarianism is known as the "greatest-happiness principle". It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest aggregate happiness among all sentient beings, within reason. In a similar vein, Mill's method of determining the best utility is that a moral agent, when given the choice between two or more actions, ought to choose the action that contributes most to (maximizes) the total happiness in the world. Happiness in this context is understood as the production of pleasure or privation of pain. Given that determining the action that produces the most utility is not always so clear cut, Mill suggests that the utilitarian moral agent, when attempting to rank the utility of different actions, should refer to the general experience of persons. That is, if people generally experience more happiness following action X than they do action Y, the utilitarian should conclude that action X produces more utility than, and is thus favorable to, action Y.[62]

Utilitarianism is built upon the basis of consequentialism, that is, the means are justified based solely off the result of one's actions. The overarching goal of Utilitarianism – the ideal consequence – is to achieve the "greatest good for the greatest number as the end result of human action".[63] Mill states in his writings on Utilitarianism that "happiness is the sole end of human action."[29] This statement brought about a bit of controversy, which is why Mill took it a step further, explaining how the very nature of humans wanting happiness, and who "take it to be reasonable under free consideration", demands that happiness is indeed desirable.[9] In other words, free will leads everyone to make actions inclined on their own happiness, unless reasoned that it would improve the happiness of others, in which case, the greatest utility is still being achieved. To that extent, the Utilitarianism that Mill is describing is a default lifestyle that he believes is what people who have not studied a specific opposing field of ethics would naturally and subconsciously utilize when faced with decision. Utilitarianism is thought of by some of its activists to be a more developed and overarching ethical theory of Kant's belief in good will however, and not just some default cognitive process of humans. Where Kant would argue that reason can only be used properly by good will, Mill would say that the only way to universally create fair laws and systems would be to step back to the consequences, whereby Kant's ethical theories become based around the ultimate good – utility.[64] By this logic the only valid way to discern what is proper reason would be to view the consequences of any action and weigh the good and the bad, even if on the surface, the ethical reasoning seems to indicate a different train of thought.

Mill's major contribution to utilitarianism is his argument for the qualitative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasures (higher pleasures) are superior to more physical forms of pleasure (lower pleasures). Mill distinguishes between happiness and contentment, claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in the statement that "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."[62]

This made Mill believe that "our only ultimate end" [65] is happiness. One unique part of Mill's Utilitarian view, that is not seen in others, is the idea of higher and lower pleasures. Mill explains the different pleasures as:

If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference […] that is the more desirable pleasure.[66]


He defines higher pleasures as mental, moral, and aesthetic pleasures, and lower pleasures as being more sensational. He believed that higher pleasures should be seen as preferable to lower pleasures since they have a greater quality in virtue. He holds that pleasures gained in activity are of a higher quality than those gained passively.[67]

Mill defines the difference between higher and lower forms of pleasure with the principle that those who have experienced both tend to prefer one over the other. This is, perhaps, in direct contrast with Bentham's statement that "Quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry",[68] that, if a simple child's game like hopscotch causes more pleasure to more people than a night at the opera house, it is more imperative upon a society to devote more resources to propagating hopscotch than running opera houses. Mill's argument is that the "simple pleasures" tend to be preferred by people who have no experience with high art, and are therefore not in a proper position to judge. Mill also argues that people who, for example, are noble or practice philosophy, benefit society more than those who engage in individualist practices for pleasure, which are lower forms of happiness. It is not the agent's own greatest happiness that matters "but the greatest amount of happiness altogether".[69]

Mill separated his explanation of Utilitarianism into five different sections; General Remarks, What Utilitarianism Is, Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility, Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible, and Of the Connection between Justice and Utility. In the General Remarks portion of his essay he speaks how next to no progress has been made when it comes to judging what is right and what is wrong of morality and if there is such a thing as moral instinct (which he argues that there may not be). However he agrees that in general "Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments".[70] In the second chapter of his essay he focuses no longer on background information but Utilitarianism itself. He quotes Utilitarianism as "The greatest happiness principle" And defines this theory by saying that pleasure and no pain are the only inherently good things in the world and expands on it by saying that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure."[71] He views it not as an animalistic concept because he sees seeking out pleasure as a way of using our higher facilities. He also says in this chapter that the happiness principle is based not exclusively on the individual but mainly on the community.

Mill also defends the idea of a "strong utilitarian conscience (i.e. a strong feeling of obligation to the general happiness)"[72] He argued that humans have a desire to be happy and that that desire causes us to want to be in unity with other humans. This causes us to care about the happiness of others, as well as the happiness of complete strangers. But this desire also causes us to experience pain when we perceive harm to other people. He believes in internal sanctions that make us experience guilt and appropriate our actions. These internal sanctions make us want to do good because we do not want to feel guilty for our actions. Happiness is our ultimate end because it is our duty. He argues that we do not need to be constantly motivated by the concern of people's happiness because the most of the actions done by people are done out of good intention, and the good of the world is made up of the good of the people.

In Mill's fourth chapter he speaks of what proofs of Utility are affected. He starts this chapter off by saying that all of his claims cannot be backed up by reasoning. He claims that the only proof that something brings one pleasure is if someone finds it pleasurable. Next he talks about how morality is the basic way to achieve happiness. He also discusses in this chapter that Utilitarianism is beneficial for virtue. He says that "it maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself."[73] In his final chapter Mill looks at the connection between Utilitarianism and justice. He contemplates the question of whether justice is something distinct from Utility or not. He reasons this question in several different ways and finally comes to the conclusion that in certain cases justice is essential for Utility, but in others social duty is far more important than justice. Mill believes that "justice must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case."[74]

The qualitative account of happiness that Mill advocates thus sheds light on his account presented in On Liberty. As Mill suggests in that text, utility is to be conceived in relation to humanity "as a progressive being", which includes the development and exercise of rational capacities as we strive to achieve a "higher mode of existence". The rejection of censorship and paternalism is intended to provide the necessary social conditions for the achievement of knowledge and the greatest ability for the greatest number to develop and exercise their deliberative and rational capacities.

Mill redefines the definition of happiness as; "the ultimate end, for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence as free as possible from pain and as rich as possible in enjoyments".[75] He firmly believed that moral rules and obligations could be referenced to promoting happiness, which connects to having a noble character. While John Stuart Mill is not a standard act or rule utilitarian, he is a minimizing utilitarian, which "affirms that it would be desirable to maximize happiness for the greatest number, but not that we are not morally required to do so".[76]

Mill's thesis distinguishes between higher and lower pleasures. He frequently discusses the importance of acknowledgement of higher pleasures. "To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure- no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit they designate as utterly mean and groveling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine".[77][page needed] When he says higher pleasures, he means the pleasures that access higher abilities and capacities in humans such as intellectual prosperity, whereas lower pleasures would mean bodily or temporary pleasures. "But it must be admitted that when utilitarian writers have said that mental pleasures are better than bodily ones they have mainly based this on mental pleasures being more permanent, safer, less costly and so on – i.e. from their circumstantial advantages rather than from their intrinsic nature".[78] All of this factors into John Mill's own definition of utilitarianism, and shows why it differs from other definitions.

Economic philosophy

Main article: Principles of Political Economy

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Essays on Economics and Society, 1967

Mill's early economic philosophy was one of free markets. However, he accepted interventions in the economy, such as a tax on alcohol, if there were sufficient utilitarian grounds. He also accepted the principle of legislative intervention for the purpose of animal welfare.[79] Mill originally believed that "equality of taxation" meant "equality of sacrifice" and that progressive taxation penalised those who worked harder and saved more and was therefore "a mild form of robbery".[80]

Given an equal tax rate regardless of income, Mill agreed that inheritance should be taxed. A utilitarian society would agree that everyone should be equal one way or another. Therefore, receiving inheritance would put one ahead of society unless taxed on the inheritance. Those who donate should consider and choose carefully where their money goes – some charities are more deserving than others. Considering public charities boards such as a government will disburse the money equally. However, a private charity board like a church would disburse the monies fairly to those who are in more need than others.[81]

Later he altered his views toward a more socialist bent, adding chapters to his Principles of Political Economy in defence of a socialist outlook, and defending some socialist causes.[82] Within this revised work he also made the radical proposal that the whole wage system be abolished in favour of a co-operative wage system. Nonetheless, some of his views on the idea of flat taxation remained,[83] albeit altered in the third edition of the Principles of Political Economy to reflect a concern for differentiating restrictions on "unearned" incomes, which he favoured, and those on "earned" incomes, which he did not favour.[84]

Mill's Principles, first published in 1848, was one of the most widely read of all books on economics in the period.[85] As Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations had during an earlier period, Mill's Principles dominated economics teaching. In the case of Oxford University it was the standard text until 1919, when it was replaced by Marshall's Principles of Economics.
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Economic democracy

His main objection of socialism was on that of what he saw its destruction of competition stating, "I utterly dissent from the most conspicuous and vehement part of their teaching – their declamations against competition." Mill was an egalitarian, but he argued more so for equal opportunity and placed meritocracy above all other ideals in this regard. According to Mill, a socialist society would only be attainable through the provision of basic education for all, promoting economic democracy instead of capitalism, in the manner of substituting capitalist businesses with worker cooperatives. He says:

The form of association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.[86][87]


Political democracy

Mill's major work on political democracy, Considerations on Representative Government, defends two fundamental principles: extensive participation by citizens and enlightened competence of rulers.[88] The two values are obviously in tension, and some readers have concluded that he is an elitist democrat,[89] while others count him as an earlier participatory democrat.[90] In one section he appears to defend plural voting, in which more competent citizens are given extra votes (a view he later repudiated). But in chapter 3 he presents what is still one of the most eloquent cases for the value of participation by all citizens. He believed that the incompetence of the masses could eventually be overcome if they were given a chance to take part in politics, especially at the local level.

Mill is one of the few political philosophers ever to serve in government as an elected official. In his three years in Parliament, he was more willing to compromise than the "radical" principles expressed in his writing would lead one to expect.[91]

John Stuart Mill was a massive proponent of the diffusion and use of public education to the working class. Mill saw the value of the individual person and he believed that “man had the inherent capability of guiding his own destiny-but only if his faculties were developed and fulfilled” which could be achieved through education.[92] Mill saw education as a pathway to improve human nature which to him meant "to encourage, among other characteristics, diversity and originality, the energy of character, initiative, autonomy, intellectual cultivation, aesthetic sensibility, non-self-regarding interests, prudence, responsibility, and self-control".[93] Education allowed for humans to develop into full informed citizens that had the tools to improve their condition and make fully informed electoral decisions. The power of education lay in its ability to serve as a great equalizer among the classes allowing the working class the ability to control their own destiny and compete with the upper classes. Mill recognized the paramount importance of public education in avoiding the tyranny of the majority by ensuring that all the voters and political participants were fully developed individuals. It was through education in which one could fully become a participant within representative democracy according to Mill.

Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution

In "Principles of Political Economy" Mill offered an analysis of two economic phenomena often linked together: The laws of production and wealth and the modes of its distribution. Regarding the former, Mill believed that it was not possible to alter to laws of production, “the ultimate properties of matter and mind... only to employ these properties to bring about events we are interested”.[94] The modes of distribution of wealth is a matter of human institutions solely, starting with what Mill believed to be the primary and fundamental institution: Individual Property.[95] He believed that all individuals must start on equal terms, with division of the instruments of production fairly among all members of society. Once each member has an equal amount of individual property, they must be left to their own exertion not to be interfered with by the state. Regarding inequality of wealth, Mill believed that it was the role of the government to establish both social and economic policies that promote the equality of opportunity. The government, according to Mill, should implement three tax policies to help alleviate poverty, (1) fairly assessed income tax, (2) an inheritance tax, and (3) a policy to restrict sumptuary consumption.[96]. Inheritance of capital and wealth plays a large role in development of inequality, because it provides greater opportunity for those receiving the inheritance. Mill’s solution to inequality of wealth brought about by inheritance was to implement a greater tax on inheritances, because he believed the most important authoritative function of the government is taxation, and taxation judiciously implemented could promote equality.[96]

The environment

Mill demonstrated an early insight into the value of the natural world – in particular in Book IV, chapter VI of Principles of Political Economy: "Of the Stationary State"[97][98] in which Mill recognised wealth beyond the material, and argued that the logical conclusion of unlimited growth was destruction of the environment and a reduced quality of life. He concluded that a stationary state could be preferable to unending economic growth:

I cannot, therefore, regard the stationary states of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested towards it by political economists of the old school.

If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compel them to it.


Rate of profit

According to Mill, the ultimate tendency in an economy is for the rate of profit to decline due to diminishing returns in agriculture and increase in population at a Malthusian rate.[99]

In popular culture

Image
Statue of Mill by Thomas Woolner in Victoria Embankment Gardens, London

• Mill is the subject of a 1905 clerihew by E. C. Bentley:[100]

John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote Principles of Political Economy.


• Mill is mentioned in Monty Python's "Bruces' Philosophers Song" (1973) in the lines:[101]

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.


Major publications

Title / Date / Source

"Two Letters on the Measure of Value" / 1822 / "The Traveller"
"Questions of Population" / 1823 / "Black Dwarf"
"War Expenditure" / 1824 / Westminster Review
"Quarterly Review – Political Economy" / 1825 / Westminster Review
"Review of Miss Martineau's Tales" / 1830 / Examiner
"The Spirit of the Age" / 1831 / Examiner
"Use and Abuse of Political Terms" / 1832 / --
"What is Poetry" / 1833, 1859 / --
"Rationale of Representation" / 1835 / --
"De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [i]" / 1835 / --
"State of Society In America" / 1836 / --
"Civilization" / 1836 / --
"Essay on Bentham" / 1838 / --
"Essay on Coleridge" / 1840 / --
"Essays On Government" / 1840 / --
"De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [ii]" / 1840 / --
A System of Logic / 1843 / --
Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy / 1844 / --
"Claims of Labour" / 1845 / Edinburgh Review
The Principles of Political Economy: with some of their applications to social philosophy / 1848 / --
"The Negro Question" / 1850 / Fraser's Magazine
"Reform of the Civil Service" / 1854 / --
Dissertations and Discussions / 1859 / --
A Few Words on Non-intervention / 1859 / --
On Liberty / 1859 / --
Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform / 1859 / --
Considerations on Representative Government / 1861 / --
"Centralisation" / 1862 / Edinburgh Review
"The Contest in America" / 1862 / Harper's Magazine
Utilitarianism / 1863 / --
An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy / 1865 / --
Auguste Comte and Positivism / 1865 / --
Inaugural Address at St. Andrews Concerning the value of culture / 1867 / --
"Speech In Favour of Capital Punishment"[102][103] / 1868 / --
England and Ireland / 1868 / --
"Thornton on Labour and its Claims" / 1869 / Fortnightly Review
The Subjection of Women / 1869 / --
Chapters and Speeches on the Irish Land Question / 1870 / --
Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism / 1874 / --
Autobiography / 1873 / --
Three Essays on Religion / 1874 / --
Socialism / 1879 / Belfords, Clarke & Co.
"Notes on N. W. Senior's Political Economy" / 1945 / Economica N.S. 12


See also

• John Stuart Mill Institute
• Mill's methods
• John Stuart Mill Library
• List of liberal theorists
• On Social Freedom
• Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom

Notes

1. Hyman, Anthony (1982). Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer. Princeton University Press. pp. 120–121. What effect did Babbages Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers have? Generally his book received little attention as it not greatly concerned with such traditional problems of economics as the nature of 'value'. Actually the effect was considerable, his discussion of factories and manufactures entering the main currents of economic thought. Here it must suffice to look briefly at its influence on two major figures; John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith
2. Varouxakis, Georgios (1999). "Guizot's historical works and J.S. Mill's reception of Tocqueville". History of Political Thought. 20(2): 292–312. JSTOR 26217580.
3. Friedrich Hayek (1941). "The Counter-Revolution of Science". Economica. 8 (31): 281–320. doi:10.2307/2549335. JSTOR 2549335.
4. "The Project Gutenberg EBook of Autobiography, by John Stuart Mill" gutenberg.org. Retrieved 11 June 2013.
5. Michael N. Forster, After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 9.
6. Ralph Raico (27 January 2018). Mises Institute (ed.). "John Stuart Mill and the New Liberalism".
7. Mommsen, Wolfgang J. (2013). Max Weber and His Contempories. Routledge. pp. 8–10.
8. Thouverez, Emile (1908), Stuart Mill. 4.ed. Paris: Bloud & Cie, p. 23.
9. Macleod, Christopher (14 November 2017). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
10. "John Stuart Mill's On Liberty". victorianweb. Retrieved 23 July 2009. On Liberty is a rational justification of the freedom of the individual in opposition to the claims of the state to impose unlimited control and is thus a defense of the rights of the individual against the state.
11. "John Stuart Mill (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 31 July 2009.
12. "Orator Hunt and the first suffrage petition 1832". UK Parliament.
13. "John Stuart Mill and the 1866 petition". UK Parliament.
14. Halevy, Elie (1966). The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism. Beacon Press. pp. 282–284. ISBN 978-0191010200.
15. "Cornell University Library Making of America Collection". collections.library.cornell.edu.
16. Murray N. Rothbard (1 February 2006). An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Ludwig von Mises Institute. p. 105. ISBN 978-0945466482. Retrieved 21 January 2011.
17. John Stuart Mill's Mental Breakdown, Victorian Unconversions, and Romantic Poetry
18. Pickering, Mary (1993), Auguste Comte: an intellectual biography, Cambridge University Press, p. 540
19. Capaldi, Nicholas. John Stuart Mill: A Biography. p. 33, Cambridge, 2004, ISBN 0521620244.
20. "Cornell University Library Making of America Collection". collections.library.cornell.edu.
21. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter M" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 15 April 2011.
22. Mill, John Stuart. Writings on India. Edited by John M. Robson, Martin Moir and Zawahir Moir. Toronto: University of Toronto Press; London: Routledge, c. 1990.
23. Klausen, Jimmy Casas (7 January 2016). "Violence and Epistemology J. S. Mill's Indians after the "Mutiny"". Political Research Quarterly. 69: 96–107. doi:10.1177/1065912915623379. ISSN 1065-9129.
24. Harris, Abram L. (1 January 1964). "John Stuart Mill: Servant of the East India Company". The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science. 30 (2): 185–202. doi:10.2307/139555. JSTOR 139555.
25. Lal, Vinay. "'John Stuart Mill and India', a review-article". New Quest, no. 54 (January–February 1998): 54–64.

Image

Vinay Lal is Professor of History and Asian American Studies at UCLA. He writes widely on the history and culture of colonial and modern India, popular and public culture in India (especially cinema), historiography, the politics of world history, the Indian diaspora, global politics, contemporary American politics, the life and thought of Mohandas Gandhi, Hinduism, and the politics of knowledge systems.

Lal was born to an Indian foreign service officer in (Delhi) India in 1961 [Father's name nowhere to be found on the Internet: 5/22/20]. His father’s constant movement because of diplomatic career, he grew up in Delhi, Tokyo, Jakarta, and Washington, D.C. In Delhi he attended Springdales School. He spent four years in Tokyo, 1965–69, but has almost no memory of those years; and it is not until 1987 that he returned to Japan for a short visit, followed by a lengthier stay of four months in Osaka in 1999 when he was a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku).

He earned his BA and MA, both in 1982, from the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University and wrote his Master's thesis on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Indian philosophy. Lal then studied cinema in Australia and India on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship before commencing his graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a PhD with Distinction from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations in 1992. He was William Kenan Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University in 1992–93, and since 1993 has been on the faculty of history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he also holds a joint appointment in Asian American Studies.

-- Vinay Lal, by Wikipedia


26. Inaugural Address at St Andrews, Longmans, Green, Reader, And Dyer, 1867.
27. "No. 22991". The London Gazette. 14 July 1865. p. 3528.
28. Capaldi, Nicholas. John Stuart Mill: A Biography. pp. 321–322, Cambridge, 2004, ISBN 0521620244.
29. John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism and the 1868 Speech on Capital Punishment. (Sher, ed. Hackett Publishing Co, 2001)
30. "Editorial Notes". Secular Review. 16 (13): 203. 28 March 1885. It has always seemed to us that this is one of the instances in which Mill approached, out of deference to conventional opinion, as near to the borderland of Cant as he well could without compromising his pride of place as a recognised thinker and sceptic
31. Linda C. Raeder (2002). "Spirit of the Age". John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity. University of Missouri Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-0826263278. Comte welcomed the prospect of being attacked publicly for his irreligion, he said, as this would permit him to clarify the nonatheistic nature of his and Mill's "atheism".
32. Larsen, Timothy (2018). John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life. Oxford University Press. p. 14. ISBN 9780198753155. A letter John wrote from Forde Abbey when he was eight years old casually mentions in his general report of his activities that he too had been to Thorncombe parish church, so even when Bentham had home-field advantage, the boy was still receiving a Christian spiritual formation. Indeed, Mill occasionally attended Christian worship services during his teen years and thereafter for the rest of his life. The sea of faith was full and all around
33. Larsen, Timothy (7 December 2018). "A surprisingly religious John Stuart Mill". TL: Mill decided that strictly in terms of proof the right answer to that question of God’s existence is that it is “a very probable hypothesis.” He also thought it was perfectly rational and legitimate to believe in God as an act of hope or as the result of one’s efforts to discern the meaning of life as a whole.
34. Shermer, Michael (15 August 2002). In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History. Oxford University Press. p. 212. ISBN 978-0199923854.
35. On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. 10 January 2011 – via http://www.gutenberg.org.
36. Mill, John Stuart "On Liberty" Penguin Classics, 2006
37. https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ ... iberty.pdf
38. Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty, Harvard Classics: Volume 25, p. 258, PF Collier & Sons Company New York 1909
39. "I. Introductory. Mill, John Stuart. 1869. On Liberty". http://www.bartleby.com. Retrieved 16 July 2018.
40. Mill, John Stuart, "On Liberty" Penguin Classics, 2006 ISBN 978-0141441474 pp. 10–11
41. Mill, On Liberty, p. 13. Cornell.edu
42. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) "On Liberty" 1859. ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb, UK: Penguin, 1985, pp. 83–84
43. Freedom of Speech, Volume 21, by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Dycus Miller, Jeffrey Paul
44. John Stuart Mill. (1863 [1859]). On Liberty. Ticknor and Fields. p. 23
45. Schenck v. United States, 249 US 47 – Supreme Court 1919
46. George & Kline 2006, p. 409.
47. George & Kline 2006, p. 410.
48. "J. S. Mill's Career at the East India Company". http://www.victorianweb.org.
49. Theo Goldberg, David (2000). ""Liberalism's limits: Carlyle and Mill on "the negro question". Nineteenth-Century Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 22 (2): 203–216. doi:10.1080/08905490008583508.
50. John Stuart Mill, Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical (New York 1874) Vol. 3, pp. 252–253.
51. Williams, David (7 February 2020). "John Stuart Mill and the practice of colonial rule in India". Journal of International Political Theory: 175508822090334. doi:10.1177/1755088220903349. ISSN 1755-0882.
52. The Negro Question, pp. 130–137. by John Stuart Mill.
53. Mill, J. S. (1869) The Subjection of Women, Chapter 1
54. "The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part II - Online Library of Liberty". oll.libertyfund.org. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
55. Vile, John R. (2003). Great American Judges: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-989-8.
56. P, T. Peter (1991). "John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and the U.s. Civil War". Historian. 54 (1): 93–106. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.1991.tb00843.x. ISSN 1540-6563.
57. Divinity, Jone Johnson Lewis Jone Johnson Lewis has a Master of; Member, Is a Humanist Clergy; late 1960s, certified transformational coach She has been involved in the women's movement since the. "About Male Feminist John Stuart Mill". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
58. John Stuart Mill: critical assessments, Volume 4, By John Cunningham Wood
59. Mill, John Stuart (2005), "The subjection of women", in Cudd, Ann E.; Andreasen, Robin O. (eds.), Feminist theory: a philosophical anthology, Oxford, UK; Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 17–26, ISBN 978-1405116619.
60. West, Henry R. (13 September 2015). "J. S. Mill". In Crisp, Roger (ed.). The Oxford handbook of the history of ethics. Oxford. p. 528. ISBN 9780198744405. OCLC 907652431.
61. Mill, John (2002). The Basic Writings Of John Stuart Mill. The Modern Library. p. 239.
62. Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill. February 2004 – via http://www.gutenberg.org.
63. Freeman, Stephen J., Dennis W. Engels, and Michael K. Altekruse. "Foundations for Ethical Standards and Codes: The Role of Moral Philosophy and Theory in Ethics." Counseling and Values, vol. 48, no. 3, 2004, pp. 163–173, eLibrary.
64. Davis, G. Scott. "Introduction." Introduction to Utilitarianism, by John Stuart Mill, VII–XIV. Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading. Barnes and Noble, 2005.
65. Heydt, Colin. "John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
66. Mill, John (1961). Utilitarianism. Doubleday. p. 211.
67. Driver, Julia (27 March 2009). "The History of Utilitarianism". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
68. Bronfenbrenner, Martin (1977). "Poetry, Pushpin, and Utility". Economic Inquiry. 15: 95–110. doi:10.1111/j.1465-7295.1977.tb00452.x.
69. Mill 1863, p. 16.
70. Mill 1863, p. 2.
71. Mill 1863, p. 3.
72. Heydt, Colin. "John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
73. Mill 1863, p. 24.
74. Mill 1863, p. 29.
75. Mill 1863, p. 8.
76. Fitzpatrick 2006, p. 84.
77. Mill 1863.
78. Mill 1863, p. 6.
79. "Ifaw.org" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 June 2008.
80. IREF | Pour la liberte economique et la concurrence fiscale Archived 27 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine (PDF)
81. Strasser 1991.
82. Mill, John Stuart; Bentham, Jeremy (2004). Ryan, Alan. (ed.). Utilitarianism and other essays. London: Penguin Books. p. 11. ISBN 978-0140432725.
83. Wilson, Fred (2007). "John Stuart Mill: Political Economy". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 4 May 2009.
84. Mill, John Stuart (1852), "On The General Principles of Taxation, V.2.14", Principles of Political Economy (3rd ed.), Library of Economics and Liberty The passage about flat taxation was altered by the author in this edition, which is acknowledged in this online edition's footnote 8: "[This sentence replaced in the 3rd ed. a sentence of the original: 'It is partial taxation, which is a mild form of robbery.']")
85. Ekelund, Robert B., Jr.; Hébert, Robert F. (1997). A History of Economic Theory and Method (4th ed.). Waveland Press [Long Grove, Illinois]. p. 172. ISBN 978-1577663812.
86. Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy, IV.7.21 John Stuart Mill: Political Economy, IV.7.21
87. Principles of Political Economy and On Liberty, Chapter IV, Of the Limits to the Authority of Society Over the Individual
88. Thompson, Dennis F. (1976). John Stuart Mill and Representative Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691021874.
89. Letwin, Shirley (1965). The Pursuit of Certainty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 306. ISBN 978-0865971943.
90. Pateman, Carole (1970). Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 28. ISBN 978-0521290043.
91. Thompson, Dennis (2007). "Mill in Parliament: when should a philosopher compromise?". In Urbinati, N.; Zakaras, A. (eds.). J. S. Mill's Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 166–199. ISBN 978-0521677561.
92. Davis, Elynor G. (1985). "Mill, Socialism and the English Romantics: An Interpretation". Economica. 52 (207): 345–58 (351). doi:10.2307/2553857. JSTOR 2553857.
93. De Mattos, Laura Valladão (2000). "John Stuart Mill, socialism, and his Liberal Utopia: an application of his view of social institutions". History of Economic Ideas. 8 (2): 95–120 (97).
94. Mill, John Stuart (1885). Principles of Political Economy. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
95. Jensen, Hans (December 2001). "John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution". Review of Social Economy. 59 (4): 491–507. doi:10.1080/00346760110081599.
96. Ekelund, Robert; Tollison, Robert (May 1976). "The New Political Economy of J. S. Mill: Means to Social Justice". The Canadian Journal of Economics. 9 (2): 213–231. doi:10.2307/134519. JSTOR 134519.
97. "The Principles of Political Economy, Book 4, Chapter VI". Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2008.
98. Røpke, Inge (1 October 2004). "The early history of modern ecological economics". Ecological Economics. 50 (3–4): 293–314. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.02.012.
99. Mill, John Stuart. Principles of Political Economy (PDF). p. 25. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
100. Swainson, Bill, ed. (2000). Encarta Book of Quotations. Macmillan. pp. 642–643. ISBN 978-0312230005.
101. "Monty Python – Bruces' Philosophers Song Lyrics". MetroLyrics. Retrieved 8 August 2019.
102. Hansard report of Commons Sitting: Capital Punishment Within Prisons Bill – [Bill 36.] Committee stage: HC Deb 21 April 1868 vol. 191 cc 1033-63 including Mill's speech Col. 1047–1055
103. His speech against the abolition of capital punishment was commented upon in an editorial in The Times, Wednesday, 22 April 1868; p. 8; Issue 26105; col E:

References

• Duncan Bell, "John Stuart Mill on Colonies," Political Theory, Vol. 38 (February 2010), pp. 34–64.
• Brink, David O. (1992). "Mill's Deliberative Utilitarianism". Philosophy and Public Affairs. 21: 67–103.
• Clifford G. Christians and John C. Merrill (eds) Ethical Communication: Five Moral Stances in Human Dialogue, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009
• Fitzpatrick, J. R. (2006). John Stuart Mill's Political Philosophy. Continuum Studies in British Philosophy. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1847143440.
• George, Roger Z.; Kline, Robert D. (2006). Intelligence and the national security strategist: enduring issues and challenges. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0742540385.
• Adam Gopnik, "Right Again, The passions of John Stuart Mill," The New Yorker, 6 October 2008.
• Harrington, Jack (2010). Sir John Malcolm and the Creation of British India, Ch. 5. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0230108851.
• Sterling Harwood, "Eleven Objections to Utilitarianism," in Louis P. Pojman, ed., Moral Philosophy: A Reader (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1998), and in Sterling Harwood, ed., Business as Ethical and Business as Usual (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1996), Chapter 7, and in [1] http://www.sterlingharwood.com.
• Samuel Hollander, The Economics of John Stuart Mill (University of Toronto Press, 1985)
• Wendy Kolmar and Frances Bartowski. Feminist Theory. 2nd ed. New York: Mc Graw Hill, 2005.
• Shirley Letwin, The Pursuit of Certainty (Cambridge University Press, 1965). ISBN 978-0865971943
• Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill, Macmillan (1952).
• Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1970). ISBN 978-0521290043
• Richard Reeves, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, Atlantic Books (2007), paperback 2008. ISBN 978-1843546443
• Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books. ISBN 184046450X.
• Frederick Rosen, Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (Routledge Studies in Ethics & Moral Theory), 2003. ISBN 0415220947
• Spiegel, H. W. (1991). The Growth of Economic Thought. Economic history. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822309734.
• Strasser, Mark Philip (1991). The Moral Philosophy of John Stuart Mill: Toward Modifications of Contemporary Utilitarianism. Wakefield, New Hampshire: Longwood Academic. ISBN 978-0893416812.
• Chin Liew Ten, Mill on Liberty, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980, full-text online at Contents Victorianweb.org (National University of Singapore)
• Dennis F. Thompson, John Stuart Mill and Representative Government (Princeton University Press, 1976). ISBN 978-0691021874
• Dennis F. Thompson, "Mill in Parliament: When Should a Philosopher Compromise?" in J. S. Mill's Political Thought, eds. N. Urbinati and A. Zakaras (Cambridge University Press, 2007). ISBN 978-0521677561
• Brink, David, "Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
• Stuart Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963–1991), 33 vols. 3/14/2017.
• Walker, Francis Amasa (1876). The Wages Question: A Treatise on Wages and the Wages Class. Henry Holt.

Further reading

• Alican, Necip Fikri (1994). Mill's Principle of Utility: A Defense of John Stuart Mill's Notorious Proof. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Editions Rodopi B. V. ISBN 978-9051837483.
• Bayles, M. D. (1968). Contemporary Utilitarianism. Anchor Books, Doubleday.
• Bentham, Jeremy (2009). An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Dover Philosophical Classics). Dover Publications Inc. ISBN 978-0486454528.
• Brandt, Richard B. (1979). A Theory of the Good and the Right. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198245506.
• Lee, Sidney, ed. (1894). "Mill, John Stuart" . Dictionary of National Biography. 37. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• López, Rosario (2016). Contexts of John Stuart Mill's Liberalism: Politics and the Science of Society in Victorian Britain. Baden-Baden, Nomos. ISBN 978-3848736959.
• Lyons, David (1965). Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism. Oxford University Press (UK). ISBN 978-0198241973.
• Mill, John Stuart (2011). A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Classic Reprint). Forgotten Books. ISBN 978-1440090820.
• Mill, John Stuart (1981). "Autobiography". In Robson, John (ed.). Collected Works, volume XXXI. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0710007186.
• Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia Ethica. Prometheus Books UK. ISBN 978-0879754983.
• Rosen, Frederick (2003). Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill. Routledge.
• Scheffler, Samuel (August 1994). The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions, Second Edition. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198235118.
• Smart, J. J. C.; Williams, Bernard (January 1973). Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521098229.
• Francisco Vergara, « Bentham and Mill on the "Quality" of Pleasures», Revue d'études benthamiennes, Paris, 2011.
• Francisco Vergara, « A Critique of Elie Halévy; refutation of an important distortion of British moral philosophy », Philosophy, Journal of The Royal Institute of Philosophy, London, 1998.

External links

Mill's works


• A System of Logic, University Press of the Pacific, Honolulu, 2002, ISBN 1410202526
• Works by John Stuart Mill at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about John Stuart Mill at Internet Archive
• Works by John Stuart Mill at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• The Online Books Page lists works on various sites
• Works, readable and downloadable
• Primary and secondary works
• More easily readable versions of On Liberty, Utilitarianism, Three Essays on Religion, The Subjection of Women, A System of Logic, and Autobiography
• Of the Composition of Causes, Chapter VI of System of Logic (1859)
• John Stuart Mill's diary of a walking tour at Mount Holyoke College
Secondary works[edit]
• Macleod, Christopher. "John Stuart Mill". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• John Stuart Mill in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Further information

• Minto, William; Mitchell, John Malcolm (1911). "MILL, JOHN STUART". The Encyclopaedia Britannica; A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information. XVIII (MEDAL to MUMPS) (11th ed.). Cambridge, England and New York: At the University Press. pp. 454–459. Retrieved 9 September 2019 – via Internet Archive.
• Catalogue of Mill's correspondence and papers held at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics. View the Archives Catalogue of the contents of this important holding, which also includes letters of James Mill and Helen Taylor.
• John Stuart Mill's library, Somerville College Library in Oxford holds ≈ 1700 volumes owned by John Stuart Mill and his father James Mill, many containing their marginalia
• "John Stuart Mill (Obituary Notice, Tuesday, November 4, 1873)". Eminent Persons: Biographies reprinted from The Times. I (1870–1875). Macmillan & Co. 1892. pp. 195–224. hdl:2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t6n011x45 – via HathiTrust.
• John Stuart Mill at Find a Grave
• Mill, BBC Radio 4 discussion with A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards & Alan Ryan (In Our Time, 18 May 2006)
• Portraits of John Stuart Mill at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• John Stuart Mill on Google Scholar
• John Stuart Mill, biographical profile, including quotes and further resources, at Utilitarianism.net.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Wed May 27, 2020 9:37 pm

New visiting fellow [Andrew Whitehead] joins IAPS [Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies]
by Katharine Adeney
University of Nottingham
February 16, 2015

Image

IAPS [Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies] is delighted to welcome Dr Andrew Whitehead as a visiting fellow.

Andrew Whitehead is an expert on contemporary South Asia, and particularly on Kashmir. He is the author of A Mission in Kashmir (2007), which uses oral history and personal testimony to interrogate the established Indian, Pakistani and Kashmiri narratives of how the Kashmir conflict started in 1947. He was awarded a PhD by published work in history at the University of Warwick in 2013. Andrew is a longstanding editor of History Workshop Journal, and has also written on the history of London and was co-editor with Jerry White of London Fictions (2013).

Andrew’s career has been as a news journalist. He was until recently Editor of BBC World Service News and has been the BBC’s Delhi correspondent and a BBC political correspondent. He has a personal website and blog – http://www.andrewwhitehead.net/ – and he tweets at @john_pether

****************

Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies
by University of Nottingham
Accessed: 5/27/20

The Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies (IAPS) China was founded in 2004 and has evolved into a leading active research centre in the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). The current director and deputy director are Professor May Tan-Mullins, School of International Studies and Dr Filippo Gilardi from the School of International Communications. The director and the deputy director will implement the overall strategic research directions of the institute, as advised by the advisory board of IAPS China. IAPS China is also embedded in an extensive global network of leading academics and institutions, and currently has over 70 research fellows, 20 global affiliated fellows and 20 PhD fellows.

IAPS China’s aims are to promote meaningful interdisciplinary research in UNNC, innovate solutions for current global challenges and enhance the understanding of the Asia-Pacific region across the Universities of Nottingham and a broader community. IAPS has three research priority groups focusing on: Cultural and Creative Industries , Contemporary Challenges of China and Gender Studies. These research groups will synergise the research expertise in the university, and achieve world leading research outputs.

199 Taikang East Road, Ningbo, 315100, China
T. +86(0)574 8818 0000 F. +86(0)574 8818 9372

University of Nottingham Ningbo China. All rights reserved.
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****************

Andrew Whitehead
by geolondon.org.uk
Accessed: 6/18/20

Dr Andrew Whitehead has been until recently the Editor of BBC World Service News, the BBC’s biggest radio network reaching more than forty million listeners around the world. During his career, he has been a foreign correspondent, a correspondent covering British politics, a news presenter and a maker of award winning documentaries. He has spent a semester as a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan. His latest book, The Lives of Freda, was published in 2019.

****************

Andrew Whitehead
by Speaking Tiger
Accessed: 6/18/20

Andrew Whitehead is—much like the subject of this biography—a British-born journalist who married into India and brought his family up in Delhi. He spent four years as the BBC India correspondent and later was a BBC News presenter and the Editor of BBC World Service News.

Andrew studied history at Oxford University and has a PhD for his work on the history of Kashmir. He is the author of A Mission in Kashmir,
and has also been a longstanding editor of History Workshop Journal, a twice-yearly publication from Oxford University Press.

He now lives in London and is an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham in England and a visiting professor at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai.

****************

About Andrew Whitehead
by Linkedin
Accessed: 6/18/20

I am now working as a historian and as a freelance journalist and lecturer with particular specialisms in South Asia and in news journalism, building on a long and successful career with BBC News. I am an honorary professor at the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the University of Nottingham. I am also senior visiting research fellow at the King’s India Institute.

I teach news journalism and contemporary British politics to Oregon undergraduates on Study Abroad programmes and broadcast journalism at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai.

In my 35 years with BBC News, I was a Lobby correspondent, Delhi correspondent, award winning documentary maker, radio presenter, and until recently the editor of BBC World Service News, responsible for the live news and current affairs content of the world’s most respected radio network.


I’ve worked in India on communications for development, particularly addressing HIV awareness as Country Director for BBC Media Action.

My recent journalism includes pieces for the London Review of Books, The Hindu, BBC News online, the Daily Mirror and From Our Own Correspondent.

My PhD is in the contemporary history of Kashmir and I’m the author of 'A Mission in Kashmir'​ about events there in 1947. I have written and lectured widely about Kashmir, and delivered the Hovey Lecture at the University of Michigan. I am an associate editor of History Workshop Journal.

My biography of Freda Bedi, an English woman who became an influential figure within Indian nationalism and later a Tibetan Buddhist nun, will be published soon..

London, my adopted city, continues to engross me – 'Curious King's Cross' will appear later this year following 'Curious Kentish Town'​ and 'Curious Camden Town'. I co-edited 'London Fictions'​ and run a linked website and I'm also co-editor of a forthcoming book about the novelist Alexander Baron.

I have a website and blog: http://www.andrewwhitehead.net/ - I tweet at @john_pether

Experience

GEO (Global Education Oregon)
Course Leader / Faculty
GEO (Global Education Oregon)
Jul 2015 – Present - 5 years
London, United Kingdom

Teach international news journalism at a London summer school for Oregon undergraduates and British politics and society to semester students.

Author
Completing a biography of Freda Bedi
Sep 2015 – Present - 4 years 10 months

Freda Bedi (1911-1977), born into a lower middle class family in Derby, went to Oxford University and married a fellow student, a Punjabi. She moved to Lahore, became involved in leftist and nationalist movements, and was jailed by the British for supporting her adopted country over her native country. She moved to Kashmir and worked for the left-wing nationalist movement there and later with Tibetan refugees, eventually taking ordination as a Tibetan Buddhist nun and helping inject Tibetan...

Honorary Professor
University of Nottingham
Oct 2015 – Present - 4 years 9 months
Nottingham

Honorary Professor with the Institute of Asian and Pacific Studies, part of the Politics Department at Nottingham

Visiting Professor
Asian College of Journalism
Jan 2017 – Present - 3 years 6 months
Chennai Area, India

Teaching broadcast journalism at India's leading journalism college.

Head of Editorial Development
BBC Media Action
Aug 2016 – Dec 2016 - 5 months
London, United Kingdom

Interim head of editorial development for the BBC's hugely ambitious and successful development communications charity, managing teams providing training worldwide, devising and producing eLearning content and developing digital and mobile strategies, as well as advising on editorial best practice.

Editor, BBC World Service News
BBC News
2008 – Feb 2015 - 7 years
Broadcasting House, London

Leading a team of 200 world beating journalists who make fourteen hours a day of great news radio for the 42 million listeners around the world to the BBC World Service radio network in English, and who are innovative in engaging with audiences on digital platforms and social media.

Earlier in my BBC career I have been ... Delhi Correspondent ... India Country Director of BBC Media Action ... Political Correspondent ... Presenter of the World Today ... Editor of the World Today ... and...

Author
A Mission in Kashmir
2007 – 2007 - less than a year
Delhi

Published by Penguin India - translated into Tamil, and republished in Kashmir by Gulshan Books. This book was the basis for a PhD by published works awarded by the University of Warwick.

Education

University of Warwick
Master's degree (1978); PhD by published works (2013)Social History; C19 Clerkenwell; Kashmir in the 1940s
1977 – 1980

Keble College, Oxford University
Bachelor's degree History First
1974 – 1977

Leeds Grammar School
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Thu May 28, 2020 12:16 am

A Poignant Journey’s End: Refugees from Tibet straggle to sanctuary in India [Misamari Camp] [Missamari Camp]
by Don Connery
Time Life, correspondent
Life Magazine
June 1, 1959

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.

Towards the close of 1956, Delhi hosted a major international Buddhist gathering that was Freda's introduction to the Tibetan schools of Buddhism, which are in the Mahayana tradition as distinct from the Theravada school which is predominant in Burma. This Buddha Jayanti was to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's life. The Indian government wanted Tibet's Buddhist leaders to attend, particularly the Dalai Lama, who was that rare combination of temporal ruler and spiritual leader of his people. The Chinese authorities initially said no but at the last minute relented. Jawaharlal Nehru was at Delhi airport to welcome the twenty-one year old Dalai Lama on his first visit to India; the young Tibetan leader had at this stage not made up his mind whether he would return to his Chinese-occupied homeland or lead a Tibetan independence movement in exile. Freda played a role in welcoming the Tibetan delegation to the Indian capital. 'The radiance and good humour of the Dalai Lama was something we shall never forget,' she told Olive Chandler. 'I also got a chance of shepherding the official tour of the International delegates to India's Buddhist shrines and made many new friends.'18 A snatch of newsreel footage shows Freda Bedi at the side of the Dalai Lama at Ashoka Vihar, the Buddhist centre outside Delhi where the Bedi family had camped out a few years earlier. Both Kabir and Guli were also there, the latter peering out nervously between a heavily garlanded Dalai Lama and her sari-clad mother.19 Freda also received the Dalai Lama's blessing.

In the following year, when she made a brief visit to Britain, Freda made a point of visiting the main Buddhist centres in London and meeting Christmas Humphreys, a judge who was the most prominent of the tiny band of converts to Buddhism in Britain. She was becoming well-known and well-connected as a practitioner of Buddhism. What prompted her to become not simply a devotee but an activist once more was the Dalai Lama's second visit to India -- in circumstances hugely different from his first. Nehru had dissuaded the Dalai Lama from staying in India after the Buddha Jayanti celebrations. Early in 1959, Tibet rose up against Chinese rule, an insurrection which provoked a steely response. The Dalai Lama and his retinue, fearing for their lives and for Tibet's Buddhist traditions and learning, fled across the Himalayas, crossing into India at the end of March and reaching the town of Tezpur in Assam on 18th April 1959. Tens of thousands of Tibetans followed the Dalai Lama, undergoing immense hardships as they traversed across the mountains and sought to evade the Chinese army. Freda felt impelled to get involved.

***

'Technically, I was Welfare Adviser to the Ministry,' Freda wrote of her time at the Tibetan refugee camps in north-east India; 'actually I was Mother to a camp full of soldiers, lamas, peasants and families.'1 It was a role she found fulfilling. Freda was able to use the skills and contacts she had developed as a social worker and civil servant and at the same time to be nourished by the spirituality evident among those who congregated in the camps. The needs of the refugees were profound. For many, the journeys had been harrowing -- avoiding Chinese troops, travelling on foot across the world's most daunting mountain range and sometimes reduced to eating yak leather to stave off starvation. Many failed to complete the journey. And while the Indian camps offered sanctuary, they were insanitary, overcrowded and badly organised. For hundreds of those who arrived tattered, malnourished and vulnerable to disease, the camps were places to die.

In October 1959, six months after the camps were set up, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's prime minister, asked Freda to visit them and report back -- though it may be more accurate to say that Freda badgered her old friend into giving her this role. Among Delhi's Buddhists, who had welcomed the Dalai Lama so reverently three years earlier, the plight of those who had followed in his footsteps over the mountains would have been of pressing concern. For Freda, it offered her a cause in which to immerse herself as well as an opportunity to deepen her spiritual engagement.

As soon as she reached the camps, Freda realised the urgent and profound humanitarian crisis that was engulfing the thousands of Tibetans who had made it into India. Within a matter of weeks, she had persuaded the government to keep her in the camps for six months as welfare adviser for Tibetan refugees. She took on this role as a secondment to the Ministry of External Affairs -- the refugees and their camps were on Indian soil, but given the intense diplomatic sensitivities of offering refuge to such large numbers of Tibetans, the foreign ministry led on the response to the influx. 'I stayed 6 months in a bamboo hut rehabilitating + looking after refugees,' Freda wrote to her old friend Olive Chandler at the close of the assignment. 'It is an experience too deep to translate into an Air Letter. The Tibetans are honest, brave + wonderful people; the 5000 Lamas we have inherited contain some of the most remarkable spiritually advanced monks + teachers it has been my privilege to meet.2 She became entirely absorbed in the lives and welfare of the refugees, and of the Buddhist practice of the monks, nuns and lamas among them.' 'I am going back to the [Social Welfare] Board tomorrow,' she told Olive, 'but my heart is in this work.'

Freda's home when working with the refugees was at Misamari camp in Assam, where a former military base -- the American Air Force had been stationed there during the Second World War -- was hastily expanded by the construction of rows of large bamboo huts. Misamari was near the town of Tezpur which the Dalai Lama had reached in mid-April 1959 at the end of his flight across the mountains. By mid-May, the Indian authorities had built shelters at Misamari sufficient for 5,000 refugees -- and it was already clear that would not be sufficient.3 It was a remote corner of the country -- though not too far as the crow flies from Borhat, still further up the Brahmaputra but on the southern bank, where Ranga and Umi and their young family were living on a tea estate.

For the Tibetans, reaching Misamari was a refuge of sorts at the end of one of the most gruelling journeys imaginable. Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche, now abbot of the Samye Ling Buddhist monastery in Scotland, was a teenager when he escaped from Tibet with his two older brothers. They were part of a group led by a twenty-year-old abbot who was to achieve renown in the west, Trungpa Rinpoche. Of the 200 or so Tibetans in the entourage, fifteen completed the mammoth trek across the mountains and into India. For weeks, they went without food, and were reduced to boiling their leather shoes and chewing the soles. They were frozen -- and terrified of the Chinese troops believed to be pursuing them. By the time these young religious leaders reached Misamari, they were -- in the words of Lama Yeshe -- 'totally lost human beings. In Tibet, we used to have everything. Each one of them had their own monastery, attendants. And then when we escaped, we lost not only our wealth, power, possessions, but also our attendants.'4 The abbots, lamas and tulkus were not simply the religious elite of Tibet, they were also the intellectuals and men of power and influence. By the time they reached the camps, they were in rags. Many were gravely ill. Lama Yeshe had TB and required a major operation; his oldest brother died of TB.

The camp may have been safe, but for many Tibetans it was not hospitable. This was alien terrain -- much lower in altitude, stiflingly hot and humid, with a different culture and cuisine. 'Tibetan people don't know [the] language [or] how to make Indian food,' recalled Ayang Rinpoche later one of the most respected Buddhist spiritual teachers in India. He was about sixteen when he arrived at Misamari shortly after the camp opened. 'That place [was] very hot, and underground water [was] very uncomfortable. By this way, Tibetans [were] much suffering and many people died. My mother also died at that place, Misamari.' Another widely revered Buddhist spiritual figure, Ringu Tulku, also reached Misamari in 1959 after a long and arduous journey, 'sometimes fighting, sometimes running, sometimes hiding', from Kham in eastern Tibet. He was about seven years old, and recalls the long bamboo sheds at the camp, each providing shelter to scores of people. 'And very, very hot, so we couldn't usually sleep at night. So we sang and danced all night -- and then we had a little bit of shower. And then we didn't know how to cook dal; we didn't know how to cook all these vegetables.' He too has vivid recollections of the large numbers who died at Misamari from fever and disease.5

Lama Yeshe came across Freda Bedi in his first few weeks at the camp. 'Before that I [had] never seen any white woman in my whole life. But she is a very caring, motherly human being.' Ayang Rinpoche also met Freda for the first time at Misamari; he remembers her as 'an English lady with Indian dress, very active, she work[ed] a lot'. Indeed, she kept herself furiously busy -- arranging, organising, improving the health facilities and the water and food supply and ensuring that there was sufficient baby food and vitamins for the newborn and nursing mothers. This became her life. When she decided to dedicate herself to an issue or a cause, it consumed her. The plight of the women among the refugees was a particular concern as they were so central to the Tibetan family groups and tended to avoid attention even when they desperately needed it. Both Kabir and Gulhima spent several weeks of their school holidays with their mother at Misamari -- not quite what they would have expected to be doing once liberated from their boarding schools in the north Indian hills. 'It was an amazing experience,' Kabir says. 'I remember her telling me that when these refugees arrived from Tibet ... the men would be absolutely shattered, probably fit to be carried. And the women would always be standing. And within days of their arrival, there would be women who would collapse and the men would stand. So it's the women who held them together in that long trek across the Himalayas.'

'Looking after 4,000 refugees, daybreak to dark, for months in Misamari Camp ... is something I can't forget,' she told friends and family in her end-of-year newsletter.

Women and children were barely 1,300 but how precious they are, for on them the continuance of the old, Tibetan Buddhist culture depends. We struggled with GLAXO and barley to save babies, whose mother's milk had dried up on the journey, or out of their suffering; others with worms and diseases contracted on the long journey down. There were no office hours. Sunrise was the signal for the first visitors.

We had no electricity, so work slowed down when the dark came. But even after that, we used to go round the barracks and into the hospitals, with volunteers and interpreters to pick up the sick and solve the day's problems. Every morning and night, the chanting of incredibly soothing and rhythmical prayers of the lamas filled the air. Each home group had its private shrine -- butter lamps were burned even if rations had to be sacrificed -- their piety and devotion meant more than bread.

I can't begin to tell you of the tragic stories all carried in their hearts. We even avoided enquiring so that old wounds would not be torn open, and gave instead positive hopes of work and resettlement. Much of my time was spent in keeping friends and family groups together when the dispersal to work sites ... and centres was taking place. For those who have lost home, country, almost every possession, family and village ties are all that is left and they assume tremendous importance and significance.6


Her most immediate task was to remedy the shortcomings in the running of these hastily set-up camps. She used the privileged access she had to India's decision makers. She went straight to the top -- to Nehru. And he listened. In early December, Nehru sent a note to India's foreign secretary [Subimal Dutt], the country's most senior career diplomat, asking for a response to concerns that Freda had brought to the prime minister's notice. He endorsed one of Freda's suggestions, 'the absolute necessity of social workers being attached to the camps'.

The normal official machinery (Nehru wrote) is not adequate for this purpose, however good it might be. The lack of even such ordinary things as soap and the inadequacy of clothing etc. should not occur if a person can get out of official routines. But more than the lack of things is the social approach.7


What concerned Nehru even more was Freda's complaint of endemic corruption. 'She says that "I am convinced that there is very bad corruption among the lower clerical staff in Missamari [sic]". Heavy bribery is referred to. She suggested in her note on corruption that an immediate secret investigation should take place in this matter.' Nehru ordered action to investigate, and if necessary to remove, corrupt officials. 'It is not enough for the local police to be asked to do it,' he instructed. It's not clear what remedial measures were taken but the interest in the running of the Tibetan camps shown by the prime minister and by his daughter, Indira Gandhi, will have helped to redress the most acute of the problems facing the refugees there.

Freda sought to raise awareness of and money for the Tibetan refugees in other ways. At the end of January 1960, just ahead of the Tibetan New Year, she wrote from Misamari to the Times of India, seeking donations from readers to allow the thousands of refugees on Indian soil to celebrate this religious festival. 'The vast majority of the Tibetan refugees are in Government refugee camps and are living on refugee rations,' she wrote. With very few exceptions they are penniless. If they light sacred lamps (deepa), they will do it by sacrificing their ghee rations for some days together. They need money for ceremonial tea and food, for incense and for community utensils ... The Tibetans are separated from country and often from family. Let us give them a feeling of welcome and belonging. Friendliness is as important as rations.'8 This was very much part of her approach to refugee welfare and reflected her own personality. For Freda, compassion and concern was as essential in aiding the refugees as food and medicine. The Tibetans needed to be reassured that the bonds of shared humanity embraced them too after the ordeal so many had suffered.

'Misamari was a bamboo village, made up of hefty bamboo huts, over a hundred of them, capable of housing eighty or ninety people,' Freda wrote in her only published account of her time in the Tibetan camps. This was titled 'With the Tibetan Refugees', which was as much a declaration of personal allegiance as a description of her role. She recounted that there had been as many as 12,000 refugees in the camp in mid-1959, but it was always intended to be a transit centre and many moved on after a few weeks. 'By the time I reached Misamari, with its fluttering prayer flags and its Camp Hospital of eighty beds, there were about four thousand still to be rehabilitated before the Camp could be closed.'9 She was writing for the government magazine she also edited, and this was not the place to raise complaints of corruption and maladministration. But she expressed sensitivity to Tibetan customs and needs.


Two main feelings united all the Tibetans. The first was a deep devotion to the Dalai Lama, and some of the big Lamas who had escaped with them. Every group had its small shrine on the barrack wall. In the case of monks and lamas their shrines were carefully set up, improvised out of wood and paper, and decorated with brass or clay images and the chased silver caskets of the kind they used as protection against the terrors of the way....

The second feeling was the feeling for family. To a man or woman who has left everything ... home, livelihood, land, friends, all that life meant, a family member or a relative, even an uncle or a cousin, assumed tremendous importance. Many had come from the battlefield, direct, and these soldier groups found their substitute family among their fellow soldiers, and developed a deep, almost mystic affection for the Commander of the Khampa Army. The monks and Lamas were divided into four main groups ... For these monks, the monastery group was supreme, and they showed a sense of discipline and a certain cleanliness and orderliness of living and programme that reminded me often of more mundane groups, like the crew of a big ship or a sports team. They had the same loyalty to the group, and the same cheerful spirit. If they took decisions they took them together, and not individually.


Freda wrote about the efforts made to educate the young Tibetans and provide vocational training. She made only glancing reference to the deployment of many thousands of Tibetans in road building gangs at a paltry daily rate, and none at all to the most unjust aspect of this close-to forced labour, the separation of large numbers of Tibetan children from their parents.10 Freda would have instinctively rebelled against such callousness, and her article with its emphasis on keeping families and groups together can be construed as advocacy of a more sensitive approach to the refugees. She was adamant that they were 'India's new responsibility' -- and they also became her new responsibility.

While based at Misamari, Freda also visited the other principal Tibetan camp, at Buxa just across the state border in West Bengal. This was both more substantial than Misamari and more forbidding. It was initially a fort built of bamboo and wood, but had been rebuilt in stone by the British and used as a detention camp -- and as it was so remote, it housed some of what were seen as the more menacing political detainees. When the buildings were made available to the Tibetans, they were in poor repair. All the same, these were allocated for Tibetan Buddhist monks and spiritual teachers. Freda referred to it rather grandly as a monastic college. And unlike Misamari, which was open for little more than a year, Buxa was intended as a long-term camp. It's estimated that at one time as many as 1,500 Tibetans lived there. Conditions were so poor that many monks contracted tuberculosis but it remained in operation for a decade.11

Towards the close of her six months in the camps, Freda Bedi again sought out Nehru, and this time was more insistent about the measures the Indian government needed to take to meet its responsibilities towards the refugees. She wrote to the prime minister to pass on the representations of 'the representatives of the Venerable Lamas and monks of the famous monasteries ... living in Misamari', though the vigour with which she expressed herself -- this was not the temperately worded letter that India's prime minister would be more accustomed to receive -- underlines her own anger at what she saw as the harsh treatment of the Tibetan clerics in particular. Her main concern was the enrolling of Tibetan refugees on road building projects.

Roadwork is heaving, exhausting, and nomadic, it is utterly unsuited to monks who have lived for long years in settled monastic communities. They can't 'take it', any more than could our lecturers, or officials, or Ashramites, or university faculties and students. Let us face that fact, and make more determined efforts to rehabilitate them in their own groups on land.12


She insisted that those who did not offer to do roadwork were not lazy, and that almost all those in the camps were 'eager and willing to work on land in a settled Community'. And she sought lenience for some of those involved in roadwork who were penalised as 'deserters' when they were forced to leave their duties because rain washed away the roads or had made shelter and food supplies precarious. 'I feel it is not worthy of Gov[ernmen]t to be vindictive when the refugees have already suffered as much in Tibet,' she told Nehru. 'We should be big hearted.'

She warned Nehru that the Indian government's responsibility for Tibetan monks wasn't limited to the 700 or so in Dalhousie in the north Indian hills and the 1,500 which at this date -- March 1960 -- were at Buxa. There were a further 1,200 monks in Misamari and new arrivals expected for some months more, and another 1,500 refugees outside the government camps living in and around the Indian border towns of Kalimpong and Darjeeling and 'in a pitiable condition'. Freda was speaking from personal observation. Her letter concluded with an appeal and a warning, again couched in language that only a personal friend could use to address a prime minister:


Panditji, I am specially asking your help as I do not want a residue of over one thousand unhappy lamas and monks to be left on our hands when Misamari closed. Nor do I want to hear totally unfair statements that 'they won't work'. I am sure you will help to clarify matters in Delhi.


Nehru asked his foreign secretary to investigate, who replied with a robust defence of the use of refugees in road-building projects. They were not acting under compulsion, he insisted, and this was a temporary measure while more permanent arrangements were made for accommodation and rehabilitation. And he suggested that some at least of the refugees were work shy, expressing just the sort of view that Freda had insisted was so unjust and uncaring. 'Mrs Bedi complains that we have been hard on the Lamas,' the foreign secretary wrote in a note to Nehru. 'There are various grades of Lamas, from the highly spiritual ones -- the incarnate Lamas -- to those who merely serve as attendents [sic]. Our information now is that having found life relatively easy ... many ordinary people who would otherwise have to earn their living by work, are taking to beads and putting forward claims as Lamas. I feel that some pressure should be brought to bear on this kind of people to do some useful work.'13

In her letter to the prime minister, Freda had mused that if Nehru could see the Buxa and Misamari camps, 'I feel you would instinctively realise the major unsolved policy problems here on the spot.'14 In a testament to her personal sway with India's leader, the following month Nehru did indeed visit Misamari. He spent two hours at the camp, looking round the hospital and seeing Tibetan girls who were being trained in handloom weaving. He addressed a crowd which consisted of almost all the 2,800 Tibetans then at Misamari, assuring them that he would act on an appeal he had received from the Dalai Lama to extend arrangements for educating both the young and adults.15 There was no greater spur to official attention to the Tibetans' welfare than the prime minister's personal oversight of the issue.
And if any had doubted just how much influence Freda held with the prime minister, persuading him to travel across the country to one of its most difficult-to-reach corners demonstrated just how influential and effective she was.

Freda did not let the matter drop. On her return to Delhi in June, she called on the prime minister and in a remarkable demonstration of her moral authority and personal influence, cajoled Nehru to write to one of his top civil servants that same evening to express his disquiet about what he had heard concerning recent ministry instructions.


One is the order that all the new refugees, without any screening, should be sent on somewhere for road-making, etc. This seems to me unwise and impracticable. These refugees differ greatly, and to treat them as if they were all alike, is not at all wise. There are, I suppose, senior Lamas, junior Lamas, people totally unused to any physical work etc. ...

Sending people for road-making when they are entirely opposed to it, will probably create dis-affection in the road-making groups which have now settled down more-or-less. I was also told that the mortality rate increases.16


It reads almost as if Freda was dictating the prime minister's note. She also prompted Nehru to question a reduction in rations for those in the camps, and to urge the provision of wheat, a much more familiar part of the Tibetan diet, rather than rice. Freda Bedi was, Nehru warned, going to call on the ministry the following day -- and civil servants were urged to take immediate action on these and any other pressing issues she raised. 'I do not want the fairly good record we have set up in our treatment of these refugees,' the prime minister asserted, 'to be spoiled now by attempts at economy or lack of care.'

Nehru's more persistent concern was the impact of providing refuge to the Dalai Lama and so many of his followers on relations with India's powerful eastern neighbour. A steady deterioration in relations eventually led to a short border war in 1962 which -- to Nehru's shock and distress -- China won. In the immediate aftermath of that military setback, Nehru came to address troops at Misamari camp, which had reverted to serving as a military base. Nevertheless, India persisted with its open-door policy for Tibetans, and somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 refugees followed the Dalai Lama into India. The Dalai Lama and his immediate entourage were settled in the hill town of Dharamsala in north India, which became the headquarters of Tibet's government-in-exile. One of Freda's more quixotic interventions with Nehru was to argue that the Dalai Lama and his entourage should remain in their temporary home in the hill resort of Mussoorie rather than relocated to Dharamsala. Nehru replied that he found her arguments 'singularly feeble'.17

Freda found her time in the Assam camps both physically and emotionally draining. On her return to Delhi she was admitted to hospital suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion. It was sufficiently serious for Kabir and Gulhima to be brought down from their boarding school in the hills. The doctors said their presence might lift her spirits. 'She responded well to our being there,' Gull says. 'Initially when we went in to see her she did not respond. But the next day she was sitting up and spoke.' Once recovered, she was determined to have a continuing role promoting the welfare of Tibetan refugees even though she was returning to her government job editing Social Welfare. Reading between the lines of Nehru's missives, Freda seems to have lobbied him on this point. 'If possible, I should like to take advantage of her work in future,' Nehru noted. 'She knows these refugees and they have got to know her. Could we arrange with the Central Social Welfare Board to give her to us for two or three weeks at a time after suitable intervals?'18

When Freda confided to her friend Olive Chandler that her heart was in working with the Tibetans, she was saying what was becoming increasingly evident to her colleagues in the Social Welfare Board. 'Freda went to these camps and her heart bled,' according to her friend and colleague Tara All Baig. 'She neglected her work with the Board more and more, travelling to the centres especially in Bengal and Dehra Dun where distress was greatest.'19 Her boss, the formidable Durgabai Deshmukh, got fed up with Freda's preoccupation with the Tibetan issue to the exclusion of other aspects of her work. She was determined to sack Freda, and only Baig's personal intervention saved her job. 'I was lashed by Durgabai's best legal arguments against retaining her. But Freda had children and needed her job. I weathered the storm and was rewarded with Freda's reinstatement.'20 She survived in her government post for another couple of years, by which time the pull of working more fully and directly with the lamas among the Tibetan refugees had become compelling.

In her letters and representations to Nehru about conditions in the Tibetan camps, Freda raised an issue about the treatment of the monks and lamas which became for her a mission. 'We are not trying seriously or systematically to send them to educational institutions to teach them English or Hindi or the provincial regional languages, without which they cannot be suitably rehabilitated,' she lamented. 'A small number should be sent now so that they can, after about 1-2 years, return to their monasteries/farms and teach the others.'21 Nehru, once again, endorsed Freda's suggestion and passed it on to civil servants, insisting that 'some priority' must be given to arranging teaching of languages in the camps, and to adults as well as children.22 Freda understood that there would be no early return to Tibet for the refugees and if the spiritual tradition which she and the Tibetans so greatly valued was to survive, then it would need to adapt to its new surroundings. She also wanted the world to appreciate Tibetan Buddhism and to have access to its richness -- to share her discovery and the joy that it brought. And for both these goals, that meant educating the coming generation of spiritual leaders -- not simply ensuring that their religious instruction and guidance continued in their new home, but that they gained proficiency in English and Hindi....

Those who came across Freda when she was a Tibetan Buddhist got no sense that she had once been engaged in radical, and indeed revolutionary, politics.

While on her initial mission at the Tibetan camps in 1959-60, Freda also visited Sikkim where a number of Tibetan monks and refugees had settled. It seems to have been then that she first met the head of the Kagyu lineage, one of the four principal schools within Tibetan Buddhism. The 16th Karmapa Lama had escaped from Tibet through Bhutan in the wake of the Dalai Lama's departure and had moved into his order's long established but near derelict monastery at Rumtek in Sikkim. Apa Pant, a senior Indian official, told Freda that she really couldn't come to Sikkim without calling on the Karmapa. Pant was an Oxford contemporary of the Bedis. He was from a princely family and had an inquiring mind about faith and religion; he went on to be one of India's most senior diplomats. At this stage of his career, Pant was India's political officer covering Sikkim and Bhutan, two small largely Buddhist kingdoms which lay on the hugely sensitive border with China, and also in charge of the four Indian missions in Tibet.23 Freda was keen to act on her friend's suggestion:

[Apa Pant] sent me on horseback -- there was no road at that point up to the monastery. And I remember the journey through the forest and it was most beautiful. As we neared the monastery, His Holiness sent people and a picnic basket full of Tibetan tea and cakes and things to refresh us. It's about twenty miles, the path up to the monastery. And when I went to see him, there he was with a great smile on the top floor of a small country monastery surrounded by birds, he just loves birds. ... There he was with his birds, sitting in his room, not on a great throne but on a carpet with a cushion on it. And just at that time, the Burmese changeover took place and the gates of Burma were shut. And I was feeling a great sense of loss that I can't see my Burmese gurus and so I asked the question that was in my mind that I was saving up to ask my guru when I met him. I asked it of His Holiness. And he gave me just the perfect answer.24


There is perhaps an allegoric aspect to much of Freda's shared memories of her relationship with her guru, as the 16th Karmapa became. But at this time political storm clouds were gathering over Burma, leading up to the military coup in March 1962 which sealed the country off from the rest of the world for a generation. The Kagyu school traced its lineage back to the eleventh century and alongside a monastic structure it emphasised meditative training and solitary retreats.25 That suited Freda. And above all she was impressed by the spirituality and personality of the 16th Karmapa, by his 'deep roaring laughter' and by a personal conduct and indeed appearance which put her in mind of the Buddha.

At the Misamari camp, Freda got to know two tulkus, reincarnations of venerated spiritual leaders, to whom she became particularly attached: Trungpa Rinpoche had led across the Himalayas the large contingent of Tibetans of which Lama Yeshe was part; Akong Rinpoche was his spiritual colleague and close friend, and Lama Yeshe's brother.26 Both were part of the Kagyu order. Trungpa, Akong and the small band of refugees who managed to complete their journey reached Misamari at the end of January 1960. Freda was the first Westerner that Trungpa had got to know. They had no common language but they established a firm bond. Freda recognised in Trungpa an exceptional spiritual presence and authority and a willingness to adapt to his new circumstances. Trungpa saw in Freda a woman of integrity and influence who could help him make that journey. 'She extended herself to me as a sort of destined mother and saviour,' he said. Within a short time, Freda was helping Trungpa to learn basic English, the first Tibetan she taught, and he was acting as Freda's informal assistant at the camp, a role which helped to spare him from the prospect of being enlisted in a road building gang.27 Trungpa and his colleagues were transferred to Buxa camp. Not long after, Trungpa managed to get out of Buxa -- the inmates were not free to come and go as they pleased -- to visit the 16th Karmapa Lama at Rumtek. The Karmapa invited Trungpa to stay and join him in rebuilding both the monastery and establishing the Kagyu tradition in new territory; Trungpa declined and moved on, an unorthodox and almost rebellious act in the deeply hierarchical and deferential culture of Tibetan Buddhism.

Shortly after Freda returned to Delhi and her job editing Social Welfare, Trungpa and Akong turned up at the door of her flat. Trungpa had travelled on from Rumtek to Kalimpong, and sent a message back to Akong in Buxa camp suggesting that they head to Delhi. Trungpa and Akong spoke no Hindi and had nothing to guide them to Freda's home beyond an address written on a slip of paper. They turned up, it seems, unannounced, confident that Mummy-La, the name by which Freda was known to the younger lamas and tulkus, would not turn them away. She didn't.28

-- The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead

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Tired little lama, Tensing Khetoo, II, is helped on way to the Misamari Refugee Camp by Aides

Trudging down out of the foothills of the Himalayan mountains (right), the Tibetan fugitives first appeared in twos and threes. But as the days passed they appeared in hundreds, following the path set a month ago by the Dalai Lama. Finally some 1,000 had reached sanctuary in camps set up to receive them in India. Eight thousand more, safely across the border, had yet to make their way to the camps.

The biggest camp was at Misamari, in Assam state, which during World War II was the site of a U.S. airbase. There the weary refugees – many of them, like the young holy Lama (above), from religious retreats now ravaged by the Chinese Communist armies – received food, shelter and medical care. It was the end of an arduous 64-day journey. Tortuously making their way on foot, they had to double back repeatedly to avoid Red Chinese soldiers and possible strafing attacks. And the steep ways were difficult even for a mountain people.

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Nearing Misamari, first Tibetan refugees come down road lading from hills to camp

The first large group of refugees from Tibet to get through to India, they may be the last. For the Reds have now virtually sealed off the Tibetan border. In India, the cruel Chinese onslaught on Tibet, and the presence of the refugees, have set up a howl and put pressure on Prime Minister Nehru to give up his long, unrealistic attempt to get along at any cost with Red China – as reported on the next page.

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Preparing for refugees. Indian workers splice bamboo for use in construction of light huts in Misamari. New camp, with 70 huts and hospital, cost India $88,000, can handle 5,000 refugees.

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Arriving Tibetans pass frontier post on way to camp. Many were men who left families, safely they hoped, because they thought the Communists would not attack towns occupied mainly by women.

In Mahayana, the “Great Vehicle”, flight from women is succeeded by compassion for them. The woman is to be freed from her physical body, and the Mahayana monk selflessly helps her to prepare for the necessary transformation, so that she can become a man in her next reincarnation. The feminine is thus still considered inferior and despicable, as that which must be sacrificed in order to be transformed into something purely masculine. In both founding philosophical schools of Mahayana Buddhism (Madhyamika and Yogachara), life, nature, the body and the soul are accordingly sacrificed to the absolute spirit (citta). The bearer of androcentric power in this phase is the “Savior” or Bodhisattva....

In early Buddhism, as in medieval Christian culture, the human body as such, but in particular the female body, was despised as a dirty and inferior thing, as something highly imperfect, that was only superficially beautiful and attractive. In order to meditate upon the transience of all being, the monks, in a widespread exercise, imagined a naked woman. This so-called “analytic meditation” began with a “perfect” and beautiful body, and transformed this step by step into an old, diseased, and dying one, to end the exercise by picturing a rotting and stinking corpse. The female body, as the absolute Other, was meditatively murdered and dismembered as a symbol of the despised world of the senses. Sexual fascination and the irritations of murderous violence are produced by such monastic practices. We return later to historical examples in which monks carried out the dismemberment of women’s bodies in reality.

There are startling examples in the literature which show how women self-destructively internalized this denigration of their own bodies. “The female novice should hate her impure body like a jail in which she is imprisoned, like a cesspool into which she has fallen”, demands an abbess of young nuns. (Faure, 1994, p. 29) Only in as far as they rendered their body and sexuality despicable, and openly professed their inferiority, could women gain a position within the early Buddhist community at all....

In the Upanishads (800–600 B.C.E.) fire continued to be regarded as a masculine element. The man thrust his “fire penis” and his “fire semen” into the “watery” cave of the female vagina. (O'Flaherty, 1982, p. 55). Here too the feminine was classified as inferior and harmful. The “way of the sun” led to freedom from rebirth, the “way of the moon” led to unwanted incarnation....

This long-running topic of the “political battle of the sexes” was picked up by the intellectual elite of European fascism in the thirties of this century. The fascists had an ideological interest in conceding the primary role in the state and in society to the warrior type and thus the monarchy. It was a widespread belief at that time that the hypocritical and cunning priestly caste had for centuries impeded the kings in their exercise of control so as to seize power for themselves. Such warrior-friendly views of history influenced the national socialist mythologist, Alfred Rosenberg, just as they did the Italian Julius Evola, who for a time acted as “spiritual” advisor to Mussolini. Both believed the masculine principle to be obviously at work in the “king” and the inferior feminine counterforce in the “priest”. “The monarchy is entitled to precedence over the priesthood, exactly as in the symbolism [where] the sun has precedence over the moon and the man over the woman", Evola wrote (Evola, 1982, p. 101)....

In his study with the descriptive title of Why can’t women climb pure crystal mountain?, the Tibet researcher Toni Huber describes an interesting mythic case where a mountain goddess was deprived of her power by a tantric Siddha and since then the location of her former rule may no longer be visited by women. The case concerns the Tsari, a mountain which was the seat of a powerful female deity in pre-Buddhist times. She was defeated by a yogi in the twelfth century. The brutal battle between her and the vajra master displays clear traits of a tantric performance. As the yogi entered the region under her control, the goddess let a series of vaginas appear by magical manipulation so as to seduce her challenger, yet the latter succeeded in warding off the magic through a brutal act of subjugation. As she then, lying on the ground, showed herself willing to sleep with her conqueror, she was at first rejected on the grounds that she was of the female sex (!). But after a while the yogi accepted her as a wisdom consort and took away all her magic powers once they had united sexually (Huber, 1994, p. 352).

From this point in time on, Tsari, which was among the most holy mountains of the highlands, became taboo for women, both for Buddhist nuns and for laity. This ban has remained in force until modern times. Groups of pilgrims who visited the mountain in the eighties sent their women back in advance. Toni Huber questioned several lamas about the significance of this misogynist custom. The majority of answers made reference to the “purity of the location” which in the view of the monks formed a geographic mandala: “Because it is such a pure abode, .... women are not allowed. ... The only reason is that women are of inferior birth and impure. There are many powerful mandalas on the mountain that are divine and pure, and women are polluting” (Huber, 1994, p. 356)....

We would like to present the social role of women in old Tibet in a very condensed manner, without considering events since the Chinese occupation or the situation among the Tibetans in exile here. Their role was very specific and can best be outlined by saying that, precisely because of her inferiority the Tibetan woman enjoyed a certain amount of freedom. Fundamentally women were considered inferior creatures. Appropriately, the Tibetan word for woman can be literally translated as “lowly born”. Man, in contrast, means “being of higher birth” (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 76). A prayer found widely among the women of Tibet pleads, “may I reject a feminine body and be reborn [in] a male one” (Grunfeld, 1996, p. 19). The birth of a girl brought bad luck, that of a son promised happiness and prosperity.

The institution of marriage itself is definitely not one of the Buddhist virtues – the historical Buddha himself traded married life for the rough life of a pilgrim. To be blessed with children was, because of the curse which rebirth brought with it, something of a burden. Shakyamuni thus fled his father’s palace directly following the birth of his son, Rahula. With unmistakable and decisive words, Padmasambhava also expressed this anti-family sentiment: "When practicing the Dharma of liberation, to be married and lead a family life is like being restrained in tight chains with no freedom. You may wish to flee, but you have been caught in the dungeon of samsara with no escape. You may later regret it, but you have sunk into the mire of emotions, with no getting out. If you have children, they may be lovely but they are the stake that ties you to samsara” (Binder-Schmidt, 1994, p. 131).

According to the dominant teaching, women could not achieve enlightenment, and were thus considered underdeveloped. A reincarnation as a female being was regarded as a punishment. The consequence of all these weaknesses, inabilities and inferiorities was that the patriarchal monastic society paid little attention to the lives of women. They were left, so to speak, to do what they wanted. Family life was also not subject to strict rules. Marriages were solemnized without many formalities and could be dissolved by mutual consent without consulting an official institution. This disinterest of the clergy led, as we said, to a certain independence among the women of Tibet, often exaggerated by sensation-hungry western travelers. Extramarital relationships were common, especially with servants. A wife nevertheless had to remain faithful, otherwise the husband had the right to cut off her nose. Of course such privileges did not exist in the reverse situation.

The much talked about polyandry, discussed with fascination by western ethnologists, was also less of an emancipatory phenomenon than an economical necessity. A wife served two men because this spared the money for a further woman. Naturally, twice the work was expected of her. Male members of the upper strata tended in contrast toward polygyny and maintained several wives. This became quite a status symbol and having more than one wife was consequently forbidden for the lower classes. In the absence of cash, a husband could pay his debts by letting his creditors take his wife. We know of no cases of the reverse.

A liberal attitude towards women on behalf of the clergy arises out of Tantrism. Since the lamas were generally viewed to be higher entities, women and girls never resisted the wishes of the embodied deities. The Austrian, Heinrich Harrer, was amazed at the sexual freedom found in the monasteries. Likewise, the Japanese monk, Kawaguchi Eikai, wondered on his journey through Tibet about "the great beauty possessed by the young consorts of aged abbots” (quoted by Stevens, 1990, p. 80). A proportion of the female tantric partners may have earned a living as prostitutes after they had finished serving as mudras. There were many of these in the towns, and hence a saying arose according to which as many whores filled the streets of Lhasa as dogs....

The “freedom” of the Tibetan women was null and void as soon as sacred boundaries were crossed — for example the gates of the monastery, which remained closed to them. Only during the great annual festivals were they sometimes invited, but they were never permitted to participate actively in the performances. In the official mystery plays the roles of goddesses or dakinis were exclusively performed by men. Even the poultry which clucked around in the Dalai Lama’s gardens consisted solely of roosters, since hens would have corrupted the holy grounds with their feminine radiation. A woman was never allowed to touch the possessions of a lama....

Through constant visions [Yeshe Tsogyal] was repeatedly urged to offer herself up completely to her master — to sacrifice her own flesh, her blood, her eyes, nose, tongue, ears, heart, entrails, muscles, bones, marrow, and her life energy. One may also begin to seriously doubt her privileged position within Tibetan Buddhism, when one hears her impressive and resigning lament at her woman’s lot:

I am a woman
I have little power to resist danger.
Because of my inferior [!] birth, everyone attacks me.
If I go as a beggar, dogs attack me.
If I have wealth and food, bandits attack me.
If I do a great deal, the locals attack me.
If I do nothing, gossip attacks me.
If anything goes wrong, they all attack me.
Whatever I do, I have no chance for happiness.
Because I am a woman it is hard to follow the Dharma.
It is hard even to stay alive.

(quoted by Gross, 1993, p. 99)

-- The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, by Victor and Victoria Trimondi


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Taking up new quarters, refugees file to thatch and bamboo huts in Misamari. Though they had to travel light, many of them brought a small statue of Buddha and some carried prayer wheels

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After washing his hair, a refugee wrings it out into Gabhru river near camp. Lamas are shaved but most Tibetans let hair grow long

Tibet’s Tragedy Wakes Up India
by Don Connery
Time Life, correspondent

With the wrath of a jilted lover, India has erupted into harsh words against Communist China. “Friendship is a good thing,” snaps a radio repairman, “but it is not possible to be friends with murderers.” “Tibet has knocked the idealism out of our relations with China,” writes a New Delhi columnist. A Mysore schoolteacher says, “Our flexible foreign policy is nothing but cowardice.”

In New Delhi, parliament anxiously debates the Tibetan situation and deplores China’s abuse of India for befriending the “rebels.” Prime Minister Nehru ponders how to say again – but without giving offense – that China is in the wrong. A British correspondent cracks that Nehru is caught on the horns of a Dalai Lama.

All the talk reveals a new realism about China, a feeling of shock at the violence of Chinese propaganda against India, and a remarkable readiness to tell off the Communists, both domestic and foreign. As a Mysore bookshop proprietor says, “The many India-China friendship associations are slowly tottering and will soon get smashed.” And the Indian Communist party finds itself isolated and ostracized as never before.

Only four years ago the romance between India and China was in full, if artificial, flower. Nehru and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai had officially enshrined the great doctrine of Panchsheel, the five principles of peaceful co-existence. But since that time disillusionment had been gradually setting in, and when Tibet exploded in mid-March individual Indians and most of the press went well beyond the tut-tutting that came from Nehru. Protest parades were launched and holy men in the sacred city of Benares prayed for the Dalai Lama’s safety. For the first time Indians widely criticized their country’s neutralism and even began discussing what was once unthinkable: joining forces with their quarrelsome neighbor, Pakistan, to defend the subcontinent.

But despite all this, India’s official policy is still one of speaking softly while carrying a small stick. Most Indians follow Nehru’s lead on neutrality and insist they want no part of the cold war. They agree with a leader of the Praja Socialist party who said, “A firm, dignified protest is the only logical stand. Counterabuse would slam the door and make it impossible for India to help Tibet in the future. Remember that India is fighting against time. We must progress economically. This is the only way to fight the Communist menace.”

With nearly half the national budget already going to the armed forces, Indian planners feel that any additional costs would wreck their hopes of economic development. They fear the expensive consequences of trying to match forces with China along a 2,000-mile border. And China has already dropped loud hints that too much protest by India might bring a succession of boundary-line disputes, as well as Chinese pressure on the buffer states.

For all these reasons there is every chance that the forms and slogans of brotherly love between India and China sooner or later will be renewed. “But it will never be quite the same,” says a thoughtful Indian student. “Now we know. We aren’t the innocents we were.”

*********************************

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Newly arrived Tibetan refugees in the Misamari camp. Marilyn Silverstone 1959

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The arrival of recent Tibetan refugees at the Misamari camp. Marilyn Silverstone 1959

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Newly arrived Tibetan Refugees at the Misamari Camp looking at photographs of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama which appeared in the most recent copy of LIFE Magazine from America. Marilyn Silverstone 1959

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Newly arrived Tibetan refugees building shelters at the Misamari camp. Marilyn Silverstone 1959

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Food being given to the newly arrived Tibetan refugees at the Misamari Camp. Marilyn Silverstone 1959

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Newly arrived refugees being given food at the Misamari Camp. Marilyn Silverstone 1959

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Newly arrived Tibetan refugees arrive at the Misamari Camp with their Assam guards. Marilyn Silverstone 1959

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Newly arrived Tibetan refugees at the Misamari Camp. Marilyn Silverstone 1959

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Newly arrived refugees waiting for trucks to take them on the 17 kilometer journey to Misamari Camp, nearby stand Indian Guards. Marilyn Silverstone 1959

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The main camp transit for Tibetan refugees at Missamari, Assam. M10 Memorial.

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Tibetan refugees building roads on the Indo-Tibet border. M10 Memorial.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Thu May 28, 2020 1:31 am

Subimal Dutt
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/27/20

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Subimal Dutt, OBE
3rd Foreign Secretary of India
In office: 11 October 1955 – 17 January 1961
Preceded by: Ratan Kumar Nehru
Ambassador of India to Germany
In office: 1952–1954
Succeeded by: A. C. N. Nambiar
Personal details
Alma mater: University of Calcutta

Subimal Dutt (সুবিমল দত্ত), OBE, ICS (5 December 1903 - 2 March 1992) was an Indian diplomat and ICS officer. He served as India's Commonwealth Secretary and later as Foreign Secretary under Jawaharlal Nehru and was also India's ambassador to the Soviet Union, Federal Republic of Germany and Bangladesh.[1]

Early life and career

Subimal Dutt hailed from the village Kanungopara near Chittagong in the Bengal Province. He was educated at the Calcutta University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and joined the ICS in 1928. He served in various capacities in Bengal districts. In 1938 he was transferred to Delhi to the Imperial Council of Agricultural Affairs to become an Additional Under-Secretary in the Department of Education, Health and Lands thereafter. In 1941, he was appointed the Government of India's Agent in Malaya.[2] After his return in December 1941 he held various posts with the Government of Bengal, from April 1944 until 22 July 1947 as Secretary of the Department of Agriculture. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1946 Birthday Honours.[3]

Diplomatic career

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In August 1947 he was appointed Commonwealth Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, From 1952-54, he was India's first ambassador to West Germany.[4] He returned as Commonwealth Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs (1954–55) and from 12 October 1955 to 11 April 1961 was the longest serving Foreign Secretary of India. As Commonwealth Secretary, along with V.K. Krishna Menon, Dutt was India's representative on the Political Committee at the Bandung Conference.[5]

The first large-scale Asian–African or Afro–Asian Conference—also known as the Bandung Conference (Indonesian: Konferensi Asia-Afrika)—was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, which took place on 18–24 April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia.[1] The twenty-nine countries that participated represented a total population of 1.5 billion people, 54% of the world's population. [2] The conference was organised by Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), Pakistan, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and India and was coordinated by Ruslan Abdulgani, secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia.

The conference's stated aims were to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by any nation. The conference was an important step towards the eventual creation of the Non-Aligned Movement. Both India and the People's Republic of China sought to claim the leadership of the emerging Asian–African nations; Chinese Premier and Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai was the political personality that most impressed delegates, along with the host of the conference, Indonesian President Sukarno.[3]

-- Bandung Conference, by Wikipedia


As Foreign Secretary in the years leading up to the Sino-Indian War of 1962, Dutt was closely involved in policy formulation regarding Tibet and China. He was also involved in shaping India's response to the Suez and Hungarian crises which happened while he was the foreign secretary.[1] He was appointed Indian Ambassador to the Soviet Union in June 1961, succeeding K.P.S. Menon. After his retirement from the Foreign Service in November 1962 he became Secretary to the President for two years. In 1964 he was appointed as the first Vigilance Commissioner of West Bengal, from 1968 to January 1972 he held the post of the Central Vigilance Commissioner. Indira Gandhi in January 1972 on short term asked him to become India's first High Commissioner to Bangladesh in 1972.[6][7] Dutt retired in April 1974 protesting against the visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Bangladesh.

Post retirement

Between 1964 and 1968, Dutt served as the Vigilance Commissioner of West Bengal where, appalled at how corruption had become endemic in public life, he coined the term 'speed money' noting that it had become a way of life.[8][9] He chaired the Industrial Licensing Policy Inquiry Committee, known as the Dutt Committee, whose report in 1969 led to the enactment of the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act in India.[10][11] Between 1968 and February 1972, he held the post of Central Vigilance Commissioner. He also authored With Nehru in the Foreign Office in 1977.[12]

Death

Subimal Dutt died on 2 March 1992 in Calcutta following a prolonged illness. He was 89.[13]

Literature

1. Amit Das Gupta, Serving India. A political biography of Subimal Dutt (1903-1992), India's longest serving Foreign Secretary (New Delhi: Manohar, 2017).
2. Amit R. Das Gupta, "Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt and the prehistory of the Sino-Indian border war", in: Das Gupta, Amit R., und Lüthi, Lorenz M., The Sino-Indian War in 1962: New Perspectives (New Delhi: Routledge, 2017): 48-67.

References

1. Gupta, Sisir (29 April 1978). "Bureaucrats and Politicians". Economic and Political Weekly. - XIII No. 17.
2. "New Indian agent Mr. Subimal Dutt Appointed". The Straits Times. 6 December 1940. Retrieved 2 December 2012.
3. London Gazette, 13 June 1946
4. "Previous Indian Ambassadors to the Federal Republic of Germany". Retrieved 2 December 2012.
5. "Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru - Volume 28" (PDF). Retrieved 2 December 2012.
6. Aiyar, Mani Shankar. "The Day After". Rediff. Archived from the original on 18 February 2013. Retrieved 2 December2012.
7. Das, B S (2010). Memoirs of an Indian Diplomat. New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill. p. 20. ISBN 9780070680883.
8. "Of MPs, fudged expenses and what India spends on them". Retrieved 2 December 2012.
9. "Cheating: A way of life". Retrieved 2 December 2012.
10. Kumar, Virendra (1979). Committees and Commissions in India, 1947-73. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. p. 112. ISBN 9788170221975.
11. "Dutt Committee Report". Retrieved 2 December 2012.
12. "With Nehru in the Foreign Office". Archived from the original on 14 April 2013. Retrieved 2 December 2012.
13. Bhatt, S C (2006). Land and People of Indian States and Union Territories: Volume 16. New Delhi: Kalpaz Publications. p. 678. ISBN 9788178353722.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Thu May 28, 2020 1:41 am

Apa Pant
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/27/20

While on her initial mission at the Tibetan camps in 1959-60, Freda also visited Sikkim where a number of Tibetan monks and refugees had settled. It seems to have been then that she first met the head of the Kagyu lineage, one of the four principal schools within Tibetan Buddhism. The 16th Karmapa Lama had escaped from Tibet through Bhutan in the wake of the Dalai Lama's departure and had moved into his order's long established but near derelict monastery at Rumtek in Sikkim. Apa Pant, a senior Indian official, told Freda that she really couldn't come to Sikkim without calling on the Karmapa. Pant was an Oxford contemporary of the Bedis. He was from a princely family and had an inquiring mind about faith and religion; he went on to be one of India's most senior diplomats. At this stage of his career, Pant was India's political officer covering Sikkim and Bhutan, two small largely Buddhist kingdoms which lay on the hugely sensitive border with China, and also in charge of the four Indian missions in Tibet.23 Freda was keen to act on her friend's suggestion:
[Apa Pant] sent me on horseback -- there was no road at that point up to the monastery. And I remember the journey through the forest and it was most beautiful. As we neared the monastery, His Holiness sent people and a picnic basket full of Tibetan tea and cakes and things to refresh us. It's about twenty miles, the path up to the monastery. And when I went to see him, there he was with a great smile on the top floor of a small country monastery surrounded by birds, he just loves birds. ... There he was with his birds, sitting in his room, not on a great throne but on a carpet with a cushion on it. And just at that time, the Burmese changeover took place and the gates of Burma were shut. And I was feeling a great sense of loss that I can't see my Burmese gurus and so I asked the question that was in my mind that I was saving up to ask my guru when I met him. I asked it of His Holiness. And he gave me just the perfect answer.24

There is perhaps an allegoric aspect to much of Freda's shared memories of her relationship with her guru, as the 16th Karmapa became. But at this time political storm clouds were gathering over Burma, leading up to the military coup in March 1962 which sealed the country off from the rest of the world for a generation. The Kagyu school traced its lineage back to the eleventh century and alongside a monastic structure it emphasised meditative training and solitary retreats.25 That suited Freda. And above all she was impressed by the spirituality and personality of the 16th Karmapa, by his 'deep roaring laughter' and by a personal conduct and indeed appearance which put her in mind of the Buddha.

-- The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead

Pant continued in the diplomatic service, and as High Commissioner or Ambassador, he represented India in many countries. It was he who personally escorted the Dalai Lama to his refuge in India....

After legal training at London’s Inns of Court, he held long discussions with Gandhi. Rethinking his goals, Pant returned to Aundh where, as the only son, he was to be groomed for succession to the throne. Instead, in a remarkable achievement, he persuaded his father to renounce the throne, dismantle the central government, disband the army and police force, and convert Aundh into a land of village democracies. Pant became Prime Minister to administer the conversion. And so it happened. The changes were in process; all was working smoothly, when the central government in Delhi sent in the army and annexed Aundh. Pant understood that in this action Nehru had the good of India in mind, and Nehru admired Pant. The two became friends, and soon Pant was appointed to East Africa.


-- Apa Pant in East Africa -- Nehru's Protégé, Edited and Compiled by Benegal Pereira

Apa B Pant in Sikkim as Political Officer

When the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan delegation crossed the Sikkim border in November 1956, they were welcomed by the Chogyal of Sikkim, Tashi Namgyal and the Indian representative in Sikkim, Apa Pant. For the following three months Apa Pant was in charge of organizing the Dalai Lama’s journey through India, visiting pilgrimage places, but also enabling the Tibetan leader to solicit foreign support for his people under siege.

Some thirty years later
my mother presented me with a little book entitled ‘Das Sonnengebet’ (Sun Prayer). I was just about to develop an interest for all things exotic, so I decided to give the seemingly simple yoga exercises a try. For several months I continued to practice the Surya Namaskars
and then I must have moved on to something else that was equally exciting and new, but the flavors of discipline and sanity that came with performing a regular exercise stayed with me for much longer.

Just recently, when researching Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö’s students in Sikkim, I found that Apa Pant had not only been the highest Indian political officer in Sikkim at the time, but also that he was an ardent practitioner of the Surya Namaskar. This stirred my memory and I phoned my mother to send me the book. Unbelievably she still found it sitting on some dusty shelf.

Sure enough the same Apa Pant who had requested Jamyang Khyentse again and again for the ultimate instruction on how to meditate (as described in chapter 5 of Sogyal Rinpoche’s Tibetan Book of Living and Dying) was the author whose instructions for yogic exercise I had followed with great curiosity many years before I even knew anything about Tibetan Buddhism.
PANT on AUNDH and his (Father) Baba or BalaSahib (PANT, Apa - Mandala: An Awakening)

... We reached Aundh at night, and laid him in a palanquin in the main temple. After the agony of those hours my stepmother broke down and wanted to offer herself as a Sati. It took me some time before I could dissuade her. Before dawn, singing and chanting, we took him to his favorite spot near the museum, half-way up the hill. As the sun rose I set fire to the pyre of this great sun-worshipper, and his remains returned to the dust of Mother Earth, and to air, water and ether within an hour.

-- Apa Pant in East Africa -- Nehru's Protégé, edited and compiled by Benegal Pereira

... In 1948, Apa Pant was chosen by the Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, to be India’s Commissioner in British East Africa. From 1951 to 1961 he was made political officer in Sikkim and Bhutan with control over Indian Missions in Tibet.

In 1956 Apa Pant helped facilitate the Indian invitation to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama by way of the Sikkim Crown Prince Thondup Namgyal.

Jamyang Kyentse returned from his pilgrimage to India and Nepal around Losar 1957, just after HH Dalai Lama had returned to Lhasa via Gangtok. It was probably during this time that Apa Pant became a student of Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö. As Sogyal Rinpoche recounts in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:

“Apa Pant told me this story. One day our master Jamyang Khyentse was watching a “Lama Dance” in front of the Palace Temple in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, and he was chuckling at the antics of the atsara, the clown who provides light relief between dances. Apa Pant kept pestering him, asking him again and again how to meditate, so this time when my master replied, it was in such a way as to let him know that he was telling him once and for all: “Look, it’s like this: When the past thought has ceased, and the future thought has not yet risen, isn’t there a gap?”

“Yes,” said Apa Pant.

“Well, prolong it: That is meditation.”

In the colophon to his teaching “Opening the Dharma” Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö writes:

“This ‘Opening the Dharma’ was written at the request of the Governor of Sikkim, Apa Sahib, by a Tibetan holding the name of Jamyang Khyentse’s emanation (from Dzongsar), stupid Chökyi Lodrö, who, with an extremely good heart, wrote uninterruptedly. May this virtue bring benefit to the Holy Dharma and to all those wandering in Samsara.”

...He authored several books some of which contain several references to Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, to whom he refers as the ‘Great Khentse Rimpoche’:

• Surya Namaskars: An Ancient Indian Exercise
• An Unusual Raja: Mahatma Gandhi and the Aundh Experiment
• An Extended Family, or Fellow Pilgrims
• A Moment in Time (his autobiography)
• Undiplomatic Incidents

-- SIKKIM e.newsletter, edited by S K Sarda

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His Excellency Apasaheb Balasaheb Pant, PS
Jomo Kenyatta, Apa Pant and Achieng Oneko
High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom
In office: 15 September 1969 – October 1972
Preceded by: S. S. Dhawan
Succeeded by: Braj Kumar Nehru
Personal details
Born: 11 September 1912, Aundh State, British India (present-day Maharashtra, India)
Died: 5 October 1992, Pune, Maharashtra, India
Father: Bhawanrao Shriniwasrao Pant Pratinidhi
Alma mater: University of Bombay; University of Oxford
Occupation: Diplomat, freedom fighter
Awards: Padma Shri (1954)

Apasaheb Balasaheb Pant, also known as Apa Pant, Appa Sahib Pant, Parashuram Rao Pant, was an Indian diplomat, prince, Gandhian, writer and freedom fighter.[1][2] A philosopher by nature and a mystic at heart, who served for over forty years as a career diplomat for the Indian Government. He served as the Indian Commissioner at various African countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and the Belgian colony of the Congo and, later, as the Indian ambassador to countries like Indonesia, Norway, Egypt, United Kingdom and Italy.[1] The Government of India honoured him in 1954, with the award of Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award for his contributions to the society,[3] placing him among the first recipients of the award.

Biography

Apa Sahib Bala Saheb Pant was born on 11 September 1912[4] in the princely state of Aundh in the British India, presently near Pune in the Indian state of Maharashtra, as the second son of Bhawanrao Shriniwasrao Pant Pratinidhi,[5] the ruler of the state.[1] After schooling at local institutions, he graduated (BA) from the University of Mumbai and secured his master's degree (MA) from Oxford University.[2] He continued his studies in London and passed Barrister at Law from Lincoln's Inn and returned to India in 1937 when the Indian freedom movement was gathering pace.[1]

Pant married Nalini Devi,[6] a medical doctor and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1942 and the couple had three children, Aditi, Aniket and Avalokita.[2] He died, aged 80, on 5 October 1992,[4] succumbing to old age illnesses.[1]

Political and diplomatic career

Pant started his political and diplomatic career as the Minister of Education of the Aundh State in 1944 when his father was the ruler of the state.[2] His tenure lasted one year and during this period and thereafter, he was involved in the discussions related to the integration of the state into Indian Union.[1] After India's independence, he entered Indian Foreign Service, got deputed to Africa and worked in Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and the Belgian colony of the Congo.[2] In 1954, he was appointed as the Officer on Special duty with the Minister of External Affairs when India's relationship with China was strained.[2] He represented India at Bandung Conference in 1956 for the formation of Non-Aligned Movement. He also worked as the Officer in Charge of the missions of Tibet and Bhutan and Sikkim,[7] and as Ambassador to Indonesia (1961–64), Norway (1964–66), Egypt (1966–69),[8] United Kingdom (1969–72) and Italy (1972–75).[1][4]

Literary career

Apasaheb Pant was a former judge for the Templeton Prize,[9] an international recognition honouring the entrepreneurship of spirit,[10] He published[2] eight books towards the latter part of his life.[1]

• Surya Namaskar, an Ancient Indian Exercise (1970)[11]
• Towards Socialist Transformation of Indian Economy (1973)[12]
• A Moment in Time (1974)[13]
Mandala: An Awakening (1976)[14]

A unique blend of political insights and philosophical reflection, this book covers a wide range of topics, thoughts and experiences in Ambassador Apa Punt’s career. It speaks of his early years on the princely state of Aundh, and comments on events in East Africa, Indonesia, the Himalayan states and Egypt, countries where he served as head of the Indian diplomatic mission.

The central core of the book, perhaps the part most significant in relation to India’s future, is his discussion of the Tibet-China-India relationship with reference to the years 1955 to 1961, which saw both the height of India’s amity with China, and the tense prelude to the 1962 war between them. Apa Pant, who was during that time India's Political Officer in Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet, asserts that India throughout had a policy of non-interference in Tibet’s political affairs, though deeply concerned with the preservation of its religious and cultural traditions.

Many unusual personal glimpses are given to us: the Dalai Lama and Jawaharlal Nehru; the rulers of Sikkim and Bhutan; Nasser dismayed at the 1967 war; the dour Chinese generals in occupied Tibet. The book concludes with u discussion of Western civilization and the Nation-State.

Pervading the book is Apa Pant's concern with man’s inner being, a consciousness that is never far from his writing, whether personal or political.

Mandala: An Awakening, by Apa Pant, by Amazon Kindle


• Survival of the Individual (1983)[15]
• Undiplomatic Incidents (1987)[16]
• An Unusual Raja – Mahatma Gandhi and the Aundh Experiment (1989)[17]
An Extended Family of Fellow Pilgrims (1990)[18]

Awards

In 1954, he was awarded with Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award for his contributions to the society, placing him among the first recipients of the award.

See also

• Pant Pratinidhi family
• Bhawanrao Shriniwasrao Pant Pratinidhi
• India portal
• Politics portal

References

1. "Benegal". Benegal. 2015. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
2. "Apa Pant in East Africa". Awaaz Magazine. 1 November 2011. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
3. "Padma Shri" (PDF). Padma Shri. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 November 2014. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
4. "WMF Labs". WMF Labs. 2015. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
5. "Free Library". Free Library. 2015. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
6. Gaurav Desai, Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination, p. 75
7. "TH Library" (PDF). TH Library. 2015. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
8. "Middle East Institute". Middle East Institute. 2015. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
9. "The Templeton Prize – Judges. Previous Judges". Templeton Foundation. 2015. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
10. "Templeton About". Templeton Foundation. 2015. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
11. Apa Pant (1970). Surya Namaskar, an Ancient Indian Exercise. Sangam Books. ISBN 9788125013877.
12. Bhuleshkar, Ashok V.; Pant, Apa B. (1973). Towards Socialist Transformation of Indian Economy. Humanitites Press.
13. Pant, Apa B. (1974). A Moment in Time. United Kingdom: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. ISBN 9780340147900.
14. Apa B. Pant (1976). Mandala: An Awakening. Sangam Books. p. 218. ISBN 978-0861310630.
15. Apa Pant (1983). Survival of the Individual. Sangam Books. ISBN 9780861314003.
16. Pant Apa B. (1987). Undiplomatic Incidents. Majestic Books. ISBN 9780861316908.
17. Apa Pant (1989). An Unusual Raja Mahatma Gandhi and the Aundh Experiment. Oscar Publications. ISBN 9780861317523.
18. Apa Pant (1990). An Extended Family or Fellow Pilgrims. Oscar Publications. ISBN 9780863111099.

Further reading

• Apa Pant (1970). Surya Namaskar, an Ancient Indian Exercise. Sangam Books. ISBN 9788125013877.
• Bhuleshkar, Ashok V.; Pant, Apa B. (1973). Towards Socialist Transformation of Indian Economy. Humanitites Press.
• Pant, Apa B. (1974). A Moment in Time. United Kingdom: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. ISBN 9780340147900.
• Apa B. Pant (1976). Mandala: An Awakening. Sangam Books. p. 218. ISBN 978-0861310630.
• Apa Pant (1983). Survival of the Individual. Sangam Books. ISBN 9780861314003.
• Pant Apa B. (1987). Undiplomatic Incidents. Majestic Books. ISBN 9780861316908.
• Apa Pant (1989). An Unusual Raja Mahatma Gandhi and the Aundh Experiment. Oscar Publications. ISBN 9780861317523.
• Apa Pant (1990). An Extended Family or Fellow Pilgrims. Oscar Publications. ISBN 9780863111099.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Thu May 28, 2020 1:59 am

Part 1 of 4

Apa Pant in East Africa -- Nehru's Protégé
Edited and Compiled by Benegal Pereira
Accessed: 5/27/20

While on her initial mission at the Tibetan camps in 1959-60, Freda also visited Sikkim where a number of Tibetan monks and refugees had settled. It seems to have been then that she first met the head of the Kagyu lineage, one of the four principal schools within Tibetan Buddhism. The 16th Karmapa Lama had escaped from Tibet through Bhutan in the wake of the Dalai Lama's departure and had moved into his order's long established but near derelict monastery at Rumtek in Sikkim. Apa Pant, a senior Indian official, told Freda that she really couldn't come to Sikkim without calling on the Karmapa. Pant was an Oxford contemporary of the Bedis. He was from a princely family and had an inquiring mind about faith and religion; he went on to be one of India's most senior diplomats. At this stage of his career, Pant was India's political officer covering Sikkim and Bhutan, two small largely Buddhist kingdoms which lay on the hugely sensitive border with China, and also in charge of the four Indian missions in Tibet.23 Freda was keen to act on her friend's suggestion:
[Apa Pant] sent me on horseback -- there was no road at that point up to the monastery. And I remember the journey through the forest and it was most beautiful. As we neared the monastery, His Holiness sent people and a picnic basket full of Tibetan tea and cakes and things to refresh us. It's about twenty miles, the path up to the monastery. And when I went to see him, there he was with a great smile on the top floor of a small country monastery surrounded by birds, he just loves birds. ... There he was with his birds, sitting in his room, not on a great throne but on a carpet with a cushion on it. And just at that time, the Burmese changeover took place and the gates of Burma were shut. And I was feeling a great sense of loss that I can't see my Burmese gurus and so I asked the question that was in my mind that I was saving up to ask my guru when I met him. I asked it of His Holiness. And he gave me just the perfect answer.24

There is perhaps an allegoric aspect to much of Freda's shared memories of her relationship with her guru, as the 16th Karmapa became. But at this time political storm clouds were gathering over Burma, leading up to the military coup in March 1962 which sealed the country off from the rest of the world for a generation. The Kagyu school traced its lineage back to the eleventh century and alongside a monastic structure it emphasised meditative training and solitary retreats.25 That suited Freda. And above all she was impressed by the spirituality and personality of the 16th Karmapa, by his 'deep roaring laughter' and by a personal conduct and indeed appearance which put her in mind of the Buddha.

-- -- The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead

Table of Contents:

• Apa Pant in East Africa -- Nehru's Protégé
• Early Life On Aundh:
• Apa on Nalini: ©
• Pant’s tenure as India’s first Commissioner for East and Central Africa, as it relates to Kenya:
• Background Pant arrived in Kenya by ship on August 15, 1948
• III. Evolution and Evaluation of Pant’s tenure
• INITIAL PHASE (August, 1948 – June 1952)
• TERMINAL PHASE (January 1952 – February 1954
• CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
• REMINISCENCES OF APA PANT: By Professor Robert Gregory
• REMINISCENCES OF APA PANT: By Peter Wright
• The Koinange Story:
• Nazareth on Nehru:
• Pant on Pinto:
• APA PANT Associations with Suryakant and Leela Patel:
• PANT on AUNDH and his (Father) Baba or BalaSahib
• Compiler Benegal Pereira
• Bibliography

I have sought to focus this compilation essentially on Apa Pant’s period in East Africa. To this end, the material includes details about his life and work before his assignment, and there is little dealing with the long period thereafter. I would like to thank all the following persons who assisted me with producing this compilation: Zahid Rajan who as publisher of Awaaz first suggested this topic to me several months ago, then gave me the benefit of several postponements because of other work pressures and finally pushed me to complete the task; Mrs. Leela Patel, a very close friend of Pant together with her late husband Suryakant starting with his period in East Africa, who was kind enough to provide me with many of the photographs supporting this commentary; Aditi and Aniket Pant who put up with my constant barrage of emails and requests for photos. Robert Gregory and Peter Wright for meeting with me and sharing their first hand experiences, having had long standing personal contacts with Pant before and after his East African tenure for their contributions as well as many interesting conversations over past years; and Angelo Faria who had lived in Kenya during Pant’s tenure, with whom I had a substantial interaction during this compilation, and for the substantial analytical piece (and rebuttals) that he prepared at relatively short notice and within tight deadlines.

In August 1948, less than a year after the attainment of Indian independence, a still deeply British colonial Kenya colony with its Asian minority who were almost wholly British rather than Indian citizens, made its first acquaintance with an engaging and charming couple, an aristocratic Indian and his medical surgeon wife – Apa and Nalini PANT. Although their arrival was marked by high positive expectations among the Asians and a distrustful respect by the local colonial authorities, by its end about 5 3/4 years later in February it was to be a valuable learning experience for both parties. Sri Apasaheb Pant, an Indian prince and son of the tenth Pant-Pratinidhi and ruler of the kingdom of Aundh, moved by the idealistic calls of Gandhi to national service and of Nehru to diplomatic duty, left his father's state of Aundh to become the first Indian Commissioner for East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar); within a couple of years, his mandate would be extended to cover British colonies in Central Africa (Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland) and eventually the Belgian colony of the Congo.

Bio-sketch:

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Apa Pant

Sri. Apa Sahib Pant was born on 11th September 1912.

Educated: at University of Bombay (BA) and Oxford University (MA); Barrister-at-Law, Lincoln's Inn; return to India in 1937.

Award: Padma Shri 1954. Married: 1942 Nalini Raje, M.B, BS, F.R.C.S

Children: Aditi, Aniket and Avalokita Interests include: Photography, yoga, tennis, skiing and gliding.

Died: Apasaheb Pant died 5th October 1992.

Diplomatic Career:

Pant's training in the arts of diplomacy began much before his arrival in East Africa. Indeed, before Indian independence he had already served as Education Minister and Prime Minister of Aundh State (1944/45) under his father's tutelage, and immediately thereafter he had been deeply engaged in the discussions leading to the integration of his state within the Indian Union. He wrote: “life is a constant arrival and departure, whether the journey is from one room to another or from one continentto another”. His subsequent diplomatic career spanned some three decades, during which time he was drafted into increasingly delicate and senior diplomatic assignments. These covered: Officer on Special Duty, Ministry of External Affairs 1954/55 when he worked directly with Nehru on matters relating to the Nonaligned country group resulting from the Bandung Conference in 1956; Officer in Sikkim and Bhutan with control over Indian missions to Tibet (1954/55) when relations with China were tense, especially after the defection to India of the Dalai Lama; followed by ambassadorships to Indonesia (1961/64), Norway (1964/66), Egypt (1966/69), United Kingdom (1969/72) and ending with Italy (1972/75).

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Apa Pant

Pant is the author of several books, all of which offer glimpses to his time in East Africa, these include:
An Unusual Raja - Mahatma Gandhi and the Aundh Experimen, Hyderabad: Sangam Books, 1989.
Surya Namaskar, an ancient Indian exercise, Bombay, Orient Longmans, 1970.
A Moment in Time, Bombay: Orient Longman, 1974.
Mandala: An Awakening, Bombay: Orient Longman, 1976.
Survival of the Individual, London: Sangam Books, 1983.
Undiplomatic Incidents;. Bombay, Orient Longman Limited, 1987
An Extended Family of Fellow Pilgrims,. Bombay, Sangam Books, 1990

Early Life

On Aundh:


Aundh a small princely kingdom, now situated in the state of Maharashtra, about a hundred miles south east of Poona. The story of Aundh goes back more than four hundred years back to the middle 17th century in about 1630. Its founder, Trabak Pant Pratinidhi, a poor Brahmin, turned warrior during the period of Sambhaji Raje and Rajaram Maharaj. The story of Aundh ended almost four hundred years later in 1951, with the death of Raja Bhawanrao Pant-Pratinidhi, also known as Balasaheb, the last Raja of Aundh (Apasaheb’s father). At the earlier urging of the Mahatma, Aundh was absorbed into free India on March 8, 1948. Apa Sahib Pant, a prince of the Pant dynasty was the second son of Raja Bhawanrao Pant. Bhawanrao or Balasaheb, was Apa Sahib’s father, and referred to him affectionately as his Baba. Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas about how he envisioned democracy in India took root in Aundh. Discussion between the Mahatma and Pant's father, Raja Bhawanrao and later Pant himself later evolved into ‘Aundh experiment’, designed to experiment with decentralization of democratic decision making in Aundh. After Apa Sahib returned home from his studies in England, Maurice Frydman, who Apasaheb referred to as genius, a saintly social worker, engineer and friend of Pandit Satwalekar, urged Balasahib to give up all power to the people of Aundh. Apa Sahib recounts a conversation with the Mahatma in the context of Aundh. The Mahatma said: “tell me, after being called to the bar and spending the money of the poor peasants of Aundh on yourself for five years, are you going to migrate to a city such as Bombay or Delhi and make money by exploitation? Or have you any sincere sense of obligation, of doing your duty, dharma, by serving the poor people of Aundh, who have until now, fed and clothed you?” Apasaheb’s quite taken aback by this direct question replied: “Bapuji, what can I say? I would certainly like to help my old father, and stay on in Aundh. At least such is my present inclination”. The Mahatma smiled, and said, “Look Apa, you are dealing with me now. My old friend Pandit Satawalekarji has written to me that your father wants to hand over the kingdom of Aundh to his people. I hope this intention is genuine. It would be truly in keeping with our ancient customs which follow by those good rulers who knew what their dharma was……” Peter Wright, a long standing and close English friend of Pant from their university days at Oxford until Pant's death, and followed him to India during the II World War period through Indian Independence and Kenya in the early 1950s,and after his deportation in 1952 back again to India,, wrote: “I am well aware of Apa's feelings with regard to the absorption of the small state of Aundh into the Bombay Presidency and subsequently into the state of Maharashtra. I visited Aundh when Apa himself was the Chief Minister and had, with enthusiastic local support, transformed it into a tiny model democratic state -- an outstanding success -- with the full support of his father. He [Pant] has never been given the recognition he deserved for doing this; incidentally it also led to a number of Indians from outside, who were "wanted" by the British authorities for political reasons, taking refuge in Aundh State. Also I am not aware that Apa has been given adequate recognition for his hard and in the circumstances painful work that he did in helping to persuade other Maratha princes to surrender their sovereignties to the newly forming Indian Union Government in the interests of constructing a truly united and democratic state. Pandit Nehru was, of course, well aware of this when he selected Apa for the Nairobi position”. The clash between Shivaji's militaristic views and Gandhiji's pacifism, inevitably affected both Apa and his father, with the Gandhian views finally triumphing (as they did with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the NWFP). I personally felt immensely privileged v to know and to have the love and friendship of this great duo, father and son, and to learn from them something of the great Maratha history and traditions.

On Leaving Aundh for East Africa (1947 – 1951): © Pant, Apa; An Unusual Raj, Sangam Book, 1989

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Apasaheb’s expressed his emotional feeling at the start of his diplomatic career, when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru offered him his first diplomatic assignment – as first ambassador of free and independent India to colonial East Africa. It was in December of 1947 that Apa Sahib was summoned to go meet with Nehru in Bombay. Pant said, “Doors that open unexpectedly are not always easy to pass through”. His energies had been in a state of dull suspension, given the prospect and dissolution of Aundh, but were stirred again as Nehru asked him “Apa, go to East Africa and be our first representative”. He later recounted: “ To be a representative, a Pratinidhi as in our family tradition, was not only exhilarating in a personal way but something I had felt my father would welcome for his son, an honor that would be his as well as mine. But the merger of Aundh had left many problems for the family, and not all of them had been settled”. Later, in New
Delhi, when taking leave of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Pant told Nehru that he knew nothing of diplomacy, or of Africa. “Never Mind”, Nehru said jokingly, “Go and shoot a few lioApa and Nalini Pantns!” Pant said he did, many of them with a camera, of course. In this and in every way it was a terrific experience. And he wanted his father to share in it; In 1950 Pant’s father paid a visit to Nairobi. Apasaheb’s speaks:

Apa Sahib speaks:

“By the end of 1947, Nalini and I left Aundh. That last day in Aundh is still vivid in my memory. I could not believe that I was leaving Aundh for good. All the pots and pans, beds and cupboards and chairs were loaded on to a state-red number plate truck.

Baba, with his red cap, had come out of the palace to bless his daughter-in-law and me, and our little, sweet four year old daughter, Aditi. Baba was happy and also sad. Happy because his daughter-in-law was to start practicing medicine and surgery in Poona - She had built a house there on the plot given to her by her father and mother. And sad because little Aditi was also leaving.

I tried to settle down to a routine in Poona at the end of 1947. I did not know what to do. Someone suggested that I stand for the constituent assembly from the Deccan state constituency. I did, but failed to get in by one vote. Shri Munavalli won against me. So I retired even more into my minuscule ego.

It was Raosaheb Patwardhan who, like the affectionate elder brother that he was, dragged me out of my hole, and forcibly took me to see Jawaharlal Nehru in Bombay. I was of course, very hurt that the congress, and the high command had completely forgotten what Raja Bhawanrao had done for the freedom struggle and I secretly hoped that Baba would at least, be made a raj pramukh if not given a ministership.

But who would care for Aundh when even the Mahatma was forgotten? So when Raosaheb ushered me into the presence of the shinning, smiling, extremely self-assured first prime minister of independent India, I was aggrieved.

Panditji however could charm anyone, any time, with hardly any effort. He was then at the height of his power.

When Raosaheb asked him if he had forgotten me, he said, “No, I was just thinking of him just the other day.” Then turning to me he said, “Apa, go to East Africa as our first ambassador there.”

Ambassador? I was to be an Ambassador? I should have shouted for joy, but didn’t feel like it then. My ego would take a while to assert itself again.

I asked, “What do I do there as an ambassador, sir?” Mischievously Panditji said, “Oh, nothing much! Giver dinners, and perhaps shoot a few lions (With a camera, of course).” So I sailed alone by the S.S.Khandala, the oldest ship of the P & O line. Baba and the rest of the family were there to bid me farewell. Was Baba proud that I, his second son was now an ambassador of free India?

Was I happy and proud? Hardly, I was disgusted with myself. I did not like leaving Baba all alone.

As I boarded the ship, I wept. Tatya Inamdar was to accompany me as my private secretary. It was Nalini’s idea and she had persuaded Jawaharlal to agree to it. It was quite unusual for a person outside the I.F.S. or the secretarial cadre to be appointed to go abroad at the Government of India’s expense, and everyone must have thought that it would serve me better if I had a wiser person to guide me. Tatya, as usual, did so with care and affection. I missed Aundh, Baba, Nalini, Aditi and little Aniket, our son who was then just a year and a half old.

Understandingly, Nalini scarified her own career as an honorary doctor ate the Sassoon Hospital in Poona, not to mention her professorship and budding practice, to join me in 1949. Thus Aditi and Aniket grew up amongst lions, rhinoceros and zebras. Those five and half years in Africa where glorious for us.

Once again I was filled with new motivation. My ego re-inflated itself and I wanted Baba to see me confident once more. So Baba came to stay with us for a while. He travelled widely.

in East Africa and was happy. He was especially fond of little Aniket. Aditi was too volatile for his liking.”

Apa on Nalini © Pant, Apa; An Extended Family of Fellow Pilgrims; Sangam Book, 1990

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Nalini Pant

The longevity and synergy of the Apa –Nalini partnership, and its resulting legacy, is a tribute to the symbiotic relationship between Apakaka and Akka, respectively (as they lovingly referred to each other).
Apakaka’s initial encounter with Akka was at her eldest brother’s small two room flat in Bombay. It had been preceded by a meeting he had with Natesh Appajii Dravid, Akka’s father, who had first come to meet him as an eligible bachelor in Poona the previous year to make a proposal of marriage. At this time, after having secured her fellowship in Surgery (F.R.C.S.) in Scotland, she had been appointed to head of a women’s hospital in Rajasthan. Curiously, Apa and Tai Dravid, Akka’s mother, had a brief letter exchange five years earlier, when she wrote him stating that she had: “watched (my) career with interest”, so Apa appears to have been tagged much earlier as a potential son-in-law for the well suited and educated Nalini.
Apa confesses that at this very first meeting with Akka he was “…deeply impressed by her apparent calm and dignified bearing, her high intelligent forehead, her sharp, steady, critical, non smiling, even stern, but kindly eyes..” But the spell was broken when “going to the kitchen, she banged into a wooden screen in front of the door”.

Apa Sahib speaks:

“Each one of us, whether it was Africa or elsewhere, looked at the same event or people from different angles. In any case no two people can even share the same point of view of life. Our view points were different – often clashed – but our objectives were the same: making friends for India and building a world network of mutual understanding. It was, of course, a fascinating task. It was very joyful and fulfilling too. At the end of it, we both felt we really had lived.

From Pandit Nehru, Indira Gandhi, to Aditi, Aniket and Avalokita, all felt that what I said or did had to have the final stamp of Akka’s approval! In fact in 1958, Pandit Nehru whilst staying with us in Gangtok, asked Akka whether she had read ‘that stupid report of your journey in Tibet by Apa?.’ He also asked her, ‘Do you approve what Apa does or write?’

Indira had a especially soft corner for Akka as did all the various ministers, such as Swaran Singh, Jagjivan Ram, Subrahmanyam and others. All the foreign secretaries would, in half-joke half-serious, manner, ask Akka to control me!! She did, magnificently.’

They spent the first five years prior to 1946 in the Aundh, where their two first children were born, Aditi and Aniket, and later their third child Avalokita. After a short interval in Poona where Nalini had to give up her job at the Sasson Hospital as well as her private practice, for the start of the Pant’s first diplomatic assignment, and as commissioner for East Africa.

Apa Sahib speaks:

“Akka can be merciless in her criticism. Her objective is not to put down or show one in a derogatory light, but to help one correct oneself: to help one to strive even harder. People like me are over generous with compliments and approvals. Our approval therefore has little value. People like Akka on the other hand are frugal, sparing in theirs, therefore all seek them and feel fulfilled when they receive them”.

“Akka has been the greatest, the most persistent, ceaseless but loving, image smasher of all! Pretence, inadequacy, hypocrisy, falsehood of any kind, she could never tolerate, and said so openly and instantly. What a fellow Pilgrim she has been” (Pant).

As one lives and experiences same or similar situations, one’s mental and intelligent vibrations start to respond to the person most intimate to oneself. Words then become unnecessary. Between Akka and me it has been so far for the last so many years. Thoughts, feelings, just get transferred spontaneously. It is great fun!! It is also a discovery of some aspects of that unified mind-energy in which we exist. Akka of course has helped me tremendously in this self-discovery.

Pant’s tenure as India’s first Commissioner for East and Central Africa, as it relates to Kenya: a personal interpretation. (Personal Communication from Angelo Faria: November 2007)

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Angelo Faria

Angelo Faria was born to Goan parents in Mombasa and completed his secondary schooling in Kenya. He went on to obtain undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics, respectively, as a Kenya Government Bursar and Leverhulme Undergraduate Scholar at the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom in the 1950s (where President Mwai Kibaki was his exact contemporary) and as a Ford Foundation Fellow in the U.S. at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in the 1960s. He was first employed as a senior official within the erstwhile East African High Commission (EAHC)/East African Common Services Organization (EACSO) in Nairobi for just under a decade. Thereafter, and following a short two-year spell with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Lusaka, Zambia, he was for about 30 years a staff member of the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC. He retired from it in 2003 and currently resides in Washington DC. He remains keenly interested in, and is a perceptive private commentator on, the East African political environment, through continuing personal contacts and periodical visits.

I. Introduction

My evidentiary background in preparing this piece is relatively modest and somewhat informal in character, being limited essentially to prior information on the evolving political environment in Kenya especially as it impacted on Asians acquired, inter alia, from having lived in Kenya both before and after independence, engaging over several decades in wide-ranging conversations with others, and reviewing cursorily earlier academic books published in the 1980s including : Dana Seidenberg (Uhuru and the Kenya Indians, 1983 and Mercantile Adventurers, Ch. 6; 1996) out of the University of Syracuse in the United States and J.M. Nazareth (Brown Man, Black Country,1981).

It is also buttressed by my more recent reading in March/April this year through incomplete sets of past Kenyan newspapers covering the period 1949-54 (East African Standard, Colonial Times, Daily Chronicle, Goan Voice and Daily Mail) that I found serendipitously in the US Library of Congress here in Washington. This was piqued by a spate of recent “revisionist” academic books published in the last three years: James Franks (Scram from Kenya, 2004); Caroline Elkins (Britain’s Gulag, 2005); David Anderson (Histories of the Hanged, 2005); and Zarina Patel (Unquiet, 2006) and an incomplete set of material copied to the UK India Office titled: “Kenya Colony Intelligence and Security Summaries Reports (1947-49”) which was released in 1998, and received recently during several interesting discussions with Pyralli Ratansi. More recently still, through the personal courtesy of Benegal Pereira, I have read through the relevant sections relating to Pant’s tenure in East Africa weaved by him in his four books: A Moment in Time (1974; Chapter Four); Mandala (1978; Chapter 2); Undiplomatic Incidents (1987; Chapter 1); and An Extended Family of Fellow Pilgrims (1990; Chapter 11); these have helped me to enable Pant’s own words, as reflected in numerous quotations (in which errors in the spelling of proper names are left unchanged) to be inserted in the text, so Pant could, as it were, be allowed to speak for himself with the benefit of considerable hindsight..

The outline of political developments in Kenya generally are thus well known from published sources; that relating to the impact of such developments on the Asian community is perhaps less well explored (apart from Seidenberg’s books), and in particular the role played by Pant which is of course the central concern of this piece. In this respect, Pant’s own evaluation interspersed through his books, although profiting modestly from the passage of time, is curiously more anecdotally than substantively reflective. As a result, I have had to try and first to sketch out with a broad brush the political environment Pant faced on his arrival and its evolution during his tenure; my effort is, therefore, counterfactual in the sense that it attempts to understand Pant’s private thinking of political developments as these evolved, as if Pant was a central player which of course he was not.

I am fully conscious that this is not the standard “scholarly” contribution, annotated by fuller reference to the extensive relevant literature that has emerged, and backed by associated citations (other than for quotations from books written by Pant noted above, which are specifically referenced by year of publication and page). These quotations are useful as providing some indication of Pant’s thinking at the time, but they provide in my view little indication regarding his perceptions about whether his exhortations were influencing the racial groups (especially Africans) to whom they were addressed at the time. Moreover, with one notably short exception (see my conclusions section), there is very little by way of balanced reservation arising from a consideration of subsequent developments in his ex-post analysis of his thinking of the period.

If the piece is not scholarly, it is only because, for several personal and time-related reasons, I have been unable to commit myself to an authoritative survey of the relevant materials. As such, this piece constitutes an entirely personal and somewhat inferential interpretation exclusively from Pant’s supposed perspective, but limited essentially to Kenya rather than to the wider geographical sphere to which he was accredited. I believe that the modestly revisionist case I make out is at least plausible on its face. I fully recognize that there is, however, always the distinct possibility that some of the inferences from an admittedly modest factual base that I draw may be prospectively invalidated by more knowledgeable contributors and even from the discovery of countervailing factual information.

In this first section, the emphasis is on delineating in general terms the environment that Pant, a diplomatic neophyte, would have found when he first arrived in Kenya in mid August 1948. In the second or evaluation section the emphasis shifts to consider more specifically Pant’s strategy and activities as these evolved during his tenure in Kenya, so far as I have been able to gauge these from his writings and my own inferences.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Thu May 28, 2020 2:01 am

Part 2 of 4

II. Background

Pant arrived in Kenya by ship on August 15, 1948 to much fanfare on his initial appointment as Commissioner of India to East Africa, his mandate gradually being widened to include Central Africa in 1950 and the Belgian Congo in 1952, and his designation concurrently being upgraded to Commissioner General; he was eventually to vacate his appointment under much less auspicious circumstances some 5 ½ years later at end February, 1954. While Pant’s remit grew wider over the term of his assignment and the paths traversed by these countries resulted in the same outcome of eventual political independence from British rule, there were important differences as between them; these related to both the nature and speed of this process, tied to the presence in their populations of white immigrants, as well to their legal status of colony (e.g. Southern Rhodesia and Kenya) versus protectorate or UN mandated Trust territories e.g. Uganda and Tanganyika and Ruanda-Urundi).

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Jomo Kenyatta Apa Pant Acheing Oneko

Two factors were, I believe, nevertheless critical in explaining why Pant’s own diplomatic activities should have been centered largely in East Africa, and within it mostly to Kenya. First, the relative numbers of residents of Indian descent in Pant’s remit (hereinafter Indians or Asians), although the number of them actually holding Indian rather than British nationality was, at best, rather miniscule. The numbers of people of Indian descent at end 1952 (as reported by Nehru in a response to a question in the Indian Parliament in 1953) were estimated as: Kenya: 152,000; Uganda: 33,367; Tanganyika: 56,499; Zanzibar and Pemba: 15,812; Northern Rhodesia: 2,600; Southern Rhodesia: 4,150; Nyasaland: 4,000;

Belgian Congo: 720. What this suggests is that Pant’s leverage in the British territorial regions outside the East African, premised on the number of their Indian residents, would have been at best exiguous. Moreover, even within the four distinct East African territories, it was clear that the issues which bedeviled the interactions in racial terms between European or native British citizens and Non European or non-native British citizens were present to a much less significant degree in the other three East African countries as compared with Kenya. This was attributable initially to the former’s somewhat different legal status as protectorates or trust territories relative to Kenya as a colony, and later to the broadly satisfactory progress that was being made within them towards constitutional reform leading to self government and eventually to full political independence.

Kenya’s case was, of course, an entirely different one, for reasons that are already too well known in the published literature to warrant being extensively detailed here. Briefly put, Pax Brittanica provided the bedrock assurance to emigration for long term settlement in the 20th century from both the United Kingdom and the Indian sub-continent, stemming largely from intrinsically economic motivations. This applied to the successive waves of European immigrants in the 20th century, accentuated for periods immediately following upon the ending of the First and Second World Wars, who engaged in agricultural, larger business and higher level government-related activities. It extended also to a steady stream of Asian or Indian immigrants that flowed in, starting with the construction of the Kenya/Uganda Railway and expanding into associated retail trading lower level governmental cadres, and the service sector generally.

Second, the interaction between Europeans and Asians on inequitable terms -- the numerically dominant Africans being treated at this stage in purely residual terms for policy purposes – had produced inter-racial flash points already in the 1920s especially in Kenya. (There were contemporaneously, of course, some minor difficulties associated with the ginning of cotton in Buganda by Indians). It has since been suggested that to head off any incipient agitation by Indians, at the request of the “settler” Europeans the United Kingdom government issued the notorious British White Paper in 1923 (also known as the Devonshire Declaration) which led to the defiant nonpayment of poll tax by several Indians in 1924. It asserted baldly the paramount nature of safeguarding the interests of the African majority as the overarching objective of colonial policy in Kenya. Later in 1934, then Colonial Secretary Ormsby Gore would even go on record as stating that he regarded Indians as “mere interlopers in a country that belonged only to Africans and Europeans”.

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Jomo Kenyatta, Apa Pant

Indeed, it was precisely such considerations that, long before their own political independence in 1947, attracted the interest and concern of the British Imperial Government as well as the solidarity of (non Muslim) politicians in India. Initially, this resulted in several Indian ICS officials (Srinivasan, Menon) coming out in the early 1920s out to examine and report on the conditions faced by Indian labour in Kenya. Eventually this would lead even to the presidency of the East African Indian National Congress (EAINC), modeled on that of the Indian National Congress (INC), being offered on a non residential basis to first Mrs. Sarojini Naidu (1924 and again in 1929) and subsequently Pandit H.N. Kunzru (1928 and 1929). It is moreover sometimes glossed over that the decision to nominate Pant as Commissioner of India for East Africa represented a direct response by Nehru to the formal request made earlier to the INC by the EAINC in September, 1946 during its 18th annual session in Mombasa.

It seems to me upon reflection that the evaluation of Pant's almost 5 1/2 years tenure in Kenya can be regarded as being largely influenced by the continuing interplay of five factors whose very rank ordering in importance understandably changed during the period of Pant’s tenure:

First, the degree of interest shown by India and specifically Nehru in speeding up the process of decolonization – a task for which the Labour Government was to prove a most accommodative partner, as this was the chief foreign policy tenet of the Fabian socialist creed with which it was imbued. In this context, I believe that as far back as 1937 Nehru, as the principal foreign policy spokesman of the Indian National Congress, had come to see that Indian emigrant minorities in colonial territories needed to be suitably sensitized to the importance of respecting and identifying with the aspirations of the majority population. One comment of Nehru to Pant bears quoting: “We Indians are in the middle…and we have a chance, a duty, to try and prevent the growth of a racial conflict” (Pant 1974, p.50). But while decolonization may well have been Nehru’s primary foreign policy preoccupation soon after Indian independence in August 1947, nevertheless by the early to mid 1950s and as India’s world role grew, this gave way gradually in his mind to a greater focus on political solidarity within a wider, so-called non-aligned comity of developing nations, some of which were former colonies.

This change of focus crystallized in India’s formulation of the regional Panchsheel principles with China over Tibet in June 1954 and the Bandung Non-Aligned Conference in April 1955, in which Pant was to play a prominent advisor’s part. It represented Nehru’s evolving philosophy of searching out for an independent “third way” for the newly emerging developing world away from the consuming rivalries of the United States and the Soviet Union as leaders of the two super power political blocs; in the nonaligned movement, while Nehru was undoubtedly the principal initiator, he came soon to be joined by presidents Nasser of Egypt, Soekarno of Indonesia and Tito of (then) Yugoslavia.

Second, the nature of the interaction, varying from initial tacit acquiescence or indifference to subsequent heightened tension, as between the United Kingdom and Indian governments relative to the assumption by India of this anti-colonial, nonaligned role --- in particular, its repercussions on Pant’s activities in at least their East African colonies. For his part, Nehru, as Pant has noted, Nehru always viewed the state of his relations with the Commonwealth Relations Office as a constructive part of his foreign policy. In practice, however, this interactive variance turned upon which among the two UK political parties, Labour (November 1945 – November 1951) or the Conservatives (November 1951 to the end of Pant’s term and beyond), were in power in London.

On the political front, Labour, influenced by its Fabian intellectuals, was clearly more anticolonial and pro-independence minded than the Conservatives, and their recent experience with granting of political independence to India and Pakistan had imbued them with the desire to hasten the process in their African colonies also; on the other hand, the Conservatives, in part from sentiment and in other part from having observed the effects of Partition on the Indian subcontinent, seemed still emotionally unprepared to contemplate an unseemly rush to dismember the British Empire, on which at one time their proud boast was that the sun never set completely on the whole of it.

On the economic front in addition, Labour held fast to the so-called Fabian socialist tenets about production and distribution, income and wealth, and the role of the government versus that of the private sector in providing economic with social justice for the common man; in marked distinction, the Conservatives emphasized individual freedom and liberty over intrusive government in economic matters, underpinned by minimally regulated free enterprise, price setting in open markets rather than artificial price fixing, and production incentives for risk-taking entrepreneurs. In many ways, the ideological struggle brought about by Labour’s first ever election victory in the UK was initially transmitted to the administration of its colonies also.

Third, the extent of local European reaction in the colonies was generally influenced on the “official” side in principle by the philosophy of the incumbent UK government (in particular, the persona of its Colonial Secretary) and in practice of course by the personality of the incumbent Governor charged with implementing stated policy; in a very real sense, therefore, colonial policy formulation and its implementation thus reflected the interaction between them. The “unofficial” side, of course, incarnated the beliefs of the white "settlers" against any dilution of their power through any equity-based power sharing agreements with the other two numerically larger races. In this connection, the Asians in particular were always perceived, by virtue of their older culture and more pronounced economic wealth, to be far and away the more imminent threat, relative to the vastly more numerical but unorganized and less well-off Africans. Moreover, European dislike of the Asians accentuated after 1947, now characterized by a greater distrust of the intentions of non-Muslims relative to Muslims largely because India and Nehru were viewed with greater distrust amounting to fear than were Pakistan and Jinnah.

It is striking in retrospect to establish that in 1949 the relative numbers in each of the four East African territories of European and Asian residents, respectively, were (multiples of Asin/European in parenthesis): Kenya: 29,660 and 152,000 (5.1); Uganda: 3,448 and 33,367 (9.7); Tanganyika: 10,648 and 54,499 (5.1); Zanzibar and Pemba: 548 and 15,812 (28.8). Asians to Europeans was a multiple of 3 or greater total population. Much more striking of course, other than in Zanzibar and Pemba where Arabs predominated), the combined population of Europeans and Asians represented some fraction of 1 percent of the total population, thereby pointing up starkly the sheer numerical predominance of the indigenous African population and their corresponding virtual absence from representation in the political and economic life of these four countries.

Fourth, initial expectations formed among the local Asian political and business representatives about Pant’s role. While it was almost euphoric at the start of his tenure, as Pant himself noted (Pant 1987; p. 16/17), it remained of course to be seen to what extent they would duly buy into Nehru’s message, quite appropriate and consistent for him but unsettling for them, which was to entail a radical re-ordering of their objectives. Here of course, in addition to the perennial problem about European/Asian relations from the early days, there were the likely consequences of the creation of India and Pakistan as new nations carved out of the subcontinent in 1947, based at least for the latter on a theocratic principle. This could only exacerbate communal tensions, previously relatively muted, in the form of separate communal rolls that would undoubtedly benefit the divide and rule policy of the British administration, notwithstanding the fact that about 80 % of the Muslim residents (including Ismailis) hailed from post-Partition India. In any event, Pant by virtue of his much earlier arrival became effectively the sole Asian sub-continental diplomatic representative during his whole tenure because the first Pakistan Commissioner (Siddik Ali Khan) did not arrive until December 1954, long after Pant had left. Curiously though, in late 1948, perhaps as a reaction to Indian independence, Portugal for the first time saw fit to appoint a Consul General (Jose de Neiva) to provide consular services to, and look after the general interests of, the Goans who were overwhelmingly Portuguese citizens by birth or registration.

Fifth, the degree to which local African politicians looked to India (rather than Pakistan) and thus to Pant for ideological and material support in their colonial struggle for political independence. At Pant’s arrival, there would appear to have been a somewhat superficial albeit non-tribal organizational cohesion, as represented by the Kenya African Union (KAU) which in 1945 had been broadened from the decades-old Kikuyu Central Association (KCA). This had been undertaken with the active support of the then Paramount Kikuyu Senior Chief Koinange-wa-Mbiyu so as to attract a wider base, including especially non-Kikuyus, in the face of the intransigence displayed by the British administration on the land tenure issue in the area (essentially the Kikuyu heartland) which later came to be known as the “White Highlands”. It was galvanized into action by the return in late 1946, after a self-imposed exile in Europe of some 15 years, of Jomo Kenyatta who took up its leadership in 1947 and married Koinange’s eldest daughter in the same year, thereby insinuating himself into the center of the Kikuyu land struggle. Apart from Kikuyu leaders like Gicheru and Kaggia, however, there was also a coterie of other non-Kikuyus such as Oneko, Kali, Josiah, Khamisi, Kasyoka, Mbotela, and Odede. Nevertheless, the agitation remained a narrowly tribal one -- essentially among the Kikuyu and grounded in their claims to Kikuyu tribal land. While India through Pant may initially well have provided a psychological boost to the African cause and some journalistic material and financial assistance in publicizing the land issue, once the struggle turned violent it is not clear what became the nature and extent of Indian support and of its channeling. In this connection, Pant cryptically notes: “ .. the colonial government could not pin onto the Indian mission any specific act of iciting the Africans against British rule, through a public speech or a secret gift of arms or ammunition to the Mau Mau”, (Pant 1987; p.25).

Whereas in principle the focus still remained on Kikuyu tribal land issues, operational activities extended to the recruitment of some cadres in the rural areas, and a modest degree of cyclostyle-type pamphleteering and vernacular newspapers, to advertise an extended range of issues to a wider African audience outside the Kikuyu heartland. The expansion of such dissemination activities were initially constrained by financial means as well as the very close monitoring and circumscription by the authorities.. Later by early 1952, the focus would change towards a more violent, and very tribally limited, uprising that moved from around the greater Nairobi area into the Aberdare forests in the Kikuyu heartland, when it came to be better known as Mau Mau.

III. Evolution and Evaluation of Pant’s tenure

Against this background, it seems to me not implausible to suggest that Pant's tenure as Commissioner can be distinguished broadly (but not neatly) into two time-demarcated phases --- an initial phase, of a longer and markedly positive period of about 4 years from August 1948 through June, 1952, during which all the factors noted above seemed to work in Pant’s favor, thereby permitting him to walk a diplomatically fine line fairly successfully between his overarching Nehruvian mandate and the more parochial expectations and fears of the other local actors. This was followed was followed by a shorter terminal phase, of about 1 ½ years from July 1952 through February 1954 when the stars would have appeared all to have turned away from him leading him to be much less successful in his mission; indeed,, during this period, his influence inexorably drained away, culminating mercifully I believe in his sudden recall.

Pant comes across as a man with a very genuine sense of mission; as he notes, “Nehru had said ‘Befriend Africa’ and I, with my usual impulsive over-enthusiasm went about it with missionary zeal”. (Pant, 1987; p.19). The essence of Pant’s somewhat romanticized view in the matter was expressed as follows: “India and East Africa may seem to be distanced from each other by salt water. But they are, and always have been ‘next shore neighbours’, and surely their future lies in the direction of mutually profitable co-operation. From the very first day that I set foot on this ‘Continent of Dawn’ I dreamed of a harmonious special relationship between our two civilizations and peoples… and I have lived out my Gandhian dream under the skies of East Africa” (Pant 1978; p. 30 and 35). Pant was thus ideally suited to his task: that being Nehru’s hand-picked instrument --even if he brought to it a somewhat naïve Gandhian dimension or what he termed as the “Nehru-Gandhi inspired ideal of making friends” (Pant 1987; p.22) not envisaged or particularly appreciated by Nehru -- for fostering the attainment of his vision of an end to racial discrimination and colonialism, denoted as the involuntary subjugation by colonial master powers of subject peoples, both of whom were racially and culturally distinct.

In carrying out his mission, however, Pant had indubitably to tread a very fine line owing to the somewhat anomalous quasi-diplomatic nature of his office. Nehru, with his overarching objectives, had idealistically envisaged for it the remit of a broad, almost super-representational role over a wide geographical area, with some trade considerations thrown in for good measure. This ambitious role had to be reconciled in actual practice with a much lower level operational role, reduced to serving as a mere listening post or conduit to report on political developments, as well as engaging in consular activity almost wholly covering travel arrangement for the mostly British citizens of Indian descent traveling on customary temporary familial visits to India. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of such persons had little intention to acquire Indian citizenship, and this was fully exposed during the Asian exodus in 1968 when the bulk of them offered the choice opted to migrate to Europe, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, rather than return to India.

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Nehru

INITIAL PHASE (August, 1948 – June 1952)

In this phase as previously noted, there was a happy confluence in the interplay of all factors noted above which made for a distinctly positive sum game for Pant in carrying out his mission --- Nehru still remained fully engaged in the decolonization exercise, in particular as it related to the British African colonies; Labour was in power for virtually the whole period, being voted out only in November 1951; Governor Mitchell’s assignment had been extended for six months in order to organize the Royal visit in February 1952 as well as to oversee the general election that would usher in the new multi-racial legislative plan in June 1952 . More importantly, he still had good relations with both Asians and Africans -- the latter, notably the Kikuyus through the Koinange family, and with them and also other tribes as represented in the labour movement -- both thanks largely to Pio Gama Pinto. They were still receptive to the general thrust of his mission, in large part because the authorities were still ambivalent about confronting the emerging signs of what later on became well known as the Mau Mau uprising.

On the work front, Pant began peripatetically by making extensive familiarization visits to both the authorities and their residents of Indian descent who were generally not Indian citizens, in the far-flung British territories under his watch; he relished these trips greatly because these opened up new vistas for him.. He did place his greatest focus, however, on delivering activities in east Africa especially Kenya, engaging in public addresses within Kenya (but never, as far as I have been able to ascertain, formally to the EAINC), as well as in private dialogue. Although these were never officially published, Pant himself realized that the details were being duly reported by informants, and subsequent intelligence reports confirm that he was correct in this assessment. He even found the time to make extensive visits through the East African countryside, in February, 1950 leading the first private Indian mountaineering team (including his wife) on a climb of Mt. Kenya (17,040 feet), where he reached a height of about 16,000 feet before retiring, and later also climbed up Mount Meru (14,000 feet) near Arusha in Tanganyika. (Pant 1987; p.30/31). Later in 1950 in the context of a visit from India by his elderly father, as well as on several occasions thereafter, he visited the various game parks to “shoot lions with my camera”, as he humorously remarked. On the commercial front, although such matters were handled by a separate Indian Trade Commissioner’s office in Mombasa established in 1950, Pant may well have played a catalytic role in January 1950 by securing the introduction of regular weekly air flights between Bombay and Nairobi by Air India; by early 1954, he likely had a hand also in strengthening ocean-going transport connections between Mombasa and Bombay through setting in train the New Eastern Passenger Service steamer using the steamer, “State of Bombay”.

Pant consistently hewed to a standard Nehru line in all his suitably nuanced public and private presentations, albeit he added his own Gandhian gloss to it.(Note that he titled the relevant chapter in one of his books as “Gandhian Dream in Africa” (Pant 1978; p.20). Following Nehru’s mandate, Pant genuinely believed that it was quite feasible to work towards a prospective multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society in East Africa if Asians were prepared to open their educational institutions to, and share economic power with, Africans; but he advocated it not merely as a form of Nehru-type political realism, but also as the basis for a Gandhian type morally- based “pilgrimage” towards the brotherhood of men of goodwill among the three races. Two quotes from Pant should suffice to capture the essence of his nuanced feelings, unchanged through time: “To me, it seemed that the immediate problem of relationship between Kenya’s Indian residents and the Africans had to be considered in the wider context of African aspirations for freedom, and of the relevance of our experiences in India to such a struggle (emphasis supplied), and “The enthusiasm of all the meetings, talks, and plans that followed was kept going, for many of us, by a feeling that the victory of harmony and enlightened co-operation over exploitation and conflicts was just around the corner”. (Pant, 1974; p. 51/52).

To this end, he counseled straightforwardly that prospective security for Asians wishing to continue to reside permanently in a future independent Kenya was crucially time-contingent, so they must remain patient and confident that positive change would come about sooner rather than later. In the meanwhile, however, they had to identify as fully and quickly as possible with the underprivileged African majority; this entailed, as a practical matter, that they should redirect themselves from their traditional quest of decades to become privileged coequals with the Europeans, who he considered largely as birds of passage, and seek new ways of participating with the majority Africans in all areas to help them to realize their full potential.

With the tenor of Pant’s general message having been clearly set out for him by Nehru himself thus permitting little creative wiggle room, Pant was effectively reduced to continually making repetitive exhortatory addresses both public and private to local Indians of all communal stripes (and perhaps even African leaders, although this is much less clear from his reporting!!) and serving as a listening post and conduit for information from the region to Nehru, when he was not traveling to “show the Indian flag” in his wide parish, as it were. There was clearly very little of substance that he could provide for the Asians in Kenya which would have corresponded to their own parochial but important concerns such as the prevalence of colour bar in service establishments, the right to freely obtain land titles for urban and rural land, and above all to secure parity in representation and treatment within the executive and legislative organs of central government and also the public administration.

Against this background, he had probably had to resort – and he would be in his element in doing this -- to maintaining very cordial social relations on an individual or small group basis with selected Asian and African leaders, exchanging with them (in particular, the Asian journalist fraternity directly or through his adept Information Officer, Shahane) snippets of information and more general assessments that could then be forwarded confidentially in his periodic reports to Nehru; indeed, it would in retrospect provide a fascinating glimpse, in generating a more accurate assessment of his thinking, if one were able to access these reports in the governmental archives in India.

Pant was evidently aware very early on of what the Asians expected from him. To quote him:“I quickly got the general drift of what the Indian population looked for in its ‘own’ Commissioner. I was to be the ‘strong man’ who would bring down the pride and exclusiveness of the Europeans and ensure equal privileges for the Indians. I must fight for more Indian seats in the Assembly and more Government posts. I must do everything, above all, to enable the Indians to make more money.” (Pant 1978; p. 22-24). What is more to the point, Pant instinctively refused to adopt this suggested role for himself, noting prophet-like “For myself, I could only shout day and night at my Indian friends that the dawn of African freedom was near and that they should wake up while there was still time to prepare themselves for it. Only a few, I’m afraid, really did wake up and even then they did not clearly see the shape of the part they would have to play in the new life of this continent.” (Pant 1978; p.24)

Asians in their turn had clearly misjudged what Pant should be able, or more importantly would choose if able, to do specifically for them on the issues noted above. This was illustrated very much earlier from the reported comment made by S.G. Amin, the EAINC President through August 1948, at one of these public meetings with Pant in October 1948. Amin had ventured to suggest that henceforward the heavy burden carried by Indian politicians and the EAINC would rest on his (Pant’s) shoulders. Pant gently but firmly took refuge in a convenient technicality by reminding his audience that he had been sent by the Indian Government to look only after Indians residing in East Africa while continuing to retain their citizenship of India.

He would expose his motivation (deriving from Nehru) much later as follows: “The existence of these populations of Indian origin was the obvious justification for my job. At the same time it was natural that the representative of an independent India would not see this job with the same eyes as a servant of the former British Raj, which had also an official concern with overseas Indians, in Africa and elsewhere. One could not forget that Gandhi had begun his life’s work as champion of the Indians in South Africa against discriminatory laws, that he had done so as a citizen of the British Empire appealing to the rights which he believed it guaranteed; and that later he had hoped and foretold that national freedom for India would open the way to liberation of the weaker peoples of the earth.” (1974; p. 49/50). There is here, in my view, a purposefully breathtaking, if somewhat specious, conflation of situations and roles that Pant apparently felt to be self-evident.

In pursuing his mission, therefore, Pant was likely able initially with his personal charm to court with substantial success most of the Asian communities’ leaders of the day, be they politicians, businessmen, journalists, and professionals. Among such political leaders were: the presidents of the East African Indian Congress (EAINC) during his tenure such as D.D.Puri and J.M. Nazareth, as well as former presidents such as A.B.Patel, N.S. Mangat, S.G. Amin, Chanan Singh, Chunilal Madan; Muslim leaders such as Shams-ud-Din, Eboo Pirbhai, Chairman of the Muslim Central Association and Ibrahim Nathoo (both Ismailis), Bhagat Singh Biant of the East African Ramgharia Board (Sikhs)t, Dr. A.C.L de Souza of the GOA (Goan), and Messrs. A.H. Nurmohamed and Y.E. Jivanjee (Ithanasheri/Bohra). His courtship also extended to businessmen and professionals such as: Suryakant Patel, the Chairman of the Seva Dal, G.L.Vidyarthi, Mohamedalli Rattansi, Inder Singh Gill, Muljibhai Madhvani, Nanji Kalidas Mehta, R.B. Pandya, R.K. Paroo, J.M. Desai, Dr. S.D.Karve, Dr F.C. Sood, John Karmali and many others. Not surprisingly because of Makhan Singh’s political peruasion and his security status, Pant appears to have had only a perfunctory and marginal contact with him, although in a sense Makhan Singh was the only Asian-born politician whose views matched up anywhere close to those of Pant himself. Nor from his books, is it clear that Pant had met with Ambu Patel, who in a Gandhian fashion “single-handedly publicized the unjust incarceration of Jomo Kenyatta.” (Seidenberg 1996, Ch. 6; p. 25). It is understood, however, that he encouraged the setting up, and assisted at the opening of, the Republic High School by Dr. A.U.Sheth in Mombasa in September, 1951 as a multi-racial school with fees underwritten on the basis of need, based on the earlier attempt with John Karmali with what developed later into the well-known and still existing Hospital Hill School.

Pant’s approaches, as noted above, initially found a very receptive ear among Asians as a whole, in part because they had no reason or alternative for not giving him the benefit of the doubt. One of the first signs of concern, however, comes in April 1950 when, at the first joint meeting of KAU (headed by Kenyatta) and EAINC (headed by Nazareth), one of the speakers quotes provocatively from an earlier statement of Nehru to the effect that Indians in Africa must generally regard themselves as “guests” of the Africans – as noted later, a climacteric personal moment for Nazareth. In addition, Hindu/Muslim agitation for separate voting rolls, although simmering below the surface especially among the Punjabi Muslims (Dr. Rana and Allah Ditta Qureshi), had not yet fully infected Asian leaders in Kenya who continued to operate largely within the cooperative harmony engendered by an earlier generation of Asian leaders. Even the Aga Khan had reportedly advised his Ismaili followers in March 1948 not to create Hindu-Muslim quarrels by bringing India’s, Pakistan’s and Hindustan’s quarrels into East Africa but rather to live as one in unity and be known as East Africans as therein would lie their salvation. In line with this position, in March, 1950 Ibrahim Nathoo roundly criticized Qureshi, the Secretary of the Muslim Central Association, for having on his personal initiative sent an unrepresentative memorandum purportedly on behalf of all Muslims in Kenya directly to the Pakistan government; he followed this up in the same month reception for Pant by stating that it was undesirable to import disunity from the Indian subcontinent to Kenya. The traditional, decades-long, obstacle for all Asians had remained, since the founding of Kenya Colony and Protectorate, the racial attitudes of the European farmer/settler, who had refused pointedly to entertain the Asians legitimate claims for racial nondiscrimination in social and economic life as well as parity of representation in the organs of government.

Pant also initially exerted a great charm on the general social circuit in Nairobi, in particular with Europeans who viewed him somewhat romantically as a different type of Indian, a suave Oxford-educated prince no less. But this soon faded, as Pant notes: “My well-known alleged --and real—sympathies and friendships with Africans (emphasis supplied) had made me almost an outcast in the social life of the white inhabitants. Except for a few real friends like Sir Berkeley Nihill, the chief justice of Kenya, Derek Ersikin, a big landowner, Sir Vaisey and a few others who could be counted on the fingers of one hand, the official circles had decided to boycott all functions at the Indian Embassy (sic) and did not invite me to theirs.” (Pant 1987; p.23). Moreover, and below the surface, as the intelligence reports suggest, the local European community of officials and settlers exhibited growing alarm about his activities, incorrectly but fearfully viewing him as a essentially a stalking horse for the introduction into Kenya of the growing worldwide influence of India and Nehru.

That nothing came of their protests was probably due to the fact that a Labour Government was in power in the UK through November 1951 and its leaders had strong personal connections to Nehru and an overarching interest in reformatting the British Commonwealth to enable India upon becoming a republic in January 1950 to stay within it, and Nehru was the key to the success of this endeavor. This bias was complemented at the local level by the then Governor of Kenya, Sir Philip Mitchell, in office during his Pant’s first four years perhaps because the former was no doubt aware of the stakes in London, and with whom Pant in any case apparently had, at least on the surface, a good working relationship, as two former Oxford men notwithstanding the considerable difference in their ages. Pant notes, for example, that the Governor looked with reserved favor at his setting up (with John Karmali and Hassan Nathu) a private school for all races in his own house, although balking at a larger and more permanent establishment of this nature (Pant 1978; p.54)

This visceral fear among Europeans for Indians was linked to India’s growing importance in the world and is amply exposed by short quotations from four statements made much later in October, 1954 in the context of the introduction of a more balanced multi-racial government and a “truce” agreement between the three major groups of European opinion (the European Electors Union, the United Country Party, and the Federal Independence Party and that arch anti-Asian politician from a previous generation, octogenarian Colonel Ewart Grogan) to resist the deepening multi-racial legislative plan drawn by the new Colonial Secretary Lennox Boyd:. The last mentioned, in a letter to the Economist, in December 1954 wrote to the effect that: “We resent the blatant inconsistency of imposing part Indian rule over our Africans and Arabs without our consent…. If the straight issue ‘Are you willing to be ruled by Indians?’ could be put to (them), the answer would be an universal and emphatic No!!”. Another similar statement came from the Earl of Portsmouth who baldly asserted in October 1954: “There is really only one real cleavage between us: to what extent shall India’s influence carry here?” Mr. S.V. Cooke also asserted: “I am all out for racial cooperation. That does not mean I am determined or prepared to give authority to Asians in this country – and more particularly the Indians”. Mr. Coller-Hallowes echoed this line with: “Unless we say that we are going to join up and go forward to help the African and the Arab in this country at every opportunity, we are going to face the issue that this country has been handed over to the Indians”.

As noted above, Governor Mitchell fully cognizant of London’s standpoint exerted a countervailing presence at the local level, helping to contain the settlers protests.. During his eight year tenure ending with his retirement from the Colonial Service at end June 1952, Mitchell identified closely with all communities in Kenya. I believe that he had gradually developed a confident and prescient multi-racial cast to his thinking born of some 40 years of prior colonial experience in the East African countries themselves (1919-40) and subsequently with countries with mixed populations, notably with Indians in Fiji from where after 8 years he had come to Kenya in 1944. There are some who hold to the view from an exchange of telegrams between the first Labour Colonial Secretary (Creech Jones) and Governor Mitchell soon after they had come to power in November 1946, that the new authorities had grave reservations about Mitchell’s attempt with Sessional Paper No.3 of 1945 to increase the executive responsibility of Europeans to the detriment of Non-Europeans generally, and to follow this up by attempting to dilute the Asian representation through the specific acknowledgement of Hindu/Muslim disunity.

If this were his initial motivation, however, once the Labour government was more fully in the saddle, he would had to have fallen into line with the new more strongly anti-colonial thinking coming out of London from his new political masters, inasmuch as Colonial 191 reserved final responsibility for the overall policy and administration of the East African territories firmly in the hands of the Imperial Government. I thus believe that he would been compelled to accept Labour’s thinking onin the need for communal rolls and not a common role in helping to bring about an eventual multi-racial society in Kenya based on majority rule and governance by moderates of all three races. Where he may undoubtedly have differed from London would be less on the direction of the change (over which he had no control) and more on the pace of change (over which he had control), designed to ensure that the process, whilst it could be accelerated in policy terms, should not be unduly rushed in operational terms.

In the event, and with London’s backing in those financially austere years, he helped push through a raft of administrative and logistical proposals to undergird an evolving multiracial society in Kenya. These included: the formation of the East African High Commission (1947) and East African Legislative Assembly (1948); the founding of the Muslim Institute (MIOME) in Mombasa in March 1950; the establishment of the East African Court of Appeal in January 1951; encouraging the formation of the United Kenya Clubs in Nairobi and Mombasa (July 1951) open to all races by allocating choice land; laying the foundation stone of the multi-racial Royal Technical College in April 1952; and finally and perhaps most importantly, agreeing to a six month extension of his term to shepherd through the run up to the general elections in early June 1952, based on the multi-racial Lyttleton Plan hurriedly put together by the new Conservative Secretary Humphrey Lyttleton after a visit to Kenya in January 1952, which accepted for the first timed for the first time a parity between Europeans and Non Europeans at the “unofficial level”. On the other hand, his biggest mistake was probably to downplay in reports to London the severity of Mau Mau secret oathing threats that had commenced over a year before he left. --- even to the extent of permitting, against the advice of his security officials, the visit to Kenya of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in early February, 1952 --- because he did not want to have to deal with the Mau Mau threat on his watch. Upon retirement and following two months of paid leave in September 1952, he chose not unsurprisingly to settle on his farm in Kenya until his passing away in 1964.

I believe too, as previously noted, that Mitchell had a fairly comfortable working relationship with Pant, favoring him with a fair degree of access and relatively free rein within the bounds of quasi-diplomatic propriety. This relationship was especially tested --as Pant ruefully notes -- when Lady Mountbatten, as Superintendent-in-Chief of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade, a member of the British Royal Family by marriage and a close confidante of Nehru, first visited Kenya in February 1951 and was invited by the Governor to stay at Government House. (Coincidentally, I believe that at that material time her younger sister Mary was in fact still married to the 4thBaron Delamere, and could in principle have been invited to the reception). At a reception in her honour, she pointedly noted to the Governor and Pant that the invited guests were largely of European “official” and “unofficial” groups, with only a miniscule number of handpicked non-Europeans. She then remonstrated that because of her charitable activities she needed to meet a much wider representative and balanced racial cross section of the population, which the Governor suggested would not be feasible at short notice. To his and Pant’s huge surprise and discomfiture, she thereupon calmly announced that in these circumstances she would move out of Government House and into the Pants’ residence for the last couple of days of her stay. As Pant himself notes, this short notice created considerable logistical difficulties for him; moreover, at a subsequent party in his house to which Pant invited 25 prominent representatives each from the European, Asian and African communities, only one European, the chief of the security police, turned up!!

Pant’s dealings with African leaders undoubtedly represented the main thrust of his activities in Kenya and East and Central Africa more generally. The message he brought them from Nehru was naturally music to their collective ears, although here too his real contact was limited to the Kikuyu, and specifically to Kenyatta and the Koinanges. It seems very likely that beyond this, and given his diplomatic position, he could only keep abreast of the evolving situation not through any Asian politician but through the conduit of the lone Asian operator, Pio Gama Pinto. At the international level, and in order to buttress the representations made by India, as the recognized leader of the anti-colonial and nonaligned world, Nehru had apparently arranged for Pant to be co-opted into the Indian delegation to the United Nations led by its internationally known ambassador Krishna Menon, starting in 1951 in Geneva and Paris, and then New York in 1952 onwards. With his unrivalled knowledge of local conditions on the ground It would appear that Pant’s role would be to participate in both the Decolonization and Trusteeship Committees at the United Nations.. Two significant indications of India and Pant’s indirect influence through Nehru’s connections, as these applied to Tanganyika as a UN Trust Territory, were: first, the new Conservative Government respected an earlier Labour government undertaking and in July 1952 permitted Sir Edward Twining, the Governor of Tanganyika, to give evidence for the first time before the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations; second, Julius Nyerere, as the newly elected President of the Tanganyika African Union (TANU) was also permitted to give direct evidence for the first time to the Council in late 1952/early 1953.

Complementing his indirect international activities on behalf of the African cause, Pant also showed his concern in several direct ways at the local level, while at all times having to be extremely careful because he was being closely monitored, despite his relationship with Governor Mitchell. This enabled him, for example, to arrange on June 23, 1951 for Jomo Kenyatta and Mbiyu Koinange to be officially welcomed and feted in Mombasa on board the visiting Indian warship HMS Delhi. Later, following the arrest in October 1952 of Jomo Kenyatta and six other associates and the proscribing of the Kenya African Union (KAU), Pant no doubt arranged for Joseph Murumbi, Acting Secretary of KAU who had fled from Kenya into exile in March 1953 to escape arrest, to meet the Indian President and Prime Minister as the external representative of KAU and to be financially supported for several years in the UK, and for Nehru to send Dewan Chaman Lall to take part in Kenyatta’s legal defence team.. He also arranged for a scholarship scheme (up to 30 in number) at Indian universities to be instituted for deserving African students (e.g those expelled from Makerere University College in June, 1952 after a student strike such as Dr. Joseph Karanja, who later rose Vice President of Kenya, Omolo Okero who became a Minister, and Joseph Gataguta, a Member of Parliament); in this endeavor, he was aided by his close and long-standing friend Peter Wright, who after he had been deported in November 1952 from Kenya, was invited by Nehru on Pant’s recommendation to create and head an African Studies program at Delhi University.

The thrust of Pant’s activities on behalf of African freedom, however, came from his direct support of the liberation fight. Very soon after his arrival in October 1948, he had been introduced by S.G. Amin to Peter Mbiyu Koinange, the brother in law of Jomo Kenyatta and eldest son of Senior Chief Koinange-wa-Mbiyu. When Pant’s father visited him in Nairobi in 1950, Pant had taken him along to meet with ex-Senior Chief Koinange at his home in Githinguri. Much later in August, 1951, just after he had returned to Nairobi from an extended visit to India in connection with the death of his father in Aundh, the progressively closer personal relationship with Pant with the Koinanges would be deepened by his “adoption” as a Koinange; it would be fully consummated in a subsequent dead-of night ritual ceremony when he was inducted with the assistance of Pinto, as an elder into the Koinange clan.(1987; p.27/28). Much later, but with less secrecy on their part and less weight attached to this on his, Pant would also be inducted as an elder into the Kamba and Luo tribes.

In any case, at this stage, the African political and trade union leadership, both within the Kikuyu heartland and elsewhere, was desperately in need of all kinds of assistance from whatever quarter it came. More ominously in the Kikuyu heartland secret oathing had commenced, encouraged it was suggested not by the Koinange family or Kenyatta through KAU, but by the more radical elements (such as Fred Kubao, Bildad Kaggia) who they could not control, through the formation of the so-called Kiambaa Parliament. By its very nature, support for such activities from whatever source had to be provided in a surreptitious manner, and there is little concrete information of whether this took the form of money and/or materiel (arms), and if so to whom and how it had been channeled; it is reported, however, that in the early 1950s Pinto did help to organize and sustain a secret Mau Mau War Council, as it was termed, in Nairobi. In this connection, it is interesting to note Pant’s mention that when he was away visiting the Belgian-Congo, a security detail was able to gain access to his basement in a fruitless search for arms stored, and later also that both Nehru and Indira Gandhi privately knew how much Pinto had done for the African cause. (Pant 1987; p. 25-27) There appears, on the other hand, to be some plausible indication that Pant focused on building up African capability in journalism by persuading existing Indian newspapers to help out and through provision of equipment and materials (for example, it has been suggested that he persuaded The Daily Chronicle to assist Asya Awori with the printing of his vernacular newspaper).

It is incontestable, and this is confirmed by Pant himself, that starting in about late-1950 and through the rest of his tenure, a central figure in Pant’s ability to operate under cover with the African (mainly Kikuyu) leaders was Pio Gama Pinto because of the latter’s extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the African trade union movement and political groupings through continual interfacing and his remarkable discretion. Working out of the EAINC office with Pant’s tacit support, Pinto was able to acquire such knowledge and acquire their unquestioning loyalty and support by sheer dint of exhibited commitment and prodigious effort that he was able to muster. Indeed, it is probably safe to say that without Pinto’s willingness to assist Pant in developing his mission to promote the African cause, while remaining the soul of discretion and thus entirely trustworthy, Pant’s forays into this area would have been greatly minimized, especially from the second half of 1951 onwards.
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Part 3 of 4

TERMINAL PHASE (January 1952 – February 1954)

By the first quarter of 1952, the situation that confronted Pant had changed quite swiftly in an entirely adverse direction ---. Nehru was increasingly turning his attention away from anti-colonial matters in Africa and towards developing firmer links with the non-aligned world (including China); the Conservatives under Churchill had ousted Labour from the government of the UK in November 1951, and Oliver Lyttleton had been appointed Colonial Secretary with Alan Lennox-Boyd as his junior Minster committed to introducing some form of a multi racial legislative system in Kenya; Governor Mitchell was focusing exclusively on the introduction of this system following a general election scheduled for June 1952 after which he would proceed on retirement; Asians had come slowly to realize that their earlier expectations about Nehru and Pant were overblown and that India had always been more interested in helping the African majority attain independence than helping Indians in their perceived predicament; amongst Africans (especially Kikuyus) -- and indeed for the whole of the country generally – Mau Mau had begun to exert its deleterious effects on all aspects of life, and Pant’s main contacts were shortly to be imprisoned as the British fight back assumed major proportions. In this environment, Pant appeared more than ever to be reduced to being an utterly reactive spectator rather than a modest proactive player, because he was wholly unable to influence any other of the major players in either official or unofficial political circles in Kenya.

The central phenomenon for the rest of Pant’s stay and even beyond, in regard to which he became a mere onlooker, would be the trial of strength between a largely Kikuyu-based tribal onslaught and the massive British response; it would lead in due course to a significant reordering of interactive relationships between all the players on the Kenya political scene dividing tribal clan from clan, tribe from tribe and even race from race. It even produced unusual tension between a realpolitik pragmatist like Nehru and a Gandhian idealist like Pant. As Pant notes wryly: “ The terrorism and violence of the Mau-Mau campaign came as a personal shock to me, as well as an obstacle to our efforts … I did not conceal my reaction to them and in consequence earned a reprimand from Nehru ..(who).. exploded in anger at my failure to distinguish between “imperialistic” violence and that of the “freedom struggle”. Once or twice he nearly threw me out of his office because I was harping, unnecessarily as he judged, upon outrages committed in the name of freedom” (Pant 1978. p.26). Pant goes on to state: “ ..I talked often before their internment about tribal life in all its aspects, above all in reference to the freedom struggle. Many of our discussions centered upon the question of violence: was it necessary, was it avoidable, was it profitable? I feel sure that if cross fertilization of Indian experience in this context had taken place ten years earlier the struggle in this part of Africa would have been different”.(Pant 1978; p.28). This quote is revealing because Pant does not provide any indication of the reactions, which certainly could not have pleased him, hence the escape from the real “what has to be” to the more counterfactual fantasy of “what might have been, if.”

By mid 1952, the escalating extent of Kikuyu oathing could no longer be swept under the rug; the local authorities and the incoming Conservative government in the UK, somewhat paralyzed into still focusing in a pro-forma way on the holding of a general election leading to the introduction of multi-racial government, was soon overwhelmed by events they could not control As previously noted, the situation remained in a holding pattern through the summer of 1952 until a new Governor, Sir. Evelyn Baring arrived on September 29, 1952. Shortly thereafter, on October 20, 1952, he declared a State of Emergency and under Operation Jock Scott had Jomo Kenyatta and seven associates arrested on October 20, as well as the Koinange family and hundreds of other Kikuyu sympathizers in the rural areas. As a result, there appears to have been a general movement of the hardcore element back to the Aberdare Forests to continue the fight, resulting in several further ritual murders of European farmers (about 100 Europeans, three quarters of them security forces personnel) were reported killed, in total). The battle was thus joined, and by June 1953 the East Africa War Command was set up separately with General Erskine as Commander in Chief and with it a War Cabinet (March, 1954). Various other military Operations followed such as Hammer (January 1953), First Flute (April 1953), Anvil (April 1954), and Hyrax (November, 1954). By October, 1954, the level of security forces had risen sharply to about 36,000 (of which 7,100 were British regiments, and 511 Asians were also called up of which 160 were in combat units). Bt the end of 1954, it was estimated that the security cost of combating the Mau Mau uprising had cost attained a level of 26 millions British pounds sterling.

Any credibility that Pant had earned with Asians dwindled rapidly as the full realization had sunk in among them that India had no real interest in their fate and thus would not intervene to assist them because it preferred to focus exclusively on the African plight. The first prominent indication of this realization came in 52 when J. M. Nazareth, a recent past president of the EAINC which had been renamed in June as the Kenya Indian Congress (KIC), met with Nehru in August 1952. In his own recounting of that meeting, Nazareth claims to have told Nehru respectfully that his practice of referring to all Indians residing in Kenya as “guests”, irrespective of whether they had been in Kenya for more than one generation and had decided to make Kenya their permanent home, had been unfortunate but Nehru significantly heard him out and said nothing. Later, Dewan Chaman Lall, when he came at Nehru’s personal request to defend Kenyatta at Kapenguria in April, 1953, suggested at a public meeting in Nairobi that “the final solution to the colonial problem is for both Europeans and Asians to return to their own countries”. Shortly thereafter, A.B. Patel is reported to have said at a public meeting that “The government of India is not correctly informed about events in this country and it is the function of the Indians here to see that the facts are understood.”

– an indirect rebuke to Pant. Finally, Murumbi, as noted above, met Nehru in March 1953 when he escaped from Kenya; he reportedly advised him that, while the majority of the Indian community appeared to have no particular sympathy with the African cause, “.there are, however, very many young Indians, particularly lawyers, who have come out and undergone sacrifices to help the Africans.” In a long, somewhat stern and uncompromising statement, Nehru reportedly said in September, 1953: “The Indians (in Africa) will not get any support from the government of India in any claims that may be advanced against the Africans. We have told them: you are there as guests. The interests of the African must be dominant. If you can serve them, then well and good; if not, pack up and go because we will not protect you there”.

Against this background, the effect of the violence associated with the Mau Mau must have deeply shocked the traditionally conservative and nonviolent Hindu community (and other Asians) and have served as a wake-up call that they would probably be the next racial group to be attacked by Africans and that there would be realistically no long term future for Indians in an independent Kenya. The June 1952 general election had incarnated the principle of separate communal rolls as between Hindus and Muslims, but now the Muslims themselves were split further between the Ismailis and the Punjabi Muslims. The former appeared to have moved, under their leader Sir Eboo Pirbhai who was unexpectedly knighted by Mitchell in January 1952 and nominated as a LEGCO member in June 1952, to assert their separate status from the Punjabi Muslims through establishing their own social welfare institutions and community organizations such as the Pomegranate Club.

Pant appeared to have gradually lost his credibility with the Indians, and his usefulness to the African cause was about to suffer a significant blow, even though Pinto was still around to help him at the margin. Pant appears to have scheduled to be away in New York at the United Nations General Assembly for about two months from late September, but apparently cut short his trip after hearing about the declaration of the Emergency and the arrests of Kenyatta and the Koinanges and arrived back in mid November to discover that his long-standing personal friend Peter Wright had also just been deported on November 13 as an undesirable immigrant with no reason being provided. But he had clearly and irrevocably lost his principal African interlocutors whom he was never to meet again. First, Peter Mbiyu sensing imminent danger of arrest had not returned from a visit abroad in late 1951 to and had settled in London where he would be joined in March 1953 by Murumbi. Then, following the declaration of Emergency on October 20, Kenyatta was arrested with others for managing Mau Mau, as were also ex-Senior Chief Koinange and his four sons on suspicion of complicity in the murder of Senior Chief Waruhui on October 7; the letter allegation had its basis in a purported blood feud between the two families since 1949 when the Paramount Senior Chief Koinange had been demoted and replaced by the loyalist Waruhui. In the event, although the eminent British criminal lawyer, Dingle Foot, had been able to secure the Koinanges formal acquittal of murder charges on conflicting evidentiary grounds, they were all detained under the Emergency Regulations and sentenced to long terms of restriction.

Within a few months into early 1953, therefore, Pant’s relationships with both Indians and Africans had irretrievably suffered, the first from a lack of credibility and the second because of the disappearance of his interlocutors, and he was now to experience an alienation from the local administration and even the UK government.. Governor Baring, although also an Oxford man like Pant but with a much smaller age difference than Mitchell’s, was by nature much more reserved and aloof than Mitchell had been, and in any case had walked straight into a crisis which he was desperately trying to stage manage. The fight against the Mau Mau had assumed major dimensions, leaving little time for Pant to interact with the local authorities, nor in any case would they even contemplate doing so. After all, Pant had been suspect to the authorities for some time over his connections with Koinange in Kenya and Nehru in India; Lyttleton had in fact pointedly in a press interview in Nairobi in November 1952 accused the Indian Commissioner’s office of acting “far beyond the bounds of diplomatic propriety”. A further complication was the strong personal relationship Pant maintained with the Kabaka of Buganda which led to three times yearly visits by Pant to Kampala and occasionally unplanned visits by the Kabaka to stay with Pant in Nairobi. One such led, as Pant noted, to “the Governor of Uganda (asking) over the telephone whether I was really going to welcome these ‘absconders’ ..and I said in my usual enthusiastic manner ‘Do not worry please; the Kabaka will be given a very good time’ .. so I brought two disgruntled African leaders (Kenyatta and the Kabaka) together …at a hugh picnic party in Githungiri”. (Pant 1987; p.21). But with the Conservative government now firmly in the saddle in London, the several requests to Nehru for Pant’s recall could no longer be contained by London and thus blithely ignored by Nehru.

There is apparently little discreet evidence about the nature and mode of Pant’s activities in Kenya during his last 18 months, and in particular of his interactions with Pinto (who would be arrested only 4 months later in early June 1954), but it is clear that the direct links with both Indians and Africans so assiduously cultivated over the past 4 years had been irreparably broken. Both the Conservative Government and their surrogates the local Kenya authorities were clearly baying for his blood, for as Pant puts it “incessantly interfering in the internal affairs of a friendly power and their policies of governing a British colony. (Pant 1987; p.22). In the event, I discovered that his formal recall without a precise date appears in the East African Standard (EAS) edition of January 15, 1954, with no official pronouncement from the Indian Commissioner’s office to confirm or deny it. Later, Pant was to confirm that: “.this actually did happen without my knowledge till much later in Delhi. The Indian government had to telegraphically transfer me to a post which did not exist, with no work to do, not even a place to sit in or a place to live.” (Pant 1987; p. 22). In this connection, Pant sadly recalls that the telegram of recall came as “a bolt from the blue” in early February that “.. he had no full sense of achievement. My dream of creating a bond of friendship between Indians, Europeans and Africans had not been realized. I saw African independence coming, but without a major Indian contribution” (Pant, 1978; p.36). Indeed, in the EAS of February 9, 1954, R.K. Tandon was designated as First Secretary/Counsellor. Pant probably spent the next couple of weeks paying farewell calls on the authorities of the country over which his remit extended. His departure from Kenya sometime in February was very low key indeed to the extent that I have yet to find in the local newspapers of the time a mention of the exact date of departure, much less any final statement from Pant or from anyone else of note. The relative suddenness of his recall was also pointed up as much by a delay of almost eight months before his successor (Gopala Menon), a more traditional civil servant, formally replaced him at end October, 1954. but before his arrival the Indian Commissioner’s office was forcibly trashed by a KAR unit, purportedly by accident for which a pro-forma formal apology was proffered.

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Kenyatta Pant

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

In the following decade, Nehru would continue to use Pant for increasingly important assignments related to his growing interest in strengthening the nonalignment movement. Until his own death in May 1964 He designated him first as the point person for China-related special duties in Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet (the latter eventually associated with the flight of the Dalai Lama), followed by full ambassadorships in two key non aligned countries (Indonesia under President Soekarno and Egypt under President Nasser; after Nehru’s passing away, Pant had senior assignments in Norway, the United Kingdom and Italy before retiring.

I had noted earlier that Pant’s books are quite minimal for their retrospective self-evaluation of his tenure, even with the benefit of hindsight. What is striking, however, is that even three decades later -- when he is putting together his books and following two visits in 1961 and again in the 1970 -- Pant refuses to let go of his unvarnished enthusiasm of before. Much later towards the last period of his life in August 1987, he could still comfortably state, driven by a one-sided sense of dharma, that his task in East Africa had been to promote: “peaceful multiracial cooperation in pursuit of stabilizing relations between Indians and Africans. Indians in East Africa had a special task to perform, expressing their debt. The Indians left India with no capital. By 1948 they had done well, many with big houses and money. My work was to make them conscious of their dharma or duty to vie back what they had been given”. (Seidenberg 1996; Ch.6; p. 162).

Moreover, he does not even to attempt to qualify it somewhat on the basis of subsequent developments particularly those relating to the Indians exodus migration of September 1968, the summary Uganda deportation by Amin of Asians in August 1972, or the inherent tribal animosities that manifested themselves after independence at least in Kenya and Uganda – indeed, he has an anodyne, almost dismissive, comment about the Uganda episode “I believe that it is only the recognition of a community of interest that can prevent the wasteful and dangerous tensions from increasing in the way that the experience of Uganda in 1972 has shown us”. (Pant 1974; p.58). It strikes me that he perhaps feels strongly that for him to do so would tantamount to a case of “think some evil; see some evil; and speak some evil.”, which, ever the Gandhian, he is not prepared to do. He makes only modest mention about some disappointments (e.g. Gandhi Memorial Academy, United Kenya Club) under the tumultuous tide of African nationalism.

The startling exception comes in his 1978 book (p. 26), where Pant provides his own ex-post valedictory on his Africa experience, which I quote in extenso for its no doubt personally painful, if transparently and naively honest, mea culpa: “Looking back from a distance on all those events, it seems to me that what some of us were up to was not, after all, so mad or so revolutionary. Whether it had a chance of success is another question. Was the tide of nationalism too strong for the state of affairs that we desired? It may be that all societies, all cultures have to establish themselves in changing circumstances before they can absorb new values and patterns of thoughts and behaviour. There is in each society the impulse to prove its own power in relation to others, before it can accept from them whatever may be good or beneficial. A society which feels itself weak and inferior may have the least, rather than the most, capacity for synthesis… To imagine, as some of us did in Kenya, that an example (India) with millennia of growth behind it, could be of service for the task of a single generation, was expecting a great deal. But the acceleration of history in our own day makes it possible, indeed necessary, to adjust our thinking” It seems to be a case of “What is truth’ said jesting Pilate, and did not wait for an answer”!! Whoever be the visionary persons involved (Nehru and Pant) in terms of the unquestionable nobility of their motivations and visions, and whatever be the degree to which they were self-inebriated with the exuberance of their own politico-moral philosophies, in the limit all is trumped by a remarkable lack of pragmatic realism, both as seen at the time and even more surprisingly so when seen with hindsight.

Fifty years on, however, the definitive verdict of history on Nehru’s policy and Pant’s faithful implementation of it has yet to really emerge, -- will it be a case of “Good Riddance” from the African perspective or “Thank Goodness” from the Asian perspective, or just somewhere in between?. Has the cumulative sum of the gains (whatever these might be) through time exceeded those of the losses (howsoever deemed) for the countries (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania) and for the individuals concerned departing Asians? The answer to the first question is less clear, certainly in economic terms, although a majority of Africans would naturally see it as clearly positive, and perhaps this has even become necessarily acceptable for that relatively small number of original Asian residents currently living in the East African countries as citizens. African society and civilization still remains more tribally fragmented in its reactions to change than perhaps Nehru and Pant would have wished. As for the second question, few Kenya Asians, even those who were deemed automatic citizens by birth, stayed thereafter in the country beyond the first decade. Most of them saw what was coming in the starkest adverse terms and chose to migrate to politico-economic “open” democratic societies for several decades now; furthermore, in looking back on their decision to migrate they appear to feel strongly that it has been vindicated fully for both themselves and their progeny, albeit they do admit though to a persisting nostalgia for the “good old days in East Africa”!!. Perhaps then, from a longer term perspective, Nehru’s admonition from July 1953 – “if you can serve them (Africans) well and good; if not pack up and go” – and Pant’s Gandhian style implementation of it, may served a purpose -- of a clarion call that helped Africans to realize that they could, would, and should, be able to go it on their own without dependence of Europeans or Asians in the final analysis, and also helped the large majority of Asians (whether Indians or not) to decide to take the plunge and migrate. Whether what has resulted for both parties is that for which Nehru and envisaged or have truly wished for, remains to be seen!

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Kenyatta Pant

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REMINISCENCES OF APA PANT
by Professor Robert Gregory

Robert G. Gregory is professor of history at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. He heads the African section of the University’s Foreign and Comparative Studies program. He is the author of India and East Africa: A History of Race Relations within the British Empire, 1890 – 1939 (Oxford 1971), other publications include; Rise and Fall of Philanthropy in East Africa: The Asian Contribution (Transaction, 1992); South Asians in East Africa: An Economic and Social History, 1890 -1980 (Westview Press) and Quest for Equality Asian Politics in East Africa, 1900-1967 (Orient Longman Limited, 1993). Gregory has also contributed articles in learned journals on the role of Asians in East Africa. His works are based on numerous archival sources and extensive interviews, and have provided a comprehensive study of the East African Asian, giving indication that the history of East African needs considerable revision to adequately acknowledge the Asians’ true role.

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Professor Robert Gregory

“I first became acquainted with Apa Pant in the early 1980s when engaged in research on the Asians of East Africa. I was struck by the importance of his leadership as the first Indian High Commissioner to East Africa at a critical time in the history of the Asian community. Strongly influenced by Gandhi, his personal friend, and representing Nehru, another friend who appointed him, Pant was welcomed by the Asians who hoped he would take the lead in helping them to secure equality with the highly privileged European community. But when he addressed the crowd of thousands who welcomed him at Mombasa, he startled the Asians by advising them not to think only of their own grievances, but to become spokesmen for the Africans. Then and later he stimulated a close association between leaders of the two communities that had never existed before.

It was an exciting time. African grievances soon culminated in the Mau Mau rebellion. For his role in publicizing the African demands and in actually assisting rebel leaders, Pant incensed the British and, at their instigation, was recalled. But his term of office was a turning point in the history of the Asians who thereafter coupled African grievances with their own and assisted in the winning of African independence.

Pant continued in the diplomatic service, and as High Commissioner or Ambassador, he represented India in many countries. It was he who personally escorted the Dalai Lama to his refuge in India.

I was attracted to Pant principally by his role in East African history, but also by his remarkable achievement in his father’s kingdom of Aundh just south of what is now Pune. After legal training at London’s Inns of Court, he held long discussions with Gandhi. Rethinking his goals, Pant returned to Aundh where, as the only son, he was to be groomed for succession to the throne. Instead, in a remarkable achievement, he persuaded his father to renounce the throne, dismantle the central government, disband the army and police force, and convert Aundh into a land of village democracies. Pant became Prime Minister to administer the conversion. And so it happened. The changes were in process; all was working smoothly, when the central government in Delhi sent in the army and annexed Aundh. Pant understood that in this action Nehru had the good of India in mind, and Nehru admired Pant. The two became friends, and soon Pant was appointed to East Africa.

In the 1980s I began to correspond with Pant who was anxious to assist in my research. He sent me copies of his books which I still read and treasure. I had one last manuscript ready for publication, and he advised me to approach his own press, Orient Longman in Delhi. The result was publication of a book on the political history of East Africa, Quest for Equality, which recounts Pant’s East Africa experience and is dedicated to him.

To further express my own appreciation and further recognition of his extraordinary accomplishments, I persuaded the Chancellor of Syracuse University to grant Apa Pant an honorary degree. The university brought Pant and his wife Nalini, a medical doctor who was with Pant in Africa, from India. Their son, Aniket, and his family came from their home in Canada. On May 15, 1988, Pant delivered a stirring address to an audience of several thousand students, parents, and faculty, and received a standing ovation. He was conferred a Doctorate of Laws degree. Later at a dinner attended by at least 200 dignitaries, Pant gave another moving speech, and again was accorded a standing ovation. Afterwards the chancellor confided to me that he had been skeptical about honoring Pant, but had to admit that he had lost all reservation while listening to Pant speak. It was characteristic of Pant that during this visit to the campus, he took over a meeting of my undergraduate class on the history of Africa, and, of course, he charmed the students, many of whom were African Americans. He did not talk about ordinary things. His words seemed eternal truths.

Two or three years later Pant suffered a heart attack or stroke. It came as a great surprise, for he had always taken pride in his physical fitness and every day had followed an exercise program developed by his father. Within a few months he had a recurrence and died. During the interim he and I exchanged several letters. He wrote about the meaning of life. I felt very close to him. His son Aniket went to Pune and sent me a moving account of his feelings before the funeral pyre.

About two years later my wife and I visited Nalini and her daughter Aditi, a chemist, at their home in Pune and there met the other daughter, Avalokita, and her family. Nalini was in a wheel chair as she had been at the graduation ceremony, and she was to die a short time after our visit. The high point for us was a drive with Aditi to the capital of Aundh. She showed us the palace and took us through a museum full of many great works of art, European as well as Asian. Her grandfather, the Raja, had personally collected the paintings and sculpture and constructed the spacious museum. Near the palace is a high hill. Steps lead to the top where there is a small stone temple which houses the family deity who is seated in a dimly lit alcove. The idol is about half human size and looks at the visitor with glowing, luminous eyes. The experience of being there in the spot where Apa had his family had worshiped, overlooking the capital and the palace of Aundh, was indeed a moving experience.

I correspond now very infrequently with Aditi, and I have lost touch with Aniket. But I shall always remember these experiences and continue to revere Apa Pant, the greatest man I have had the privilege to know”.

REMINISCENCES OF APA PANT
by Peter Wright

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Peter Wright

Peter Wright's connection with Pant which spanned over six decades through association in both India and Kenya stems from their meeting more than 60 years ago as undergraduates at Oxford. Wright followed Pant to India as a result of several of his Indian friends urging him to take up work there; this was before his World War 2 service in the Indian Army. Later he followed Pant to Kenya in early 1951 as teacher and Vice Principal of the Technical High School for Asians in Nairobi (the first new non-academic craft school built in Kenya for Asians). During his relatively short stay in Nairobi, he was soon able to get involved with local Indian political groups and started a study circle with Pio Gama Pinto in cooperation with several Kikuyu enthusiasts. This was where Pio and Wright leaned to know each other and to become good friends. It was the study circle activities in mid-November 1952, which led to Wright’s deportation from Kenya by the British authorities and summarized as a "prohibited immigrant" before the expiry of his contract, and without any prior hearing or stating of the grounds -- the first and possibly the only European to be so treated.

Wright remained in close contact by mail with Apa Pant and returned to India in mid 1954 to head the Catholicate college in Pathanamthitta in Kerala However in December 1954 he was appointed at Pandit Nehru' s request, Organiser of the Postgraduate Division of African Studies in the University of Delhi for a three and a half year contract period. Wright left in mid 1958 and served a one and a half year contract as a senior civil servant in newly independent Ghana, and then moved to Nigeria to assist Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Premier of the Eastern Region, in the establishment of the new University of Nigeria in Nsukka. Wright worked there for 15 months and then moved to a teaching position in Jamaica until1964. In March 1965 Wright moved to the State University of New York in New Paltz, New York to be Head of the Division of Area Studies and Geography. Wright served with the University until his retirement in 1980. Wright now reside in Seattle in Washington State. His wife died 10 years ago. Wright has three children and six grandchildren and continues to be active within the local community at the age of 93.


Apa wrote that almost all Indians students at Oxford were convinced that Peter was ‘spying’ on them, and giving information about them to government authorities back in India. Pant described Peter as; “ a thin, hooked nose, deep set twinkling blue eyes, a sarcastic smile on his lips as if he was all the while pulling your leg, peter had perfect manners of a well bred English gentleman and always talked courteously to Indians. He was one of the very, very few under-graduates who cared to take any notice of his own brown fellow students” Peter Wright now at the ripe age of 94 lives in Bellevue, a Seattle Washington suburb where I met with him recently. Peter wrote:

“I joined the University of Oxford as an undergraduate student and a member of Exeter College in 1932. Soon after this I made the acquaintance of Apa Sahib Pant, a member of Brasenose College, which is next door to Exeter. We very soon became fast friends, a friendship which lasted until Apa’s death in 1992. Thanks to Apa’s influence and that of several other good Indian friends I was persuaded to start my career in India and I owe a great debt of gratitude to Apa and his family for their friendship and support during my years in India. Indeed I became a member of Apa’s “Extended family” and later he became the godfather of my daughter Romola. I spent 20 wonderfully happy years in India and then, thanks to Apa’s urging I moved to the British colony of Kenya, where he was then India’s diplomatic representative, and worked in the colony’s education department. In India and in Kenya, and years later in the United States, we continued to meet and I had a very enjoyable visit to India and to Apa and Nalini and their family in Pune and Aundh shortly before Apa’s death in 1992 (?) Now in 2007, I still maintain contact with his children. I have great memories of a wonderful and loving friendship dating back to 1932. Apa has been a remarkably positive influence in most of my life.

My totally unexpected deportation from Kenya Colony in 1952 was, I suspect, largely due to misinformation supplied to the colonial authorities by a close colleague and supposed friend of mine, a Commander John Miller, who was in fact an official “informer” with, I suspect little or no training, who had, I imagine, volunteered to report on my activities, and those of Apa Pant, to the Kenya Intelligence authorities. He deliberately posed as a liberal, who sympathized with African demands for their civil rights, whereas, in fact, as his later activities in Central Africa indicated, he was a diehard conservative and racist. Inevitably his views colored his intelligence reports and in consequence he conveyed a very false impression of my activities and objectives to the authorities and sometimes submitted reports that were totally false. A deplorably weak and biased and incompetent intelligence service failed to check on the accuracy of reports received and in consequence, with no adequate knowledge the Kenya authorities, disregarding my rights as a British citizen, arranged for my sudden deportation without any charge being brought against me until after my departure. The treatment of Africans suspected of working for civil rights was incomparably worse and resulted in appalling atrocities that have severely damaged Britain’s reputation and of Kenya’s subsequent development”.
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