Freedom From Afar

A lively introduction to forgotten lobbyists, with a 8216;Deep Throat8217; surprise at the end

The intense lobbying for Indian interests that we currently see amongst the Indian diaspora in the US has a long pedigree. Gould recounts the fascinating story of how a small group of men, numbering a few hundred, without much personal or professional security, without the demographic or economic might of the current diaspora, lobbied valiantly, and against the odds, for Indian interests in the US before India achieved independence. Many of these figures and movements, Har Dayal, Taraknath, Bhai Parmanand or the Ghadr party, are now largely forgotten. What makes this book particularly interesting is that it connects two stories: The quest by Indian immigrants for racial and social justice in North America on the one hand and the Indian struggle for freedom on the other.

Gould8217;s story begins with the early Sikh migration to the West Coast, from California to Vancouver. This small group, numbering no more than five thousand, largely ex-army personnel, of a middling status, was the early immigrant pioneers to the US. But this community literally melted away, largely as a result of intermarriage. Gould8217;s fascinating data suggest most of them married Hispanics! But even such a small number weighed much in the American imagination and initial fear of immigration from the subcontinent. Legal, racial and social barriers were set up to deter immigrants from India, and even small groups had to slowly struggle to claim their civil rights. The key moment in crystallising an 8220;Indian8221; political consciousness in Canada comes in 1914, with the fascinating incident of the Komagata Maru, a ship carrying Indian immigrants that was detained in Vancouver for 45 days before being turned back to Calcutta, where many of the passengers were shot. But by World War I, something resembling an Indian political movement was in place in America: The Ghadr party, a crew of motley individuals who took inspiration from pre-Gandhian nationalists, had been formed to fight racial injustice and colonial oppression.

Not all their activity was confined to lobbying or pamphleteering as was exemplified in the famous German Conspiracy Case, where members of the Ghadr party were accused of conspiring with Germans to foment armed uprising in India. But this is also a period of sustained Indian encounter with America. Tagore, M N Roy and Lala Lajpat Rai were engaged with America in this period. Indeed if the book has a fault, it its that it concentrates too much on mundane politics and gives little of the ideological and imaginative sense in which America itself was seen by the Indian activists who encountered it. After all, Lajpat Rai wrote an astonishing memoir of this encounter and all the figures he admires in his account are Africa-American, and himself became friends with Du Bois; and most of the protagonists in the story were prolific writers. The richness of the material would have made for a fascinating literary story as well.

The book ends with lobbying efforts during WW II to distance America from British policy in India. It recounts the painful episode where the UNRRA took up the question of the Bengal Famine as a result of lobbying, only to have Girjia Shankar Bajpai, the British agent general, refusing to acknowledge the issue under British pressure. But the whodunit in the book revolves around an article published in the Washington Post by Drew Pearson in 1944, which revealed a private letter written by William Phillips, US envoy in Delhi, to Franklin Roosevelt. The letter was a scathing critique of British policy in India, and its publication helped galvanise key support for the India cause in the US Senate. The US was headed on the path of distancing itself from the British on India in any case, but this letter made it even more difficult for Roosevelt to hold on to the British line. There has been immense speculation on who leaked this letter: Candidates have included G.D. Birla and the Congress Party. Gould finally reveals 8220;Deep Throat8221;.

Savour the book for its treasure house of marvellous little stories, interesting characters and its ability to create a world of politics that is at once distant and eerily familiar. It is also, in its own way, a register of the different meanings of nationalism, the diasporic experience, racism and dogged political persistence. What difference Indian lobbying in the US made is ultimately difficult to tell, but it is an engrossing story.