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Part 2 of 2

The Reasons for the Society’s Failure

Table 1. Actions Undertaken by the Maniktala Secret Society

Year / Month / Place / Target / Type / Result

1906 / ? / East Bengal / Fuller / Assassination / Aborted
1906 / ? August / Rangpur / a widow / Dacoity / Aborted
1907 / ? August / Bankura / a mahani / Dacoity / Aborted
1907 / October / Darjeeling / Fraser / Assassination / Aborted
1907 / November / Mankundu / Fraser / Derailment / Failure
1907 / November / Mankundu / Fraser / Derailment / Aborted
1907 / December / Narayangarh / Fraser / Derailment / Failure
1908 / January / Calcutta / Kingsford / Assassination / Failure
1908 / April / Chandernagore / Tardivel / Assassination / Failure
1908 / April / Muzaffarpur / Kingsford / Assassination / Wrong persons killed
Sources: GOB pol. conf. 26fiI1908; ABT, p. 16; Nixon Report, Table A; GOI HP-A September 1910, nos. 33-40, pp. 18-21, 42, GOI HP-D, August 1911, no. 9, p. 13.

The Maniktala secret society was more ineffective than most such groups, failing in all ten actions it undertook. (Table 1) The first six attempts may be considered training exercises. In the four that followed those involved did not fail for want of pluck, but because of carelessness and lack of discipline. In contrast the centrally organised Dacca Anushilan, which began later than the Maniktala society, got positive results from the first, seriously wounding their initial assassination-target (a British Collector) and then carrying out a series of successful dacoities and collaborator-assassinations.101 On the other hand Jatin Mukherjee, who like Barin preferred non-centralised organisation, achieved many of his revolutionary dims and generally managed to keep himself out of jail. The failures of the Maniktala group must be attributed primarily to slackness on the part of its senior members. The breaches of security that led to its penetration and capture were the responsibility of two long-time members, Satyen Bose and Abinash Bhattacharya.102 Barin Ghose, whose rashness has been attested to by his brother Aurobindo and Hem Chandra Das, did not properly dispose of the society’s arms and explosives even after he learned that a search was imminent. Many members including the usually circumspect Aurobindo were exceedingly incautious with regard to documents that when produced in court often resulted in conviction.

Some writers have maintained that the failure of the Maniktala group, and the early Bengali revolutionary movement in general, should be attributed to its lack of a proper ideological foundation. Beginning with society member Hem Chandra Das, a class of writers have suggested that the infusion of religion crippled the movement almost from the beginning.103 Others, basing themselves on the Marxist conception of terrorism, have argued that the lack of mass contact or ’peasant base’ was the undoing of Indian revolutionaries before the 1920s.104 It certainly is true, as I have noted above, that early Bengali terrorists lost a potential source of strength by shutting out the Muslims. But religious beliefs do not necessarily weaken a movement of violent resistance. Many religious terrorist groups have been quite effective. The conflict between the ’religious’ and ’non-religious’ members of the Maniktala group no doubt was a drain on their energies; but all members shared a common dedication to the goal of independence and this should have been enough to permit them to engage in effective action. They were urban terrorists, not rural guerrillas needing peasant support to set up ’liberated areas’.105 They could have succeeded in their immediate aims if they had applied themselves to the job. They failed not because of mistaken ideology but because they lacked circumspection, discipline, and experience.

Failure is the lot of most terrorists. According to one expert there is no known case of modern terrorists seizing political power; at best they have influenced the course of revolutionary movements by applying pressure on the rulers and by providing publicity to the cause. 106 The Maniktala society definitely succeeded in making public the demands of the most extreme school of nationalist politics. They also appear to have helped force the government to take remedial steps faster than it would otherwise have done. In December 1908 Lord Minto commented in a letter to Secretary of State for India John Morley ’that up to the murders at Muzaffarpore we thought we were dealing merely with sedition as represented by treasonable speeches and writings, but that the Manicktola Garden discoveries shed an entirely new light on the dangers we had to face.’ Minto was hardly one to admit to being swayed by a show of force; but he did acknowledge in the same letter: ’The conspiracy is far better organized than I had ever imagined and though the idea of any attempt at revolution seems fantastical, there might if we had not made the discoveries we have, have been something in the nature of simultaneous assassinations of Europeans followed by tremendous punishment by us. The dangers, which I hope we have avoided, are terrible to think of.’107 Minto did not and perhaps could not imagine that the dangers represented by a race he considered ’hysterical’, ’impressionable’ and ’devoid of manly qualities’ might prove a challenge to the Empire. Such complacency would not be possible for his successors, for example Lord Irwin, who had to negotiate with Gandhi in the wake of the Chittagong Armoury Raid and the execution of Bhagat Singh. Morley, a more perceptive statesman than Minto, was aware even in 1908 that the terrorists could not be answered by police repression alone. Three weeks after the Muzaffarpur attempt he wrote to Minto from London: ’The Bomb (here at least) has made old John Bull waken up and rub his eyes; he won’t be satisfied with mere Police Vigour (though we may throw him judicious morsels of this sort); he will want rational endeavors to set right Whatever may be amiss.'108 A year later it was ’common talk in Calcutta that the Council reforms [’Morley-Minto Reforms’] and the appointment of the Hon’ble Mr Sinha [to the Viceroy’s council] were the direct resuits of the [Alipore] conspiracy. It is said that the Congress begged for 20 years and got nothing, but one year of bombs has brought all this reform.’109 This of course was an exaggeration: work on the reforms had begun two years before the first bomb was thrown. But it seems likely that the terrorist threat was one of the factors that made Morley lash out at Minto after reading a tardy and timid draft reform proposal of July 1908: ’India can’t wait.’ ’It [the draft scheme] will have to be extended immensely.110 The proposal was in fact much extended before its tabling a half year later, and an Indian member of council, previously unthinkable to Minto, was appointed. No bureaucrat will freely admit in an official document that his decisions have been influenced by actions outside the legitimate political ~tocess. But such actions certainly have an influence on government policy. Was Barin Ghose far off the mark when he remarked to Charles Tegart in 1913: ’Can any official assure me that bombs had nothing to do with the undoing of the partition of Bengal’?111

Conclusion

The Maniktala secret society set the pattern for Bengali terrorist organisations before the 1920s. The group was loosely structured and dependent on leaders whose incompetence led it to ruin before its aims could be achieved. In some respects, for example, organisational patterns and the use of high explosives, the society followed the example of European, particularly Russian terrorist societies. In other respects -- composition, methods of collection of funds and arms, types of operation -- it was typical of terrorist groups everywhere. All its actions were failures, but it influenced the course of the freedom movement by introducing to it a new and dangerous element.

_______________

Notes:

1. The term ’Jugantar Group’ was first used in 1907 to designate those who continued to work for the newspaper Jugantar after the split between Barindrakumar Ghose and Nikhileshwar Roy Maulik (J. Mukhopadhyay, Biplabi Jibaner Smriti, Calcutta, 1983, p. 38). The police seem to have thought the term applied to Barin’s faction, for in a Government of Bengal file dated I May 1908, the Chief Secretary applied the terms ’Jugantar Party’ and ’Jugantar boys’ to those arrested in Manicktolla and Calcutta the next day (Government of Bengal, political confidential file 266/1908, file marked ’Spare Copies etc.’ Government of Bengal political confidential files are kept in the West Bengal State Archives (WBSA). Hereafter they will be referred to as GOB pol. conf.) In 1909 and 1910 the Bengal Government used the term ’Jugantar Gang’ to refer to the group that had published Jugantar in 1907 and 1908 and later continued its operations in secret (Note on the ’Jugantar’ Gang Subsequent to the Search of the Manicktola Garden (WBSA); Government of India Home Political A, March 1910, nos. 33-40, p. 46. Government of India Home Political files, kept in the National Archives of India, will be referred to hereafter as GOI HP-series A, B or D.) During the Howrah Gang Case (1910) the Bengal Government named one of twelve groups of persons accused in the case the ’Yugantar Gang’ or ’Group’ (Report of Committee Appointed to Investigate Revolutionary Conspiracies in India (hereafter Rowlatt Report), Annexure (1), 6.) It is not true as suggested by G. Haldar and others that the term Jugantar Party was invented by the Government at the time of the Howrah Case and later on adopted by the revolutionaries. G. Haldar, ’Revolutionary Terrorism’, in Studies in the Bengal Renaissance, Calcutta, 1977, p. 243; S. Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908, Calcutta, 1973, pp. 465-66.

2. An Account of the Revolutionary Organisations in Bengal Other than the Dacca Anushilan Samiti, 1917 (hereafter Nixon Report) (WBSA), pp. 1-7; Memorandum on the History of Terrorism in Bengal 1905-1933 (hereafter Terrorism 1905-33) (WBSA), p. 3; B. Ghose, Wounded Humanity, Calcutta, n.d. (1936), p. 52.

3. The Chapekar brothers’ ’club’ (1895-97) was not in my opinion a terrorist organisation. since its only active members (after a brief experiment with street waifs) were from a single family. Nor did it have a clear political aim. See Damodar Chapekar’s ’Autobiography’ in Source Materials for a History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 2, Bombay, 1958, pp. 955-1015. Taking this and other documents into consideration, the writers of the Rowlatt Report concluded, correctly, I think, that the brothers were first and foremost ’ultraorthodox’ and had ’no definite political aims’ (Rowlatt Report, para 20).

4. Jugantar, 8 April 1906. Text reproduced in Haridas Mukherjee and Uma Mukherjee, eds., Bharater Swadhinata Andolane ’Jugantar’ Patrika Dan, Calcutta, 1972, p. 56; article ascribed to Aurobindo Ghose by Bhupendranath Dutt (a sub-editor of J)ugantar in ’Aurobindo Smarane’ (Nirnay, Paush-Magh 1357 Bengali era, p. 55).

5. Jugantar articles reprinted in Mukherjee and Mukherjee, eds., ’Jugantar’ Patrika, pp. 62, 78, 131, 72-73, 190, etc. The word swadhinata, not the vague and more ambiguous swaraj, was almost invariably used for ’independence’.

6. Bande Mataram, 11 April 1907.

7. Bande Mataram, quoted in Times (London) 10 September 1906 under date 8 September. The issue of Bande Mataram in which Pal’s editorial appeared has been lost.

8. Sri Aurobindo [Ghose], On Himself, Pondicherry, 1972, p. 29; Bande Mataram, 12 April 1907.

9. See the memoirs of participants passim, for example, B. Ghose, Agniyug, Calcutta, n.d.; U. Bannerjee, Nirbasiter Atmakatha, Calcutta, 1976; H. Kanungo [Das], Banglay Biplab Pracheshta, Calcutta, 1928; N. Gupta, Smritir Pata, Calcutta, 1381 Bengali era.

10. Kanungo [Das], chapter 12.

11. For ’Libertad’ see Archives Nationales, Paris, F/7/12723, and Jean Maitron et al., Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français, vol. 13, Paris, 1975, pp. 283-84. One of the men Hem studied with was the Russian Nicolas Safranski; see Archives Nationales F///12894, no. 1; Cf. James Campbell Ker, Political Trouble in India 1907-1917, Calcutta, 1973, pp. 130-31. This edition (hereafter Ket) was a reprint of the Calcutta edition of 1917.

12. Kanungo [Das], chapter 5; M.N. Roy, Selected Works of M.N. Roy, vol. 1, Delhi, 1987, pp. 332 ff., cf. vol. 2, 1988, 165-68. Sarkar, Swadeshi Movement, pp. 484-88.

13. For a journalistic expression of this opinion see Indranil Banerjie, ’Roots of Revivalism’, Sunday, 25-31 October 1987, p. 27. Among historians, Amales Tripathi asserts that ’the inevitable recoil from [Aurobindo’s] unnatural blend of religion and politics had one tragic side-effect viz. strengthening of communalisin’ (’Aurobindo—A Study in Messianic Nationalism’, The Calcutta Historical Journal 4 (July-December 1979), p. 75. Bipan Chandra states that Aurobindo and others ’encouraged religiosity and thus indirectly a sense of communal identity among Hindus’ (Communalism in Modern India, Delhi, 1987, p. 175). Gopal Krishna states more prudently that Aurobindo, Tilak and others imparted ’a profoundly religious charactei’ to the national movement, but absolves them from promoting ’an exclusive Hindu nationalism’ (IESHR, 8, 4, 1971, pp. 378-79).

14. Romila Thapar, The Past and Prejudice, New Delhi, 1975, p. 13; Chandra, Communalism, p. 142; Banerjie, ’Roots’, p. 27. Note that all three writers equate Aurobindo’s ’religion’ with Hinduism and that Thapar and Banerjie print ’Nationalism’ (upper case in the text) as ’nationalism’.

15. Sri Aurobindo papers (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives), Notebook G10.

16. I.e., Thapar, ibid. and Chandra, ibid.

17. These are official translations. So far as I know the Bengali texts of the two pamphlets have not survived. English translation of Sonar Bangla reprinted in Empress (Calcutta) September 1906, reproduced in Shankari Prasad Basu, Nivedita Lokamata, vol. 3, Calcutta, 1395 Bengali era, pp. 114-16; text of Raja Ke? reproduced as Exhibit 1226 in Alipore Bomb Trial, Alipore Bomb Trial Papers, Victoria Memorial (Calcutta) Collection (hereafter VM ABT records), III.6.1226.

18. Jugantar articles reproduced in Mukherjee and Mukherjee, eds., ’Jugantar’ Patrika, 131, 53.

19. I have discussed the terrorists’ aims and the ’religious’ and ’revolutionary’ influences on their thinking at greater length in a paper to be published by The Historian (Tempe, Arizona).

20. The best treatment of the subject is in Sarkar, Swadeshi Movement, pp. 405-64.

21. There was, said one contemporary political and labour leader, ’a belief [among Hindus] that the East Bengal Government was responsible for the aggressiveness of the Mahomedans; for instance for the desecration of the temples at Jamalpur’ (Deposition of A.C. Bannerjee in Alipore Bomb Trial, VM ABT records IV.5.423).

22. ’Rules of Membership of the Anushilan Samiti’, cited in P.K. Ghose, ’Ideology of a Revolutionary Secret Society’. India Past and Present 1 (1984); 96.

23. Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 23.

24. A. Bhattacharya, ’Baiplabik Samitir Prarambh Kaler Itihas’, in B. Datta, Dwitiya Swadhinatar Sangram, Calcutta, 1949, pp. 190-200; A. Bhattacharya, ’Aurobindo’, Galpa Bharati 6 (Paush 1357 Bengali era): 829-34; B. Ghose, Agniyug, p. 47.

25. GOI HP-A May 1908, nos. 112-50, pp. 13, 25; B. Ghose, Agniyug, pp. 69, 77.

26. ’Statement of Accused Person’, in Bijoy Krishna Bose, ed., The Alipore Bomb Trial, Calcutta, 1922, p. 22. This book, hereafter referred to as ABT, contains transcripts of documents and summaries of testimonial evidence. It is more convenient to cite this book than the often unnumbered transcripts of the court proceedings kept in the Alipore Judges Court and in the Alipore collection of the Victoria Memorial, Calcutta.

27. Ker, p. 62.

28. GOI HP-D July 1907, no. 66: 1; V. Chirol, Indian Unrest, London, 1910, pp. 22, 95; Letter Minto to Morley 27 May 1908, q. Mary Minto, India: Minto and Morley: 1905-1910, London, 1934, p. 234.

29. ABT, pp. 29, 39, 41, 35, 32, 36.

30. GOB History Sheet 679 (Appendix A), p. i (WBSA).

31. Terrorism 1905-33, p. 2.  

32. Ker, Political Trouble, pp. 51-52.

33. Bartaman Rana Niti was written by Barin Ghose using notes from Major Bloch’s Modern Warfare which was published serially in The Review of Reviews. GOB pol. conf. 279/1910; Bengalee 4 April 1909; N. Gupta, p. 33.

34. Ker, Political Trouble, p. 50.

35. For example, ’General Principles of [the] Secret Society’, India Office Records (IOR) MSS Eur D 709, ’Nangla Dacoity Case Exhibits’, Ex 3g (hereafter ’General Principles’). This document is generally known through the summary published in para 90 of the Rowlatt Report.

36. GOI HP-A September 1910, nos. 33-40, p. 40.

37. Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism, Boston, 1987, p. 93.

38. A. Guha, Aurobindo and Jugantar, Calcutta, n.d., pp. 32-34; P. Ghose, ’Organizational Structure of a Revolutionary Secret Society: Anushilan Samity, 1901-1918’. Bengal Past and Present XCVII, part II.(1978): 144.

39. N. Gupta, pp. 32-33; U. Banerjee, p. 11.

40. This actual twofold division corresponds also to the theoretical division in the ’General Principles’ manuscript (p. 20) into ’general’ and ’special’ branches, the former being concerned with organisation, propaganda and agitation, the latter having seven sections, one of which is the ’terroristic department’.

41. GOB pol. conf. 194/1909 (9).  

42. Laquour, pp. 93-96.

43. Nolini Gupta wrote that he spoke once to Aurobindo Ghose about the hierarchical structure described in a book he had read, almost certainly Thomas Frost’s The Secret Societies of the European Revolution 1776-1876, 2 vols. London, 1876; N. Gupta, pp. 33-34. See also the Rowlatt Report, para 14, where it is noted that Ganesh Savarkar possessed a ’much scored’ copy of Frost. The authors suggest that the structure of the Abhinav Bharat Society was modelled on certain Russian groups spoken of in the book.  

44. Laqueur, pp. 93-96. For factionalism in the Dacca Anushilan see P. Das, Amar Jiban Kahini, Calcutta, 1987, pp. 81, 84 and P.K. Ghose, ’Organizational Structure’, p. 143. Ghose notes that Pulin Das made operations of one group at the expense of others part of the samiti’s general strategy.

45. The story of these schisms is told in overabundant detail in B. Ghose, Agniyug; N. Banerjee, Nirbasiter A;tmakatha H. Kanungo, Banglay Biplab P;racheshta etc.

46. B. Ghose, Wounded Humanity, p. 5 1; B. Ghose, ’Sri Aurobindo As I Understand Him’ (unpublished manuscript, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives), p. 37.

47. Interview with A.B. Purani in A.B. Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Pondicherry, 1982, p. 17.

48. U. Bannerjee, p. 87; cf. N. Gupta, p. 35.

49. C.P. Beachcroft, judgment in Alipore Bomb Case.

50. Kanungo [Das], chapter 14.

51. C.C. Dutt, Purano Katha-Upasanhar, Calcutta, 1359 Bengali era, p. 18.

52. Kanungo [Das], pp. 10-13, 30-32.

53. M.N. Roy, q. L. Gordon, ’Portrait of a Bengal Revolutionary’. Journal of Asian Studies 28 (1968); 206. Bakunin’s ’World Revolutionary Union’ was fictitious, as was Nechaev’s Narodnaya Rasprava, for whose non-existent members the famous Revolutionary Catechism was written. The ’European Revolutionary Committee’ of Ishutin was another ’international organization’ with no membership. Laqueur, pp. 31-32.

54. B. Ghose, letter of 1955 in National Archives of India, History of the Freedom Movement file IV & V 41/2.

55. Morley papers (IOR MSS Eur 573), letters Morley to Minto 7 May 1908 and Minto to Morley 8 July 1908.

56. Alipore Bomb Trial proceedings reported in Englishman, 15 September 1909; GOI HDA May 1908, nos. 112-50, p. 6.

57. GOI HP-A September 1910, nos. 33-40, p. 40.

58. GOI HP-D August 1911, no. 9, pp. 13-14.

59. Ker, p. 387.  

60. Ibid., p. 364.  

61. Kanungo [Das], chapter 13.

62. Bunde Mataram weekly edition, 16 August 1908, p. 13.

63. Ker, pp. 139, 329-30, 402; see also B. Majumdar, Militant Nationalism in India, Calcutta, 1966, pp. 104-5.

64. B. Ghose, ’Sri Aurobindo as I Understand Him’, p. 37.

65. N. Gupta, pp. 36-37. Cf., for rites of passage, Laqueur, p. 25.

66. GOI HP-A May 1908, nos. 112-50, p. 36.

67. Note on the Chandernagore Gang (WBSA), p. 4.

68. GOI HP-A December 1909, nos. 15-16, p. 10.

69. Note on the Growth of the Revolutionary Movement in Bengal (hereafter Daly note) (WBSA), p. 8.

70. GOI HP-A May 1908, nos. 112-50: 11, 19-20.

71. Laqueur, p. 143; D. Rapoport, ’Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions’. Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 78 (1984): 660, 666. See Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 76ff, for a discussion of ’propaganda by deed’ in nineteenth-century Europe.

72. Laqueur, p. 105.

73. Kanungo [Das], chapter 9.

74. GOI HP-D August 1911, no. 9: 13; Daly note p. 14.

75. GOI HP-A May 1908, nos. 112-50, p. 19; Minto papers (National Library of Scotland), Telegram Minto to Morley, 16 May 1908.

76. See note 11 above.

77. HD-A May 1908, nos, 112-50, pp. 6, 16, 19; ABT, pp. 82, 84, 85.

78. Laqueur, p. 105n.

79. GOI HP-B March 1909, nos. 181-82, pp. 1-5.

80. GOI HP-A May 1908, nos. 112-50, p. 15.

81. Quoted in Laqueur, pp. 57-58.

82. ’General Principles’, p. 2.

83. GOB History Sheet 709, p. 4.

84. Daly note, p. 7; Narendra Nath Goswami confession reported in Bande Mataram weekly 28 June 1908; A. Bhattacharya, ’Aurobindo’, pp. 195, 196.

85. A. Bhattacharya, ’Aurobindo’ p. 191; Daly note, p. 7.

86. In Wounded Humanity (pp. 46-47) Barin wrote that ’political leaders’ made assassination ’a condition for providing necessary funds ... [saying] we must kill such and such officials and judges.’ In his Bengali memoirs he specified that one unnamed leader gave him a thousand rupees to kill Bampfylde Fuller (B. Ghose, Atmakahini, Calcutta, 1379 Bengali era, p. 58). Hem Chandra Kanungo [Das] made an almost identical assertion, mentioning the same official and the same amount, in his Bengali memoirs (Kanungo [Das], p. 118, see also p. 98). These statements are corroborated by Upendranath Banerjee, who told police in Port Blair in 1911 that Nirode Mullick gave ’Rs 1000 when Hem Das, Barindra and Mani Lahiri of Rungpore went over to Shillong to kill Sir Bampfylde Fuller’. Upendranath also stated that C.C. Dutt ’induced Suren Tagore to pay Rs 1000 to Barindra if the L.G. [Andrew Fraser] or Mr Kingsford could be killed’ (GOI HP-D September 1911, no. 9, p. 13). While doubtless induced by an offer of favourable treatment, the remarkably detailed holographic statement in which Upendranath revealed these and other party secrets is quite credible. Nothing he said was to my knowledge a deliberate lie. Some of his information dealt with matters the police knew nothing about, for example the book-bomb used in an attempt on Kingsford’s life, which subsequently was found in Kingsford’s house in Muzaffarpur.

87. GOI HP-A September 1910, nos. 33-40, p. 18.

88. Rowlatt Report, para 77.

89. Laqueur, p. 112.

90. Recently operations involving the killing of or threat of death to innocent people, for example, plane hijackings or bomb-blasts in public places, have replaced assassinations as the terrorist tactic of choice. Turn-of-the-century Bengalis did not as a rule engage in indiscriminate terror of this sort. However there were scattered cases of inferior bombs left in public places (for example, the Grey Street tram-line and Lower Circular Road church bombs that followed the Maniktala arrests) or thrown randomly (for example, the bomb thrown from one running train to another on 5 April 1909 that injured five Bengali passengers). Ker, pp. 415, 420.

91. Laqueur, p. 112.

92. IOR MSS Eur D709. ’Nangla Dacoity Case Exhibits’, Ex 3j, p. 18.

93. Gordon, ’Portrait’, p. 202.

94. A. Guha, First Spark of Revolution, Bombay, 1971, pp. 384, 392.

95. Nixon Report, p. 7; Kanungo [Das], p. 164; B. Ghose, Wounded Humanity, p. 50.

96. Gordon, ’Portrait’, p. 205.

97. GOB pol. conf. 266/1908, ’Brief accounts’, R.N. Mukerjee file, p. 2.

98. Kanungo [Das], p. 166; N. Gupta, p. 37.

99. Ker, pp. 415 ff.

100. Ker, pp. 423-41. The Bengal enumeration does not include murders committed during robberies.

101. Nixon Report, p. 9; Ker, pp. 140-54, 414 ff.

102. Satyen took the infiltrator Abdur Rahman into confidence and sent him to Calcutta with a letter of recommendation that allowed Rahman to make a full report on the workings of the society (Note on the Midnapore Revolutionary Conspiracy (WBSA), pp. 7-28). Abinash spoke about the Muzaffarpur attempt to an informer named Rajanikant, who gave information confirming Rahman’s to the CID. (A. Bhattacharya, ’Purano Katha’, Dainik Basumati 28 Baishash 1359 Bengali era.)

103. See references in note 12 above.

104. A Marxist definition of ’terrorism’ is ’violence by individual groupings, which have lost touch with the masses, and are currently in opposition to the popular masses’ (V. Vituik, Left Terrorism, Moscow, 1985, p. 74). It would appear to be a definition of this sort that Bipan Chandra had in mind when he wrote that ’the Extremist leadership ... failed to provide a positive outlet for the [terrorists’] revolutionary energies and to educate them on the difference between revolution based on the activity of the masses and a revolutionary action based on individual action, however heroic. (B. Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, New Delhi, 1989, p. 144). Sumit Sarkar seems to have had been working from similar assumptions when he wrote: ’Lacking a peasant base, the revolutionaries could never rise to the level of real guerilla action or set up "liberated areas" in the countryside.’ (Sarkar, Swadeshi Movement, p. 491.)

105. See Laqueur, p. 147, for the distinction between terrorism and guerilla warfare. The ’essence’ of the latter, according to this scholar, is ’to establish liberated areas in the countryside ....’

106. Laqueur, p. 303; for publicity see note 71 above.

107. Morley papers, Minto to Morley 17 December 1908.

108. Morley papers, Morley to Minto 21 May 1908.

109. GOI HP-A July 1909, nos. 40-41, p. 3.

110. Morley papers, Morley to Minto 10 August 1908.

111. Notes on Andaman Enquiry (August 1913) (WBSA), p. 8.

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Part 1 of 2

Ghadar Mutiny
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/4/20

The Ghadar Mutiny (Hindustani: ग़दर राज्य-क्रान्ति, غدر ریاست - کرانتی Ġadara Rājya-krānti), also known as the Ghadar Conspiracy, was a plan to initiate a pan-Indian mutiny in the British Indian Army in February 1915 to end the British Raj in India. The plot originated at the onset of World War I, between the Ghadar Party in the United States,...

The Ghadar Movement was an early 20th century, international political movement founded by expatriate Indians to overthrow British rule in India. The early membership was composed mostly of Punjabi Sikhs who lived and worked on the West Coast of the United States and Canada, but the movement later spread to India and Indian diasporic communities around the world. The official founding has been dated to a 1913 meeting in Astoria, Oregon, with the Ghadar headquarters and Hindustan Ghadar newspaper based in San Francisco, California.

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, some Ghadar party members returned to Punjab to incite armed revolution for Indian Independence. Ghadarites smuggled arms into India and incited Indian troops to mutiny against the British. This uprising, known as the Ghadar Mutiny, was unsuccessful, and 42 mutineers were executed following the Lahore Conspiracy Case trial. From 1914 to 1917 Ghadarites continued underground anti-colonial actions with the support of Germany and Ottoman Turkey, known as the Hindu–German Conspiracy, which led to a sensational trial in San Francisco in 1917.

Following the war's conclusion, the party in the United States fractured into a Communist and an Indian Socialist faction. The party was formally dissolved in 1948.

-- Ghadar Movement, by Wikipedia

the Berlin Committee in Germany,...

The Berlin Committee, later known as the Indian Independence Committee after 1915, was an organisation formed in Germany in 1914 during World War I by Indian students and political activists residing in the country. The purpose of the Committee was to promote the cause of Indian Independence. Initially called the Berlin–Indian Committee, the organisation was renamed the Indian Independence Committee in 1915 and came to be an integral part of the Hindu–German Conspiracy. Famous members of the committee included Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (alias Chatto), Chempakaraman Pillai and Abinash Bhattacharya.

-- Berlin Committee, by Wikipedia

the Indian revolutionary underground in British India ...

The Revolutionary movement for Indian Independence is a part of the comprising the actions of the underground revolutionary factions. Groups believing in armed revolution against the ruling British fall into this category, as opposed to the generally peaceful civil disobedience movement spearheaded by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The revolutionary groups were mainly concentrated in Bengal, Maharashtra, Bihar, the United Provinces and Punjab. More groups were scattered across India.

-- Revolutionary movement for Indian independence

and the German Foreign Office through the consulate in San Francisco. The incident derives its name from the North American Ghadar Party, whose members of the Punjabi Sikh community in Canada and the United States were among the most prominent participants in the plan. It was the most prominent amongst a number of plans of the much larger Hindu–German Mutiny [Hindu-German Conspiracy], formulated between 1914 and 1917 to initiate a Pan-Indian rebellion against the British Raj during World War I.[1][2][3] The mutiny was planned to start in the key state of Punjab, followed by mutinies in Bengal and rest of India. Indian units as far as Singapore were planned to participate in the rebellion. The plans were thwarted through a coordinated intelligence and police response. British intelligence infiltrated the Ghadarite movement in Canada and in India, and last-minute intelligence from a spy helping to crush the planned uprising in Punjab before it started. Key figures were arrested, mutinies in smaller units and garrisons within India were also crushed.

Intelligence about the threat of the mutiny led to a number of important war-time measures introduced in India, including the passages of Ingress into India Ordinance, 1914, the Foreigners act 1914, and the Defence of India Act 1915. The conspiracy was followed by the First Lahore Conspiracy Trial ...

The Lahore Conspiracy Case trial, also known as the First Lahore Conspiracy Case, was a series of trials held in Lahore (then part of the undivided Punjab of British India), and in the United States, in the aftermath of the failed Ghadar conspiracy in 1915. There were nine cases in total. The trial was held by a Special tribunal constituted under the Defence of India Act 1915.

Out of a total of 291 convicted conspirators, 42 were executed, 114 got life sentences and 93 got varying terms of imprisonment. 42 defendants in the trial were acquitted. The uncovering of the conspiracy also saw the initiation of the Hindu German Conspiracy trial in the United States.

-- Lahore Conspiracy Case trial, by Wikipedia

The Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial commenced in the District Court in San Francisco on November 12, 1917 following the uncovering of the Hindu–German Conspiracy (also known as the Indo German plot) for initiating a revolt in India. It was part of a wave of such incidents which took place in the United States after America's entrance into World War I.

In May 1917, eight Indian nationalists of the Ghadar Party were indicted by a federal grand jury on a charge of conspiracy to form a military enterprise against the United Kingdom. The trial lasted from November 20, 1917 to April 24, 1918. The British authorities hoped that the conviction of the Indians would result in their deportation from the United States back to India. However, strong public support in favor of the Indians meant that the U.S. Department of Justice chose not to do so.

-- Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial, by Wikipedia

and Benares Conspiracy Trial which saw death sentences awarded to a number of Indian revolutionaries, and exile to a number of others. After the end of the war, fear of a second Ghadarite uprising led to the recommendations of the Rowlatt Acts ...

The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, popularly known as the Rowlatt Act or Black Act, was a legislative council act passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi on 21 March 1919, indefinitely extending the emergency measures of preventive indefinite detention, incarceration without trial and judicial review enacted in the Defence of India Act 1915 during the First World War. It was enacted in light of a perceived threat from revolutionary nationalists to organisations of re-engaging in similar conspiracies as during the war which the Government felt the lapse of the DIRA regulations would enable.

It was the Rowlatt Act which brought Gandhi to the mainstream of Indian struggle for independence and ushered in the Gandhi's Era of Indian politics.

The British government passed the infamous Rowlatt Act which gave enormous powers to the police to arrest any person without any reason whatsoever. The purpose of the Act was to curb the growing nationalist upsurge in the country. Gandhi called upon the people to do Satyagraha against such oppressive "Act".

Passed on the recommendations of the Rowlatt Committee and named after its president, British judge Sir Sidney Rowlatt, this act effectively authorized the government to imprison any person suspected of terrorism living in British India for up to two years without a trial, and gave the imperial authorities power to deal with all revolutionary activities.

The unpopular legislation provided for stricter control of the press, arrests without warrant, indefinite detention without trial, and juryless in camera trials for proscribed political acts. The accused were denied the right to know the accusers and the evidence used in the trial. Those convicted were required to deposit securities upon release, and were prohibited from taking part in any political, educational, or religious activities. On the report of the committee, headed by Justice Rowlatt, two bills were introduced in the central legislature in February 1919. These bills came to be known as "black bills". They gave enormous powers to the police to search a place and arrest any person they disapproved of without warrant. Despite much opposition, the Rowlatt Act was passed in March 1919. The purpose of the act was to curb the growing nationalist upsurge in the country.

Mahatma Gandhi, among other Indian leaders, was extremely critical of the Act and argued that not everyone should be punished in response to isolated political crimes. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a member of the All-India Muslim League resigned from the Imperial legislative council in protest against the act. The act also angered many other Indian leaders and the public, which caused the government to implement repressive measures. Gandhi and others thought that constitutional opposition to the measure was fruitless, so on 6 April, a hartal took place. This was an event in which Indians suspended businesses and went on strikes and would fast, pray and hold public meetings against the 'Black Act' as a sign of their opposition and civil disobedience would be offered against the law. Mahatma Gandhi bathed in the sea at Mumbai and made a speech before a procession to a temple took place. This event was part of the Non-cooperation movement.

However, the success of the hartal in Delhi, on 30 March, was overshadowed by tensions running high, which resulted in rioting in the Punjab and other provinces. Deciding that Indians were not ready to make a stand consistent with the principle of nonviolence, an integral part of satyagraha, Gandhi suspended the resistance.

The Rowlatt Act came into effect on 21 March 1919. In Punjab the protest movement was very strong, and on 10 April two leaders of the congress, Dr. Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, were arrested and taken secretly to Dharamsala.

The army was called into Punjab, and on 13 April people from neighbouring villages gathered for Baisakhi Day celebrations and to protest against deportation of two important Indian leaders in Amritsar, which led to the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919.

Accepting the report of the Repressive Laws Committee, the Government of India repealed the Rowlatt Act, the Press Act, and twenty-two other laws in March 1922.

-- Rowlatt Act, by Wikipedia

and thence the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919, when Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered troops of the British Indian Army to fire their rifles into a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, Punjab, killing at least 379 people and injuring over 1,000 other people.

On Sunday, 13 April 1919, Dyer, convinced a major insurrection could take place, banned all meetings. This notice was not widely disseminated, and many villagers gathered in the Bagh to celebrate the important Indian festival of Baisakhi, and peacefully protest the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. Dyer and his troops entered the garden, blocking the main entrance behind them, took up position on a raised bank, and with no warning opened fire on the crowd for about ten minutes, directing their bullets largely towards the few open gates through which people were trying to flee, until the ammunition supply was almost exhausted. The following day Dyer stated in a report that "I hear that between 200 and 300 of the crowd were killed. My party fired 1,650 rounds".

The Hunter Commission report published the following year by the Government of India criticised both Dyer and the Government of the Punjab for failing to compile a casualty count, and quoted a figure offered by the Sewa Samati (a Social Services Society) of 379 identified dead, and approximately 11,000 wounded, of which 192 were seriously injured. The casualty number estimated by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500 injured, with approximately 1,000 dead.

Dyer was initially lauded for his actions in Britain and became a hero among many who were directly benefiting from the British Raj, such as members of the House of Lords. He was, however, widely criticised in the House of Commons, whose July 1920 committee of investigation censured him. Because he was a soldier acting on orders, he could not be tried for murder. The military chose not to bring him before a court-martial, and he was only removed from his current appointment, turned down for a proposed promotion, and barred from further employment in India. Dyer retired from the army, and he returned to England, where he died unrepentant in 1927.

Responses polarized both the British and Indian peoples. Eminent author Rudyard Kipling declared at the time that Dyer "did his duty as he saw it". This incident shocked Rabindranath Tagore (the first Indian and Asian Nobel laureate) to such an extent that he renounced his knighthood and stated that "such mass murderers aren't worthy of giving any title to anyone".

The massacre caused a re-evaluation by the British Army of its military role against civilians to minimal force whenever possible, although later British actions during the Mau Mau insurgencies in Kenya have led historian Huw Bennett to note that the new policy was not always carried out. The army was retrained and developed less violent tactics for crowd control.

The level of casual brutality, and lack of accountability "stunned the entire nation", resulting in a "wrenching loss of faith" of the general Indian public in the intentions of the UK. The ineffective inquiry, together with the initial accolades for Dyer, fuelled great widespread anger against the British among the Indian populace, leading to the Non-cooperation Movement of 1920–22. Some historians consider the episode a decisive step towards the end of British rule in India.

-- Jallianwala Bagh massacre, by Wikipedia

The Non-cooperation movement was launched on 4th September, 1920 by Mahatma Gandhi with the aim of self-governance and obtaining full independence as the Indian National Congress (INC) withdraw its support for British reforms following the Rowlatt Act of 21 March 1919, and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919.

The Rowlatt Act in March 1919, suspended the rights of defendants in sedition trials, was seen as a "political awakening" by Indians and as a "threat" by the British. Although it was never invoked and declared void just a few years later, the Act motivated Gandhi to conceive the idea of satyagraha (truth), which he saw as synonymous with independence. This idea was also authorised the following month by Jawaharlal Nehru, for who the massacre also endorsed “the conviction that nothing short of independence was acceptable”.

Gandhi's planning of the non-cooperation movement included persuading all Indians to withdraw their labour from any activity that "sustained the British government and economy in India", including British industries and educational institutions. In addition to promoting “self-reliance” by spinning khadi, buying Indian made goods only and doing away with English clothes, Gandhi's non-cooperation movement called for the restoration of the Khilafat in Turkey...

The Khilafat movement, also known as the Indian Muslim movement (1919–24), was a pan-Islamist political protest campaign launched by Muslims of British India led by Shaukat Ali, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Hakim Ajmal Khan, and Abul Kalam Azad to restore the caliph of the Ottoman Caliphate, who was considered the leader of Sunni Muslims, as an effective political authority. It was a protest against the sanctions placed on the caliph and the Ottoman Empire after the First World War by the Treaty of Sèvres.

The movement collapsed by late 1922 when Turkey gained a more favourable diplomatic position and moved towards secularism. By 1924 Turkey simply abolished the role of caliph.

-- Khilafat Movement, by Wikipedia

and the end to untouchability. The resulting public held meetings and strikes (hartals) led to the first arrests of both Jawaharlal Nehru and his father, Motilal Nehru, on 6 December 1921.

It was one of the movements for Indian independence from British rule and ended, as Nehru described in his autobiography, "suddenly" in February 1922 after the Chauri Chaura incident....

The Chauri Chaura incident took place at Chauri Chaura in the Gorakhpur district of the United Province, (modern Uttar Pradesh) in British India on 5 February 1922, when a large group of protesters, participating in the Non-cooperation movement, clashed with police, who opened fire. In retaliation the demonstrators attacked and set fire to a police station, killing all of its occupants. The incident led to the deaths of three civilians and 22 policemen. Mahatma Gandhi, who was strictly against violence, halted the non-co-operation movement on the national level on 12 February 1922, as a direct result of this incident.

-- Chauri Chaura incident, by Wikipedia

Subsequent independence movements were the Civil Disobedience Movement ...

The Salt March, also known as the Salt Satyagraha, Dandi March and the Dandi Satyagraha, was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience in colonial India led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The 24-day march lasted from 12 March 1930 to 6 April 1930 as a direct action campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly. Another reason for this march was that the Civil Disobedience Movement needed a strong inauguration that would inspire more people to follow Gandhi's example. Mahatma Gandhi started this march with 78 of his trusted volunteers. Walking ten miles a day for 24 days, the march spanned over 240 miles (384 km), from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, which was called Navsari at that time (now in the state of Gujarat). Growing numbers of Indians joined them along the way. When Gandhi broke the salt laws at 6:30 am on 6 April 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Raj salt laws by millions of Indians.

After making the salt by evaporation at Dandi, Gandhi continued southward along the coast, making salt and addressing meetings on the way. The Congress Party planned to stage a satyagraha at the Dharasana Salt Works, 25 miles south of Dandi. However, Gandhi was arrested on the midnight of 4–5 May 1930, just days before the planned action at Dharasana. The Dandi March and the ensuing Dharasana Satyagraha drew worldwide attention to the Indian independence movement through extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage. The satyagraha against the salt tax continued for almost a year, ending with Gandhi's release from jail and negotiations with Viceroy Lord Irwin at the Second Round Table Conference. Although over 60,000 Indians were jailed as a result of the Salt Satyagraha, the British did not make immediate major concessions....

The march was the most significant organised challenge to British authority since the Non-cooperation movement of 1920–22, and directly followed the Purna Swaraj declaration of sovereignty and self-rule by the Indian National Congress on 26 January 1930. It gained worldwide attention which gave impetus to the Indian independence movement and started the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement.

-- Salt March [Civil Disobedience Movement], by Wikipedia

and the Quit India Movement.

The Quit India Movement (translated into several Indian languages as the Leave India Movement), also known as the August Movement, was a movement launched at the Bombay session of the All-India Congress Committee by Mahatma Gandhi on 8 August 1942, during World War II, demanding an end to British Rule of India.

The Cripps Mission had failed, and on 8 August 1942, Gandhi made a call to Do or Die in his Quit India speech delivered in Bombay at the Gowalia Tank Maidan. The All-India Congress Committee launched a mass protest demanding what Gandhi called "An Orderly British Withdrawal" from India. Even though it was at war, the British were prepared to act. Almost the entire leadership of the Indian National Congress was imprisoned without trial within hours of Gandhi's speech. Most spent the rest of the war in prison and out of contact with the masses. The British had the support of the Viceroy's Council (which had a majority of Indians), of the All India Muslim League, the princely states, the Indian Imperial Police, the British Indian Army, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian Civil Service. Many Indian businessmen profiting from heavy wartime spending did not support the Quit India Movement. Many students paid more attention to Subhas Chandra Bose, who was in exile and supporting the Axis Powers. The only outside support came from the Americans, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressured Prime Minister Winston Churchill to give in to some of the Indian demands. The Quit India campaign was effectively crushed. The British refused to grant immediate independence, saying it could happen only after the war had ended.

Sporadic small-scale violence took place around the country and the British arrested tens of thousands of leaders, keeping them imprisoned until 1945. In terms of immediate objectives, Quit India failed because of heavy-handed suppression, weak coordination and the lack of a clear-cut program of action. However, the British government realized that India was ungovernable in the long run due to the cost of World War II, and the question for postwar became how to exit gracefully and peacefully.

-- Quit India Movement, by Wikipedia

Through non-violent means or Ahimsa, protesters would refuse to buy British goods, adopt the use of local handicrafts and picket liquor shops. The ideas of Ahimsa and non-violence, and Gandhi's ability to rally hundreds of thousands of common citizens towards the cause of Indian independence, were first seen on a large scale in this movement through the summer of 1920. Gandhi feared that the movement might lead to popular violence.

-- Non-cooperation movement, by Wikipedia

Background

Main article: Hindu–German Conspiracy

World War I began with an unprecedented outpouring of loyalty and goodwill towards the United Kingdom from within the mainstream political leadership. Contrary to initial British fears of an Indian revolt, India contributed massively to the British war effort by providing men and resources. About 1.3 million Indian soldiers and labourers served in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, while both the Indian government and the princes sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition.

However, Bengal and Punjab remained hotbeds of anti colonial activities. Militancy in Bengal, increasingly closely linked with the unrest in Punjab, was significant enough to nearly paralyse the regional administration.[4][5] Also, from the beginning of the war, an expatriate Indian population, notably from the United States, Canada, and Germany, headed by the Berlin Committee and the Ghadar Party, attempted to trigger insurrections in India along the lines of the 1857 uprising with Irish Republican, German and Turkish help in a massive conspiracy that has since come to be called the Hindu–German Mutiny[2][3][6] This conspiracy also attempted to rally Afghanistan against British India.[7]

A number of failed attempts were made at mutiny, of which the February mutiny plan and the Singapore Mutiny remain most notable. This movement was suppressed by means of a massive international counter-intelligence operation and draconian political acts (including the Defence of India Act 1915) that lasted nearly ten years.[8][9]

The Defence of India Act 1915, also referred to as the Defence of India Regulations Act, was an emergency criminal law enacted by the Governor-General of India in 1915 with the intention of curtailing the nationalist and revolutionary activities during and in the aftermath of the First World War. It was similar to the British Defence of the Realm Acts, and granted the Executive very wide powers of preventive detention, internment without trial, restriction of writing, speech, and of movement. However, unlike the English law which was limited to persons of hostile associations or origin, the Defence of India act could be applied to any subject of the King, and was used to an overwhelming extent against Indians. The passage of the act was supported unanimously by the non-official Indian members in the Viceroy's legislative council, and was seen as necessary to protect against British India from subversive nationalist violence. The act was first applied during the First Lahore Conspiracy trial in the aftermath of the failed Ghadar Conspiracy of 1915, and was instrumental in crushing the Ghadar movement in Punjab and the Anushilan Samiti in Bengal. However its widespread and indiscriminate use in stifling genuine political discourse made it deeply unpopular, and became increasingly reviled within India. The extension of the law in the form of the Rowlatt Act after the end of World War I was opposed unanimously by the non-official Indian members of the Viceroy's council. It became a flashpoint of political discontent and nationalist agitation, culminating in the Rowlatt Satyagraha. The act was re-enacted during World War II as Defence of India act 1939. Independent India retained the law in a number of amended forms, which have seen use in proclaimed states of national emergency including Sino-Indian War, Bangladesh crisis, The Emergency of 1975 and subsequently the Punjab insurgency.

-- Defence of India Act 1915, by Wikipedia

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Part 2 of 2

Indian nationalism in US

Early works towards Indian nationalism in the United States dates back to the first decade of the 20th century, when, following the example of London India House, similar organisations were opened in the United States and in Japan through the efforts of the then growing Indian student population in the country.[10] Shyamji Krishna Varma, the founder of India House, had built close contacts with the Irish Republican movement.

Annie Besant (née Wood; 1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933) was a British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer, orator, educationist, and philanthropist. Regarded as a champion of human freedom, she was an ardent supporter of both Irish and Indian self-rule....

Annie Wood was born in 1847 in London into an upper middle-class family. She was the daughter of William Burton Persse Wood (1816-1852) and Emily Roche Morris (died 1874). The Woods originated from Devon and her great-uncle was the Whig politician Sir Matthew Wood, 1st Baronet from whom derives the Page Wood baronets. Her father was an Englishman who lived in Dublin and attained a medical degree, having attended Trinity College Dublin. Her mother was an Irish Catholic, from a family of more modest means. Besant would go on to make much of her Irish ancestry and supported the cause of Irish self-rule throughout her adult life. Her cousin Kitty O'Shea (born Katharine Wood) was noted for having an affair with Charles Stewart Parnell, leading to his downfall....

Charles Stewart Parnell (27 June 1846 – 6 October 1891) was an Irish nationalist politician who served as Leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1882 to 1891 and Leader of the Home Rule League from 1880 to 1882. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1875 to 1891. His party held the balance of power in the House of Commons during the Home Rule debates of 1885–1890.

-- Charles Stewart Parnell, by Wikipedia

In 1867, at age twenty, she married 26-year-old clergyman Frank Besant (1840–1917), younger brother of Walter Besant. He was an evangelical Anglican who seemed to share many of her concerns. On the eve of her marriage, she had become more politicised through a visit to friends in Manchester, who brought her into contact with both English radicals and the Manchester Martyrs of the Irish Republican Fenian Brotherhood,...

The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish republican organisation founded in the United States in 1858 by John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny. It was a precursor to Clan na Gael, a sister organisation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Members were commonly known as "Fenians". O'Mahony, who was a Gaelic scholar, named his organisation after the Fianna, the legendary band of Irish warriors led by Fionn mac Cumhaill.

-- Fenian Brotherhood, by Wikipedia

as well as with the conditions of the urban poor....

Meanwhile, Besant built close contacts with the Irish Home Rulers and supported them in her newspaper columns during what are considered crucial years, when the Irish nationalists were forming an alliance with Liberals and Radicals. Besant met the leaders of the Irish home rule movement. In particular, she got to know Michael Davitt, who wanted to mobilise the Irish peasantry through a Land War, a direct struggle against the landowners.

Michael Davitt (25 March 1846 – 30 May 1906) was an Irish republican activist for a variety of causes, especially Home Rule and land reform. Following an eviction when he was four years old, Davitt's family emigrated to England. He began his career as an organizer of the physical-force Irish Republican Brotherhood. Convicted of treason felony for arms trafficking in 1870, he served seven years in prison. Upon his release, Davitt pioneered the New Departure strategy of cooperation between the physical-force and constitutional wings of Irish nationalism on the issue of land reform. With Charles Stewart Parnell, he co-founded the Irish National Land League in 1879, in which capacity he enjoyed the peak of his influence before being jailed again in 1881.

-- Michael Davitt, by Wikipedia

She spoke and wrote in favour of Davitt and his Land League many times over the coming decades....

The Irish National Land League was an Irish political organisation of the late 19th century which sought to help poor tenant farmers. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The period of the Land League's agitation is known as the Land War. Historian R. F. Foster argues that in the countryside the Land League "reinforced the politicization of rural Catholic nationalist Ireland, partly by defining that identity against urbanization, landlordism, Englishness and—implicitly—Protestantism." Foster adds that about a third of the activists were Catholic priests, and Archbishop Thomas Croke was one of its most influential champions.

-- Irish National Land League, by Wikipedia

For Besant, politics, friendship and love were always closely intertwined. Her decision in favour of Socialism came about through a close relationship with George Bernard Shaw, a struggling young Irish author living in London, and a leading light of the Fabian Society who considered Besant to be "The greatest orator in England"....

As early as 1902 Besant had written that "India is not ruled for the prospering of the people, but rather for the profit of her conquerors, and her sons are being treated as a conquered race.". She encouraged Indian national consciousness, attacked caste and child marriage, and worked effectively for Indian education. Along with her theosophical activities, Besant continued to actively participate in political matters. She had joined the Indian National Congress. As the name suggested, this was originally a debating body, which met each year to consider resolutions on political issues. Mostly it demanded more of a say for middle-class Indians in British Indian government. It had not yet developed into a permanent mass movement with local organisation. About this time her co-worker Leadbeater moved to Sydney.

In 1914 World War I broke out, and Britain asked for the support of its Empire in the fight against Germany. Echoing an Irish nationalist slogan, Besant declared, "England's need is India's opportunity". As editor of the New India newspaper, she attacked the colonial government of India and called for clear and decisive moves towards self-rule. As with Ireland, the government refused to discuss any changes while the war lasted.

In 1916 Besant launched the All India Home Rule League [Indian Home Rule Movement] along with Lokmanya Tilak, once again modelling demands for India on Irish nationalist practices. This was the first political party in India to have regime change as its main goal. Unlike the Congress itself, the League worked all year round. It built a structure of local branches, enabling it to mobilise demonstrations, public meetings and agitations. In June 1917 Besant was arrested and interned at a hill station, where she defiantly flew a red and green flag. The Congress and the Muslim League together threatened to launch protests if she were not set free; Besant's arrest had created a focus for protest.

-- Annie Besant, by Wikipedia

The first of the nationalist organisations was the Pan-Aryan Association, modelled after Krishna Varma's Indian Home Rule Society,...

The Indian Home Rule Society (IHRS) was an Indian organisation founded in London in 1905 that sought to promote the cause of self-rule in British India. The organisation was founded by Shyamji Krishna Varma, with support from a number of prominent Indian nationalists in Britain at the time, including Bhikaji Cama, Dadabhai Naoroji and S.R. Rana,[1][2] and was intended to be a rival organisation to the British Committee of the Indian National Congress that was the main avenue of the loyalist opinion at the time.

The Indian National Congress is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa. From the late 19th century, and especially after 1920, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Congress became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement. Congress led India to independence from Great Britain, and powerfully influenced other anti-colonial nationalist movements in the British Empire.

Congress is a "big tent" party whose liberal social democratic platform is generally considered to be on the centre-left of Indian politics. Congress' social policy is based upon the Gandhian principle of Sarvodaya -- the lifting up of all sections of society -- which involves the improvement of the lives of economically underprivileged and socially marginalised people. On social and economic issues, it advocates liberty, social justice, equality, welfare state, along with progressive and secular society. The party's constitution adheres to liberal–democratic socialist philosophy.

-- Indian National Congress, by Wikipedia

Founded on 18 February 1905, the IHRS was a metropolitan organisation modelled after Victorian public institutions of the time. It had a written constitution and the stated aims to "secure Home Rule for India, and to carry on a genuine Indian propaganda in this country by all practicable means". The IHRS was open for membership "to Indians only", and found significant support amongst Indian students and other Indian populations in Britain. It recruited from amongst young Indian activists, collected money, and may have been collecting arms and maintaining close contact with revolutionary movements in India. The society was foundations of the India House and, along with Krishna Varma's journal The Indian Sociologist, was the foundation of the militant Indian nationalist movement in Britain. After Krishna Varma's shift to Paris in 1907, the society gave way the secret nationalist society of Abhinav Bharat Mandal,...

Abhinav Bharat Society (Young India Society) was a secret society founded by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his brother Ganesh Damodar Savarkar in 1904. Initially founded at Nasik as "Mitra Mela" when Vinayak Savarkar was still a student of Fergusson College at Pune, the society grew to include several hundred revolutionaries and political activists with branches in various parts of India, extending to London after Savarkar went to study law. It carried out a few assassinations of British officials, after which the Savarkar brothers were convicted and imprisoned. The society was formally disbanded in 1952.

Vinayak Savarkar and Ganesh Savarkar started Mitra Mela, a revolutionary secret society in Nasik in 1899. It was one among several such melas (revolutionary societies) functioning in Maharashtra at that time, which believed in the overthrow of British rule through armed rebellion. In 1904, in a meeting attended by 200 members from various towns in Maharashtra, Vinayak Savarkar renamed it Abhinav Bharat, taking after Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Italy.

In 1906, Vinayak Savarkar left to London to study law. In the same year, he compiled a volume called Mazzini Charitra, a translation of the Italian revolutionary Mazzini's writings with a 25-page introduction added. The book was published in Maharashtra in June 1907 and the first edition of 2000 copies is said to have sold out within a month. Mazzini's techniques of secret societies and guerilla warfare were fully embraced by Savarkar.

Blavatsky claimed to have fought and been injured in the 1867 battle of Mentana, and speaks of knowing the Garibaldis who could vouch for her. Admiring references to Mazzini are found in other TS founders sources like Charles Sotheran and Herbert Monachesi, and of course Olcott. Later Rene Guenon described HPB as having been involved in the Jeune [Young] Europe movement which had been established by Mazzini. He was passionately anti-clerical and promoted a spirituality that would be more liberal and inclusive than that of the Catholic Church. Hence Blavatsky’s resonance with Mazzini’s ideas could have been equally political and spiritual. Likewise her admiration for Cagliostro and his “Egyptian Masonry” which also seems to have been common among the several TS founders.

-- Hypatia interview (Greek Theosophical Journal), by Erica Georgiades

He wrote regular newsletters to his compatriots in India as well as carrying out revolutionary propaganda in London.

Savarkar's revolutionary propaganda led to the assassination of Lt. Col. William Curzon-Wyllie, the political aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India, by Madanlal Dhingra on the evening of 1 July 1909, at a meeting of Indian students in the Imperial Institute in London. Dhingra was arrested and later tried and executed. A. M. T. Jackson, the district magistrate of Nasik, was assassinated in India by Anant Laxman Kanhare in 1909 in the historic "Nasik Conspiracy Case".

The investigation into the Jackson assassination revealed the existence of the Abhinav Bharat Society and the role of the Savarkar brothers in leading it. Vinayak Savarkar was found to have dispatched twenty Browning pistols to India, one of which was used in the Jackson assassination. He was charged in the Jackson murder and sentenced to "transportation" for life. Savarkar was imprisoned in the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands in 1910.

-- Abhinav Bharat Society, by Wikipedia

founded by V.D. Savarkar. The society was founded amongst efforts and movements that arose to reverse the flow of authority and power from Britain to India.[3][8] along with substantial help from Bhikaji Cama.

-- Indian Home Rule Society, by Wikipedia

opened in 1906 through the joint Indo-Irish efforts of Mohammed Barkatullah,...

Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah, known with his honorific as Maulana Barkatullah (c. 7 July 1854 – 20 September 1927), was an Indian revolutionary with sympathy for the Pan-Islamic movement. Barkatullah was born on 7 July 1854 at Itwra Mohalla Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, India. He fought from outside India, with fiery speeches and revolutionary writings in leading newspapers, for the independence of India. He did not live to see India independent. In 1988, Bhopal University was renamed Barkatullah University in his honour. He was also Prime Minister of first Provisional Government of India established at Afghanistan in 1915.

-- Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah, by Wikipedia

S.L. Joshi [Samuel Lucas Joshi] and George Freeman.[11]

George Freeman, an Irish-American, was editor of the Gaelic American newspaper. He also worked for the Free Hindustan newspaper and was involved in attempts to incite a revolt in British-ruled India.

-- George Freeman (newspaper editor), by Wikipedia

Barkatullah himself had been closely associated with Krishna Varma during his earlier stay in London, and his subsequent career in Japan put him at the heart of Indian political activities there.[11]

The American branch of the association also invited Madame Cama—who at the time was close to the works of Krishna Varma—to give a series of lectures in the United States. An "India House" was founded in Manhattan in New York in January 1908 with funds from a wealthy lawyer of Irish descent called Myron Phelps. Phelps admired Swami Vivekananda, and the Vedanta Society (established by the Swami) in New York was at the time under Swami Abhedananda, who was considered "seditionist" by the British.[10] In New York, Indian students and ex-residents of London India House took advantage of liberal press laws to circulate The Indian Sociologist and other nationalist literature.[10] New York increasingly became an important centre for the global Indian movement, such that Free Hindustan, a political revolutionary journal published by Tarak Nath Das closely mirroring The Indian Sociologist, moved from Vancouver and Seattle to New York in 1908. Das collaborated extensively with the Gaelic American with help from George Freeman before Free Hindustan was proscribed in 1910 under British diplomatic pressure.[12] After 1910, the American east coast activities began to decline and gradually shifted to San Francisco. The arrival of Har Dayal around this time bridged the gap between the intellectual agitators and the predominantly Punjabi labour workers and migrants, laying the foundations of the Ghadar movement.[12]

Ghadar party

The Pacific coast of North America saw large scale Indian immigration in the 1900s, especially from Punjab which was facing an economic depression. The Canadian government met this influx with a series of legislations aimed at limiting the entry of South Asians into Canada, and restricting the political rights of those already in the country. The Punjabi community had hitherto been an important loyal force for the British Empire and the Commonwealth, and the community had expected, to honour its commitment, equal welcome and rights from the British and Commonwealth governments as extended to British and white immigrants. These legislations fed growing discontent, protests and anti-colonial sentiments within the community. Faced with increasingly difficult situations, the community began organising itself into political groups. A large number of Punjabis also moved to the United States, but they encountered similar political and social problems.[13]

Meanwhile, nationalist work among Indians on the east coast began to gain momentum from around 1908 when Indian students of the likes of P S Khankhoje, Kanshi Ram, and Tarak Nath Das founded the Indian Independence League in Portland, Oregon. Khankhoje's works also brought him close to Indian nationalists in the United States at the time, including Tarak Nath Das. In the years preceding World War I, Khankhoje was one of the founding members of the Pacific Coast Hindustan Association, and subsequently founded the Ghadar Party. He was at the time one of the most influential members of the party. He met Lala Har Dayal in 1911. He also enrolled at one point in a West Coast military academy.

The Ghadar Party, initially the Pacific Coast Hindustan Association, was formed in 1913 in the United States under the leadership of Har Dayal, with Sohan Singh Bhakna as its president. It drew members from Indian immigrants, largely from Punjab.[13] Many of its members were also from the University of California at Berkeley including Dayal, Tarak Nath Das, Kartar Singh Sarabha and V. G. Pingle. The party quickly gained support from Indian expatriates, especially in the United States, Canada, and Asia. Ghadar meetings were held in Los Angeles, Oxford, Vienna, Washington, D.C., and Shanghai.[14]

Ghadar's ultimate goal was to overthrow British colonial authority in India by means of an armed revolution. It viewed the Congress-led mainstream movement for dominion status modest and the latter's constitutional methods as soft. Ghadar's foremost strategy was to entice Indian soldiers to revolt.[13] To that end, in November 1913 Ghadar established the Yugantar Ashram press in San Francisco. The press produced the Hindustan Ghadar newspaper and other nationalist literature.[14]

Ghadar conspiracy

See also: Komagata Maru incident


Punjabi Sikhs aboard the SS Komagata Maru in Vancouver's Burrard Inlet, 1914. Most of the passengers were not allowed to land in Canada and the ship was forced to return to India. The events surrounding the Komagata Maru incident served as a catalyst for the Ghadarite cause.

Har Dayal's contacts with erstwhile members of India House in Paris and in Berlin allowed early concepts of Indo-German collaboration to take shape. Towards the end of 1913, the party established contact with prominent revolutionaries in India, including Rash Behari Bose. An Indian edition of the Hindustan Ghadar essentially espoused the philosophies of anarchism and revolutionary terrorism against British interests in India. Political discontent and violence mounted in Punjab, and Ghadarite publications that reached Bombay from California were deemed seditious and banned by the Raj. These events, compounded by evidence of prior Ghadarite incitement in the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy of 1912, led the British government to pressure the American State Department to suppress Indian revolutionary activities and Ghadarite literature, which emanated mostly from San Francisco.[15][16]

1914

During World War I, the British Indian Army contributed significantly to the British war effort. Consequently, a reduced force, estimated to have been as low as 15,000 troops in late 1914, was stationed in India.[17] It was in this scenario that concrete plans for organising uprisings in India were made.

In September 1913, Mathra Singh, a Ghadarite, visited Shanghai and promoted the Ghadarite cause within the Indian community there. In January 1914, Singh visited India and circulated Ghadar literature amongst Indian soldiers through clandestine sources before leaving for Hong Kong. Singh reported that the situation in India was favourable for a revolution.[18][19]

In May 1914, the Canadian government refused to allow the 400 Indian passengers of the ship Komagata Maru to disembark at Vancouver. The voyage had been planned as an attempt to circumvent Canadian exclusion laws that effectively prevented Indian immigration. Before the ship reached Vancouver, its approach was announced on German radio, and British Columbian authorities were prepared to prevent the passengers from entering Canada. The incident became a focal point for the Indian community in Canada which rallied in support of the passengers and against the government's policies. After a 2-month legal battle, 24 of them were allowed to immigrate. The ship was escorted out of Vancouver by the protected cruiser HMCS Rainbow and returned to India. On reaching Calcutta, the passengers were detained under the Defence of India Act at Budge Budge by the British Indian government, which made efforts to forcibly transport them to Punjab. This caused rioting at Budge Budge and resulted in fatalities on both sides.[20] A number of Ghadar leaders, like Barkatullah and Tarak Nath Das, used the inflammatory passions surrounding the Komagata Maru incident as a rallying point and successfully brought many disaffected Indians in North America into the party's fold.[19]

Outlines of mutiny

By October 1914, a large number of Ghadarites had returned to India and were assigned tasks like contacting Indian revolutionaries and organisations, spreading propaganda and literature, and arranging to get arms into the country that were being arranged to be shipped in from United States with German help.[21] The first group of 60 Ghadarites led by Jawala Singh, left San Francisco for Canton aboard the steamship Korea on 29 August. They were to sail on to India, where they would be provided with arms to organise a revolt. At Canton, more Indians joined, and the group, now numbering about 150, sailed for Calcutta on a Japanese vessel. They were to be joined by more Indians arriving in smaller groups. During the September–October time period, about 300 Indians left for India in various ships like SS Siberia, Chinyo Maru, China, Manchuria, SS Tenyo Maru, SS Mongolia and SS Shinyo Maru.[18][21][22] The SS Korea's party was uncovered and arrested on arrival at Calcutta. In spite of this, a successful underground network was established between the United States and India, through Shanghai, Swatow, and Siam. Tehl Singh, the Ghadar operative in Shanghai, is believed to have spent $30,000 for helping the revolutionaries to get into India.[23]

Amongst those who returned were Vishnu Ganesh Pingle, Kartar Singh, Santokh Singh, Pandit Kanshi Ram, Bhai Bhagwan Singh, who ranked amongst the higher leadership of the Ghadar Party. Pingle had known Satyen Bhushan Sen (Jatin Mukherjee's emissary) in the company of Gadhar members (such as Kartar Singh Sarabha) at the University of Berkeley. Tasked to consolidate contact with the Indian revolutionary movement, as part of the Ghadar Conspiracy, Satyen Bhushan Sen, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Vishnu Ganesh Pingle and a batch of Sikh militants sailed from America by the SS Salamin in the second half of October 1914. Satyen and Pingle halted in China for a few days to meet the Gadhar leaders (mainly Tahal Singh) for future plans. They met Dr Sun Yat-sen for co-operation. Dr. Sun was not prepared to displease the British. After Satyen and party left for India, Tahal sent Atmaram Kapur, Santosh Singh and Shiv Dayal Kapur to Bangkok for necessary arrangements.[24][25][26][27] In November, 1914, Pingle, Kartar Singh and Satyen Sen arrived in Calcutta. Satyen introduced Pingle and Kartar Singh to Jatin Mukherjee. "Pingle had long talks with Jatin Mukherjee, who sent them to Rash Behari" in Benares with necessary information during the third week of December.[28] Satyen remained in Calcutta at 159 Bow Bazar [Street]. Tegart was informed of an attempt to tamper with some Sikh troops at the Dakshineswar gunpowder magazine. "A reference to the Military authorities shows that the troops in question were the 93rd Burmans" sent to Mesopotamia. Jatin Mukherjee and Satyen Bhushan Sen were seen interviewing these Sikhs.[29] The Ghadarites rapidly established contact with the Indian revolutionary underground, notably that in Bengal, and the plans began to be consolidated by Rash Behari Bose and Jatin Mukherjee and the Ghadarites for a coordinated general uprising.

Early attempts

Indian revolutionaries under Lokamanya Tilak's inspiration, had turned Benares into a centre for sedition since the 1900s. Sundar Lal (b. 1885, son of Tota Ram, Muzaffarnagar) had given a very objectionable speech in 1907 on Shivaji Festival in Benares. Follower of Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Sri Aurobindo, in 1908 this man had accompanied Lala in his UP lecture tour. His organ, the Swarajya of Allahabad, was warned in April 1908 against sedition. On 22 August 1909, Sundar Lal and Sri Aurobindo delivered “mischievous speeches” in College Square, Calcutta. The Karmayogi in Hindi was issued in Allahabad since September 1909: controlled by Sri Aurobindo, the Calcutta Karmagogin was edited by Amarendra Chatterjee who had introduced Rash Behari to Sundar Lal. In 1915, Pingle will be received in Allahabad by the Swarajya group.[30] Rash Behari Bose had been in Benares since early 1914. Large number of outrages were committed there between October 1914 and September 1915, 45 of them before February was over. On 18 November 1914, while examining two bomb caps, he and Sachin Sanyal had been injured. They shifted to a house in Bangalitola, where Pingle visited him with a letter from Jatin Mukherjee and reported that some 4000 Sikhs of the Gadhar had already reached Calcutta. 15.000 more were waiting to join the rebellion.[31] Rash Behari sent Pingle and Sachin to Amritsar, to discuss with Mula Singh who had arrived from Shanghai. Behari’s man of confidence, Pingle, led a hectic life in UP and Punjab for several weeks.[32]

During the Komagata Maru affray in Budge Budge, near Calcutta, on 29 September 1914, Baba Gurmukh Singh had contacted Atulkrishna Ghosh and Satish Chakravarti, two eminent associates of Jatin Mukherjee, who actively assisted them. Since then, angry letters from US-based Indians had reached India expressing hopes for a German victory; one of the emigrant leaders warned that his associates were in touch with the Bengal revolutionary party. It was at this juncture, in December 1914, that Pingle arrived in the Punjab, promising Bengali co-operation to the malcontent emigrants. A meeting demanded revolution, plundering of Government treasuries, seduction of Indian troops, collection of arms, preparation of bombs and the commission of dacoities. Rash Behari planned collecting gangs of villagers for the rebellion. Simultaneous outbreaks at Lahore, Ferozepore & Rawalpindi were organised while risings at Dacca, Benares, and Jubbalpur would be further extended.[33]

Preparing bombs was a definite part of the Gadhar programme. The Sikh conspirators – knowing very little about it – decided to call in a Bengali expert, as they had known in California Professor Surendra Bose, associate of Taraknath Das. Towards the end of December 1914, at a meeting at Kapurthala, Pingle announced that a Bengali babu was ready to co-operate with them. On 3 January 1915, Pingle and Sachindra in Amritsar received Rs 500 from the Ghadar, and returned to Benares.[34]

Coordination

Pingle returned to Calcutta with Rash Behari's invitation to the Jugantar leaders to meet him at Benares for co-ordinating and finalising their plans. Jatin Mukherjee, Atulkrishna Ghosh, Naren Bhattacharya left for Benares (early January 1915). In a very important meeting, Rash Behari announced the rebellion, proclaiming: "Die for their country." Though through Havildar Mansha Singh, the 16th Rajput Rifles at Fort William was successfully approached, Jatin Mukherjee wanted two months for the army revolt, synchronising with the arrival of the German arms. He modified the plan according to the impatience of the Gadhar militants to rush to action. Rash Behari and Pingle went to Lahore. Sachin tampered with the 7th Rajputs (Benares) and the 89th Punjabis at Dinapore. Damodar Sarup [Seth] went to Allahabad. Vinayak Rao Kapile conveyed bombs from Bengal to Punjab. Bibhuti [Haldar, approver] and Priyo Nath [Bhattacharya?] seduced the troops at Benares; Nalini [Mukherjee] at Jabalpur. On 14 February, Kapile carried from Benares to Lahore a parcel containing materials for 18 bombs.[35][36]

By the middle of January, Pingle was back in Amritsar with "the fat babu" (Rash Behari); to avoid too many visitors, Rash Behari moved to Lahore after a fortnight. In both the places he collected materials for making bombs and ordered for 80 bomb cases to a foundry at Lahore. Its owner out of suspicion refused to execute the order. Instead, inkpots were used as cases in several of the dacoities. Completed bombs were found during house searches, while Rash Behari escaped. "By then effective contact had been established between the returned Gadharites and the revolutionaries led by Rash Behari, and a large section of soldiers in the NW were obviously disaffected." "It was expected that as soon as the signal was received there would be mutinies and popular risings from Punjab to Bengal." "48 out of the 81 accused in the Lahore conspiracy case, including Rash Behari’s close associates like Pingle, Mathura Singh & Kartar Singh Sarabha, recently arrived from North America."[37]

Along with Rash Behari Bose, Sachin Sanyal and Kartar Singh, Pingle became one of the main coordinators of the attempted mutiny in February 1915. Under Rash Behari, Pingle issued intensive propaganda for revolution from December 1914, sometimes disguised as Shyamlal, a Bengali; sometimes Ganpat Singh, a Punjabi.[38]

Setting a date

Confident of being able to rally the Indian sepoy, the plot for the mutiny took its final shape. The 23rd Cavalry in Punjab was to seize weapons and kill their officers while on roll call on 21 February. This was to be followed by mutiny in the 26th Punjab, which was to be the signal for the uprising to begin, resulting in an advance on Delhi and Lahore. The Bengal revolutionaries contacted the Sikh troops stationed at Dacca through letters of introduction sent by Sikh soldiers of Lahore, and succeeded in winning them over.[39] The Bengal cell was to look for the Punjab Mail entering the Howrah Station the next day (which would have been cancelled if Punjab was seized) and was to strike immediately.

1915 Indian mutiny

See also: 1915 Singapore Mutiny


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

By the start of 1915, a large number of Ghadarites (nearly 8,000 in the Punjab province alone by some estimates) had returned to India.[4][40][41] However, they were not assigned a central leadership and begun their work on an ad hoc basis. Although some were rounded up by the police on suspicion, many remained at large and began establishing contacts with garrisons in major cities like Lahore, Ferozepur and Rawalpindi. Various plans had been made to attack the military arsenal at Mian Meer, near Lahore and initiate a general uprising on 15 November 1914. In another plan, a group of Sikh soldiers, the manjha jatha, planned to start a mutiny in the 23rd Cavalry at the Lahore cantonment on 26 November. A further plan called for a mutiny to start on 30 November from Ferozepur under Nidham Singh.[42] In Bengal, the Jugantar, through Jatin Mukherjee, established contacts with the garrison at Fort William in Calcutta.[4][43] In August 1914, Mukherjee's group had seized a large consignment of guns and ammunition from the Rodda company, a major gun manufacturing firm in India. In December, a number of politically motivated armed robberies to obtain funds were carried out in Calcutta. Mukherjee kept in touch with Rash Behari Bose through Kartar Singh and V.G. Pingle. These rebellious acts, which were until then organised separately by different groups, were brought into a common umbrella under the leadership of Rash Behari Bose in North India, V. G. Pingle in Maharashtra, and Sachindranath Sanyal in Benares.[4][43][44] A plan was made for a unified general uprising, with the date set for 21 February 1915.[4][43]

February 1915

In India, confident of being able to rally the Indian sepoy, the plot for the mutiny took its final shape. Under the plans, the 23rd Cavalry in Punjab was to seize weapons and kill their officers while on roll call on 21 February.[19] This was to be followed by mutiny in the 26th Punjab, which was to be the signal for the uprising to begin, resulting in an advance on Delhi and Lahore. The Bengal cell was to look for the Punjab Mail entering the Howrah Station the next day (which would have been cancelled if Punjab was seized) and was to strike immediately.

However, the Punjab CID successfully infiltrated the conspiracy at the last moment through Kirpal Singh: a cousin of the trooper Balwant Singh (23rd Cavalry), US-returned Kirpal, a spy, visited Rash Behari's Lahore headquarters near the Mochi Gate, where over a dozen leaders including Pingle met on 15 February 1915. Kirpal informed the police.[45] Sensing that their plans had been compromised, the D-day was brought forward to 19 February, but even these plans found their way to the Punjab CID. Plans for revolt by the 130th Baluchi Regiment at Rangoon on 21 February were thwarted. On 15 February, the 5th Light Infantry stationed at Singapore was among the few units to actually rebel. About half of the eight hundred and fifty troops comprising the regiment mutinied on the afternoon of the 15th,[46] along with nearly a hundred men of the Malay States Guides. This mutiny lasted almost seven days, and resulted in the deaths of forty-seven British soldiers and local civilians. The mutineers also released the interned crew of the SMS Emden. The mutiny was only put down after French, Russian and Japanese ships arrived with reinforcements.[47][48] Of nearly two hundred tried at Singapore, forty-seven were shot in a public execution,. Most of the rest were deported for life or given jail terms ranging between seven and twenty years.[47] Some historians, including Hew Strachan, argue that although Ghadar agents operated within the Singapore unit, the mutiny was isolated and not linked to the conspiracy.[49] Others deem this as instigated by the Silk Letter Movement which became intricately related to the Ghadarite conspiracy.[50] Plans for revolt in the 26th Punjab, 7th Rajput, 24th Jat Artillery and other regiments did not go beyond the conspiracy stage. Planned mutinies in Firozpur, Lahore, and Agra were also suppressed and many key leaders of the conspiracy were arrested, although some managed to escape or evade arrest. A last-ditch attempt was made by Kartar Singh and Pingle to trigger a mutiny in the 12th Cavalry regiment at Meerut.[51] Kartar Singh escaped from Lahore, but was arrested in Benares, and V. G. Pingle was apprehended from the lines of the 12th Cavalry at Meerut, in the night of 23 March 1915. He carried "ten bombs of the pattern used in the attempt to assassinate Lord Hardinge in Delhi," according to Bombay police report.[39] It is said that it was enough to blow up an entire regiment.[52] Mass arrests followed as the Ghadarites were rounded up in Punjab and the Central Provinces. Rash Behari Bose escaped from Lahore and in May 1915 fled to Japan. Other leaders, including Giani Pritam Singh, Swami Satyananda Puri and others fled to Thailand or other sympathetic nations.[19][51]

Later efforts

Other related events include the 1915 Singapore Mutiny, the Annie Larsen arms plot, Christmas Day Plot, events leading up to the death of Bagha Jatin, as well as the German mission to Kabul, the mutiny of the Connaught Rangers in India, as well as, by some accounts, the Black Tom explosion in 1916. The Indo-Irish-German alliance and the conspiracy were the target of a worldwide British intelligence effort, which was successful in preventing further attempts. American intelligence agencies arrested key figures in the aftermath of the Annie Larsen affair in 1917. The conspiracy led to criminal conspiracy trials like the Lahore Conspiracy Case trial in India and the Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial in the United States, the latter being the longest and most expensive trial in the country at that date.[1]

Trials

Main articles: Lahore Conspiracy Case trial and Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial

The conspiracy led to a number of trials in India, most famous among them being the Lahore Conspiracy Case trial, which opened in Lahore in April 1915 in the aftermath of the failed February mutiny. Other trials included the Benares, Simla, Delhi, and Ferozepur conspiracy cases, and the trials of those arrested at Budge Budge.[52] At Lahore, a special tribunal was constituted under the Defence of India Act 1915 and a total of 291 conspirators were put on trial. Of these 42 were awarded the death sentence, 114 transported for life, and 93 awarded varying terms of imprisonment. A number of these were sent to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman. Forty-two defendants in the trial were acquitted. The Lahore trial directly linked the plans made in United States and the February mutiny plot. Following the conclusion of the trial, diplomatic effort to destroy the Indian revolutionary movement in the United States and to bring its members to trial increased considerably.[53][54][55]

Impact

The Hindu–German Conspiracy as a whole, as well as the intrigues of the Ghadar Party in Punjab during the war, were among the main stimuli for the enactment of the Defence of India Act, appointment of the Rowlatt Committee, and the enactment of the Rowlatt Acts. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre is also linked[specify] intimately with the Raj's fears of a Ghadarite uprising in India especially Punjab in 1919.

See also

• British counter-intelligence against the Indian revolutionary movement during World War I
• Ghadar Party

References

1. Plowman 2003, p. 84
2. Hoover 1985, p. 252
3. Brown 1948, p. 300
4. Gupta 1997, p. 12
5. Popplewell 1995, p. 201
6. Strachan 2001, p. 798
7. Strachan 2001, p. 788
8. Hopkirk 2001, p. 41
9. Popplewell 1995, p. 234
10. Fischer-Tiné 2007, p. 333
11. Fischer-Tiné 2007, p. 334
12. Fischer-Tiné 2007, p. 335
13. Strachan 2001, p. 795
14. Deepak 1999, p. 441
15. Sarkar 1983, p. 146
16. Deepak 1999, p. 439
17. Strachan 2001, p. 793
18. Deepak 1999, p. 442
19. Strachan 2001, p. 796
20. Ward 2002, pp. 79–96
21. Sarkar 1983, p. 148
22. Hoover 1985, p. 251
23. Brown 1948, p. 303
24. Bose 1971, pp. 87–88, 132
25. Statement of Pingle and Mula Singh to Cleveland, d/31-3-1915, H.P. 1916, May 436-439B. Notes on Tahal, Roll 6, RG 118.
26. Rowlatt Report §110, §121 and §138.
27. Majumbar 1967, p. 167.
28. Bose 1971, pp. 161–162
29. Terrorism in Bengal, Government of West Bengal, Vol. III, p505
30. Ker 1917, pp. 373–375
31. Rowlatt, §121, §132-§138
32. Terrorism in Bengal, Vol. V, p170
33. Rowlatt, §138
34. Ker 1917, p. 367
35. Rowlatt, §121
36. Ker 1917, pp. 377–378
37. Bose 1971, pp. 124–125
38. Majumbdar 1967, p. 167
39. Majumbdar 1967, p. 169
40. Chhabra 2005, p. 597
41. Jain, Phūlacanda (1998). Svatantratā senānī granthamālā: Krāntikārī āndolana, suprasiddha prasanga. India. p. 7. ISBN 9788170227519.
42. Deepak 1999, p. 443
43. Gupta 1997, p. 11
44. Puri 1980, p. 60
45. Ker 1917, p. 369
46. Philip Mason, pages 426–427 A Matter of Honour, ISBN 0-333-41837-9
47. Sareen 1995, p. 14,15
48. Kuwajima 1988, p. 23
49. Strachan 2001, p. 797
50. Qureshi 1999, p. 78
51. Gupta 1997, p. 3
52. Chhabra 2005, p. 598
53. Talbot 2000, p. 124
54. "History of Andaman Cellular Jail". Andaman Cellular Jail heritage committee. Archived from the original on 13 January 2007. Retrieved 8 December 2007.
55. Khosla, K (23 June 2002). "Ghadr revisited". The Tribune. Chandigarh. Retrieved 8 December 2007.

Further reading

• Bose, A. C. (1971), Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 1905–1927, Patna: Bharati Bhawan, ISBN 978-81-7211-123-6.
• Brown, Giles (August 1948). "The Hindu Conspiracy, 1914–1917". The Pacific Historical Review. University of California Press. 17 (3): 299–310. doi:10.2307/3634258. ISSN 0030-8684. JSTOR 3634258..
• Chhabra, G. S. (2005), Advance Study In The History Of Modern India, 2: 1803–1920, Lotus Press, ISBN 978-81-89093-07-5, archived from the original on 17 July 2011, retrieved 27 October 2008.
• Deepak, B. R. (1999). "Revolutionary Activities of the Ghadar Party in China". China Report. Sage Publications. 35 (4): 439. doi:10.1177/000944559903500402. ISSN 0009-4455..
• Fischer-Tiné, Harald (2007), "Indian Nationalism and the 'world forces': Transnational and diasporic dimensions of the Indian freedom movement on the eve of the First World War", Journal of Global History, Cambridge University Press (2): 325–344, ISSN 1740-0228.
• Gupta, Amit K. (September–October 1997). "Defying Death: Nationalist Revolutionism in India, 1897–1938". Social Scientist. 25 (9/10): 3–27. doi:10.2307/3517678. ISSN 0970-0293. JSTOR 3517678..
• Hoover, Karl (May 1985). "The Hindu Conspiracy in California, 1913–1918". German Studies Review. German Studies Association. 8 (2): 245–261. doi:10.2307/1428642. ISSN 0149-7952. JSTOR 1428642..
• Hopkirk, Peter (2001), On Secret Service East of Constantinople, Oxford Paperbacks, ISBN 978-0-19-280230-9.
• Ker, J. C. (1917), Political Trouble in India 1907–1917, Calcutta. Superintendent Government Printing, India, 1917. Republished 1973 by Delhi, Oriental Publishers, OCLC: 1208166.
• Kuwajima, Sho (1988), "First World War and Asia — Indian Mutiny in Singapore (1915)", Journal of Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Osaka University of Foreign Studies, 69: 23–48, ISSN 0472-1411.
• Majumdar, Bimanbehari (1967), Militant Nationalism in India and Its Socio-religious Background, 1897–1917, General Printers & Publishers.
• Plowman, Matthew (Autumn 2003), "Irish Republicans and the Indo-German Conspiracy of World War I", New Hibernia Review, Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas, 7 (3): 81–105, doi:10.1353/nhr.2003.0069, ISSN 1534-5815.
• Popplewell, Richard J. (1995), Intelligence and Imperial Defence: British Intelligence and the Defence of the Indian Empire 1904–1924, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-7146-4580-3.
• Puri, Harish K. (September–October 1980), "Revolutionary Organization: A Study of the Ghadar Movement", Social Scientist, 9 (2/3): 53–66, doi:10.2307/3516925, ISSN 0970-0293, JSTOR 3516925.
• Qureshi, M. Naeem (1999), Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics: A Study of the Khilafat Movement, 1918–1924, Brill Academic Publishers, ISBN 978-90-04-11371-8.
• Sareen, Tilak R. (1995), Secret Documents On Singapore Mutiny 1915, Mounto Publishing House, New Delhi, ISBN 978-81-7451-009-9.
• Sarkar, Sumit (1983), Modern India, 1885–1947, Delhi: Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-333-90425-1.
• Strachan, Hew (2001), The First World War, I: To Arms, USA: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-926191-8.
• Ward, W. P. (2002), "White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Toward Orientals in British Columbia", McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History (3 ed.), McGill-Queen's University Press, ISBN 978-0-7735-2322-7.

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Samuel Lucas Joshi [S.L. Joshi]
by Aravind Ganachari
Excerpt from Two Indian Revolutionary Associations Abroad: Some New Light on the Pan-Aryan Association and the Indo-Japanese Association

The Pan-Aryan Association was the earliest known Indian political association founded, in September 1906, in America, by two India's revolutionaries -- Samuel Lucas Joshi (1878-1940) and Mohammad Barkatulla (b. ? D. 1928).1 It was started in New York on the lines of Indian Home Rule League,2 with the purpose of making a common cause with the similar movement in Ireland. This was one of the first Indo-Irish endeavours for attaining their swaraj.3 About the same time, Joshi attended a meeting of the United Irish League delegated on 21 October 1906, to enlist the support of the Irish leaders. Further evidence of this is the fact that President of the Pan-Aryan Association was an Irishman named A.S. Dulin. Joshi became the Secretary of this Association. It seems, Joshi was assisted in this effort by George Fitzgerald 'Freeman, who edited the Gaelic American, a mouth-piece of Irish revolutionaries, and which espoused the cause of Indian independence,4 and John Devoy of Clan-na-Gael.

The first public meeting of the Pan-Aryan Association took place at the Hotel 'Martha Washington', N.Y., on 11 February 1907, which was presided over by A.S. Dulin, and speeches were delivered by S.L. Joshi, Mohd. Barkatulla and Indu Bhushan Dey Mazumdar,6 in which they emphasised British oppression and the new industrial movement in India. The report of this meeting, and the prospectus of the Association, was published by the Gaelic American in its issue of 2 March 1907. The aims and objectives of this Association could be thus summarised --

1. To secure Home Rule for India.

2. To carry on propaganda in the United States with a view to attain the same, and to bring India and America in closer contact.

3. To spread among the people of India a knowledge of the advantages of freedom and national unity.

4. To help the students from India, to educate and send them back, so that they may spread the message of liberal education and industrialism.

For achieving closer co-operation with the Irish leaders. S.L. Joshi attended a meeting of United Irish League In New York on 26 October 1906, in which Mr. Bulmer Hobson of Belfast was the principal speaker. The meeting was stated to have been attended by over 2,500 people including every active Irish and Indian nationalist in New York. After Bulmer Hobson spoke on "the Aim, Methods and Working of the Sinn Fein Movement",7 Joshi spoke on the Swadeshi movement in India, and pointed out that It was similar to the one mentioned by Hobson, started for the purpose of achieving emancipation, political and economic, from a common enemy, the English. He also pointed out the economic ruin that was brought about by the English rule In India, and said, "we feel that Ireland's cause is our own, and our hearts are knit with the hearts of Ireland".8 At the close of the meeting, resolution was passed which ran thus:

"We extend to the people of India our sympathy and good-will in their struggle for the recovery of their independence, and we congratulate them on the splendid progress they have made through the Swadeshi movement in the revival of industries which have been destroyed by England, and which are a necessity in the national life. We hope and pray that India and Ireland may march side by side to complete in absolute freedom".

Joshi and Barkatulla's close contacts with Shyamji Krishna Verma, Mrs Bhikaiji Rustom, K.R. Cama, and the India Home Rule League of London, can be understood from the report of the second Annual General Meeting of the Indian Home Rule League, held on 23 February 1907, published by Shyamji Krishna Verma in Indian Sociologist. The report applauded the establishment of the Pan-Aryan Association by their 'friends and sympathisers.'9

In October 1907, Mrs. Cama, the well known Indian revolutionary abroad, arrived in New York. She was put up in the Hotel 'Martha Washington', from where the Pan-Aryan Association functioned. Her interview was published in New York Sun of 20 October 1907, in which she exposes the British oppression in India. It also mentions that S.L. Joshi was present at that time. Mrs. Cama's lectures were arranged under the auspices of the Pan-Aryan Association.10

It must be noted here that Myron H. Phelps, an Irish American, also organised Indo-American National Association on 5 September 1907, and Society for the Advancement of India in November 1907, in New York for similar purposes.11 It seems, Phelps' effort to unite his Association with the Pan-Aryan Association did not succeed. In the opinion of police report, it was because Joshi and Barkatulla were jealous of Phelps' position and influence rather than any divergence of political views.12 Interestingly, a letter signed by six Bengali students, which appeared in the Bande Mataram of Calcutta in its issue of 11 April 1908, regretted Phelps' arbitrary manner in running his Society, without desiring the active cooperation of any of their representative leaders, and expressed their intention of joining the Pan-Aryan Association.13 This showed the influence of the Pan-Aryan Association on Indian students studying in America.

The biographical sketch of Samuel Lucas Joshi and Mohd. Barkatulla is very scant. A few facts about them, culled from the Police 'secret' files and the contemporary records, may be briefly stated.

S.L. Joshi14 was born in 1874, at Buldhana, in Maharashtra (then in Berar). His father, Rev. Lucas Mahoba Joshi, was connected with the Church Mission Society, for more than forty years. S.L. Joshi lived at Nasik from 1876 to 1888. He completed High School education at Aurangbad. From 1890 to 1895, he studied for B.A. degree at the Nizam College, Hyderabad. During most of this time, he lived with the Rev. M.G. Goldsmith of Church Mission Society. After taking his degree, he went to Bombay in 1896, and was employed in the Bombay Government secretariat. Later, he joined the office of the Bombay Presidency Magistrates' court, while studying law in the Bombay Government Law School. In 1899, he was appointed Head Master of the Church Mission Society's High Master at Hyderabad, Sind. In 1900, he went to Amballa as the Head Master of a High School. There he received an offer of a lecturership in Indian Languages in an American institution for training for intending missionaries. He left for America in August 1902. The institution where Joshi was working in America having changed hands, he came to New York where he made his living by lecturing on India for the New York Board of Education, and also as representative of the Foreign Missions Industrial Association. In this capacity, he lectured extensively on the need for reviving Indian industries on modern scientific lines.

When the work of this mission was given up for want of funds, Joshi turned to research work at Columbia University, where he took his M.A. degree in 1905. It was during his lecturing on Indian industries that Joshi seems to have become interested in revolutionary activities.

Very little is known about Mohd. Barkatulla's early life, and also about his family. He was probably born around 1870.15 He went to U.S.A. towards the end of 19th century, and gradually became involved in the incipient Indian revolutionary movement there. He, more than Joshi, seems to have been in close contact with the Indian revolutionaries like Shyamji Krishna Verma, Mrs. Cama, Sardar Rewasingji Rana, and others.

In 1908, Surendra Mohan Bose, who had come from Japan, Gurudatta Kumar, and Tarak Nath Das, had started publishing Free Hindustan, a bi-monthly journal from Vancouver, British Canada, a close imitation of Indian Sociologist of S.K. Verma. Due to pressure of British administration there, it was moved to Seattle in Autumn 1908, and then to New York. George Freeman, S .L. Joshi, and Barkatulla are said to have played a major role in having Free Hindustan published from New York. However, its publication abruptly ended in 1910.

The activities of the Pan-Aryan Association came to an end around February 1909. Even Phelps had to close down his Association and India House in New York around the same time. The reason could be that William Jennings Bryan, who was Governor of Nebraska, and later became Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State in 1916, castigated the British rule in India by comparing it with Czarist rule in Russia. The British Foreign Office showed total displeasure to the US administration at such utterances of Bryan. It was with a view to achieve US-British friendship, President Theodore Roosevelt countered Bryan's views on India16 and suppressed, at the instance of British Government, all kinds of pro-Indian activities in New York.17

While Mohd. Barkatulla left for Tokyo in March 1909, S.L. Joshi took up a teaching assignment in Maharaja College in Baroda State. When the Government of India objected through the Political Resident, Joshi disclaimed his earlier association with Mrs. Cama and others, and thereafter, the political intelligence did not keep track of his activities. After some years, he was allowed to take up Carnegie Exchange Professorship in America. During 1926-1936, he was the Head of the Department for Comparative Religions and Indian Philosophy at Dartmouth College. He died on 16 June 1940 at Chicago.18 During this period, he helped many Indian students who went to America for higher education.

_______________

Notes:

1. Bombay Presidency Abstracts of Intelligence (hereinafter BPPAI). Year 1910 / Vol. XXIII / No. 11 / 19 March / Para-758.

2. The Indian Home Rule Society was formed by about twenty Indians, under the leadership of Shyamji Krishna Verma on 18 February 1905, in London on lines of Irish Home Rule League Society. For details see Indulal Yajnik: Shyamji Krishna Verma, Bombay, 1950. 130-133.

3. One of the earliest links between Irish and Indian patriots was that an Indian student named Camille F. Saidhana was helped, in May 1906, by the Clan-na-Gael to go to Dublin to establish contacts with the Sinn Fein leaders. Arun Kumar Bose: Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 1905-1922, Patna, 1971, 38.

4. George Freeman and John Devoy seem to have been in touch with Mrs. Cama in Paris regarding smuggling of arms. DCI on 9 March 1915, Home-Political, 1915-April, 412-15 B, source quoted by Arun Kumar Bose. Ibid, 48.

5. Clan-na-Gael was a revolutionary society established by a group of Irish Americans called Fenians in the second half of the 19th century. This Society under John Devoy had proclaimed its political alliance with Indian revolutionaries. The Gaelic American was banned by the Government of India in 1907.

6. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No.11 / Para 758: A letter from Mrs. Cama to Indu Bhushan Dey, which the police intercepted.,made them interrogate him and check his luggage on his arrival at Bombay in 1910. He gave following information about himself to the police. He was studying in Cornell University and had same tendencies with many other Indians abroad, and that he has now given up such ideas. He travelled some time with Prince Victor of Cooch Bihar and undertook his last trip to America, Egypt and Turkey at the expense of the Cooch Bihar State. The correspondence found with him revealed his association with Mrs. Cama, Barkatulla, Myron H. Phelps and other extremists. A photo of S.L. Joshi and a group photo with Myron Phelps was also found. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No.9 / 5 March / Para 596.

7. Sinn Fein, meaning "We Ourself," Irish nationalist party founded by Arthur Griffith (1872-1922). In 1905, it was extremist outfit, later became the political wing of Irish Republican Party.

8. BPPAI / XXIII / No.47 / 3 Dec. / Para 758.:

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Aravind Gururao Ganachari. "Myron H. Phelps (1856-1916): An Early American Advocate of India's Freedom," PIHC, 52nd Session, New Delhi, 1991-92, 650-651.

12. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No.47 / 3 December / Para-3197.

13. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No.24 / 18 June / Para-1820.

14. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No.47 / 3 December / Para-3197. History sheet of S.L. Joshi. Photograph of S.L. Joshi in BPPAI / 1909, 758.

15. Arun Kumar Bose. op. cit., 253.

16. President Theodore Roosevelt countered Bryan's views on India. In his speech delivered at the Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Church at Washington on 18 January 1908.

17. At this time, the India Office In London as well as the Government of India were extremely watchful of the activities of the Indian revolutionaries and their foreign collaborators abroad. Dunlop Smith, who was a close confidant of Lord Minto in the India Office, then headed by Lord Morley, made discreet inquiries whether any Irish Society or any other organisation was supporting Indian revolutionaries. Minto Papers, Correspondence - Eng. & Ind., L & T. Vol. II. No. 7. Dunlop Smith to Lord Minto. dt. 12 July 1907. Quoted by M.N. Das: India Under Morley and Minto, London, 1963, 115- 16.

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Two Indian Revolutionary Associations Abroad: Some New Light on the Pan-Aryan Association and the Indo-Japanese Association
by Aravind Ganachari (LM00176)

The Pan-Aryan Association in the United States of America and the Indo-Japanese Association in Japan are the two earliest political associations started by Indians in those respective countries. While the existing works on Indian revolutionaries abroad make passing reference to the Pan Aryan Association of U.S.A., there is hardly any account of the Indian revolutionary activity in Japan prior to the activities of Rash Behari Bose. This paper, which is primarily based on the Bombay Presidency Police Abstracts of Intelligence, seeks to throw some new light on these Indian revolutionary associations and evaluate their contribution to India's freedom struggle.

I

The Pan-Aryan Association was the earliest known Indian political association founded, in September 1906, in America, by two India's revolutionaries -- Samuel Lucas Joshi (1878-1940) and Mohammad Barkatulla (b. ? D. 1928).1 It was started in New York on the lines of Indian Home Rule League,2 with the purpose of making a common cause with the similar movement in Ireland. This was one of the first Indo-Irish endeavours for attaining their swaraj.3 About the same time, Joshi attended a meeting of the United Irish League delegated on 21 October 1906, to enlist the support of the Irish leaders. Further evidence of this is the fact that President of the Pan-Aryan Association was an Irishman named A.S. Dulin. Joshi became the Secretary of this Association. It seems, Joshi was assisted in this effort by George Fitzgerald 'Freeman, who edited the Gaelic American, a mouth-piece of Irish revolutionaries, and which espoused the cause of Indian independence,4 and John Devoy of Clan-na-Gael.

The first public meeting of the Pan-Aryan Association took place at the Hotel 'Martha Washington', N.Y., on 11 February 1907, which was presided over by A.S. Dulin, and speeches were delivered by S.L. Joshi, Mohd. Barkatulla and Indu Bhushan Dey Mazumdar,6 in which they emphasised British oppression and the new industrial movement in India. The report of this meeting, and the prospectus of the Association, was published by the Gaelic American in its issue of 2 March 1907. The aims and objectives of this Association could be thus summarised --

1. To secure Home Rule for India.

2. To carry on propaganda in the United States with a view to attain the same, and to bring India and America in closer contact.

3. To spread among the people of India a knowledge of the advantages of freedom and national unity.

4. To help the students from India, to educate and send them back, so that they may spread the message of liberal education and industrialism.

For achieving closer co-operation with the Irish leaders. S.L. Joshi attended a meeting of United Irish League In New York on 26 October 1906, in which Mr. Bulmer Hobson of Belfast was the principal speaker. The meeting was stated to have been attended by over 2,500 people including every active Irish and Indian nationalist in New York. After Bulmer Hobson spoke on "the Aim, Methods and Working of the Sinn Fein Movement",7 Joshi spoke on the Swadeshi movement in India, and pointed out that It was similar to the one mentioned by Hobson, started for the purpose of achieving emancipation, political and economic, from a common enemy, the English. He also pointed out the economic ruin that was brought about by the English rule In India, and said, "we feel that Ireland's cause is our own, and our hearts are knit with the hearts of Ireland".8 At the close of the meeting, resolution was passed which ran thus:

"We extend to the people of India our sympathy and good-will in their struggle for the recovery of their independence, and we congratulate them on the splendid progress they have made through the Swadeshi movement in the revival of industries which have been destroyed by England, and which are a necessity in the national life. We hope and pray that India and Ireland may march side by side to complete in absolute freedom".

Joshi and Barkatulla's close contacts with Shyamji Krishna Verma, Mrs Bhikaiji Rustom, K.R. Cama, and the India Home Rule League of London, can be understood from the report of the second Annual General Meeting of the Indian Home Rule League, held on 23 February 1907, published by Shyamji Krishna Verma in Indian Sociologist. The report applauded the establishment of the Pan-Aryan Association by their 'friends and sympathisers.'9

In October 1907, Mrs. Cama, the well known Indian revolutionary abroad, arrived in New York. She was put up in the Hotel 'Martha Washington', from where the Pan-Aryan Association functioned. Her interview was published in New York Sun of 20 October 1907, in which she exposes the British oppression in India. It also mentions that S.L. Joshi was present at that time. Mrs. Cama's lectures were arranged under the auspices of the Pan-Aryan Association.10

It must be noted here that Myron H. Phelps, an Irish American, also organised Indo-American National Association on 5 September 1907, and Society for the Advancement of India in November 1907, in New York for similar purposes.11 It seems, Phelps' effort to unite his Association with the Pan-Aryan Association did not succeed. In the opinion of police report, it was because Joshi and Barkatulla were jealous of Phelps' position and influence rather than any divergence of political views.12 Interestingly, a letter signed by six Bengali students, which appeared in the Bande Mataram of Calcutta in its issue of 11 April 1908, regretted Phelps' arbitrary manner in running his Society, without desiring the active cooperation of any of their representative leaders, and expressed their intention of joining the Pan-Aryan Association.13 This showed the influence of the Pan-Aryan Association on Indian students studying in America.

The biographical sketch of Samuel Lucas Joshi and Mohd. Barkatulla is very scant. A few facts about them, culled from the Police 'secret' files and the contemporary records, may be briefly stated.

S.L. Joshi14 was born in 1874, at Buldhana, in Maharashtra (then in Berar). His father, Rev. Lucas Mahoba Joshi, was connected with the Church Mission Society, for more than forty years. S.L. Joshi lived at Nasik from 1876 to 1888. He completed High School education at Aurangbad. From 1890 to 1895, he studied for B.A. degree at the Nizam College, Hyderabad. During most of this time, he lived with the Rev. M.G. Goldsmith of Church Mission Society. After taking his degree, he went to Bombay in 1896, and was employed in the Bombay Government secretariat. Later, he joined the office of the Bombay Presidency Magistrates' court, while studying law in the Bombay Government Law School. In 1899, he was appointed Head Master of the Church Mission Society's High Master at Hyderabad, Sind. In 1900, he went to Amballa as the Head Master of a High School. There he received an offer of a lecturership in Indian Languages in an American institution for training for intending missionaries. He left for America in August 1902. The institution where Joshi was working in America having changed hands, he came to New York where he made his living by lecturing on India for the New York Board of Education, and also as representative of the Foreign Missions Industrial Association. In this capacity, he lectured extensively on the need for reviving Indian industries on modern scientific lines.

When the work of this mission was given up for want of funds, Joshi turned to research work at Columbia University, where he took his M.A. degree in 1905. It was during his lecturing on Indian industries that Joshi seems to have become interested in revolutionary activities.

Very little is known about Mohd. Barkatulla's early life, and also about his family. He was probably born around 1870.15 He went to U.S.A. towards the end of 19th century, and gradually became involved in the incipient Indian revolutionary movement there. He, more than Joshi, seems to have been in close contact with the Indian revolutionaries like Shyamji Krishna Verma, Mrs. Cama, Sardar Rewasingji Rana, and others.

In 1908, Surendra Mohan Bose, who had come from Japan, Gurudatta Kumar, and Tarak Nath Das, had started publishing Free Hindustan, a bi-monthly journal from Vancouver, British Canada, a close imitation of Indian Sociologist of S.K. Verma. Due to pressure of British administration there, it was moved to Seattle in Autumn 1908, and then to New York. George Freeman, S .L. Joshi, and Barkatulla are said to have played a major role in having Free Hindustan published from New York. However, its publication abruptly ended in 1910.

The activities of the Pan-Aryan Association came to an end around February 1909. Even Phelps had to close down his Association and India House in New York around the same time. The reason could be that William Jennings Bryan, who was Governor of Nebraska, and later became Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State in 1916, castigated the British rule in India by comparing it with Czarist rule in Russia. The British Foreign Office showed total displeasure to the US administration at such utterances of Bryan. It was with a view to achieve US-British friendship, President Theodore Roosevelt countered Bryan's views on India16 and suppressed, at the instance of British Government, all kinds of pro-Indian activities in New York.17

While Mohd. Barkatulla left for Tokyo in March 1909, S.L. Joshi took up a teaching assignment in Maharaja College in Baroda State. When the Government of India objected through the Political Resident, Joshi disclaimed his earlier association with Mrs. Cama and others, and thereafter, the political intelligence did not keep track of his activities. After some years, he was allowed to take up Carnegie Exchange Professorship in America. During 1926-1936, he was the Head of the Department for Comparative Religions and Indian Philosophy at Dartmouth College. He died on 16 June 1940 at Chicago.18 During this period, he helped many Indian students who went to America for higher education.

II

The striking and pre-eminent position which Japan had attained as one of the foremost nations of modern times, not only evoked admiration but stimulated the newly awakened Indian national sentiment and the spirit of industrial revival, during the extremist phase of Indian national movement. Maharashtra's connection with Japan began in the closing years of 19th century. B.G. Tilak's close associate, Vasukaka Joshi, proprietor of the Chitrashala Press, had wished to establish contacts with Japan through Nepal Government, and even visited Japan himself.19 Perhaps, it may be because of his efforts that Japanese Government came forward to give financial help to the draught stricken people in Maharashtra in 1900. The native newspapers in Maharashtra followed the Russo-Japanese War with unabated interest. It was Kesari, who in return to Japanese help earlier, undertook the task of giving pecuniary aid to the families of Japanese soldiers rendered destitute in the war, collected 'one-rupee' contribution in the Deccan and sent Rs. 2000/- to the Yokohama Specie Bank,20 which accounts their later help.

One of the earliest who went to Japan in 1899, was Krishnaji Dadaji alias Kedba Kulkarni, a member of the secret society named Shivaji Club of Kolhapur. in Maharashtra. While most of these used to go to Japan to learn mach-box or glass manufacturing, a few of them used to acquire the knowledge of bomb-making21 and on their return used to secretly help the armed revolutionaries.

Many students. mostly from Maharashtra, Bengal, Baroda, Madras and Mysore, followed K.D. Kulkarni. Around 1906, there were as many as 50 of them on Tokyo alone. Most of them were students of Tokyo Higher Technological School, the Tokyo and Kyoto Imperial Universities and the Sapparo Agricultural College. A few others acquired knowledge at factories of various kind. Their Japanese colleagues respected them for their intelligence. The mutual advantages of a closer connection between the two countries, especially in the field of commercial, industrial and educational activity was realised, and need for a properly organized agency was felt by these students. They had the good fortune of enlisting the warm sympathies of the foremost leaders of modern Japan including such celebrities as Count Okuma, one of the four 'elder-statesmen' (the Genro); the founders of industrial enterprise in Japan, i.e., Mr. Kondo, President of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, and Baron Takahashi, President of the Yokohama Specie Bank. The result was the establishment of the Indo-Japanese Association In Tokyo.22 One of the chief supporters of this cause was R.D. Tata. The aims and objectives of this Association were:

1. To guide and help every possible way Indian students and others, proceeding to Japan for study or business.

2: To provide a building for the accommodation of Indian students for housing a suitably equipped library.

3. To create and foster In the intelligent classes of Japan, interest in Indian students. esp. in Indian commerce and industries, and to devise means for developing commerce and industry in India.

4. To spread the knowledge of Indian vernaculars among the educated classes of Japan.

5. To encourage intercourse between the two countries so as to bring the people into closer contact.23

One of those students who played a large part in the establishment of this Association was Govind Narayan Potdar,24 He had gone to Japan In 1903 and had remained till December 1908, to study Applied Chemistry. He, along with other students, started India House in Tokyo, similar to the one at London25 and branches were opened in Kyoto, Osaka, and in almost all industrial cities. Among other prominent students were, Surendra Mohan Bose, who later went to America, K.D. Kulkarni, L. Barthakur, S.C. Ray, S.C. Ghosh, J.J. Sawant, S.C. Bose, J.B. Bidyant, B.H. Khatao. Besides, many Indian business firms in Japan, seem to have lent all kinds of support to the activities of Indian students.26 Many of these after their return to India started swadeshi industries27 and some of them actively connected with the armed revolutionaries.

The arrival of Mohd. Barkatulla in February 1909, gave a shot in the arm to the anti-British political activities at India House. He took up the assignment of teaching Urdu at the Tokyo School for Foreign Languages. The statement given to the police after much interrogation by one Nanalal Pranshankar alias Kanchan Kumar, who had visited India House at Tokyo and other places in Japan, reveals the influence that Mohd. Barkatulla wielded.

"He (Barkatulla) is a good and spirited speaker. He speaks against the (British) Government, a man of strong political views ... From my travels through Japan, I came to the conclusion that in Tokyo Indian politics were freely discussed and that the Japanese took a lot of interest in them. I understood that Barkatulla was a great favourite of the Indians and the Japanese, and commanded immense influence ... He told me that the Japanese who were present for my lecture at the India House were the sons of military men. He said that India would regain her liberty one day through the combined assistance of China and Japan ... In my opinion, Barkatulla is the Shyamji Krishna Verma of Japan. He is friendly with the Captains of the Japanese steamers coming to and fro from India. Barkatulla carried on correspondence in cipher ... Savant, Gokhale and Mukharji know Japanese and are friends of Barkatulla ... 28

There is an interesting report from the D.C.I. Simla: "It has since been suggested that the arms which are being smuggled into India by the Japanese include rifles which are sent out in parts packed separately in merchandize". 29

It should be noted that before the First World War, a Japanese secret society named Shina Ronin, with its leader Toyama Mitsura, was actively supporting Indian revolutionaries. It also had the financial backing of Japanese Govemment30. Because of the growing anti-British and Pan-Aryan sentiment, the obvious self-interest of some Japanese commercial houses and seamen could be easily blended with their new imperialist ideals, and a substantial part of the illicit arms and ammunitions secured by the revolutionaries in India used to come from Kobe and Yokohama.31

On 1 August 1912, the Viceroy of India appealed to the Secretary of State to request the Japanese Government to put an end to the publication of the Islamic Fraternity, which Barkatulla edited from Tokyo.32 The governments of Gomble Yamamoto and Shigenobu Okuma wanted good relations with Britain, and so it was not possible for Indians in Japan to carry on an effective anti-British agitation, until the activities of Rash Behari Bose. Barkatulla left for San Francisco on 6 May 1914.33 The Indo-Japanese Association, which had become centre of anti-British political activity until 1914, again became apolitical organization.

_______________

Notes:

1. Bombay Presidency Abstracts of Intelligence (hereinafter BPPAI). Year 1910 / Vol. XXIII / No. 11 / 19 March / Para-758.

2. The Indian Home Rule Society was formed by about twenty Indians, under the leadership of Shyamji Krishna Verma on 18 February 1905, in London on lines of Irish Home Rule League Society. For details see Indulal Yajnik: Shyamji Krishna Verma, Bombay, 1950. 130-133.

3. One of the earliest links between Irish and Indian patriots was that an Indian student named Camille F. Saidhana was helped, in May 1906, by the Clan-na-Gael to go to Dublin to establish contacts with the Sinn Fein leaders. Arun Kumar Bose: Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 1905-1922, Patna, 1971, 38.

4. George Freeman and John Devoy seem to have been in touch with Mrs. Cama in Paris regarding smuggling of arms. DCI on 9 March 1915, Home-Political, 1915-April, 412-15 B, source quoted by Arun Kumar Bose. Ibid, 48.

5. Clan-na-Gael was a revolutionary society established by a group of Irish Americans called Fenians in the second half of the 19th century. This Society under John Devoy had proclaimed its political alliance with Indian revolutionaries. The Gaelic American was banned by the Government of India in 1907.

6. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No.11 / Para 758: A letter from Mrs. Cama to Indu Bhushan Dey, which the police intercepted.,made them interrogate him and check his luggage on his arrival at Bombay in 1910. He gave following information about himself to the police. He was studying in Cornell University and had same tendencies with many other Indians abroad, and that he has now given up such ideas. He travelled some time with Prince Victor of Cooch Bihar and undertook his last trip to America, Egypt and Turkey at the expense of the Cooch Bihar State. The correspondence found with him revealed his association with Mrs. Cama, Barkatulla, Myron H. Phelps and other extremists. A photo of S.L. Joshi and a group photo with Myron Phelps was also found. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No.9 / 5 March / Para 596.

7. Sinn Fein, meaning "We Ourself," Irish nationalist party founded by Arthur Griffith (1872-1922). In 1905, it was extremist outfit, later became the political wing of Irish Republican Party.

8. BPPAI / XXIII / No.47 / 3 Dec. / Para 758.:

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Aravind Gururao Ganachari. "Myron H. Phelps (1856-1916): An Early American Advocate of India's Freedom," PIHC, 52nd Session, New Delhi, 1991-92, 650-651.

12. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No.47 / 3 December / Para-3197.

13. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No.24 / 18 June / Para-1820.

14. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No.47 / 3 December / Para-3197. History sheet of S.L. Joshi. Photograph of S.L. Joshi in BPPAI / 1909, 758.

15. Arun Kumar Bose. op. cit., 253.

16. President Theodore Roosevelt countered Bryan's views on India. In his speech delivered at the Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Church at Washington on 18 January 1908.

17. At this time, the India Office In London as well as the Government of India were extremely watchful of the activities of the Indian revolutionaries and their foreign collaborators abroad. Dunlop Smith, who was a close confidant of Lord Minto in the India Office, then headed by Lord Morley, made discreet inquiries whether any Irish Society or any other organisation was supporting Indian revolutionaries. Minto Papers, Correspondence - Eng. & Ind., L & T. Vol. II. No. 7. Dunlop Smith to Lord Minto. dt. 12 July 1907. Quoted by M.N. Das: India Under Morley and Minto, London, 1963, 115-16.

18. The Times of India, 17 June 1940: Also. V.S. Joshi: Agnipathavaril Paragandha (Marathi), 1987, 156-7.

19. For details see. Y.D. Phadke: Lokmanya Tilak Ani Krantikarak (Marathi). Pune, 1985, 48-49. Their hopes of having help of Nepal Government were dashed as it was not ready to incur the displeasure of British Government In India.

20. Maharashtra State Archives / Political Department / Confidential 'A' Procedings for May 1905, No. 10 of 1905, dated 14 April 1905, 371-73.

21. K.D. alias Kedbe Kulkarni, an active member of the Shivaji Club, on his return to India by the end of 1906, joined the services of Gwalior State, from which he was dismissed in 1907. It was he who introduced Krishnaji Damodar Limaye, another member of the Shivaji Club, to G.N. Potdar to learn bomb making. From 1913, Kulkarni evaded warrant for arrest, was eventually arrested in 1918, and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment, in Phadke, op. cit., 49.

22. Printed note of the Indo-Japanese Association given by R.D. Tata to the police, in BPPAI / 1909 / XXII / No. 49 / 11 December / Para-2321.

23. Ibid.

24. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No. 17 / 30 April / Para-1194: The History sheet of G.N. Potdar describes him as an extremist and a protege of Dr. Moreshwar Gopal Deshmukh, Hon. Secretary of the Hindu Educational Fund of Bombay. Potdar was from Akalkot in Solapur Dist., studied in Nizam College, Hyderabad, and was graduated from University of Madras in 1903. The police described that Potdar learnt bomb-making in Japan and was close to revolutionaries from Bengal and Maharashtra. He was in close contact with Waman Baji Ruikar, who was connected to Belapur Swami Club, and Hotilal Verma, who was arrested in Bengal for revolutionary activities. Potdar, later started a monthly called India House Magazine, published from Bombay.

25. BPPAI / 1910 / XXIII / No. 49 / 11 December / Para-2321.

26. Ibid. The police report gives the list of 27 Indian firms in Tokyo and Yokohama alone, 11 in Kobe, and 7 in other industrial cities. Both the India House and these firms also gave loans to the students. The firms also helped the Indian visitors to Japan, in providing lodging and boarding.

27. Potdar started manufacture of sulphuric acid at Mahim and also helped the Talegaon Glass Factory. Balkrishna Hart Khatao started Belgaum Match Factory. Both were given financial help from the Paisa Fund started by Tilak.

28. BPPAI / 1914 / XXVII / No. 22 / 6 June / Para- 1058.

29. BPPAI / 1914 / XXVII / No.3 / 24 January / Para-121.

30. Don Dignan: Indian Revolutionary Problem in British Diplomacy, 1914-1919, New Delhi, 97.

31. R.P. Dua: The Impact of the Russo-Japanese (1905) War on Indian Politics, Delhi, 1966, 67-68.

32. The Islamic Fraternity, edited by Barkatulla, tried to unite the Islamic people of Turkey to make a common cause and fight the British. According to the Police, this monthly was a fanatically Pan-Islamic, but in the wider context it does not seem to be true. Before the Director of Foreign Languages and the Japanese Government warned Barkatulla, the publication of this paper had ceased on 12 Oct. 1912. He also wrote two revolutionary pamphlets, Akher al-Helal Saif, in Urdu and Proclamation of Liberty in English. For Barkatulla's later life see Dictionary of National Biography, Vo1. 1, edited by S.P. Sen. Calcutta, 1972, 139-140. Photograph of Barkatulla in BPPAI / 1913, p. 915. Group photo of India House in BPPAI / 1910, 748 does not give any information of Barkatulla's contribution to 'German Connection': Nirode K. Barooha, "Har Dayal and the German Connection," in IHR, Vol. VII, July 1980-Jan. 1981. Nos. 1-2, 184-211.

33. R.P. Dua, op. cit.

[admin]

United Irish League
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/5/20

United Irish League
Founded: 23 January 1898
Dissolved: 1920s
Ideology: Land Reform; Political Reform; Irish Home Rule


William O'Brien, founder of the United Irish League

The United Irish League (UIL) was a nationalist political party in Ireland, launched 23 January 1898 with the motto "The Land for the People" .[1] Its objective to be achieved through agrarian agitation and land reform, compelling larger grazier farmers to surrender their lands for redistribution among the small tenant farmers. Founded and initiated at Westport, County Mayo by William O'Brien, it was supported by Michael Davitt MP, John Dillon MP, who worded its constitution, Timothy Harrington MP, John O'Connor Power MP and the Catholic clergy of the district.[2] By 1900 it had expanded to be represented by 462 branches in twenty-five counties.[3]

Background

In 1895 William O'Brien retired from Parliament and the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in the wake of the Parnell split, by which the party became fragmented into three separate networks of local organisation—the Parnellite Irish National League, the Dillionite anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation and the Healyite Peoples Right's Association.[4] O’Brien had become disillusioned with the internal party quarrels and its failure to rouse the people to a new sense of involvement with national goals.[5] After O’Brien had withdrawn to the West of Ireland he experienced at first hand in his Mayo exile the plight of the peasant tenant farmers and landless labourers, their distressed hardship trying to eke out an existence in its rocky landscape. In contrast, the grazier ranches on the rich plains of Mayo, Roscommon and Galway were in the hands of local town shopkeepers, retired policemen, and other middle-class Irish elements.[6] They were, according to O'Brien, the real infernal evils, the so-called grasslands-grabbers, from whom the small tenant farmers were obliged to rent land for their needs. O'Brien saw the necessity to tackle the owners of these grazing ranches. He wanted to have the lands redistributed, a new idea at the time.

The land agitations during the 1880s saw the introduction of the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act 1885, also known as the Ashbourne Act, which helped to eliminate the old cry of "land-grabbers" but since the 1890s the cry was supplemented by "grass-grabbers". O'Brien thus began to take the first steps in his new campaign of agrarian agitation that would ultimately establish peasant proprietorship. This prompted him to call for the introduction of a Land Bill with a provision for the compulsory purchase of untenanted grazier-ranches for distribution among tenants. The failure of the Conservative Government to provide for compulsory purchase under Balfour's 1891 Land Act, convinced O'Brien that something more than Parliamentary oratory was needed to encourage official circles to attend to the needs of the people.[7]

Objectives

The decline in population since the Great Famine had been accompanied by the conversion of previously cultivated land into large grazing ranches, so that in many areas most of the local population was still crowded on tiny, uneconomical holdings within sight of open, untilled fields.[8] At the very place in Westport where in 1879 Parnell once launched the Irish Land League, and in response to the near-famine of 1897–98,[9] O’Brien established a new organisation, the United Irish League (UIL) in January 1898 under the banner of ‘’The Land for the People’. The League had as its prime declared object the breaking up of the large grassland farmers, by compelling them to surrender their lands voluntarily to the Congested Districts Board, established by Balfour in 1891, for redistribution among the tenants of smaller agricultural holdings.[10] It was largely welcomed even among some of the clergy while the authorities on the other hand kept the new movement under close observation.[11] Actually, O’Brien put more life into the country in the first six months of the League than the Nationalist party had aroused in years,[12] after widespread agrarian agitation recommenced in 1898.

The clergy in the district around Westport and Newport, County Mayo promoted the League with considerable zeal, one parish priest called for a branch to hunt the grabbers and Scottish graziers out of the country . Elsewhere the clergy were in no hurry to sanction the League's agitation. Except for Archbishop McEvilly of Tuam, who expressed sympathy for the goals of its agitation.[13] By September 1899 the League had spread to the extent that all six Connacht bishops expressed approval of attempts "to create peasant proprietorship with enlarged holdings in the west of Ireland".[14] The Tuam provincial hierarchy's accommodation of the League up to 1900 reflected predominantly the genuine congruence of their social ideals with the stated aims of the movement.[15]

The League was equally and explicitly designed to reconcile the various parliamentary fragments by bringing them together in a new grass roots organisation around a programme of agrarian agitation, political reform, settlement of the Irish land question and pursuit of Irish Home Rule. William O'Brien was the prime mover, and the difficulty of the project can be gauged from the fact that the parliamentary leaders had very different opinions on the land question. Dillon regarded the unresolved land issue as an essential motor for the nationalist home rule movement. O'Brien championed the smallholders against the large graziers while Davitt, whose original idea had been state ownership and agrarian socialism, was not particularly enamoured by peasant proprietorship.[16]

Though O’Brien claimed that his organisation had no political objective, he became intrinsically aware that to further their cause the three split factions of the IPP needed to be re-united.[17] He strongly believed that only agitational politics combined with constitutional pressures, rather than physical force, were the best means of achieving its goals. It was O’Brien's and Davitt's hope that reunion could be forced on the party from the outside, by organising the country and transforming the Irish representation in Parliament through the election of "good men".[18] Dillon became ambivalent about the new association, believing that it would lead to confrontation with the government and endanger the alliance with the Liberals . This marked the first significant strain in the O'Brien-Dillon relationship.

Expansion


The Irish People (29 February 1908), the official newspaper of the UIL

Organised by John O'Donnell MP as its general secretary the UIL performed extremely well and threatened the position of the divided Irish Parliamentary Party. As a consequence, it quickly gained popular support among tenant farmer, its branches sweeping over most of the country, dictating to the demoralised Irish party leaders the terms for reconstruction, not only of the party but the nationalist movement in Ireland. The UIL platform included commitments to such themes as language revival and industrial development. The movement was backed by O'Brien's new newspaper The Irish People (Sept. 1899 – Nov. 1903). In it he declared that the new League was the people's organisation and that the people, and not the politicians, should be its base. Its organisation included an elaborate representative structure linked to a National Directory. This threat to the divided factions of the IPP began a reunification among MPs, led from above, to counter the UIL threat growing up from below.[19]

The League immediately took up the issue of land redistribution, which the Irish Land League had campaigned on two decades earlier, but had been sidelined after the IPP split into the declining Irish National League and the Irish National Federation. The League's first electoral target was the county council elections under the new revolutionary Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. The Act broke the power of the landlord ascendancy dominated "Grand Juries", for the first time passing absolute democratic control of local affairs into the hands of the people through elected Local County Councils. Next to full Home Rule a no more remarkable concession to popular rights and economic reconstruction.

The creation of the new councils had a significant effect on Ireland as it allowed local people to take decisions affecting themselves. The County and the sub-county District Councils created a political platform for proponents of Irish Home Rule, displacing Unionist influence in many areas. The enfranchisement of local electors allowed the development of a new political class, creating a significant body of experienced politicians who would enter national politics in Ireland in the 1920s, and increase the stability of the transitions to the parliaments of the Irish Free State.

The first local government elections under the Act were held in the spring of 1899 when the Leagues' candidates swept the field and Nationalist county and district councillors began to conduct the local administrative functions hitherto performed by landlord-dominated grand-juries.[3] In some areas such as county Cork, where long standing trade union and labour traditions existed, the electorate tended to adhere to representatives of their allegiances. The depth of support for labour was particularly displayed in Mid-Cork, no doubt due to the growth of another organisation, the Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA), assiduously cultivated by D. D. Sheehan the then editor of the Skibbereen based newspaper, The Southern Star, who assured that UIL and ILLA branch reports were given weekly press coverage, crucial for the expansion and growth of the UIL in Cork.[20] The existence of these two organisations, the UIL centred on popular broad-nationalism, the ILLA based on ‘labour nationalism’ at first apparently corroborative of one another, would within a decade ultimately lead to self-destructive class-tensions, schisms and divisions.[21]

The UIL tactic at the time of setting the have-nots against the haves naturally appealed to the self-interest of the simpler peasants and was the main reason for the rapid spread of the movement.[7] By April 1900 the League's listing showed 462 branches, representing between 60,000 and 80,000 members in twenty five counties.[3] Within two years O’Brien's UIL was by far the largest organisation in the country, comprising 1150 branches and 84,355 members.[22]

Party re-united


John Redmond MP, first leader of the United Irish League

Around 1900 O'Brien, an unbending social reformer and agrarian agitator, was the most influential and powerful figure within the nationalist movement, although not formally its leader. The period was marked by considerable political development in which Davitt had been of great help during the crucial years of the League's existence, but in February, worn out and ill, he left for abroad.[23] The settlement of the party leadership question now focused on the two most important men in Irish politics, O'Brien and Redmond. The initiative seemed to lie with O'Brien, yet Redmond had the prestige of being the Irish party leader. O'Brien was not in the true sense a politician, he possessed great popular gifts, but lacked that will to power which is the hallmark of the politician.[24]

The result of the rapid growth of his UIL as a national organisation in achieving unity through organised popular opinion, was to effect a quick defensive re-union of the discredited IPP factions on 6 February in London under the unanimously agreed leadership of John Redmond MP,[25] largely fearing O'Brien's return to the political field. The National League and the Irish National Federation, representing the two wings of the IPP, both merged with the UIL, which actually became accepted by the parliamentarians as the main support organisation of the parliamentary nationalists. The UIL resembled the old INL, however, in its organisers; many of them were old INL cadre whom O'Brien had recruited for a repeat performance, and it thrived in those areas where land-hungry men were particularly dominant.[26]

The League organisers worked furiously during the months following the reunion to spread the UIL organisation into the eastern and southern parts of the country, the sharp rise during 1900 probably reflected the absorption of old National League and National Federation branches, the new organisation possessing a dynamism which had long been lost by the older bodies.[27] The ill-feeling between the League and many clergymen transcended the political conflicts within the Irish party. The dominance of the Church in Irish rural life made almost inevitable a sense of frustration on the part of young men of ambition among the lower classes. A generation earlier such men had gravitated into pathetic secret protest movement. Now they found a place in the United Irish League.[28]

One crucial problem had yet to be faced – the question of who should be president of the League. O’Brien, now at the pinnacle of national popularity, had created the League primarily to promote land purchase through vigorous agitation. This had been crippled earlier by Parnell in the National League. To avoid this in the future he saw the only way was by retaining control of the UIL through individuals who were agrarian agitators. A National Convention of the League was called and held in Dublin on 19 and 20 June 1900. It registered the triumph of the League as the national organisation with elaborate rules and a constitution drawn up by O’Brien. Redmond was elected chairman.[29] He himself had no doubt as to the future action to be taken. Redmond intended to capture O’Brien's organisation and subordinate it to party Parliamentarian interests.[30] He assumed the role of president in December. Within two years he and Dillon were to tactically adjunct the UIL under the wing of the IPP, manoeuvring it out of O'Brien's control.

In the September general election. O'Brien swept back to Parliament again for his old Cork constituency as the only begetter of the League and as a senior member of the inner circle of party managers. He could feel proud of his achievement after the reunited party fought its first election on the program of the United Irish League.[31] The unity disturbed O'Brien however as it resulted in most of the ineffective party candidates being re-elected, preventing the UIL Directory from using its power in the pre-selection of candidates. The task facing the united Irish Party's new leader Redmond was now to create a unified political organisation, effectively grounded in the realities of Irish society.[28] By 1901 revolutionary nationalism was moribund, though it was, of course, to undergo a miraculous recovery.[32]

Renewed agitation

Throughout the early months of 1901 agitation was limited, merely thirty-five cases of boycotting reported, due to O’Brien's weak health and Davitt being in America for most of the year. Despite this the Nationalists felt the old sting of League meetings being outlawed, the traditional reaction of the Administration to the least sign of popular unrest.[33] In August 1901 the UIL reached nearly 100,000 members,[34] when its Directory issued a resolution calling for active agitation throughout Ireland. O'Brien now at the height of his prestige, dominated the UIL machine and in a vigorous speech on 15 September called for “a great national strike against ranching and grabbing” as its winter program. What he wanted was boycotting and the filling of Irish jails.[35] Dillon also made several fiery speeches against the government, and to tenants encouraging them to demand rent reduction and "for the purpose of driving every landlord out of the country".[36]

With the National Convention in January 1902 claiming 1230 branches,[37] the scene was thus set for a clash between a strong government, which was in no mood to allow an Irish land war to deflect it from its own constructive ideas, and a League pledged to attack landlordism, turning more and more to the traditional weapons of boycott and outrage. The attitude of the Dublin Castle administration hardened to such a degree that O'Brien moved a parliamentary amendment in January 1901 condemning a resort to the methods of Arthur Balfour. A steady stream of proclamations and arrests continued so that between 1901 and 1902 among others, thirteen Irish MPs were imprisoned under the Crimes Act and by the Spring of 1902 the counties of Cavan, Clare, Cork, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary and Waterford were proclaimed to fall under the Act.[38]

The UIL agitation focused attention on the fact that many families lived on patches of land too small to provide a decent livelihood even without rent.[39] Agitation by tenant farmers continued to press for compulsory land purchase, but the four years of almost ceaseless activity that O’Brien put into the League had not brought the benefits for the tenants he had hoped for, apart from giving the Parliamentary party a new lease of life. Nevertheless, the Chief Secretary for Ireland Wyndham came to recognise the dire situation of the starved population of the west of Ireland. The existence of the United Irish League, the conversion of the Ulster Protestant tenant leader T. W. Russell to compulsory land purchase, O'Brien whipping up enthusiasm for his winter program of boycotting and agitation together with the cost of maintaining a huge police force to quell agrarian unrest, influenced Wyndham to recognise that the time had come to construct a Land Bill for Ireland.[40]

Achievement


Timothy Harrington, MP for the League and tenant farmers' representative

Balfour gave Wyndham the go-ahead to prepare for a Land Purchase Bill early in 1902, which when introduced in spring turned out to be a half-hearted abortive Bill, its terms, as urged by O'Brien, rejected by the party, so that the measure was withdrawn.[41] There then arose one of the most striking and richly complex initiatives in the entire political history of modern Ireland.[42] In June a landlord of moderate views, Lindsay Talbot Crosbie, wrote to the press calling for an agreed settlement between representatives of the proprietor and tenant interests. On 3 September a similar letter was published by another Galway landlord, Captain John Shawe-Taylor setting out proposals for a landlord-tenant conference. They were important because they articulated the desires of a small but influential group of moderate landlords, who, encouraged by the Administration in Dublin Castle, heralded an era of landlord-tenant rapprochement in Ireland.[43] What saved Taylor's letter from being branded, as Crosbie's scheme was by O'Brien's Irish People, as “a stale and rotten red-herring across the path of the National movement” was its endorsement by the Chief Secretary Wyndham, who grasped the chance to salvage his Land Bill for reintroduction on terms agreed to in advance by both interested parties.[41]

When letters of approval by Redmond and O'Brien were published in response by the press at the end of September there was no turning back. It resulted in Wyndham calling for a Land Conference to strive for a settlement by mutual agreement between landlord and tenant. It was to be among four landlord delegates to be led by Lord Dunraven on the one hand and William O'Brien MP, John Redmond MP, Timothy Harrington MP and Ulster's T. W. Russell MP representing tenant farmers on the other hand. Thus after considerable internal deliberations on both sides, the eight delegates met in Dublin on 20 December 1902 in a conference publicly hailed by Redmond as "the most significant episode in the public life of Ireland for the last century". After only six sittings, the conference report as framed by O'Brien was published on 4 January 1903, making eighteen recommendations. The report was received favourably by people holding most shades of public opinion.[44]

After O'Brien and Redmond had met the head of the Civil Service in Dublin Castle, Sir Anthony MacDonnell, for informal talks on 6 February, the National Directory and the Parliamentary party gave approval to the Land Conference terms on 16 February. The bill to achieve social reconciliation in Ireland was finally introduced by Wyndham on 25 March 1903. The Irish Landowners' Convention which met in April acclaimed the bill as "by far the largest and most liberal measure ever offered to landlords and tenants by any Government in any country".[45] A League Convention on 16 April saw 3,000 Nationalist supporters applaud the bill and O'Brien's resolution which "pledged the Irish nation . . . . . to the vital principle of the policy of national reconciliation". He followed this by orchestrating the greatest and widest piece of social legislation Ireland had yet seen, the Land (Purchase) Act (1903) through Parliament. The Act provided generous bonus-subsidy terms to landowners on sale, the Irish Land Commission overseeing the new landowner's low interest annuities.[45] O'Brien saw his achievement as having guided the official nationalist movement into endorsement of a new policy of "conference plus business" and of having set in motion events of decisive importance in reversing the consequences of centuries of alien domination. In the period 1903 to 1909 over 200,000 peasants became owners of their holdings under the Act.[46] There is no reason to doubt O'Brien's sincerity in viewing the settlement of the land question as the first step in the attainment of Home Rule. Unfortunately few others would have the same outlook, for which he was yet to suffer.[47]

Estrangement

The passing of the Land Act in August 1903 precipitated a full-scale attack on O'Brien and the Act. The conciliatory approach and achievement in solving the land question aggravated Dillon who generally detested any negotiations with landlords. Together with Thomas Sexton and his Irish party's Freeman's Journal, Dillon denounced the legislation and the "doctrine of conciliation". This divergence, was in a few short weeks to turn the two old and once intimate friends into mortal enemies.[48] Davitt condemned both peasant land proprietorship and that land was being purchased rather than confiscated from the landlords. O'Brien requested from his conciliatory friend Redmond that they be disciplined, which to O'Brien's consternation he refused to do, fearing a renewed party split.

Seeing himself thus alienated from the party O'Brien informed Redmond on 4 November 1903 that he was resigning from Parliament, leaving the UIL Directory, ceasing publication of his newspaper, The Irish People and withdrawing from public life. Despite appeals from friends and allies he refused to reconsider.[49] O’Brien's resignation was a very serious matter for the party, throwing it into a state disarray not experienced since the Parnell crisis in 1890. It had repercussions at home and abroad. Laurence Ginnell of the central office reported 22 lapsed divisional bodies by December, 489 lapsed branches by the spring of 1904. The League was wholly dead in the west and in Dublin. Particularly younger men turned from any support whatever for the parliamentary movement. Davitt reported that it was also virtually dead in United States. The League continued to decline nationwide over the next years seriously affecting the funding of both the party and the League.[50]

At the November 1904 National Convention, the General Secretary of the League, O'Brien's loyal John O'Donnell MP, was replaced by Dillon's close protégé and Belfast ally Joseph Devlin a young MP of remarkable political ability[51] who in time gained complete control and leadership of the entire party organisation. It deprived O'Brien of all authority. Devlin was devoted to Dillon, who had helped him greatly in his rise to eminence, and Dillon in his turn had come to heavily rely on him, not only for control of the United Irish League and the Catholic organisation, the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), but also because he was the outstanding representative of Ulster Nationalism.[52]

O'Brien had always been gravely disturbed by the Irish Parliamentary Party's involvement with "that sinister sectarian secret society", the Ancient Order of Hibernians, often known as the Molly Maguires, or the Mollies – what he called "the most damnable fact in the history of this country", and was bitterly resentful and unsparing in his attacks upon it.[53] AOH members represented Catholic-nationalism of a Ribbon tradition, their Ulster Protestant counterpart the Orange Order. Joseph Devlin, the AOH Grandmaster had attached himself to the Dillonite section of the Irish Party, was now additionally General Secretary of O'Brien's adopted UIL.[54] Devlin was already known as "the real Chief Secretary of Ireland",[55] his AOH spreading successfully and eventually saturating the entire island.[56] Even in Dublin the AOH could draw large crowds and stage impressive demonstrations. In 1907, Devlin was able to assure John Redmond, the Irish Party leader, that a planned meeting of the UIL would be well attended because he would be able to get more than 400 AOH delegates to fill the hall.[57]

Paths divide

From the founding of the UIL, O’Brien held the view that Ireland's problems were caused by the manoeuvrings of the parliamentary politicians who were out of touch with popular opinion. Under the new arrangements after 1900, O’Brien proclaimed that the party should be subordinated to the League, which represented the true feeling of the country. But what in fact happened was that party members soon dominated the councils of the League and its administrative machinery. Redmond never attempted to hide the necessity for the party to be dominant in policy-making. Once O’Brien began to campaign against party policy, he was treated as a “factionist”. In 1900 the leadership of the UIL had consisted of O’Brien and Dillon. In 1905, it consisted of Redmond, Dillon, and to a lesser extent, Joseph Devlin and T. P. O’Connor. O'Brien, by refusing to play the game according to the unwritten rules, forfeited his place in the leadership of the League.[58]

O'Brien subsequently became involved with the Irish Reform Association 1904–1905, then turned to and allied with D. D. Sheehan and his Irish Land and Labour Association, which became his new platform for renewed political activity. In addition O'Brien supported both the 1904 devolution scheme and the 1907 Irish Council Bill, a bill rejected by the UIL, as a step in the right direction, or "Home Rule by instalments". These involvements inflamed the Dillonite section of the IPP to the extent that they were determined to destroy both O'Brien and Sheehan "before they poison the whole country"[59] and published regular denunciations of their conciliatory policies in the IPP's Freeman's Journal. By 1907, there were seven MPs outside the parliamentary party. Proposals to reunite the party were made by Redmond and a meeting summoned for the Mansion House, Dublin, in April 1908.[60] In the interest of unity, O'Brien and others rejoined the party, though a year later O'Brien left it for good. This time he was hounded out by Devlin's Molly Maguire baton troops, a wing of the Hibernian Order, on the occasion of the rigged Dublin National Convention in February 1909, called the "Baton Convention", in a dispute over the financial arrangements for the next stage of the 1909 Land Purchase Act.[61] As a consequence, O'Brien next founded his new political movement, the All-for-Ireland League, which returned eight independent MPs in the December 1910 general elections.

The United Irish League remained politically active as Devlin's support organisation for the Parliamentary party, becoming largely infiltrated by members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, up until the rise of Sinn Féin after the outbreak of World War I in 1914. From 1918, the UIL was restricted to Northern Ireland; it was defunct by the mid-1920s.[62]

Notes

1. O'Brien, Joseph V.: William O'Brien and the course of Irish Politics, 1881–1918, “"The United Irish League"” p.107, University of California Press (1976) ISBN 0-520-02886-4
2. Miller, David W.: Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898–1921 pp.19–28, Gill & Macmillan (1973) ISBN 0-7171-0645-4
3. O'Brien, Joseph V.: p.112
4. Miller, David: p.17
5. O’Brien, Joseph V.: p.105
6. O'Brien, Joseph V.: p.106
7. O'Brien, Joseph V.: p.107
8. Miller, David: p. 18
9. Maume, Patrick: The long Gestation, Irish Nationalist Life 1891–1918, p.30 , Gill & Macmillan (1999) ISBN 0-7171-2744-3
10. Maume, Patrick: p.31
11. O’Brien, Joseph V.: pp.107–8
12. O’Brien, Joseph V.: p.110
13. Miller, David: p.20
14. Miller, David: p.23
15. Miller, David: p.18
16. Garvin, Tom: The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics: The Reconstruction of Nationalist Politics, 1891–1910 p.102, Gill & Macmillan (2005) ISBN 0-7171-3967-0
17. O’Brien, Joseph V.: pp.108–9
18. O’Brien, Joseph V.: p.114
19. Maume, Patrick: p.31
20. O'Donovan, John: Class, Conflict, and the United Irish League in Cork, 1900–1903 in SAOTHAR 37 pp.19–29, Journal of the Irish Labour History Society pp.20–21, (2012) ISSN 0332-1169
21. O’Donovan, John: pp.26–27
22. Garvin, Tom: table p. 101
23. O'Brien, Joseph V.: pp.111&119
24. O'Brien, Joseph V.: p.118
25. Lyons, F. S. L.: John Dillon, Ch. 7 pp.204–05, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (1968), SBN 7100 2887 3
26. Garvin, Tom: p.103
27. Miller, David: p. 48
28. Miller, David: p.57
29. Lyons, F. S. L.: p.213
30. O’Brien, Joseph V.: p.125
31. O'Brien, Joseph V.: p.127
32. Miller, David: p.60
33. O’Brien, Joseph V.: pp.129–130
34. Lyons, F. S. L.: p.223
35. O’Brien, Joseph V.: pp.130–31
36. Lyons, F. S. L.: p.225
37. O’Brien, Joseph V.: p.191
38. Lyons, F. S. L.: pp.224–5
39. Miller, David: p.76
40. O'Brien, Joseph V.: pp.138–39
41. O'Brien, J. V.: p.140
42. Jackson, Alvin: Home Rule: An Irish History 1800—2000 p.104, Phoenix Press (2003) ISBN 0-7538-1767-5
43. Jackson, Alwin: p.104
44. O'Brien, Joseph V.: pp.146–7
45. O'Brien, J. V.: pp.151–55
46. O'Brien, Joseph V.: p.167
47. O'Brien, Joseph V.: p.148
48. Lyons, F. S. L.: p.236
49. Maume, Patrick: p.69
50. O'Brien, Joseph V.: pp.161–63
51. Maume, Patrick: p.70
52. Lyons, F. S. L.: p.288
53. MacDonagh, Michael: The Life of William O'Brien, the Irish Nationalist, pp.181–2, Ernst Benn London (1928)
54. MacDonagh, Michael pp.181–2
55. MacDonagh, Michael: p.182
56. Garvin, Tom: The Rise of the Hibernians pp.105–110
57. Garvin, Tom: 105–110
58. Miller, David: pp.140–42
59. O'Brien, Joseph V.: p.170
60. Sheehan, D. D., Ireland since Parnell, pp.199–206, Daniel O'Connor, London (1921)
61. O'Brien, Joseph V.: p.187
62. Garvin, Tom: pp.108–9

References

• O’Brien, Joseph V.: William O’Brien and the course of Irish Politics, 1881–1918, “The United Irish League” pp. 107–125, University of California Press (1976), ISBN 0-520-02886-4
• Miller, Dr. David W.: Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898–1921 Gill & Macmillan (1973), ISBN 0-7171-0645-4
• Maume, Patrick: The Long Gestation- Irish Nationalist Life 1891–1918, Gill & Macmillan (1999), ISBN 0-7171-2744-3
• Garvin, Tom: The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics, (1991) Gill & Macmillan (2005), ISBN 0-7171-3967-0
• Barberis, Peter, McHugh, John and Tyldesley, Mike: Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organisations, Continuum Publishing London (2005)
• Stanford, Jane: That Irishman, the Life and Times of John O'Connor Power, 'United Irish League', pp. 195–201, The History Press Ireland (2011), ISBN 978-1-84588-698-1
• O’Donovan, John: Class, Conflict, and the United Irish League in Cork, 1900–1903, in SAOTHAR 37, pp. 19–29, Journal of the Irish Labour History Society (2012), ISSN 0332-1169

External links

• United-Irish-League-in-Cork-1900-1910
• United Ireland League campaigns

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Berlin Committee
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/5/20

The Berlin Committee, later known as the Indian Independence Committee (German: Indisches Unabhängigkeitskomitee) after 1915, was an organisation formed in Germany in 1914 during World War I by Indian students and political activists residing in the country. The purpose of the Committee was to promote the cause of Indian Independence. Initially called the Berlin–Indian Committee, the organisation was renamed the Indian Independence Committee in 1915 and came to be an integral part of the Hindu–German Conspiracy. Famous members of the committee included Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (alias Chatto), Chempakaraman Pillai and Abinash Bhattacharya

Background

A number of Indians, notably Shyamji Krishna Varma, had formed the India House in England in 1905. This organisation, with the support of Indian luminaries like Dadabhai Naoroji, Lala Lajpat Rai, Madame Bhikaji Cama and others, offered scholarships to Indian students, promoted nationalistic work, and was a major platform for anti-colonial opinions and views. The Indian Sociologist, published by Krishna Varma, was a notable anti-colonial publication. Prominent Indian Nationalists associated with the India House included Vinayak Damodar Savarkar or Veer Savarkar, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (alias Chatto), and Har Dayal.

The British government kept track of India House because of the nature of its work and the increasingly inciting tone of The Indian Sociologist, which proposed killing British colonial officials. English detectives followed and watched the student leaders in India House. The speed of Veer Savarkar's activities in London was breathtaking. India House was constantly in the news from 1906 to 1910. Savarkar started regular Sunday meetings to discuss various topics related to India's future. The speeches made during these meetings by Veer Savarkar were deemed seditionist. In 1909, Madan Lal Dhingra, closely associated with Veer Savarkar and the India House, shot and killed William Hutt Curzon Wyllie, the political ADC to the Secretary of State for India. In the aftermath of the assassination, India House was rapidly suppressed. Evidence found showed that Browning pistols were being sent to India in order to bring about an armed revolution. Veer Savarkar was arrested for all this and awarded Life Sentence. His famous arrest in London caused legal difficulties for British Courts and whose case is still referred to in the interpretations of the Fugitive Offenders Act and the Habeas Corpus (Rex Vs Governor of Brixton Prison, ex-parte Savarkar). Other leaders, including Krishna Varma, were forced to flee to Europe. Some, including Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, moved to Germany, while a number of the leadership moved to Paris.[1]

World War I

At the outbreak of World War I, Indian nationalists looked for ways to use the enmities to support their goals. As early as 1912, the German Foreign Office had considered supporting the Pan-Islamist and Bengali revolutionary movement in India to weaken the British position.[2]

The Kaiser had considered the option on 31 July 1914 when Russian mobilisation was confirmed, and the scope of British mobilisation against Germany was becoming evident.[2] In September 1914, the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, was authorised by the Kaiser to sanction German activity against British India.[2][3] The German effort was headed by Max von Oppenheim, an archaeologist and the head of the newly formed Intelligence Bureau for the east. He was to organize the Indian student groups into a cohesive group. Oppenheim also convinced Har Dayal of the feasibility of the project.

A group of Indians resident in Germany, headed by M. Prabhakar (then teaching at Düsseldorf after graduating from Heidelberg), along with Abd ur Rahman and A Siddiqui, had issued statements condemning England and France for their support of the Czar in Russia. As these students were political novices, Oppenheim sought to find more prominent revolutionaries who would carry more weight in the community. Otto Gunther von Wesendonck, a young officer of the Auswärtiges Amt, was given the task of organising revolutionary outbreaks along the Indian and Russian border.[4] with the help of their close acquaintance Anna Maria Simon, Abhinash Bhattacharya and Virendranath Chattopadhyaya issued similar statements against Britain and France, which were distributed in Austria-Hungary, Switzerland and the Netherlands in addition to Germany, attracting editorial comments. The duo, with the help of Frau Simon, set up meetings with the Berlin Foreign office.[1]

Berlin Committee

Arriving at Berlin, they were assigned a building in the Schöneberg suburbs, as their new headquarters. In their first meeting with the foreign office liaison Max von Oppenheim, on 3 September 1915, Chattopadhyay (also known as Chatto) identified the goals and requirements of the committee:[1]

• With a view to starting a revolution in India,
o Money, arms ammunition as well as expert advice were needed.
o They should be carried to the Indian coast.
o Early arrangement should be made to send the leaders back to India.
• A large number of 10 Rupee notes were to be forged and sent to India to create some confusion in their money market.
• An Indo-German Committee should be constituted to co-ordinate and carry on these activities.

With the help of Oppenheim, messages were sent out to Indian students in German universities, as well as Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands, who were likely to share the same views. Among those who joined the organisation at the time were Dr. Dhiren Sarkar, Chanji Kersasp, N. S. Marathe, Dr. J. N. Dasgupta, and C. Padmanabhan Pillai, quickly joined by his brother, Champak Raman Pillai. The 'Champak-Chatto' Berlin Committee was founded.[1]

Although the group urged him, Oppenheim refused to approach Shyamji Krishnavarma, then in Geneva, nor did he try to reach Lala Lajpat Rai, then in the United States. The latter was suspected by British intelligence in the United States to be deeply involved in the seditionist movement [5] although he personally refused to enter an alliance with another Imperialist Power.[4] In 1915, Har Dayal and Barkatullah became actively involved in the Berlin Committee and its goals. The committee is known to have sent missions to the Middle Eastern cities of Istanbul and Baghdad, and Kabul, Afghanistan.[6]

Hindu–German Conspiracy

Main article: Hindu–German Conspiracy

The committee soon established contacts with Indian revolutionaries, including Bagha Jatin. They visited armament and explosives factories to identify war material, and met with Indian prisoners-of-war held in Germany to recruit them to the nationalist cause. Lala Har Dayal, who had fled to Germany after his arrest in the United States, was convinced to lend his support to the committee's cause. They established contacts with the Ghadarite movement in the United States. Dr. Dhiren Sarkar and N.S. Marathe left for Washington, D.C. on 22 September 1915 and, through the German Ambassador, Johann von Bernstoff, established links with the Ghadar Party. The culmination of the American efforts was the Annie Larsen arms plot.

Kabul mission

Main article: Provisional Government of India

See also: Oskar von Niedermayer and Niedermayer–Hentig Expedition

The Berlin-Indian Committee (which became the Indian Independence Committee after 1915) created an Indo-German-Turkish mission to the Indo-Iranian border to encourage the tribes to strike against British interests.[7] At this time, the Berlin Committee was in touch with the Khairi brothers (Abdul Jabbar Khairi and Abdul Sattar Khairi) who had settled in Istanbul at the onset of the World War I. In 1917 they had proposed to the Kaiser a plan to lead tribes in Kashmir and North-West Frontier Province against British interests. Another group, led by the Deobandi Maulana Ubaid Allah Sindhi and Mahmud al-Hasan (principle of the Darul Uloom Deoband), had traveled to Kabul in October 1915 with plans to initiate a Muslim insurrection in the tribal belt of India. Ubaid Allah proposed that the Amir of Afghanistan should declare war against Britain while Mahmud al Hasan sought German and Turkish help. Hasan proceeded to Hijaz. Ubaid Allah, in the meantime, established friendly relations with the Amir.

At Kabul, Ubaid Allah, along with some students who had preceded him to Ottoman Turkey to join the Caliph's "Jihad" against Britain, decided that the pan-Islamic cause would be better served by focusing on the Indian Freedom Movement.[8] This group was met by the Indo-German-Turkish mission to Kabul in December 1915, headed by Oskar von Niedermayer and including among its members Werner Otto von Hentig, the German diplomatic representative to Kabul; and Raja Mahendra Pratap, Barkatullah and other prominent nationalists from the Berlin group. Known as the Niedermayer–Hentig mission, it brought members of the Indian movement to India's border, and carried messages from the Kaiser, Enver Pasha, and Abbas Hilmi, the displaced Khedive of Egypt, expressing support for Pratap's mission. They asked the Amir to move against India.[9][10] The mission's immediate goal was to rally the Amir against British India[9] and to obtain a right of free passage for the conspirators from the Afghan Government.[11]

Although the Amir made no commitment to the group, they found support amongst the Amir's immediate and close political and religious advisory group, including his brother Nasrullah Khan, his sons Inayatullah Khan and Amānullāh Khān, and religious leaders and tribesmen.[9] Afghanistan's then most influential newspaper, the Siraj al-Akhbar, took Barkatullah as an officiating editor in early 1916. Its editor Mahmud Tarzi published a number of inflammatory articles by Raja Mahendra Pratap, as well as increasingly anti-British and pro-Central Powers articles and propaganda. By May 1916, the tone in the paper was deemed serious enough for the British Raj to intercept its issues.[9] In 1916, the Berlin Committee established the Provisional Government of India in Kabul.

Its formation infers the seriousness of intention and purpose of the revolutionaries. The government had Raja Mahendra Pratap as President, Barkatullah as Prime Minister, Ubaid al Sindhi as the Minister for India, Maulavi Bashir as War Minister and Champakaran Pillai as Foreign Minister. It tried to gain support from the Russian Empire, Republican China, and Japan. Galib Pasha joined them in proclaiming jihad against Britain.[11]

Following the February Revolution in Russia in 1917, Pratap's Government is known to have corresponded with the nascent Soviet Government. In 1918, Pratap met the Russian leader Leon Trotsky in Petrograd before meeting the Kaiser in Berlin; he urged both to mobillise against British India.[12] Under pressure from the British, the Afghans withdrew their cooperation and the mission closed down. The Niedermayer–Hentig Expedition, with associated liaisons of the German mission had a profound effect on the political and social situation in Afghanistan. It catalyzed political change that ended with the assassination of Habibullah in 1919 and the transfer of power to Nasrullah and, subsequently, Amānullah; the Third Anglo-Afghan War began, which led to Afghan Independence.[12]

End of the Indian Independence Committee

The Committee was formally disbanded in November 1918, with most of the members shifting their attention to the nascent Soviet Russia. Between 1917 and 1920, most of the members became active in communism.

Notes

1. "Champak-Chatto" And the Berlin Committee". Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Retrieved 4 November 2007.
2. Fraser 1977, p. 256
3. Hoover 1985, p. 251
4. Fraser 1977, p. 257
5. Dignan 1971
6. Bagulia 2006, p. 146
7. Ansari 1986, p. 514
8. Ansari 1986, p. 515
9. Sims-Williams 1980, p. 120
10. Seidt 2001, p. 1,3
11. Ansari 1986, p. 516
12. Hughes 2002, p. 474

References

• Newsletter of the Regional Office-South East Asia. German Academic Exchange Service.
• "Champak-Chatto And the Berlin Committee".Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
• Hoover, Karl. (1985), The Hindu Conspiracy in California, 1913-1918. German Studies Review, Vol. 8, No. 2. (May, 1985), pp. 245-261, German Studies Association, ISSN 0149-7952.
• Fraser, Thomas G (1977), Germany and Indian Revolution, 1914-18. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 255-272., Sage Publications, ISSN 0022-0094.
• Ansari, K.H. (1986), Pan-Islam and the Making of the Early Indian Muslim Socialist. Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3. (1986), pp. 509-537, Cambridge University Press.
• Sims-Williams, Ursula (1980), The Afghan Newspaper Siraj al-Akhbar. Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 7, No. 2. (1980), pp. 118-122, London, Taylor & Francis Ltd, ISSN 0305-6139.
• Hughes, Thomas L (2002), The German Mission to Afghanistan, 1915-1916.German Studies Review, Vol. 25, No. 3. (Oct., 2002), pp. 447-476., German Studies Association, ISSN 0149-7952.
• Seidt, Hans-Ulrich (2001), From Palestine to the Caucasus-Oskar Niedermayer and Germany's Middle Eastern Strategy in 1918.German Studies Review, Vol. 24, No. 1. (Feb., 2001), pp. 1-18, German Studies Association, ISSN 0149-7952.

External Links

• Liebau, Heike: Berlin Indian Independence Committee, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.

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Chapter 23. Politicians versus Saints
Excerpt from "All You Need is Love: An Eyewitness Account of When Spirituality Spread from the East to the West"
by Nancy Cooke de Herrera
Foreword by Deepak Chopra

Chapter 23. Politicians versus Saints

The late '60s and early '70s were good years for me and my family, with the exception of Tony's sickness. Although he had been off cortisone since 1969, the rigidity of his frame entered his personality. I continually cautioned the children to overlook his crankiness as he became more limited with his body movements.

Even though Tony and I now lived like brother and sister, we were a good team. I threw my energies into my family, the SRM [Spiritual Regeneration Movement], traveling, and entertaining for Tony. His energy went into music and the law. I continued with my lecture series and also was a judge for the Miss California beauty contest each year.


Nancy as Ambassadress of Fashion (Swedish Life Magazine, 1957)


Staebe-Seger's farewell party for me, with the "West Berlin Couturiers" (Berlin, 1958).


The Ambassadress of Fashion with the Princess Marcella Borghese (Rome, 1958)

Occasionally, we took a month's vacation to Honolulu or some place where Tony could swim. He always returned vastly improved, but then he would return to his workaholic ways. Several doctors commented that his mind was killing his body, but Tony would not listen. He took in more partners, and the money rolled in. He didn't consider the personal cost to him and to his family life.

Maharishi taught, "You judge the effectiveness of your meditation by how your life flows." Life was flowing for us financially, if not in health. My children had come through the frantic '60s drug-free, happy, well-balanced young people with a sense of direction and joy in life. The boys missed Vietnam by flunking their health exams-two had extra vertebrae and one a heart murmur. Rik had graduated from UCLA and gone off to architecture school in Oregon; Starr was finishing Stanford; Brett still attended Yale; and Maria Luisa was happily at Westlake. I had so much to be grateful and thankful for. The only negative we had was Tony's delicate state of health.

I did a lot of traveling with the children. Brett, Maria Luisa, and I visited Spain, Italy, and Greece; Tony joined us in London. Another trip with Brett and Maria Luisa was to Berlin, where I was still working with German couture. With Brett's ability to pick up languages, he was a joy to travel with.

But no country pulled me back like India. I returned regularly to work on different secular projects -- I helped design fashions that would be attractive to Western buyers and I originated itineraries for India's Minister of Tourism. The Indian travel industry had no idea of how to present their incredible country. In 1969, under the supervision of S.K. Roy, still the Director General of Tourism, I brought 20 friends to India and gave them a 30-day "fairyland" tour. My Indian friends entertained us; we stayed in Maharajahs' palaces; we went from the untouched beaches of Trivandrum to the high peaks of Nepal. They all came back confirmed Indiaphiles.

Because of the success of my Indian trip, the airline gave me three free round-the-world passes. So, in 1970, Tony, Starr, and I went to Rishikesh together. Brett and Maria Luisa were in school, so they could not join us. The ashram had a new image. In order to accommodate the increasing numbers attending courses, the blocks had been closed in, and the porches made into rooms. Unfortunately, it was not well done. We were given The Beatles' old block. What luxury in comparison to what I'd experienced in '68. Now there was a new ashram kitchen and dining room complex -- very nicely done, except it leaked in the rain. I was so happy to have Tony along and prayed he would enjoy the trip.

At the end of two weeks of resting and meditating, Tony looked like a different person; his aches and pains were gone. I began to hope I might get my "real husband" back, but once back in the highly competitive world of law and business, the advances soon disappeared.

It was the last time I saw Maharishi at the ashram; he was now giving most of his courses in Europe. Because of tax problems with the Indian government, he did not return to India for many years. I frequently told my Indian friends, "You have driven away your best export. You should attract Maharishi back to India. Think of the money India is losing. The thousands attending Maharishi's course would have, and should have, come here." I guess they felt TM was a flash in the pan.

Throughout this period India continued to intrigue me. No other country offers such a range of contrasts. It is a mosaic of not only people, but of traditions, climates, cultures, and scenery.

Each time I went to India I returned to the ashram to see Satyanand. In spite of letters and phone calls advising of my arrival, the result was always the same. I would climb the hill, be greeted by peons, and nothing was ready for me. Everything was uncared for. New buildings had gone up instead of taking care of what was there. It had gone "Indian" in spite of Satyanand's supervision.

Several times returning home from India I called on Maharishi, who usually was in Italy, Spain, or Switzerland. I begged him to send a European couple to take over management of the ashram, but it fell on deaf ears. His courses grew in number and the organization became prosperous in spite of the press, who continued to print any scandalous rumor about Maharishi that came their way -- no thought was given to authenticity.

[Mia Farrow] accused Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of hitting on her when she visited the guru with The Beatles in 1968.

The Fab Four flew home from India in disgust after Mia fled the Maharishi’s cave in tears claiming the supposedly celibate swami had grabbed and groped her.

“Boys! Boys! What’s wrong? Why are you leaving?” the Maharishi shouted after them, John Lennon later recalled.

“If you’re so f - - king cosmic, you’ll know,” came Lennon’s scathing reply.

Lennon expressed his disillusionment in “Sexy Sadie” — originally titled “Maharishi” but changed to avoid legal problems — singing, “Sexy Sadie, what have you done? You made a fool of everyone.”

-- Mia Farrow claimed Beatles pal groped her, by Richard Johnson

One who did come to Maharishi's defense often was the world famous nutritionist, Dr. Gayelord Hauser. This vigorous, young 70-yearold had sold over 70 million books and was responsible for bringing yogurt to the Western world. During the fifties when I first met him in Paris, he had his followers on the blackstrap molasses, wheat germ, and yogurt kick. He had a huge following around the globe, but lived most of the year in Beverly Hills; we had become intimate friends.

He once said to me regarding lecturing, "Honey, just remember five little words, 'What's in it for me' -- that's what an audience wants to hear." His 6'3" physique was trim and tan, no fat on him. His thick, gray hair crowned a large head that was always held erect. His blue eyes were surrounded with laugh lines.

"That little guy," he said, referring to Maharishi, "really has something. People in Germany (Gayelord's place of birth) were prepared to laugh at him, instead they started to follow him."

He paused and said in a soothing voice, "Girls and boys," as he loved to address his audience, "he knows that tension is one of the worst sicknesses of America. If you meditate, tension leaves you."

Side Effects of Meditation With Possible Adverse Reactions

Depersonalization, Derealization...Hallucinations, Fear of persecution, Disorientation, Poor insight and judgment, Reduced food intake...Insomnia reported as complete sleep loss...Delusions of grandeur, Thought disorder...Feelings of anxiety, Feelings of intense dysphoria, Feelings of mania...Increased epileptogenisis susceptibility...Double vision, Grandiosity/elation...Feelings of depression, including Attempted suicide...Restlessness/extreme agitation...Reports of psychosis...Decreased life motivation/boredom, Increased negativity/self-judgment...Panic and/or tension...Disorientation/confusion, Feelings of meditation “addiction”, Reports of pain ...Religious delusions...Intense fear and loneliness...Feelings of mania, including Increased talkativeness, Overactivity/restlessness, Distractible, Sexual disinhibition, Reports of psychotic symptoms, including Thought disorder with flight of ideas.

-- Mindfulness Meditation Research: Issues of Participant Screening, Safety Procedures, and Researcher Training, by M. Kathleen B. Lustyk, PhD; Neharika Chawla, MS; Roger S. Nolan, MA; G. Alan Marlatt, PhD

At seventy-five, a young Dr. Gayelord Hauser. He died in 1985 at age ninety.

Once, during one of his lectures, he introduced me to the 3,000 staring faces, "This is my friend Nancy. She introduced me to Maharishi and then taught me meditation, one of the great gifts in my life." A nice plug from a world figure.

Slowly I reconciled myself to the fact that my marriage situation was not going to change or get much better. I rationalized, "I have a happy secure base for myself and the children; I've already had more romance in my life than most people; socially I belong to the best organizations and groups in the Beverly Hills/Los Angeles area-any outsider would think I lead a very glamorous life. I think so too, so what do I have to complain about?" If I were going to have a love affair, it would be with travel.

My friend Carroll Righter, the astrologer, had advised me when I'd told him of my plans to marry Tony, "Well, take lots of trips. Cancer and Aries are not a good combination -- water and fire getting together produce steam -- you'll need an escape valve for sure."

Carroll Righter (February 2, 1900 – April 30, 1988) was known as the "astrologer to the stars." He wrote a syndicated daily advice column for 166 newspapers around the world and was reputed to be an advisor to Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Righter, who liked to be called the "gregarious Aquarius,' began doing charts for Hollywood notables in 1938 and became a columnist in 1950. Prior to that, he was a lawyer in Philadelphia.

Righter was mentioned in President Reagan's 1965 autobiography Where's The Rest of Me? and, according to former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, Mrs. Reagan turned to astrologers to help determine the president's schedule. Asked specifically whether he believed in astrology, President Reagan said, "I don't guide my life by it" but he added, "I don't know enough about it to say, is there something to it or not...and I don't mean to offend anyone who does believe in it, or engages in it." When Righter was asked in 1985 if he consulted with Ronald Reagan on astrology, he replied, "No comment."

Righter claimed he warned Marlene Dietrich to avoid working on a studio set one day because she might get hurt. His advice was not heeded, and Dietrich broke an ankle while reaching out to save a falling child. Word of the accident and Righter's advice led other celebrities to the astrologer, ensuring his fame. Among those who sought his advice were Arlene Dahl, Rhonda Fleming, Jane Withers, Hildegard Knef, Joan Fontaine and Grace Kelly. At one point in the late 1930s, the then-young Robert Mitchum worked as a ghost writer for Righter.

Righter wrote several books, including Astrology and You, the Astrological Guide to Health and Diet, and the Astrological Guide to Marriage and Family Relations.

-- Carroll Righter, by Wikipedia

He was right; my trips were this valve. Tony encouraged our trips; he liked the quiet times when we were away. The house was well run, and he could have his beloved Bach blaring at ear-bursting levels.

My mother once asked, "How can you stand that continual loud sound all the time when Tony is home? It would drive me mad." Houseguests often complained and asked that the music be turned down. Sir John BarbiroIIi, the well-known conductor, once provided ammunition when he said, "Tony, turn that music down! Music is to be listened to, not shouted over." Tony was Sir John's lawyer so he had to respond.

My solution was to wear earplugs, or I'd go into my bedroom and shut the door in order to concentrate on whatever I was doing. It seemed a sensible solution, now that our marriage had assumed the platonic level Dr. Bieler had predicted.

That Tony enjoyed having the house to himself was confirmed, when, against everyone else's advice, he encouraged me to go to India, just weeks after the Pak-Indian war came to an end in 1972.

"Go and present the U.S. side to our Indian friends." He loaded me down with all sorts of information and data and practically pushed me out the door.

It wasn't a happy trip. None of the children could go with me, so this time I went alone. Once back in India, I did nothing for six weeks but argue that President Nixon had tried not to take sides in the war. Originally, Pakistan and India had been offered the same armaments deal. The former accepted, while the latter haughtily turned it down. U.S. columnists Leon Frankel and Jack Anderson, with their violently anti-Nixon views, had done much to erode friendship between India and the U.S. As the only U.S. journalists heard from in Indian newspapers, India judged the U.S. attitude by their writings.

My friend Piloo Mody tried to explain these attacks. "The Indians, having won what on a world scale was a small military battle, are now plumped up like proud pigeons. Don't let them get to you, Nancy."

Then my Parsee friend added, "And don't forget, Nancy, arrogance comes easily to an Indian."

Piloo Mody (14 November 1926 – 29 January 1983) was an Indian architect and politician and one of the founding members of the Swatantra Party....

The Swatantra Party was an Indian classical liberal political party, that existed from 1959 to 1974. It was founded by C. Rajagopalachari in reaction to what he felt was the Jawaharlal Nehru-dominated Indian National Congress's increasingly socialist and statist outlook.

It had a number of distinguished leaders, most of them old Congressmen, for example, C. Rajagopalachari, Tanguturi Prakasam Pantulu, Minoo Masani, N.G. Ranga, Darshan Singh Pheruman, Udham Singh Nagoke and K.M. Munshi. Right-wing groups and parties had existed earlier at the local and regional levels, but Swatantra’s formation was the first attempt to bring these highly fragmented right-wing forces together under the umbrella of a single party. The provocation was the left turn which the Congress took at Avadi[11] and the Nagpur Resolutions. Swatantra stood for a market-based economy with the "Licence Raj" dismantled, although it opposed laissez faire policies. The party was thus favoured by some traders and industrialists, but at the state-level, its leadership was dominated by the traditional privileged classes such as zamindars (feudal landlords) and erstwhile princes. Located on the right of the Indian political spectrum Swatantra was not a communal party; its membership was not restricted on the basis of religion, unlike the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Jana Sangh. In 1960, Rajagopalachari and his colleagues drafted a 21-point manifesto detailing why Swatantra had to be formed, even though they were hitherto Congressmen and associates of Nehru during the struggle for independence. The Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was highly critical of Swatantra, dubbing the party as belonging to "the middle ages of lords, castles and zamindars".

-- Swatantra Party, by Wikipedia

In 1975, at the time of the Emergency in India, Mody was arrested on the orders of the Indira Gandhi government, using the controversial powers granted by the Maintenance of Internal Security Act.

After an absence of a year from parliament, on 10 April 1978 Mody joined the Rajya Sabha and served there until his death in 1983.

-- Piloo Mody, by Wikipedia

But, eventually, it did get to me. I couldn't understand why all of India seemed so anti-U.S. We did have a record of trying to help them over the years with a massive educational and agricultural aid program. Was this all forgotten, or was it just an illustration of this story:

"One day, Confucius, walking with a friend, nodded in recognition to a man coming toward him. The other man defiantly ignored his acknowledgment. Confucius turned to his companion, 'What strange behavior; I don't remember having ever helped him.'''

However, one evening, while dining with Goodie and Bikki Oberoi in their penthouse suite at the Oberoi Intercontinental,...

Goodie Oberoi

an energetic, hawk-nosed, mustachioed man strode into the room, carrying a plastic bag full of greens.

"Here, enjoy this lettuce. It was raised in my garden, and I can guarantee no bloke has ever peed on it." He was introduced to me as Uncle Sam, my escort for the evening. He had a forceful, outgoing personality. When he heard I was on my way to Israel, he asked me to get some information on solar heating and water collection methods. I agreed and asked his full name and address.

Goodie laughed, "Ail you have to put on the envelope is Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, India. He's the general who won our war."

Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, MC (3 April 1914 – 27 June 2008), widely known as Sam Manekshaw and Sam Bahadur ("Sam the Brave"), was the Chief of the Army Staff of the Indian Army during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, and the first Indian Army officer to be promoted to the rank of field marshal. His military career spanned four decades and five wars, beginning with service in the British Indian Army in World War II....

Having already commanded troops at division, corps and regional levels, Manekshaw became the seventh chief of the army staff in 1969. Under his command, Indian forces conducted victorious campaigns against Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which led to the creation of Bangladesh in December 1971. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan, the second and third highest civilian awards of India. In January 1973, Manekshaw was conferred with the rank of Field Marshal, the first army officer of independent India to be so honoured.

-- Sam Manekshaw, by Wikipedia

He had attended Sandhurst with the Pakistani President, General Yaya Khan and had psyched him out on every tactic, knowing exactly how the general's mind worked. At one moment, when Sam had Delhi practically surrounded by tanks, an anti-Gandhi sympathizer reportedly asked him, "Why don't you just take India." Sam replied, "Who wants it?"

He was presently the only Indian Field Marshall. How different his attitude was. He spoke with warmth and admiration for the U.S. and excused the Indians' excessive pride over their "little skirmish." He even spoke well of Ali Bhutto who, becoming Prime Minister of Pakistan, had the job of soothing the wounded national pride of his countrymen over the loss of Bangladesh -- a loss that Bhutto later confessed to me had probably been a blessing. This was during a trip I made to Pakistan in '74.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Sindhi: ذوالفقار علي ڀٽو‎; Urdu: ذوالفقار علی بھٹو‎‎; 5 January 1928 – 4 April 1979) was a Pakistani barrister and politician who served as the 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977, and prior to that as the fourth President of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973. He was also the founder of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and served as its chairman until his execution in 1979.

Born in modern-day Sindh and educated at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Oxford, Bhutto trained as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, before entering politics as one of President Iskander Mirza's cabinet members, and was assigned several ministries during President Ayub Khan's military rule from 1958. Appointed Foreign Minister in 1963, Bhutto was a proponent of Operation Gibraltar in Kashmir, leading to war with India in 1965. After the Tashkent Agreement ended hostilities, Bhutto fell out with Ayub Khan and was sacked from government.

Bhutto founded the PPP in 1967 on a socialist platform, and contested general elections held by President Yahya Khan in 1970. While the Awami League won a majority of seats overall, the PPP won a majority of seats in West Pakistan; the two parties were unable to agree on a new constitution in particular on the issue of Six Point Movement which many in West Pakistan saw as a way to break up the country. Subsequent uprisings led to the secession of Bangladesh, and Pakistan losing the war against Bangladesh-allied India in 1971. Bhutto was handed over the presidency in December 1971 and emergency rule was imposed. When Bhutto set about rebuilding Pakistan, he stated his intention was to "rebuild confidence and rebuild hope for the future".

By July 1972, Bhutto recovered 43,600 prisoners of war and 5,000 sq mi of Indian-held territory after signing the Simla Agreement. He strengthened ties with China and Saudi Arabia, recognised Bangladesh, and hosted the second Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Lahore in 1974. Domestically, Bhutto's reign saw parliament unanimously approve a new constitution in 1973, upon which he appointed Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry President and switched to the newly empowered office of Prime Minister. He also played an integral role in initiating the country's nuclear programme. However, Bhutto's nationalisation of much of Pakistan's fledgling industries, healthcare, and educational institutions led to economic stagnation. After dissolving provincial feudal governments in Balochistan was met with unrest, Bhutto also ordered an army operation in the province in 1973, causing thousands of civilian casualties.

Despite civil disorder, the PPP won parliamentary elections in 1977 by a wide margin. However, the opposition alleged widespread vote rigging, and violence escalated across the country. On 5 July that same year, Bhutto was deposed in a military coup by his appointed army chief Zia-ul-Haq, before being controversially tried and executed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1979 for authorising the murder of a political opponent.

-- Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, by Wikipedia

Finally, getting fed up with politics in the capital city of India, I decided to travel south to check out some new potential tourist attractions and several holy men I'd been hearing about. In Madras, I had a delightful spiritual encounter. I sought out the Shankaracharya of that area. It reminded me of the quests Tom and I had made together.

Though advised that I'd never find him, and even if I did, he wouldn't see me, I took a young Indian guide, Vigi, and we set out in an Indian-made Ambassador. Having no air conditioner, we had to leave the windows open, so we arrived at the marketplace of ancient Kanchipuram hot and covered with dust.

Crumbling sandstone temples surrounded a square filled with exotic colors, pungent smells and people hawking their wares. Southern Indians seem smaller and darker than Northern Indians, and in Madras they speak Tamil, not Hindi. Most of the young women had woven fragrant flowers in their hair. We bought bright orange flower garlands mixed with sweet narcissus, and asked for news of the aged sage whose only mode of travel was walking. If he were nearby, the people would know it, as he was one of the most revered saints in India.

"Yes, he is here. He arrived yesterday." So the tip we'd been given was correct. A skinny arm pointed the direction.

The Swami's place of refuge was a small building with a thatched roof. In front was a water well. A group of people stood waiting. A white-robed Indian explained to Vigi in Tamil, "Tell Memsahib Swami does not see Europeans."

I persisted, "Please explain to the Shankaracharya that I am a follower of Maharishi's and the wisdom of Shankara. I do my puja every day and I have come to receive his darshan."

He disappeared, then came back to say, "It is all right, Memsahib, please stand behind these people."

I felt so happy as we waited for the Swami to appear. I studied the group in front. All were men, and by the sacred threads around their shoulders, they were of the Brahmin caste. Many times I had seen Maharishi give deference to a Brahmin over another of a lesser caste.

A hush fell over the group as a white-haired old man slowly emerged and stood at the other side of the well. His skin was dry and parched from years of walking in the relentless sun of Southern India. His hand grasped a staff. He looked at us with pale eyes and said nothing. His aide motioned to the first Brahmin. He prostrated himself on the ground and, rolling back and forth, wailed out his story.

"He has a very sick wife," Vigi explained.

Each came forward and repeated a similar tale. He hardly acknowledged them.

Then my turn came. Vigi told me it was not expected for me to roll on the ground. I went toward the well and gave my flowers to the aide. Vigi explained who I was and what was in my heart as I spoke my words in English. The old Swami beckoned me closer to the well. He peered at me closely with seemingly blind eyes. Then his parched face cracked with a slight smile, which revealed toothless gums. He moved forward and put the Brahmin's garlands around our necks. Then he turned and slowly left us. A tremendous surge of love filled my being.

Vigi and I wordlessly got back into our taxi. Months later, he wrote, "I had not been to the temple for a long time, and my family was upset with me. Now I go regularly and am studying our scriptures. My family is happy and joyous over the change that has taken place in me since I had the good karma to go with you to Kanchipuram."

Before leaving Kanchipuram, I bought an exquisite sari -- one typical of that place, so I would always have a material reminder of that experience with the old Shankaracharya. Experiences such as these were the jewels I gathered in India.

My love affair with India continued. Friends, who consider me an expert on the "subcontinent," frequently ask to "tag along" on my next trip. So, several times I took a group of friends to India; Rik went as my assistant. With one year of architectural school behind him, Rik became convinced that photography would be his profession, and architecture his hobby. These trips provided a good opportunity for selling photos to magazines.


Ambassador and Mrs. Shankar Bajpai (Beijing, China, 1980)

In 1970, Shankar Bajpai wrote, suggesting we visit him in Gangtok, Sikkim. He had been the Indian Consul General in San Francisco in the '60s, and we'd met through B.K. Nehru. Now he was the Political Officer of Sikkim, which meant he ran the place, as India provided the small mountain country with its foreign policy, currency, and military presence. (Later, India swallowed it up as it did Goa, all the time criticizing the U.S. for expansionist policies in Vietnam.) His letter was provocative, "Two hours from Gangtok there is an exotic monastery in Rumtek. The top boy is a very important Tibetan Lama. Rik will get dramatic pictures and you can have the thrill of knowing another saint."

He loved to kid me about my holy friends.

We decided to do it and put a group of friends together. Taking people to India was turning out to be a new hobby for me. Shankar and his wife, Meera, were delighted. He wrote again, "Before you leave Darjeeling, call me. It's always a frightful bore at the border. Just to be on the safe side, I'll have my men waiting for you. And by the way, do you suppose you could bring me about 12 pounds of fresh pork? If so, we'll have an authentic Tibetan dinner for you."

He went on to name a few other items impossible to get in the tiny kingdom.

K Shankar Bajpai (l), Indian ambassador to Pakistan in New Delhi on July 20, 1976.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has named K. Shankar Bajpai—who served as India’s ambassador to Pakistan, China and the United States—as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center.

At the Library, Bajpai hopes to explore the roots and history of Indo-American relations, and to examine more closely the question of post-colonial attitudes towards the colonial experience. Bajpai’s appointment started in mid-June and will run approximately three months, until September 22.

Bajpai also served as India’s Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs, the country’s top diplomat, from 1982 to 1983. The son of India’s Agent-General to the United States during World War II, Bajpai spent many of his formative years in Washington, D.C. An expert in security issues, he joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1952. Bajpai served in Germany, Turkey and Pakistan. He was named ambassador to Pakistan from 1976 to 1980, to China from 1980 to 1982 and to the United States from 1984 to 1986.

On retirement from government service in 1986, he entered academic life, working as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and as the first professor of non-Western studies at Brandeis University. He has been a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and the co-founder and chairman of the Delhi Policy Group, an independent policy analysis center in India. The author of numerous articles on diplomacy, foreign affairs and national security, Bajpai was editor of “Democracy and Diversity: Comparing India and the United States” (2007)...

-- K. Shankar Bajpai Named Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, by Library of Congress, July 21, 2009

Months later, through the Tenduf-las, the owners of the old-fashioned, cozy Windemere [Windamere] Hotel in Darjeeling where we stayed, it was possible to find everything.

The hotel started out as boarding house for bachelor British tea planters in Darjeeling, in what was then British India, were built in 1841 and opened up as a boarding house in the late 1880s. The property named Adda Villa is owned by the family of Robin Mookerjee. It was leased to Tenduf La, a Sikkimese of Tibetan descent, who turned it into a hotel with the name Windamere. The hotel became more widely known as Darjeeling became the Bengal Presidency's summer capital. It expanded and took over a new wing, formerly the Loreto Convent, where the actress Vivien Leigh had spent some years in childhood.

In 1959, Palden Thondup Namgyal, Crown Prince of Sikkim, met his future wife Hope Cooke for the first time in the Windamere Hotel.

The hotel is also known for its views of the tea plantations below and of Mount Kangchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world.

-- Windamere Hotel, by Wikipedia

From our hotel on the highest part of Darjeeling, our group caravan dropped over the backside of the mountain on a winding road down to a turbulent river. Crossing the gorge, we started the climb up the next mountain to enter the Kingdom of Sikkim-about a four-hour scenic drive. Bajpai's men were there, and we passed through the official gate with no problems.

As we approached the official residence, we saw the Bajpais sitting in lawn furniture in front of the government house, having tea. Shankar's round face broke into a wide smile as he welcomed us to Gangtok in his flawless English. Light reflected off his baldpate; he looked like a Buddha in his warm, monk-like robe. Meera had a woolen shawl around her sari. The mountain air was cool.

"Come join us. I'm sure you're all ready for a good hot cup of tea." We blessed the British. And what an enchanted tea it was. Good conversation was as available as good food when around the Bajpais. Oxford-educated Shankar was a popular diplomat for India. His next ambassadorial posts were to China, Pakistan, and the United States.

The next morning, the sun backlighted Kachenjunga, the huge mountain worshipped by the Sikkimese. Through the leaded windows of my room in Raj Bavan, another colonial gingerbread house, I watched the spectacular sunrise. Often the magnificent mountain was hidden by cloud cover, but not this morning. There it was, soaring 29,000 feet into the air, dwarfing the rest of the Himalayan chain. It was so cold as I stood there that I had my electric heater in my hand. Luckily it had a long cord and went everywhere in the room with me, including the bathroom. I set it next to the tub while I splashed hot water over myself from a bucket. The huge, marble bathtub would have taken a week to fill.

Starting out for Rumtek monastery, we were bundled in our coats as we bounced along in our Land Rovers. An hour later, coats were discarded. It had become a lovely, sunny day in the mountains. There was no way to alert the monks that we were coming; we'd just arrive, all 18 of us. We switchbacked over several mountains, until the driver of the front vehicle stopped and pointed to the top of a distant peak.

"Monastery, Memsahib." At that distance we could see nothing. Swinging back and forth on the winding road, we passed between barley fields tended by farmers winnowing grain. Oxen walked slowly in circles, around and around, as they had for centuries. The tidiness of the land bespoke of their care. Bright-cheeked Sikkimese and Tibetan girls called out their traditional greeting, "Jole."

"Mom, stop the car here. I have to take that picture!" Rik demanded. "Those fields with the girls' costumes are great."

There was the monastery-bright red, glistening in the sun. On both sides were rows of prayer flag trees, similar to those I'd seen at Govinda's in Almora on my first visit to India. Behind the monastery, providing a silent frame, were more mountains. My friends were filled with excitement; none had been to a Tibetan monastery.


Monks and Korshak Bakula (Leh)


His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa performing the Ceremony of the Vajra Crown (Black Hat) (Rumtek Monastery, Sikkim, 1972)

As we drove to the entrance, the round wooden door, divided in the middle, stood open in welcome. Three burgundy-robed monks stood by to receive us. A high-cheekb-oned Tibetan introduced himself.

"My name is Tashi. We are most happy to welcome you. It is very auspicious. You have arrived just in time for the Black Hat Ceremony. This event takes place once a month at the time of the full moon." We thought it a coincidence; the monks thought otherwise.

"Please follow me." We crossed the enclosed courtyard. Ahead stood the main building. Through the painted doors we could see a high-ceilinged room, filled with long benches on which sat monks of all ages from ancients down to those of five- or six-years-old. A huge, golden Buddha watched over ail. The ceiling held bells of ail descriptions. Long, brocaded panels, statues, butter lamps, and old thangkas cluttered every available spot. Incense curled through the air.

We were led up a worn and uneven wooden staircase to a spacious, high-ceilinged room at the top of the monastery. Both ends of the room were opened to the temple below. We had no sooner seated ourselves on the floor than the ceremony began. We had arrived at curtain time.

Darkly clad monks slowly paraded in with long copper horns, at least eight feet in length. Standing to the side of a high, throne-like chair and platform, they blew long, discordant, sonorous notes. Soon another group arrived, escorting to the seat of honor a stocky young man, who wore a high-peaked, brocaded lama's hat. Adjusting his heavy, gold-embroidered cape, he beamed happiness down upon us. He nodded his head to the monks to proceed.

"That is His Holiness, the Gyalwa Karmapa," Tashi informed me, handing out some papers of explanation. The Karmapa was the sixteenth incarnation of a Tibetan saint, recognized as the embodiment of Avalokitesvara (the Buddha of compassion) who attained enlightenment in one lifetime. His followers are called the Karma Kagyus. The Black Hat, which was made of human hairs in the eleventh century by devoted followers, was believed to have tremendous healing effects for viewers. "The Karmapa and the Dalai Lama are the two God-Kings of Tibet. Sikkim and Bhutan revere especially the Karmapa's line," explained Tashi.

An elaborate brocade box was carried in with much fanfare and presented to the God-King. After opening the box and putting the stiff, black, onion-shaped hat on his head, the Karmapa, with one hand holding the hat in place, closed his eyes in meditation. It was signaled that we follow suit. With my eyes shut I thought to myself, a God-King-how impressive for my friends. Shankar doesn't know this. How lucky we are to be here! Later, as we were each introduced to His Holiness, we presented white prayer scarves, khatas, which Shankar had advised us to take along.

One of my friends could hardly contain himself. "Wait 'til you hear what happened to Winnie." It seemed while his wife was sitting with closed eyes, she had the cherished "golden sun" wash over her entire being. She was still in shock, but radiant.

After the Karmapa left, Tashi asked us, "Would you like to meet our sister?" We, of course, said yes and followed him along an outside ledge to a corner room. It was a breathtaking view as we looked down into the valley over the winding road we had followed. All we could see were brown mountains in every directions.

"You must come back again later, when the mountains are green." Following Tashi through a narrow frame door, I stepped into a small hall; to the left a larger room opened out. As I entered, I gasped in surprise. On a low platform sat an English woman in monk's robes. She appeared to be in her sixties and her large, pale blue eyes looked enormous because of her shaved head.

"Come in, I am Sister Palmo. It is a joy to welcome you."

Recovering from our start, we formed a circle around her on the floor. As we gathered confidence, we asked questions about herself and the significance of the ceremony we had just witnessed.

"What good fortune, coming here on this particular day. It was not accidental; every movement of even a grain of sand is planned." She gently explained some of the basic Buddhist beliefs and traditions to us.

Time flew by, and, unfortunately, being on a tight schedule, we could not remain long enough. Rik took me aside.

"This place is sensational. We simply have to come back here and spend more time with Sister Palmo."

While the group had tea in another room and ate the picnic sandwiches we'd brought, we made our plans with the English nun.

"Yes, yes, do come back. I knew you would want to. We are meant to become friends. If you would be so kind as to bring me a few things from the Gangtok marketplace, I would be so happy. Then you can have lunch here with me."

We decided that Avi, who had joined us in Gangtok, could take the group to Calcutta the next morning, and we'd follow a day later. Shankar had suggested it earlier, "Take more time here. You can use my car and driver to go to the Bagdogra airport any time." In the jeep returning to Gangtok, we chattered like mapgies, awed by our experience at the monastery.


Sister Palmo at the Rumtek Monastery (1972)

That evening, we celebrated with a Tibetan dinner. The table was heaped with all sorts of succulent, hotly spiced vegetable and pork dishes. The Bajpais had outdone themselves, and they seemed proud of us as a group. We came from Argentina, Washington D.C., New York, Beverly Hills, Honolulu, and Hamburg. Included were top social names, a former U.S. Ambassador, a famous choreographer (Tony Duquette), the head of the Beverly Hills Testavant Chevalier (elite gourmet Society) and a woman astrologer, the grandniece of the legendary flying ace of World War II, Baron Manfred Von Richthofen (the Red Baron). Yes, we were an interesting assortment. We, in turn, were honored to meet the Chogyal with his American wife, Hope Cooke, and the General who had accompanied the Dalai Lama on his escape from Lhasa. The Chogyal was charming, Her Highness was shy and aloof, and the General complimented me, "That turquoise amulet you are wearing is an extremely good one."

I had bought it the day before in Gangtok. A Tibetan in dusty robes, wearing one long turquoise and coral earring had tugged at Rik's shirt. We followed him down a little alley and up a broken staircase to a tiny little room where two elderly Tibetan women sat. From under their bed, they pulled out a trunk and carefully unwrapped their treasures wrapped in dirty clothes. The minute I saw the delicate amulet, I knew I wanted it. The price was reasonable, but Rik said, in Spanish, "Mom, you've taught me to bargain. Seventy dollars is a lot in Sikkim, you will get it for less."

By bargaining, I got it for $80. We laughed at the reverse psychology of the Tibetans. The minute we started to bargain, they knew we wanted it and upped the price.

Our group left us early the next morning. Shortly afterward, I initiated Meera Bajpai into TM. Shankar scoffed, but added hastily, "I will not oppose anything that might interest her," remembering my criticism of years before. On his arrival in San Francisco as Consul General, he had been asked about Maharishi by the press. He had replied, "Oh, we laugh at all these holy men who come to the U.S. to make a fortune." I had jumped on him, "Shankar, you have never met Maharishi or taken his course. Why didn't you just say you knew nothing about him?"

By 8 A.M., the marketplace was open. Vegetables, eggs, spices, and all sorts of foodstuffs were spread out on canvasses in front of flimsy stalls. We laughed as we watched one owner beat a cow on the head as he tried to retrieve a bunch of carrots from its mouth. Succeeding, he brushed the orange roots and put them back in place-a sort of Julia Child attitude about a few teeth marks.

Soon we had our baskets filled with bread (a luxury in Rumtek), tomatoes, butter, cream, and all the requested vegetables and fruits. It was time for our return to the monastery.

"How nice to be alone!" Rik said.

Although we enjoyed our group, nearing the end of a 30-day trip, we looked forward to being on our own. Now we were off on the kind of adventure we dearly loved. It was about 11 A.M. when we drove up to the monastery door, giving us at least eight hours of daylight for a nice long visit.

Anila, Sister Palmo's tiny attendant, took our parcels from us with joy and the quick, silent movements of a bird. Sister Palmo was sitting, as she had been when we left her the day before.

"Good morning, what a treat to get all those lovely foods. Come sit near me. Are you sure you wouldn't like chairs brought in?" We assured her not.

She told us a bit about herself. She had been married to an Indian whom she had met while both were students at Oxford. They had three grown children. Their photos were beautiful.

"This one, my son Kabir Bedi, is a leading cinema star in Bombay. He's gone through a painful divorce, but is coming out of it. My husband was a businessman, but now has become a Hindu holy man and psychic healer. At present, he is touring Italy. We meet occasionally, when I go to see my children, and are good friends."

We asked how she had become a nun. "For years I followed Gandhi. One day I was attending a conference, and while walking with some friends, a voice from within spoke to me. It gave me instructions about what I was to do-I was to renounce the world of activity and become a nun in a Buddhist monastery."

Her full face glowed as she remembered. "My husband understood. He had felt the tug himself. It was a natural, happy parting, and we now travel different roads to the same destination." She must have been a young beauty, I thought. Lovely white skin, but it's hard to tell what a woman with a shaved head would look like with hair.

We discussed her early years as a nun. Evidently, as the highest in the order, she was the confidential assistant to His Holiness. She even discussed the shaving of her head.

"I guess that is the final commitment for a woman," her eyes twinkled. "You know vanity is gone when you see your hair on the floor."

We felt honored as she shared these intimacies with us. Then, abruptly, she changed the subject. "But tell me more about yourselves. What brought you here? How much do you know about Buddhism?"

I spoke first, "Well, I know that the Vedas inspired Gautama Buddha's 'seek out your own salvation,' but that he rejected the Brahmin's interpretation. Born as an Indian prince, he was horrified by what he saw outside the walls of his princely home. Needing to think, to rationalize the 'whys of creation,' he spent hours under the Bodhi tree contemplating. Occasionally he would slip into 'nothingness.' There he was free, free of worries, desires, and emotions. There he experienced total release. Austerities didn't do it, worship didn't do it; contemplation and meditation did it. It brought about the nothingness -- Nirvana!"

"Very good, that's all correct! Buddhism as explained by our Kagyu lineage also states that meditation, while unmasking our deceptions, helps us to know ourselves in the present situation, to face life, and to accept ourselves. It will bring transcendental common sense."

That struck a cord with us. Rik said, "Sister, that happens to be a word we are very aware of, but please go on."

She continued, "And from Buddha's illuminations, where he transcended the limitations of individuality, he replaced the idea of the immutable, eternal soul incapable of growth and development, with the conception of a spiritual consciousness yearning for freedom and enlightenment through the continuous process of becoming and dissolving." She spoke slowly and clearly.

"Those are almost Lama Govinda's words," I exclaimed.

"Yes, he will be known to the West as the first interpreter of Tibetan Buddhism into layman's terms. He helps one understand how we must abandon our thought habits in order to know the real nature of the Mind that encompasses both the individual and the Universe."

Agreeing with the Sister, I added, "The West will welcome his work. Many years ago, wanting to understand something about Buddhism, I read several books on the subject, but I gave up ... to understand them, one had to learn a whole new vocabulary."

"Indeed, and the whole idea was made easy by Buddha when he presented the eight basic rules to live by: Right Thought; Right Understanding; Right Action; Right Speech; Right Livelihood; Right Effort; Right Mindfulness; and Right Concentration."

By following these, one would become "enlightened." No longer would life be directed by attachment. The goal, actually, was to be free from the pressure of the human race.

"But, Sister Palmo, what we don't understand is this: Gautama Buddha was against gods, priests, worship, and dogma. He advised against building monasteries, as did the sages of the Upanishads, warning that, through the problems arising from household responsibilities and positions, jealousies would be born and infighting would develop between superiors and inferiors. All that was important was pure thought. Yet, when he died, they turned him into a god to worship."

"Not exactly-he's worshipped as Buddha, the Enlightened One, not as a god."

Rik and I couldn't see the difference. "Isn't it a shame that man always takes simplicity and complicates it?" mused Rik.

"Man feels more secure in clinging to traditions. He needs sets of commentaries, and philosophical principles that he can classify and put down in sacred texts-man clings to 'things.' He wants to possess and make his knowledge exclusive. Even the Karmapa once admitted to me, 'It took the Red Chinese to force Tibet into sharing its wisdom with the outside world.' That was our bad karma, trying to keep it to ourselves." We admired the English nun for her honesty. What a rare treat this visit was for us. She went on to explain the symbolism found in Buddhist art and the importance it had to all meditative schools. We could have spent a week there sitting at her feet like enthusiastic little school children.

Soon it was time for lunch. Rik and I were hesitant to eat at the monastery, where sanitary conditions were uncertain, so we said we'd had a large breakfast. "Not at all, that was hours ago," insisted the nun. "Anila is cooking our meal in the next room. I have taught her to make crepes."

We couldn't believe it; I watched her cook over a little oil burner in the corner. Everything was spotless. The crepes, when served with cream and honey whipped with butter, were delicious. I'd been afraid we'd receive "buttered tea" and tsampa, made from roasted gingke, a flour-like barley mixed with yak butter.

"What a treat for me," said Sister Palmo. "Our diet is sparse here. One of the things I miss is toast with my tea. We often go weeks without bread. We raise chickens and goats outside the monastery. So it's an eggs, goat's milk, and grain menu." No wonder the foods we'd brought were thought so dazzling.

Sister Palmo was interested in hearing about Maharishi and his teachings. "He sounds like a wise man, and from the happiness you both exude, one can see it's working." We then urged her to tell us more about her life at the monastery.

She explained in detail her daily routine, how she counted hundreds of thousands of Aum mani padme hum, a Buddhist mantra, on her rosary-type beads, her mala. She told us about visualization, very important in the practice of Buddhism, and the exaltation one felt when the Buddha was seen sitting on a lotus with the honey of compassion dripping down. Even though she detailed it carefully, it was foreign to us and seemed laborious in comparison to our system.

Shortly after lunch, she announced, "Anila has brought a message that His Holiness is ready to receive you." Gathering her robes, she stood up. We had only seen her seated and were surprised to see that she was as tall as I. She walked as an English woman, with good sturdy shoes, taking long decisive steps.

From an outside door, the Karmapa's quarters were on the far side of the monastery. The room was bare, but lighted by many windows. On a small divan-like platform sat His Holiness. Without his hat and heavy cape, he looked younger than he had the day before. Now, he wore a simple wine-red robe. He smiled in welcome, indicating we should sit on cushions near him.

Then we had a surprise. A beautiful Indian woman entered the room. It was Goodie Oberoi. Sister Palmo was delighted to find we knew each other, and left us with Goodie to interpret. "How is it that you are here?" I asked. She had been one of the Indian friends I'd brought to Maharishi for initiation while I was attending the 1969 course in Kashmir. She hadn't mentioned the Karmapa to me.

"His Holiness is my treasured teacher now and has helped me more than anyone in the world." I could understand her need of help. Her life with Bikki, son of the hotel tycoon, had to be difficult. Bikki's love of drinking and women were well-known among the social set of India.

"Sister comes to visit us and now we have one of her nuns with us at home. You have no idea, Nancy, what a wonderful change it has brought over the children. I will always love Maharishi," she continued, "but, for me, I need personal contact with my spiritual guide." Her handsome face looked more serene than I had ever seen it.

Interpreting was difficult. The Karmapa spoke rapidly. His man translated the Tibetan into Hindi; then Goodie put the Hindi into English. It discouraged any substantial penetration of his knowledge. We were left with the simple enjoyment of sitting near him and receiving his serene vibrations.

"This is a most wonderful soul," Goodie explained. "You are fortunate to see him like this and share his darshan. He is revered as a God King by the Sikkimese, Bhutanese, and many Tibetans. He is the Supreme head of the Kagyu Order of Tibetan Buddhism, the embodiment of the power and compassion of Buddhist Tantra. They consider him a higher incarnation than the Dalai Lama. When the Chinese invaded Tibet, India offered the Dalai Lama asylum; likewise the Karmapa, but he came here to Sikkim at the invitation of the Chogyal."

The Karmapa radiated sunshine and he was attentive when we spoke. He appeared to be in his 30s, but I heard later he was almost 50. "He would like to give you a special mantra," Goodie explained. It was an honor we couldn't refuse. We moved close to him. He had been knotting some cords while he spoke and with his expressive hands he now tied both a yellow and red cord around each of our necks. With a small pair of scissors, he cut a lock of hair from our heads.

"It is a great blessing," Goodie explained, "that he would knot the cords and put them around your necks with his own hands. It is unusual, and I'm so happy for you. You have taken refuge in the Buddha with this ceremony."

She wrote down our mantras on a piece of paper, handing it to us with some powder and pills. "Sister Palmo will explain these to you."

The good Sister was overjoyed when she heard what had transpired and clapped her hands. "When you walked into my room today and my thangka of Vajrasattva was exposed, I knew something auspicious would happen. Usually we keep that particular thangka covered."

We told her about the mantras, and she understood our dilemma. "You are right. Stick to what you are doing. But, sometimes on a special full moon, or in a time of danger, you might use them."

She explained the healing qualities of the powder and pills to which I reacted, "Oh, good, I'll take them to my husband." She agreed they might help. (Unfortunately, Tony never saw any apparent effects.)

Then she asked, "Now, may I ask you a favor?" We quickly nodded. "We have a convent in Tulokpur. You mentioned you were on your way to visit His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, after your friends return to the U.S., to photograph the Tibetan New Year's celebration there. Tulokpur is between Dharamsala and Dalhousie. One takes a risk sending money by mail to India, but we need to get money to the monastery to feed the nuns and their cattle. Could we entrust the money to you to deliver?"

We agreed and got all the necessary instructions. We were happy we'd ordered five thangkas to be hand painted for us. We knew our money helped to fill the envelope given us.

Again the day came to an end, far too quickly. Sister Palmo escorted us to the jeep. "We will keep in touch through letters, and one day I will come to see you in the U.S. You will come back to Rumtek. It is written." In fact, the following year she stayed with us in Beverly Hills and made a lasting impression on my family. I felt my children were fortunate to meet such dedicated people.

As we rode down the hill, our minds relived our beautiful experience. "Where else could such a thing happen?" Rik said. "Here we are with the money for their convent's food, and they know nothing about us. We'll have to be so careful not to have anything happen to us, or those poor animals and people will starve!"

Later, we learned, the Karmapa, with his powers, probably knew more about us than we did ourselves! But we were complimented by their blind trust, and we did deliver the money safely.

My encounters with the world of Buddhism started with Lama Govinda, followed by the Dalai Lama, and now continued with the Karmapa. The more I was exposed to their spiritual leaders, the more attracted I became. There was no doubt that I felt a kindred spirit for the Tibetan race. They are bright, outgoing, and friendly in spite of the terrible hardships their people and homeland have suffered; they are optimistic and determined to succeed. Maybe I had been a Tibetan in one of my past lives.

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Girija Shankar Bajpai
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/10/20


Sir Girija Shankar Bajpai, KCSI KBE CIE
Girja Shankar Bajpai with the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in the first Commonwealth Prime Ministers conference in 1948 in London.
1st Secretary General, Ministry of External Affairs
In office: 1947–1952
Prime Minister: Jawaharlal Nehru
Preceded by: position established
Succeeded by: N. R. Pillai
Personal details
Born: 3 April 1891[1], Allahabad, North-Western Provinces, British India (now in Uttar Pradesh, India)
Died: 5 December 1954 (aged 63), Bombay, Bombay State, India (now Mumbai, Maharashtra)
Nationality: British Indian (1891-1947); Indian (1947-1954)
Children: 7 (4 daughters; 3 sons), including Uma Shankar Bajpai
Alma mater: University of Allahabad, Merton College, Oxford

Sir Girija Shankar Bajpai KCSI KBE CIE (3 April 1891 – 5 December 1954) was an eminent Indian civil servant, diplomat and Governor.

Early life and education

Bajpai was born in Allahabad to an orthodox Kanyakubja Brahmin family originally from Lucknow.[2] He was the second son of Rai Bahadur Pandit Sir Seetla Prasad Bajpai CIE (1865 - 1947), who in the course of his career served as Chief Justice and Minister of Justice of Jaipur State and was knighted in 1939.[3] and to Rukmine Shukla (18?? - 1945).[4][5] He was initially educated at Muir Central College, from where he received a King's Scholarship to Oxford, taking a B.A. from Merton College, Oxford.[6][7]

Career

He entered the ICS on 16 October 1915.[8] He began his career in the (then) United Provinces as an assistant collector and magistrate, receiving a promotion to joint magistrate in May 1918.[1] In April 1921, he was appointed as a secretary to V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, and served in this capacity until November 1922.[1] He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1923 New Year Honours list.[9] From 1923 to 1930, Bajpai served in the Department of Education, Health and Lands, rising from under-secretary in September 1923 to deputy secretary (officiating) in March 1924 and to deputy secretary in June 1926.[1] The secretary of a Government of India delegation to South Africa in 1926, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in that year's Birthday Honours List.[10] He was promoted to secretary (officiating) in the department of Education, Health and Lands in December 1927 and to joint secretary in November 1929.[1]

From November 1930 to January 1931, Bajpai was a member of the British Indian delegation to the First Round Table Conference in London, and was promoted to the rank of collector and magistrate in October 1931. After a brief posting to South Africa from December 1931 to August 1932, he was appointed as a full secretary in the Department of Education, Health and Lands,[1] and was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the 1935 Birthday and Silver Jubilee Honours List.[11] In March 1940, Sir Girija was appointed as one of the six members of the Viceroy's Executive Council, the colonial version of a Cabinet, having previously served as a temporary member of the council from 1935 to 1936.[1][12] In October 1941, he was appointed the Agent-General (roughly equivalent to an ambassadorial post) to the USA for India.[1] He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India (KCSI) in that year's Birthday Honours List.[13]

Sir Girija was known for his ethics, oratory, strong will and far-reaching vision. It is said he warned Prime Minister Nehru about the potential for a Chinese invasion more than a decade before it happened.[14][15] He represented India in numerous international forums in the 1930s and 1940s, including at the UN during the Kashmir debate.[6] American diplomat Mr Vincent Sheean has mentioned in his book "Nehru – The Years of Power" that it was a technical error on part of the team headed by Mr Girija Bajpai which filed India's appeal to the UN Pakistan's invasion in Kashmir which led to the issue being considered a dispute rather than an act of aggression by Pakistan. The appeal should have been made under Chapter 7 of the UN charter rather than Chapter 6.[16]

Following the independence of India from the British Raj in 1947, Prime Minister Nehru retained Sir Girija as his principal foreign affairs adviser, appointing him the first Secretary General in the Ministry of External Affairs.[17]

Later years and death

Bajpai had experienced poor health for some years, and the pressures of the immediate post-Independence years took their toll. In failing health by 1952, he was appointed as the Governor of Bombay State by Nehru, in part to allow him to recuperate. He recovered his health sufficiently to represent India the following year at the UN conferences on the Kashmir dispute, which were held at Geneva. Following his return to India, Sir Girija fell seriously ill in early 1954.[2] He died in office of a cerebral haemorrhage in the early morning of 5 December 1954, aged 63. He lay in state in the audience hall of Raj Bhavan, his body draped with the tricolour as citizens, political leaders and consular officials filed past. Later that day, with thousands of people lining the streets, his corpse was conveyed to the crematorium in a gun carriage drawn by detachments of the army, navy, air force and the Mumbai Police. He was cremated with full ceremonial honours, including a 17-gun salute, fired as his eldest son, Uma Shankar Bajpai, lit the funeral pyre.

The (then) Vice President of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, delivered a eulogy in which he said Bajpai's life had been "an example of devotion and dedication" which would be long remembered.[18]

Personal life

Sir Girija Bajpai was known for his wealth and lifestyle. He always dressed impeccably and was considered an authority on clothes, fine wines and carpets. His ethics and strong sense of family responsibility led him to pay off his brother's debts, some of which were run up in his name, several times in an effort to preserve the family's reputation.

Bajpai was married to Rajni Misra of Kanpur, with whom he had four daughters and three sons; Uma Shankar Bajpai, Durga Shankar Bajpai and K.S. Bajpai,

K Shankar Bajpai (l), Indian ambassador to Pakistan in New Delhi on July 20, 1976.

all who became diplomats.[2] Kanti Bajpai, the son of Uma Shankar, is a noted academic.

K. Shankar Bajpai, Chairman Emeritus
by Delhi Policy Group: Advancing India's Rise as a Leading Power
Accessed: 6/10/20


K.Shankar Bajpai, Former Indian Secretary, External Affairs Ministry, and Ambassador to Pakistan, China and USA.

Born March 30, 1928, in Jaipur, India. Educated St Albans School, Washington D.C. ( Cum Laude, 1944, with prize for English; Editor, School Year Book; co-Chair Government Club).
Merton College, Oxford, (BA Honours in History 1949, MA 1954, President of Indian Club, Film Society and Cosmos Society)
Ecole des Hautes Etudes Universitaire, Geneva 1952
Speaks French, some German, in addition to English and Hindi
Career: Joined Indian Foreign Service 1952, served in Bonn, Ankara, Bern 1955-8, Political Officer, Indian High Commission in Pakistan, 1962-65; In External Affairs Ministry, Under Secretary Arab Affairs, Deputy Secretary UN Affairs, Special Officer for Disarmament 1958-62; Special Officer for Pakistan Affairs and Director Americas, 1966-67.

As Head of Post or Mission Consul General, United States West of the Mississippi, in San Francisco, 67-70; Government of India’s Representative in Sikkim, 70-74; Ambassador to The Netherlands, 1975; High Commissioner to Pakistan, 1976-80; Ambassador to China, 1980-82; Secretary, External Affairs, 1982-83; Ambassador to the USA, 1984-86.

After retirement from government service in 1986, entered academic life: Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, 87; Regents Professor, University of California, (all campuses) 1987-88; Visiting Professor, University of California, Berkeley, 1989-92; First Professor of Non-Western Studies, Brandeis University, 1992 & 93; Visiting Fellow, Center for International Security & Cooperation, Stanford, ‘02; Senior International Adviser, Merrill Lynch, International, New York 1995-2000; Chairman, Delhi Policy Group, an independent "think-tank", since its founding, ‘94. Also involved in various “track-two” interactions with the USA and Pakistan.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has named K. Shankar Bajpai—who served as India’s ambassador to Pakistan, China and the United States—as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center.

At the Library, Bajpai hopes to explore the roots and history of Indo-American relations, and to examine more closely the question of post-colonial attitudes towards the colonial experience. Bajpai’s appointment started in mid-June and will run approximately three months, until September 22.

Bajpai also served as India’s Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs, the country’s top diplomat, from 1982 to 1983. The son of India’s Agent-General to the United States during World War II, Bajpai spent many of his formative years in Washington, D.C. An expert in security issues, he joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1952. Bajpai served in Germany, Turkey and Pakistan. He was named ambassador to Pakistan from 1976 to 1980, to China from 1980 to 1982 and to the United States from 1984 to 1986.

On retirement from government service in 1986, he entered academic life, working as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and as the first professor of non-Western studies at Brandeis University. He has been a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and the co-founder and chairman of the Delhi Policy Group, an independent policy analysis center in India. The author of numerous articles on diplomacy, foreign affairs and national security, Bajpai was editor of “Democracy and Diversity: Comparing India and the United States” (2007)...

-- K. Shankar Bajpai Named Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, by Library of Congress, July 21, 2009

He was an early notable in Scouting and Guiding in India, and worked to unify their scattered organisations during the pre-independence era.

References

1. The India Office and Burma Office List: 1945. Harrison & Sons, Ltd. 1945. p. 127.
2. "Sir Girija Bajpai: Architect of Indian Diplomacy". The Times. 6 December 1954.
3. London Gazette, 2 January 1939
4. "Bajpai, Sir Seetla Prasad, Rai Bahadur, (19 April 1865–1 Feb. 1947), Chief Justice and Judicial Member of Council, Jaipur, Rajputana". Oxford Index BAJPAI, Seetla Prasad, Rai Bahadur (1865 - 1947), Chief Justice and Judicial Member of Council, Jaipur, Rajputana. 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U222158.
5. "Bajpai, Sir Girja Shankar (1891-1954), administrator and politician in India". 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30544.
6. "BAJPAI, Sir Girja Shankar". Marquis Who Was Who in America 1607–1984. Marquis. Retrieved 27 October 2012. – via Credo Reference (subscription required)
7. Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900-1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 83.
8. "No. 29348". The London Gazette. 2 November 1915. p. 10785.
9. "No. 32782". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 December 1922. p. 10.
10. "No. 33179". The London Gazette (Supplement). 2 July 1926. p. 4406.
11. "No. 34166". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 May 1935. p. 3612.
12. "No. 34831". The London Gazette. 16 April 1940. p. 2252.
13. "No. 36033". The London Gazette (Supplement). 28 May 1943. p. 2420.
14. Bajpai, K.S. "Weightlifting". Outlook Magazine. Retrieved 28 October 2012.
15. "Letter from Deputy Prime Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to Prime Minister Jahawarlal Nehru". The Tribune. 16 October 2012. Retrieved 28 October 2012.
16. Sheean, Vincent (1960). Nehru: The Years of Power. Random House.
17. Kapur, Harish (2009). Foreign Policies of India's Prime Ministers. Delhi: Lancer Publishers. p. 444. ISBN 9780979617485.
18. "This day that age – December 6, 1954". The Hindu. 6 December 2004. Retrieved 28 October 2012.