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Enemies of Enemies …

The Nationalist Ghadar

FEELING LIKE A NATION, THINKING LIKE A STATE

It is a truism for theorists of nationalism (and even for common observers of the world) that the rhetoric of nationalism, and the emotionality of patriotism, increase drastically during war time. The Great War introduced a hitherto unimaginable scale of conflict as the great empires collided and began ripping each other apart. National identities took over for the duration, breaking up the ideal of international class solidarity to the bitter disappointment of many anarchists and socialists.

For Indian and other anticolonial movements this effect of the war was even stronger. Nationalist rhetoric was the cornerstone of such movements in any case; besides, a colonized area is already by definition in a state of war, secured by foundational violence and subject at the best of times to conditions of low-intensity military occupation. The state’s monopoly of force and its disciplinary regime are made more explicit and acute by their obvious external origin; hence the inescapability of the need for political liberation as the dominant theme of struggle in such a region (as distinct from the struggle’s economic and cultural dimensions).

Furthermore, the war was ostensibly being fought, or so went the rhetoric, on the principles of democracy and self-determination for all nationalities—at least for those within the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires. This was a favorable environment for nourishing the slogans of Egypt for the Egyptians, Asia for the Asiatics, Home Rule, Swadeshi, Swaraj, Sinn Fein, Ourselves Alone, each expressing the fundamental notion that its claimants constituted a People, and that a People must have an autonomous sovereign territory and a government of its own. While the war did not create such aspirations and identities, it intensified them to a pitch of influence and emotional power sufficient to absorb and bear the weight of all the other yearnings for social and economic emancipation and cultural transformation that had been on the rise over the past half-century. This was not overlooked by any of the main adversaries, who happily stoked insurgencies within one another’s imperial possessions: the British cultivated the Arabs against the Ottoman Turks even as the Germans cultivated the Indians and Irish against the British, and the Moroccans against the French. Afterward at Versailles, the language of self-determination then drove not only the hopes but the subsequent bitter disillusionment of anticolonial movements, leading directly to the postwar upsurges of nationalist activity not only in India but in China, Egypt, and Ireland.

For the duration of the war, the strategy of the independence movement abroad, while still oriented toward armed revolt, was for all practical purposes anchored in the military and diplomatic logic of interstate power relations. Tactical realpolitik prevailed. It was a time for action, not for philosophizing. Thinking was about strategy and tactics, not about philosophy of liberation or analysis of oppression. Accordingly, propaganda was aimed more toward incitement to action than ideological persuasion, and tailored to what ever was needed to appeal to those one was trying to arouse, at least within the bounds of assuming a common immediate (though not necessarily ultimate) goal. Indeed, this pragmatism had always been characteristic of the Ghadarite approach; their philosophy of revolutionary praxis was by definition one of action, without which it made no sense.

However, now these tactics presumed nation-state units as actors. Internationalism was relevant here less as a principled ideal than as a geography of organization involving long-distance alliances, epic travels, and many covert crossings of lines. The revolutionaries worked through the German consulate system, with its outposts around the Pacific Rim, and sought to constitute themselves formally as a sovereign nation with diplomatic recognition. With damning accusations of anarchism continuing unabated, it seemed imperative to claim legitimacy by declaring oneself a government or authorized government representative—even if this meant only a few individuals wielding fancy letterhead and official-looking seals—capable of contacting world leaders and expecting to receive a hearing. By 1914 the India that the overseas revolutionists had in mind was clearly a secular, federated republic, though discussion of its future social and economic character remained deferred.

The revolutionaries abroad were well aware of predictions that Germany and Britain (and the United States and Japan, for that matter) were sliding glacially toward war. Indeed they were counting on it. But they had thought it would be much later, certainly not a mere nine months after the Ghadar’s debut. They had expected to have several years in which to mature the tasks of planning, educating, raising consciousness, preparing the ground. But with the conflagration unleashed in Europe, the Ghadar leadership saw a “golden” opportunity that, even if premature, could not possibly be refused.

THE BERLIN INDIA COMMITTEE

As the machinery of great power politics ground toward a seemingly inevitable collision, Germany had already been looking to the “Orient” as a field to draw on for opposition to its rival juggernaut, Britain. The referent for this vast and mysterious entity was, as convenient, either India or the so-called Islamic world—a significant elision adopted no less by Bolshevik Russia, or by Japanese, Indian, Egyptian, and Chinese Pan-Asianists themselves, than by German strategists. But strategy aside, Germany already had a venerable tradition of Orientalist scholarship and political interest, producing such distinguished figures as Baron Max von Oppenheim, who had a long history of archeological study and diplomatic service in Egypt and the Middle East, and Dr. Herbert Mueller, a Sinologist who had studied in China between 1912 and 1914. Mueller recalled that as early as 1904 at Berlin University he had “bec[o]me interested in the political emancipation movement in, what we called, “The Orient” at that time and I soon had many friends amongst nationalists and revolutionaries from Egypt, Turkey, Kurdistan, Persia, India, China and Korea.”¹

These strategists had determined that supporting Indian and/or Pan-Islamist anti-British unrest (between which there was understood to be significant overlap, although the two were obviously far from identical) was an important part of conducting their war.was In Germany and the Next War, published in October 1911, General Friedrich von Bernhardi indicated the German hope that the Hindu population of Bengal, “in which a pronounced revolutionary and nationalist tendency had showed itself, might unite with the Muhammedans of India and that the cooperation of these elements might create a very grave danger capable of shaking the foundations of England’s high position in the world.”² Plainly, despite the tendency to take the East as a single unit, German Orientalists at least were aware of the disparate religious, regional, and cultural affiliations within the Oriental world. Otherwise they could hardly have spoken of linking them up as a desirable new development, even if this goal was hindered by failure to fully understand the content and context of the differences among them, or their priorities. Nevertheless, the slippage or overlap of categories (along with the nature of the Indian national revolutionaries’ relationships to Egyptian and Japanese movements) opened a door through which leftist, national liberationist, and Pan-Islamist streams of anticolonial activity could flow in and out of each other in the 1920s.

By spring 1915 the German Foreign Office (Auswertiges Amt, or AA) had gathered most of the significant Indian radicals then active in Europe to form the Indian National Party or Berlin India Committee (BIC).³ Indeed, both the Yugantar group and Dacca Anusilan Samiti had already approached Germany by 1911 on behalf of the Bengali movement, while Virendranath Chattopadhyaya had arrived in Berlin from France in 1914 to represent the international revolutionaries.⁴ Other important participants from all quadrants of British India included Champakaraman Pillai,⁵ Bhupendranath Dutt,⁶ M. P. T. Acharya, Ajit Singh, and disenfranchised aristocrat Mahendra Pratap. Representing the North Americans were Muhammed Barakatullah, Taraknath Das, Bhagwan Singh, and Har Dayal.⁷ Har Dayal was still presumed to exercise significant influence over the transatlantic movement, and one of the main reasons the Foreign Office wanted him was that they were very keen to incorporate the American Ghadarites. The California group was identified as a particularly valuable addition to the team, since they already had a well-developed infrastructure, mobilized support base, extensive propaganda machinery, and other situational factors such as the presence of large German and Irish immigrant populations in the United States, the latter of whose contingent of anti-British militants Germany was similarly interested in supporting. An article in the Berliner Tageblatt published 6 March 1914 and entitled “England’s India Trouble” “depict[ed] a very gloomy situation in India,” due to which “secret societies flourished and spread and were helped from outside. In California especially, it was said there appeared to be an organized enterprise for the purpose of providing India with arms and explosives.”⁸ As usual this was not altogether wrong, if exaggerated and not altogether right either.

In addition to the Indian committee, Berlin hosted similar Persian and Turkish groups. Indian activist Jodh Singh explained: “The object of the first named is to free Persia from European influence in general and create ill feelings against the British, in particular, and to assist the Indians in obtaining a republic. The object of the Turkish Society is practically the same.”⁹ Members of both groups also attended BIC meetings. But the BIC at first had little direct contact with the AA itself, communicating mainly through Oppenheim and Mueller, although Chatto and Har Dayal had clearance to attend meetings of the Foreign Office where “Indian matters” were discussed.¹⁰ But while the German goal for India was to foment unrest that would destabilize Britain, integrating “all revolutionary organizations of America and Europe … under the control of the German authority,” the better to effectively coordinate and “deploy schemes through other centres of authority in distant countries,”¹¹ the BIC’s own stated goal for itself was first and foremost “establishing a republican government in India by any means.”¹² As self-appointed “Supreme General Staff of the Indian Revolution” the committee was supposed to be an independent body, with the Indians making their own decisions about what to do.¹³ Its members insisted that they must “represent India while negotiating with Germany on a footing of equality on the basis of mutual interest and not as a subordinate power begging for help,” observed an intelligence report, and “seem to have continuously guarded themselves against being used as tools in the hands of Germany for her imperialist motives.”¹⁴

In 1915 the AA established the Nachrichtenstalle für der Orient (News Agency for the Orient) to produce news and pamphlets in various languages for distribution to soldiers in Europe and the Middle East. The Germans hoped the members of the Berlin India Committee would serve as propagandists, translators, and compilers in this effort. By mid-1916, British intelligence had compiled a list of eighty-two papers and pamphlets “published by German agency or by societies subsidised by Germany” in languages including English, French, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Malay, Tartar, Chinese, and four or five Indian vernaculars.¹⁵ But “the production of anti-British literature” was only the first item in an agenda that the DCI compiled after the fact, in 1920.¹⁶ Also on the list were “attempts to commit assassinations in England and allied countries, especially Italy,” and “an attempt to endanger the lines of communication through the Suez Canal.”¹⁷ Meanwhile, some BIC members were tapped for additional training in explosives and sabotage, while others visited the captured troops in an attempt to “win Indian [POWs] from their allegiance,” a task to be directed by Barakatullah.¹⁸

After Berlin the second major headquarters was in Istanbul, headed first by Har Dayal and later by the BIC’s Dr. Mansur Ahmed. The Istanbul office was to be the hub for coordinating efforts in Egypt, Persia, and Mesopotamia. Plans for importing the revolt to India were deployed along the three major approaches to the subcontinent: over land from the northwest across Persia to the Afghan frontier, from the northeast across Siam to the Burmese frontier, and by sea from the Dutch East Indies.¹⁹ Each of these three strategic initiatives was delegated primarily to a different segment of the Indian revolutionaries abroad: the northwestern land route to the Pan-Islamists and Europe-based nationalists, the northeastern land route to the California Ghadarites, and the southeastern sea route to the domestic Bengalis.²⁰ However, there were multiple connection points among the campaigns, and many individuals played a role in more than one area.

We will return later to the western approach, pausing here only to note one of the fruits of the German mission across Persia to Afghanistan: namely, the establishment of a self-designated Provisional Government of India in Kabul. Nirode Barooah calls this provisional government in exile Barakatullah’s “brainchild,” as it was his suggestion that claiming a piece of land and achieving diplomatic recognition—that is, a state-to-state affirmation of sovereignty—would facilitate fund-raising by making it easier to procure war loans from other governments who opposed England.²¹ From a strictly nationalist point of view, such recognition would be the very definition of freedom. Indeed, as Gobind Behari Lal put it, “The real significance” of the Berlin group was that “these Indian revolutionaries made great nations like Germany … recognize the concept of an Indian government in exile representing a free India.”²²

For now let us concentrate on the two entangled projects to India’s east during the first half of 1915: one a gunrunning operation between Batavia and Calcutta; and the other, initial preparations for a Siam-based invasion across India’s Burmese frontier. In order to focus on these projects we must first return to California, since it was through the Hindu-German Conspiracy trial in San Francisco, extending from November 1917 to April 1918, that the hidden events in East Asia entered the recorded narrative.

THE EASTERN FRONT

The BIC’s East Asian initiatives were the ones most closely associated with the Californian branch of the movement abroad, second only to the initial mutiny attempt, which preceded any German role. East Asia was strategically important from the perspectives of both California and Berlin, due to the large number of Sikh and Muslim troops stationed in Burma and Malaya as military police, or as watchmen in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the other British treaty ports of China.²³ There were also significant numbers of Indian laborers in the Philippines. Well before the war, in 1913, G. D. Kumar sailed from San Francisco for Manila, where he informed Taraknath Das in a letter that he was “going to establish a base … [to] supervise the work near China, Hong Kong, Shanghai. Professor Barakatullah is all right in Japan.”²⁴ These cities, emerging as “subsidiary bases in the Ghadar network,”²⁵ were to serve as recruitment centers (garnering as many as six or seven hundred new activists),²⁶ propaganda distribution points, and intermediary links between San Francisco and India.²⁷ When C arrived in San Francisco in late 1914, several missions were already in the works: some to Shanghai via Japan to collect India-bound recruits; others to scout landing places in Java for arms and ammunition. Ram Chandra tasked C himself to go to Sumatra, where he was to contact the German consul for money and then go about the same tasks of recruitment, location scouting, and establishing contact with India.

Meanwhile, Bhagwan Singh nurtured a secret society in Shanghai until a few emissaries arrived from California to formalize a Ghadar branch there.²⁸ When he arrived in late spring or summer 1915 on the island of Sulu “in a small boat laden with range-finders and other military equipments and maps,” his destination was the Dutch East Indies.²⁹ Sent back to the Philippines after an arrest (for “trying to leave by an unopened port”),³⁰ he then proceeded to build Manila into one of the strongest Ghadar organizing centers in East Asia. In May 1915 the British consul at Manila wrote to the viceroy that Bhagwan Singh had turned up there accompanied by his friend Dost Mahommed, who was employed there as a watchman. Bhagwan Singh meanwhile had no apparent occupation other than propaganda work, distributing pamphlets to his countrymen, addressing small meetings, and collecting money for the cause. Many Ghadar issues had been posted from Manila into India, “wrapped well inside local papers and addressed not to the intended recipients, whose correspondence might be examined, but to unsuspected and inactive sympathizers, who would arrange for the transmission.”³¹ Those watching his movements reported him a frequent visitor to both the headquarters of the Indian Association of the Philippines and the local German consulate, which provided him with money.³²

MAP 2. Northeast invasion