We’ve had a few posts in the past on the growing influence of the Indian American Lobby (see 1,2,3), particularly with regards to the U.S./India nuclear deal. However, a new book set for release stateside next month takes us old school. Long before Indian Americans were lobbying for a nuclear deal with India they were lobbying for the basics, such as civil rights here and freedom for India. Indolink.com has a very informative review:
“Sikhs, Swamis, Students, and Spies: the India lobby in the United States, 1900-1946” is the title of a new book, authored by veteran South Asian scholar Dr Harold Gould, of the University of Virginia, and scheduled for release later this month by Sage Publications.
The subtitle suggests that it deals with the pioneers who confronted racism and opened America to South Asians, reflecting, as Joan Jensen informs us in her earlier classic study ‘Passage from India,’ “The story of how Indian immigrant pioneers settled in a hostile land and struggled to enjoy rights equal to those of Euro-Americans.”
That’s certainly a part of the historical confrontation between desis and non-desis in North America. It should be remembered that this was a time when the process of becoming an American citizen was one from which Indians were excluded through an increasingly complex maze of laws and regulations. Indeed, Indians were the only class of people whose citizenship was revoked because they did not neatly fit into the then commonly accepted racial categories of Caucasian, Mongolian, and Negro.
This was also a time when the chief of the bureau of naturalization notified all United States attorneys to oppose actively the granting of naturalization to “Hindoos or East Indians” and to instruct clerks of courts in their districts to refuse to accept declarations of intention or to file petitions for naturalization. Attorneys were also asked to file motions for orders to cancel declarations of intention already filed by Indians.
That’s why, in 1907, when Bengali student Taraknath Das was refused an application for citizenship in San Francisco, he wrote to the attorney general: “May I ask you if the Hindus who belong to the Caucasian stock of the Human race have no legal right to become citizens of the United States, under what special law the Japanese who belong to a different stock are allowed to declare their intention to become citizens of the United States.” [Link]
By that last paragraph I can see that solidarity with other Asian Americans definitely wasn’t in vogue at the time. According to review, the book takes a very close look at the efforts made throughout North America to drum up support against the British occupation in India:
Most of the India associations had high aims and objectives. For instance, the Hindustanee association of United States, founded in Chicago in 1913, stated its aims as follows: “To further the educational interests of the Indian students, to gather or disseminate all kinds of educational information, to seek help and cooperation from people at home and in the country.” As I.M.Muthanna observes in his book ‘People of India in North America,’ “Though outwardly it posed as a cultural organization, the real aim of this association was to preach sedition against the British.”
The ‘Hindu’ Associations organized in the U.S. had the following objectives: ‘Receipt of vernacular papers from India in order to keep Hindus fully informed of the events in their country, importation of youths from India to America for their education and for preparing them for developing their nationalist outlook, and to hold weekly meetings and discus politics.’
Apart from the Ghadar weekly, some of the pamphlets that were widely circulated include New Echo, Gadar di Goonj, Gadar di Karak, Gadhar Sandesh etc. The editor Ram Chandra wrote: “The ghadar conveys the message of rebellion to the nation once a week. It is brave, outspoken, unbridled, soft-footed, and given to the use of strong language. It is a lightning, a storm and a flame of fire ..we are the harbinger of freedom…” [Link]
The nature of these pamphlets published by the Ghadar Party were most often quite “militant” in tone:
Following the entry of Canada into World War I, the organisation was centred in the USA and received substantial funding from the German government. They had a very militant tone, as illustrated by this quote from Harnam Singh:
No pundits or mullahs do we need
No prayer or litanies recite.
These will only scuttle our boat;
Draw the sword, it’s time to fight!
Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs though we be Sons of Bharat are we still.
Postpone your prayers to another time; The call of the hour is to kill!
Promptly 61 Ghadarites, led by Jwala Singh, set sail from San Francisco, via Korea, Canton and Singapore to start an uprising in India. Joined by over a hundred others (including British spies), they were nearly all arrested upon arrival. [Link]
Gould’s new book is also compared to one written a century ago by Har Dayal, one of the Ghadar leaders. Today we often note how the Indians that immigrated to America after the 1965 Immigration Act often represented the best minds that India had to offer. A 100 years ago Dayal noted the same except that he also went on to point out the transformational effect that America had on the “dross” that also came over from India.
Interestingly, the title of Gould’s book derives from an article entitled ‘India in America’ written almost 100 years ago by the Indian revolutionary Har Dayal who lived in the Bay Area — while teaching philosophy at Stanford — and was the prime intellectual force behind the Ghadar movement.
Writing in the July 1911 issue of ‘The Modern Review’ of Calcutta, Dayal noted that those Indians who were in the America at the time represented “the best elements of the population of the mother country.” He then went on to classify them into four groups with “accidentally alliterative appellations”: Sikhs, swamis, students and spies.
Today, if the full story of Indian-Americans were to be told, one would have to include - if one were to follow Harold Gould’s alliterative sequence - slaves, soldiers, scientists and software engineers too.
Taking into account the demographics of early immigrants from the subcontinent, Dayal noted that it was the Sikhs who were the dominant group among the Indian immigrants. He did not define them in their religious context but as peasants - “timid, shabby, and ignorant.” It was no wonder, enthused Har Dayal, that in America they were transformed. He asserted that no one could live in the United States “without being lifted to a higher level of thought and action.”
He went on: “The great flag of the greatest democratic state in the world’s history, burns up all cowardice, servility, pessimism and indifference, as fire consumes the dross and leaves pure gold behind.” Moreover he hailed the United States as an “ethical sanitarium, where eternal sunshine prevails, and the wrecks of other climes are wrought into beautiful specimens of restored humanity…” [Link]
I obviously wasn’t going to end this post without mentioning the “spies” that are referred to in the title of this book. A mole always makes for a good story:
… someone like India-born William C.Hopkinson, the son of a British sergeant and an Indian mother, was hired to conduct surveillance of the Indian immigrant community. Hopkinson, who spoke Hindi and Urdu, led a double life among the Indian immigrants under the alias of Narain Singh, sporting a turban and a fake beard. He attended meetings at the local Sikh gurdwara. He paid other Indians to tell him about the activities of immigrants and students he suspected. For at least six years between 1909 and 1914 Hopkinson acted as an undercover agent, reporting on many Indian activists in North America, the best known being the intellectuals Taraknath Das and Har Dayal. [Link]If any of you know of a commenter who isn’t who they claim to be, please do let us know.
