A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo, page 11
12
United States
WITH A SHUTTERED India and an ebbing Khilafat movement, Syud Hossain was at a loose end again; he faced the twin problems of a rapidly depleting wallet and no organisational support. Perhaps that rich old benefactor from Bombay, Seth Chotani, generously opened his purse to enable him to travel to Europe where, among others, he visited the German Universities of Bonn, Heidelberg and Munster. On completing his lecture-cum-research trip, Syud mulled over crossing the Atlantic to the United States. This was driven by a number of reasons. Firstly, the activities of all Indian political organisations had virtually ceased in England due to Gandhi’s non-cooperation. Secondly, the INC had decided that, in view of the importance of the United States in the post WWI era, propaganda and dissemination of news about India should not be restricted to England but should also include the U.S.A. The INC, however, did not allocate any funds for foreign propaganda until 1926, and even this was marginal at best.1 Syud may have been asked by Gandhi to go to America as an interim unofficial spokesman for the Congress. And finally, the recent events concerning India would scarcely have made him hugely popular in Congress circles, and he was moreover restrained by his purported promise to Gandhi to not return home. Syud would have undoubtedly learnt that the woman he loved had got married a few months before to a man chosen by Gandhi himself.2 Left with no other choice, he departed the shores of England in October 1921 to embark on the next stage of his life.
On the fourteen-day journey from Liverpool to New York, the thirty-three-year-old Syud Hossain had ample time to ruminate on his life so far. It hadn’t been easy. His formal qualification was a mere Intermediate. The diminution of his family’s wealth over the decades no longer exemplified his aristocratic lineage. He was an exile from his own country with a scandal that bedevilled him. After his return from England in 1916, he had been in his country for a mere four years, too short to forge a distinct identity of his own, or a have a decisive impact on people and events. He had been a foot soldier—of Horniman, Motilal, Gandhi and Mohamed Ali—but not a leader at the high table. He loved a life of comfort but had to depend on others to sustain it. As a bachelor and an orphan, with long absences and a maverick lifestyle, he had barely had a chance to develop a closeness with the youngsters of his family. A pungent pen, a pugnacious eloquence, a stubborn patriotism, and an admiration for Gandhi had been his life’s anchors. As he worried about his future, an icy blast from the ocean added to his trepidation…and his melancholy.
He had left behind an India seething with discontent against British rule. The promulgation of the Rowlatt Act, the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, and the effort by the Hunter Committee to exonerate the guilty, had had the profound effect of alienating the Indians from their British rulers. Unchallenged, Gandhi had assumed the leadership of the freedom movement, and his efforts at Hindu-Muslim unity had prevailed, albeit temporarily. Rarely during colonial rule was the amity between the two communities as high as during this period of 1919–21. Jinnah and his radical brand of Islamic nationalism had yet to gain ground, and the same went for Ambedkar’s opposition to Gandhi’s views on the emancipation of the Untouchables. Overall, it was an India welded into a purposeful unit by Gandhi with his unique philosophy of Satyagraha and non-violence, and intent on securing its rightful niche in the new comity of nations, unencumbered by the colonial harness.
As the Cunard liner Albania approached the port of New York on 25 October 1921,3 Hossain was on the deck gazing at an amorphous structure looming ahead of him through the fog. As the haze cleared, it was instantly recognisable as the Statue of Liberty, a sight that had greeted every ship-borne immigrant who had landed in New York since 1886, and which promised him the bounty of a democratic country based on equality, liberty, and justice. Syud recalled with scepticism the words of Emma Lazarus on the plaque mounted on the pedestal of the statue,
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Notwithstanding these words, the United States of America, in an exhibition of unvarnished racism, had taken every step possible to prevent the entry of Indians into the country, and would hypocritically collude with the British Empire to deprive the Indians in America of the very rights proclaimed by the Lady with the torch. This poignant story, long in its narrative, is told over the next five chapters before we see our protagonist again.
PART II
13
Indians in America—The Genesis
INDIAN IMMIGRATION TO North America in significant numbers began in the first few years of the twentieth century, and its genesis can be loosely traced to the rule of the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) in the North Indian province of Punjab, an immensely fertile area watered by five rivers. In his thirty-eight-year reign, Ranjit Singh, popularly known as the Sher-e-Punjab or Lion of Punjab, succeeded in establishing a Sikh Empire from the Punjab to Kashmir and to the frontiers of Afghanistan. A charismatic leader, an able administrator, and a formidable militarist, Ranjit Singh’s legacy was a modern, well-trained army consisting of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, officered by many Europeans. The Sikh empire however rapidly disintegrated after Ranjit Singh’s death, and the British (in the persona of the British East India Company) annexed the Punjab after vanquishing the Sikhs in the Second Anglo-Sikh war of 1849. Though defeated in battle, their discipline and fighting prowess won the admiration of the British which led to the Sikhs being inducted into the irregular forces under British command. As historian, writer, and columnist Khushwant Singh says, “Their performance in the skirmishes against Pathan tribesman and in the Anglo-Burmese War (1852) encouraged the British commanders to enlist them in larger numbers.”1
The break-up of the Sikh empire had fostered an animosity between the Sikhs and the Hindustanis (Hindus from the Eastern part i.e. from the present Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal) as well as between the Sikhs and Eastern Muslims.* This was skilfully used by the British to their own advantage in the upheaval caused by the Sepoy Mutiny, a seminal event in the history of colonial India. The Sepoy Mutiny erupted in the town of Meerut near Delhi in May 1857 when both Muslim and Hindu soldiers revolted due to long-festering real and perceived grievances. They murdered their British officers and then advanced to Delhi to restore Bahadur Shah, the deposed Mughal Emperor, as the Emperor of Hindustan. The news spread rapidly and led to civilians joining the sepoys in many of the towns with a British presence. There was widespread violence against the Europeans throughout Northern India, frequently accompanied by unspeakable acts of cruelty from both sides. The mutiny almost brought the administration of the East India Company to its knees, but it recovered quickly and mounted a rapid counter-attack quelling the remnants of the mutiny by 1858. This was amongst the very first organised rebellion against British rule in India, and the mutiny of 1857 is therefore now more appropriately called as the ‘First War of Indian Independence’.
While Northern India was convulsed with the rebellion, Punjab, except for a few incidents, largely escaped the frenzy of violence, with the Sikhs as well as the Punjabi Hindus and Muslims staying away from joining the mutiny. The Sikh soldiers of the local garrisons affirmed their loyalty to the British and were thus used to maintain order in the Punjab. Elsewhere, as Khushwant Singh writes, “The role of the Sikhs in suppressing the uprising was the most significant. Sikh soldiers defended English establishments and families in Allahabad, Banaras, Lucknow, Kanpur, Arrah, and other centres of revolt. Sikh soldiers were in the van of the assault on Delhi, and, when the city capitulated on 20 September 1857, they were allowed to help themselves to whatever they could lay their hands on. The Sikhs were handsomely rewarded for their services: the princes with grants of territory and palatial residences; commoners with loot and employment opportunities.” Singh continues, “An important outcome of the mutiny, as far as the Sikhs were concerned, was that service in the armed forces was thrown open to them, and they became the most sought-after recruits for the British army.”2 The Sikhs, along with the Gurkhas, were declared a ‘martial race’ by the British, and became their most trusted and dependable soldiers. A career in the army thus enhanced one’s monetary as well as social status. Due to the favouritism shown to the Sikhs by the British, including requiring them to practice the tenets of their religion after joining the army (to foster a distinct communal identity), many Punjabi Hindus too converted to Sikhism and joined the army.3
The most significant fallout of the mutiny though was that the British East India Company was wound up, and India came under the direct suzerainty of the British Crown symbolised by Queen Victoria. The governance of India was now vested in the newly created India Office in London headed by a Secretary of State, with a Viceroy in Calcutta being the Queen’s representative in India. On 1 November 1858, a grand durbar was held at Allahabad where the Queen’s proclamation was read out. Inter alia it said, “We hold Ourselves bound to the Natives of Our Indian Territories by the same Obligations of Duty which bind Us to all Our other subjects; and those Obligations, by the Blessing of ALMIGHTY GOD, We shall faithfully and conscientiously fulfill.”
This clause was to cause acute embarrassment to the British government in the years to come.
Shortly thereafter, the number of Sikhs in the British Army increased manifold, and detachments of them were posted to the far reaches of the Empire in the furtherance and maintenance of British rule in those territories. By 1900 there were forty-two thousand Punjabi troops in the British army, a quarter of them being Sikhs.4 A significant number of Sikh soldiers were posted in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Shanghai. Sikh regiments fought under the British flag in the Second Anglo-Chinese War (also called the Second Opium War) between 1856–1860, and also to quell the Boxer Rebellion in China between 1899 and 1901. Sikhs were also recruited into the police forces of these colonies. These hardy, rustic Sikhs (primarily of the Jat caste) hailing from the agricultural hinterlands of the Punjab were now exposed to a foreign way of life with newer ideas and a far superior standard of living than what they had left behind. Notably, the expatriate Sikhs also became familiar with the prevailing trend among the Chinese and Japanese who travelled from these Asian ports across the Pacific to Canada’s western coast to be employed in the railroad construction that was proceeding apace there.
On retirement or decommissioning, a few of the Punjabi and Sikh soldiers and policemen stayed back in their new homes taking up different jobs but most of them went back to the Punjab. However, the economic situation in Punjab, especially from the 1870s, had deteriorated; the prosperity ushered in by British policies and initiatives soon after the mutiny to increase agricultural productivity had now given way to inflation, rising land prices, large-scale peasant indebtedness, and a declining agricultural production that led to famine and rural discontent. The returnees, who had dreamt of a comfortable post-service life, instead confronted a reality that was dismal in contrast. The situation became worse with the plague of 1907 that killed half a million of the population. Unsurprisingly, what followed was a period of unrest with hostile demonstrations against the government’s land tenure policies. The government reacted by suppressing all political activity, and arresting Punjabi leaders such as Lala Lajpat Rai.
The search for better paying jobs led these ex-soldiers and policemen (along with their male kin) to foreign shores, following the Chinese and Japanese who had gone there to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). While the CPR continued to attract workers, jobs were readily available in the mining and lumber industries of Canadian British Columbia, as well as in the states of Washington and Oregon across the border in the United States, and also in the farms and vineyards of California. A small number of those who migrated from India did so not so much to escape poverty but to enhance their wealth and agricultural holdings, and to improve their status in society by bringing back foreign earned income.5 The first batch of five Sikhs arrived at Vancouver (in British Columbia, Canada) aboard the Empress of India in March 1904,6 heralding the start of the migration of Indian labour to North America. Having served the British Raj loyally in their prime, they rightfully expected the protection of the British Empire whose citizens they no doubt were. That innocent belief belied the enormous amount of racial prejudice and hatred they would have to endure in the years to come. A related event that contributed immensely to the globalisation of Indian labour was the abolition of slavery by Great Britain in 1835. This drastically reduced the trans-Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the New World but instead created a whole new population of indentured labour that migrated from India to the agricultural plantations of Fiji, the Caribbean, East and South Africa, the Philippines, and the Americas.
The growing exposure of the elite in India to Western ideas, and the realisation that they barely had any control over their own affairs, prompted a few Indian intellectuals and liberal Englishmen to found the Indian National Congress (INC) in December 1885. The objective of the organisation, as articulated by A.O. Hume (one of the founders of the INC) a year earlier, was to “promote Indian nationalism and to establish a closer relation between India and England by securing the removal of unjust and harmful laws.”7 In the beginning it was led by those who had been schooled with a naïve belief in the fairness of the British Parliamentary system and its essential sense of justice. However, over the next couple of decades the INC gradually transformed itself from being a voice of moderates to one so nationalistic that the British described it as a ‘factory of sedition’.8 The last years of the nineteenth century saw the rise of militant nationalism in response to the ineffectual results of the moderate leadership of the Congress in gaining any concessions from the British, even though their demands were minimal and never ever extended to demanding self-rule. Moderates leaders like Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Pherozshah Mehta saw their influence ceding to the philosophies of nationalist ideologues like Swami Vivekananda, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Dayanand Saraswati and to the emerging extremist leadership of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Shyamji Krishna Varma, V.D. Savarkar, Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai, all of whom, vociferously and unambiguously, wanted the British to leave India to Indians and were prepared to achieve that objective with violence if required. Every one of these new leaders, in varying degrees, would exert an influence on those who would later take up the cause of the Indians in America in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century.*
As seen earlier [Chapter 1], a most consequential event took place in Bengal that proved decisive for the future course of Indian independence viz. the Partition of Bengal. The INC was largely Hindu led, and the British, following their well-tested policy of divide and rule, encouraged Muslims as a countervailing power. The Viceroy, Lord Curzon, partitioned the province of Bengal on 16 October 1905, essentially to curtail the power and numerical superiority of the Hindus in undivided Bengal. While the Muslims welcomed the move, the Hindus bitterly opposed it and launched an anti-British movement in Bengal that soon spread to the rest of the country. The students and intellectuals of Bengal led the protests against the British that included boycotting British goods (called the Swadeshi movement), and some of the radical elements even took to violence. In order to rein in the students, the government issued a circular, popularly known as the Carlyle circular (named for the Chief Secretary to the government who issued it), instructing its officers to ban students from participating in political activities and take action against those who defied the ban.9 ‘Bande Mataram’ (salutations to my mother) became the battle-cry of the anti-partition protest movement which now permeated the whole country.
The repression of the students and intellectuals forced many of them to move to other countries such as Japan to escape British wrath, and to continue their anti-British propaganda. Unluckily for them, the renewal of a treaty between Japan and Britain in 1905 ended the former’s status as a hospitable haven, and the rebel students and political outcasts had to move to other countries—mainly Germany, France and the United States—to continue their mission. Among such students from Calcutta who came to the United States through Japan was twenty-two-year-old Taraknath Das. He landed in Seattle on 12 July 190610 and ‘was the first Indian migrant to claim asylum in the United States as a political refugee escaping tyrannical British rule in India.’11 There was another group of students that had no political inclinations while in India but developed and assimilated nationalistic thoughts while journeying to the United States. Transiting through England or France, they stayed there with Indian students or activists, and absorbed the radical philosophies of Krishna Varma or Savarkar in London, or Madam Bhikaji Cama in Paris. On reaching the United States, most of these students enrolled in universities on either coast; a few chose the Mid-West. Har Dayal from the Punjab was one of those who had met both Krishna Varma and Madam Cama and made his way to the United States by a circuitous route in 1911. Both Das and Dayal will figure prominently in our story going forward.
While the first Indian student arrived on the Pacific Coast in the winter of 1901–1902, the numbers went up substantially after the Partition of Bengal, and the Consul General of the United States in Calcutta, William Michael, himself wrote twenty-five letters of introduction between May and October 1906 for students wishing to study in the States.12 The young students, with either their own experience of British repression or a newly acquired radicalism, were ideally positioned to provide the intellectual and organisational backbone to channelise the fledgling resentment that was building up within the American and Canadian Indian community into a coherent movement. The conflation of the misery due to racial oppression faced by the migratory workers who came to America out of economic necessity, and the ideas of the revolutionaries who came here to escape political oppression, set the stage for what would play out to be a momentous battle over the next forty years for racial equality, national independence and citizenship rights.
