A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo, page 18
Hossain spoke to a diverse section of the American public straddling its intellectual spectrum as well as its geography. Among Syud’s notable talks was the crowded luncheon held under the auspices of the Foreign Policy Association at Hotel Astor in New York in March 1922 where he engaged in a heated debate with P. Whitewall Wilson of The London Daily News and a former M.P. Syud denounced the British rule in India as one relying on brute force while Wilson was of the view that Britain represented the minimum of Western interference.8 In December, Syud spoke to a delegation of more than two-hundred teachers at the Michigan State Teachers Association held in Lansing on “Gandhi as I know him”. In a debate on the Greek-Turkish issue held at the Unity Forum in Montclair, New Jersey, Syud’s opposing speaker was A.T. Polyzoides, the editor of Atlantis, the leading Greek paper in the States, who spoke first and asserted that the interests of peace demand that Turkish rule should not be permitted in Europe. Syud was so effective in his rebuttal of Mr Polyzoides that The Montclair Times declared, “No account could do justice to the brilliant style and rapid wit of the young Moslem orator, who proved to be one of the finest speakers ever presented to a Montclair audience.”9
Syud Hossain set himself an ambitious target to cover at least the major states and cities of the United States in the immediate future. He was in New York and Washington D.C. from January to April 1922; in California from June to September; in Wilmington (Delaware) and Plainfield (New Jersey) in October; and in Cincinnati, Montclair (New Jersey) and Lansing (Michigan) in November. In 1923 he covered Ohio, Massachusetts, Utah, and California. Unsurprisingly, it was California that saw more of Syud in his first year in the country. The large Indian migrant population in California was attractive both as his primary support base as well as a significant source of funding, and in the years to come his associates there would have a sizeable impact on his activities in the United States.
Syud’s first visit to California was in mid-1922, where over four months (June to September), he went to San Francisco, Sacramento, Berkeley, Stockton, Los Angeles, and a few other cities. His speeches there attracted a substantial audience from the Indian community. He was described in the press as a “disciple of Gandhi” and his sessions were invariably well covered in the local newspapers, an example of one such being his talk at the Muslim Association at Marysville in Yuba County. The report said, “As a result of the meeting held here last Sunday when Syud Hossain spoke to a large assemblage of Hindus and Mohammedans on the work of Mahatma Gandhi, practically every Hindu and Mohammedan in Yuba and Sutter counties have joined the ‘Muslim Association’.”10 A prominent member of the association declared that the membership in the two counties had increased to nearly a thousand post SH’s speech, underlining the influence this young activist was beginning to have on the Indian community.
Syud’s moderate stance invoking the pacifism of Gandhi had great appeal to a certain segment of the Indian populace that had become uncomfortable with the earlier extremist version of the Gadar movement which, to an extent, had created a religious schism within the migrants. As seen earlier, Bhagwan Singh Gyanee and a few others had revived the Gadar Party in 1920 in a less radical form, and Syud cultivated those still actively involved in the party and others whose ardour for it had perceptibly cooled down. In particular, he would have a long association over the next two and a half decades with Bhagwan Singh Gyanee and Godha Ram Channon, both of whom had been released after completing their sentence in the Hindu Conspiracy Trial.
It was in California, in the early 1920s, that Syud met Abnashi Ram and Mumtaz Kitchlew who would become his closest friends, the trio forming a bond with a deep respect for one another’s intellectual abilities. Abnashi Ram had come to the United States in 1920, and after a brief stay in Berkeley where he met Har Dayal and Gyanee, enrolled at Texas A & M University to graduate with a degree in textile engineering. Not finding the insides of a textile mill conducive to his health, Ram thereafter worked in the farms of Sacramento Valley for a few years making enough money, and gathering rich and influential friends along the way, including Syud Hossain. He then moved to Los Angeles in 1927 where he set up an import business, and opened a gift shop called “Hollywood Treasures” on Hollywood Boulevard, selling Indian artefacts and jewellery, an enterprise that succeeded well beyond the expectations of the fledgling entrepreneur. Mumtaz Kitchlew, the nephew of Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew (of 1919 Amritsar fame), landed in the United States sometime around 1924 and stayed for a while at the Gadar Ashram in San Francisco editing the Urdu edition of the Gadar newspaper, at which time he met both Syud and Abnashi Ram. Mumtaz moved to Chicago in 1926 and he too established an import house as well as a store selling Indian handicrafts located at Palmer House in downtown Chicago. Mumtaz Kitchlew and Abnashi Ram regularly corresponded with each other from the 1930s onwards right up to Ram’s death in 1979, and while some of the letters exclusively concern their business dealings, a majority of them are ruminations on their personal lives, introspection on the freedom movement, commentary on Indian activism in the United States, despair at the travails of Kashmir, and vivid descriptions of their travels to India. The letters make for a rich and fascinating record of events over four decades seen through the perspective of immigrants who came to the country before India’s partition and stayed on after it. The letters frequently reveal rare and intimate details about the lives of their associates, including Syud, and constitute a unique source of information for a chronichler.*
Syud had to contend with the fact that the American public’s familiarity with India and its issues were superficial at best, and much of the American press too did not rise greatly above that level of ignorance. Amusingly, many newspapers would announce a talk by him describing him as a “Hindu” orator and in the same breath would talk about his Muslim ancestry.11 Perhaps ignorance, but more likely the deeply entrenched usage amongst the Americans of that era of referring to all Indians as “Hindoos” or “Hindus” irrespective of whether they were Hindus, Sikhs or Muslims. Syud Hossain perhaps forgave them their sciolism when a newspaper gushed, “Mr. Hossain, who looked like a Rodolf Valentino, sensitized, intellectualized and just as youthful in spite of his long years before the public…”12 Rodolf Valentino (1895–1926) was an Italian actor based in the United States who was an early pop icon and a sex symbol of the 1920s.
It was the accepted practice for speakers to be represented by a lecture manager for a mutually advantageous financial relationship. These firms were skilled in advertising their speakers with a good amount of hyperbole to ensure a good attendance. Since the contract with a speaker would last several months, the lecture managers would also advise their clients on the best way to approach different types of audience to create the maximum impact. A well-received speaker was sure to get repeat invitations from the same town, university, or organisation. Syud initially contracted with the Emmerich Lecture Bureau and then with the Pond Bureau, both at New York, to handle his speaking engagements. The Pond Bureau was a well-known firm that was founded by Major James B. Pond (1838–1903) around the 1870s and had since grown its business in organising tours for speakers, singers and musicians, having an enviable roster of clients such as Sir Arthur Conon Doyle, Helena Normanton, Annie Besant and Rabindranath Tagore. After the Major’s death, his son, James Pond Jr, ran the business. J.B. Pond had also taken a financial interest in Redpath Lecture Bureau, a similar company based in Chicago, which handled Syud’s business in the late 1930s and 1940s. While the exact commercial deal between him and the lecture bureaus is not known, the general contractual terms was a fifty-fifty arrangement with the proceeds equally shared between the speaker and the agency, and the travel expenses usually borne by the latter. Patrons would be charged $0.50 and above to attend. Such a deal seems to have been remunerative enough for Syud to live in comfort, along with the indulgences he was used to, for the next couple of years. It was estimated that 75 per cent of all lecture attendees were women and hence male lecturers would need to be “handsome, virile young men, and suave men of the world who may also be handsome and virile”.13 Evidently Syud Hossain fitted the bill.
Initially, Syud’s lecture topics usually dealt with themes that he had been involved in over the immediate past such as: The Crisis in India and Gandhi; India Today; The Moslem World and Western Civilization; Gandhi as I know—the Man and his Message; and The Lausanne Conference. By mid-1925, he had covered twenty-two of the fifty states in the country. Over time Syud became increasingly adroit at speaking to diverse groups—book clubs, university students, religious institutions, ladies’ clubs, charitable societies and multi-speaker public meetings—by adapting his talks to suit the crowd. The repertoire of his subjects too expanded to topics such as, ‘Eastern and Western Ideals’, ‘From Buddha to Gandhi’ and ‘Imperialism in the Orient’.
A flyer prepared by Pond in the early 1920s to advertise his talks was a model of American immodesty:
James B. Pond presents
SYUD HOSSAIN
The Incomparable Lecturer on the Orient, World Peace and International Relations
Many of the foremost leaders of Public Opinion as well as the Press throughout the United States have hailed him as the most brilliant lecturer on the American platform today.
Syud Hossain was described in these flyers and brochures as:
Syud Hossain has everywhere taken his audiences by storm
An orator with international reputation, and a foremost authority on the political, economic and cultural relations between the East and the West
He has won signal tributes as a man of compelling eloquence, wide knowledge, cosmopolitan sympathies and rare charm of personality
He is the only man on the American platform who has the distinction of having been an editor in three continents
Syud Hossain is a lineal descendent of Mohammad and comes of an aristocratic family whose Persian ancestors settled in India in the reign of the Emperor Jehangir, and for successive generations were among the premier nobility of the land.
The flyers also printed effusive comments from the press such as, “A master of English and diction” and “The most distinguished Indian visitor in America since Tagore”. The San Francisco Call and Post went overboard with, “Sensitive, delicate features carved of smooth ivory, eyes that weld the burning mysticism of the east with the calculating, practical judgment of the man of the world and journalist, a linguist, a man whose thoughts cuts with the clarity of vitriol, a patriot, easy of manner, polished, cosmopolitan, handsome—Hossain”.14
Syud went beyond the realm of public speaking and into writing for various newspapers and publication to reach a wider audience. One of his earliest and most quoted articles was, “What India Wants” in The New York Times. In three-quarters of a page, he listed the three demands enumerated by Gandhi viz. the righting of the Punjab wrongs; the fulfilment of the British pledges to Moslems; and the attainment of Swaraj, and went on to to argue these with a masterful marshalling of facts and logic. In conclusion he wrote, “India should work out her own destiny, unfettered and uncoerced, and make her own contribution, as in the past, to the culture and civilization of the world. Not only India, but the world is the poorer for her present compulsory emasculation and disorganization. The British have fixed a stranglehold on her creative genius and national growth. India must be free.”15
Syud, with the inherent traits of a journalist, rapidly developed a wide network of friends and associates, some of whom were best-known intellectuals and religious leaders of the day such as Norman Thomas (a socialist leader and editor), Rev. John Haynes Holmes (Minister of the Community Church of New York), Dr J.T. Sunderland (a Canadian Unitarian Minister), Oswald Garrison Willard (editor of The Nation), Rabbi Judah Magnes and Blanche Watson. All of them were avowed supporters of India, and many were on familiar terms with the Mahatma himself. In the years to come, they gave their unstinted support to Syud and other Indian nationalists for the cause of India’s freedom on public forums, writings in journals, and meetings with the influential. Syud had also reconnected with Haridas Muzumdar soon after his arrival in the U.S.A. (whom he had met in Bombay a few years ago) and who was now a student at Columbia University. The esteem that Muzumdar held Syud in is evident in his characterisation of him as, “…immaculately dressed, polished in manners, brilliant in oratory, Dr. Hossain immediately captivated his audience from coast to coast”.16
Syud met a number of fellow South Asians in New York, such as Taraknath Das and Gadar Party sympathisers, who would congregate at the Ceylon India Inn, a restaurant whose history is inextricably linked with that of the Indian nationalists of the 1920s to the 1940s. K. Yaman Kira was a Buddhist from Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) who was born in 1884 at Kandy. He was proficient in the Kandyan dance form, native to Kandy, and toured the United States in 1904 and 1909 with Kandyan dance troupes, sometimes performing with American circuses. In 1913, Kira married a German immigrant, Elizabeth Eckhard, gave up dancing, and opened a restaurant called Ceylon India Inn sometime in 1913 in Harlem whose address is mentioned in records as being on West 135th Street. This was perhaps the oldest Indian restaurant in New York; its customers mostly consisted of ex-Indian seamen who had settled down in Harlem. The restaurant ran for a year in there when Kira sensed the business potential of a curry-loving upper class clientele and shifted Ceylon India Inn in 1914 to a place on 8th Avenue at the periphery of the Tenderloin* district in Manhattan. It remained in this location till 1924 when Kira got his wife to take a twenty-one year lease on a premises at 148 West 49th street located in the Broadway Theatre district (between 6th and 7th avenues) and close to Times Square. By the 1930s, the restaurant was touted as “New York’s foremost—famous for delicious curries”. Apart from serving Ceylonese and Indian delicacies to sailors, travellers, students and immigrants, it developed into a sort of community centre for the South Asians in Manhattan. The Indian nationalists used this place as a base for their meetings and celebrations that included the founding of the India League of America and dinners in honour of visiting Indians.17 Yaman Kira sold the restaurant to Rustum Wadia from Bombay in the 1950s and retired to Long Island where he died in 1961, with Elizabeth following him a few years later. The restaurant then changed names and owners in quick succession, variously known as Lalbagh in 1980 (under Lal Khan), then as Bombay Masala in 1992 (under Mohaimin Ahmed from Bangladesh) and now as Curry India since 2016 (under Vijay Sharma).*
Insulated from the chilly breeze of a December morning by the warm confines of the Ceylon India Inn, Syud Hossain ordered his favourite chicken curry for lunch. He looked out of the window and reflected upon the two years he had spent in this country. He felt a deep sense of fulfilment. This country had given him what Britain had not; the freedom to navigate the terrain on his own, an escape from the overbearing tyranny of the Congress party’s hierarchy, and the seeming distance between him and the reach of the Empire. He had established himself as a brilliant speaker, as an effective spokesman for Gandhi, and as a potential leader of the Indian community. As the aroma of the curry wafted over him, he rolled up his sleeves determinedly. He had plenty to do in America.
19
The New Orient
(1924–28)
THE NEXT PHASE of Syud Hossain’s activism progressed from writing for journals to editing his own. This came about due to his association with Hari Govil, one perhaps facilitated by Haridas Muzumdar. Hari Govind Govil was born on 3 August 1899 in the town of Bikaner in the state of Rajasthan in northern India, the oldest of seven children to Mukundlal, an indigent government pleader. Academically lackadaisical, Govil nonetheless obtained a scholarship to study at the Banaras Hindu University. He did not complete his education in Banaras, but instead decided to sail to the United States for further studies. Having run out of money, he stopped at London, where an indulgent Indian mill owner, Ambalal Sarabhai, took pity on him, gave him some money, and sent him on his way to the United States. He disembarked from the SS Olympia on 5 September 1920.1 Govil had plans to study at the Boston Institute of Technology but noticing America’s growing interest in India, he decided that it was financially more rewarding to be a lecturer on Hindu culture than a technologist, and moved to New York. An advertisement in The New York Times announced his talk on “When Science and Occultism Meet” in a house at Upper West Side.2 In 1924, Govil founded the India Society of America, with the stated purpose “to promote a broader and more intelligent understanding between the people of India and of America through the study and appreciation of Hindu art, literature, philosophy and culture”.3
Within a few months of Govil landing in the United States, Haridas Muzumdar too, followed. Little is known of Haridas Muzumdar’s early life. He was born in Baroda to a middle class family at the cusp of the century, on 28 December 1898. He had his primary and middle schooling in the newly established public school system of the State of Baroda, and his high schooling in Surat, which was then part of Bombay state. He then enrolled at Elphinstone College (part of Bombay University) for his intermediate but left within two years to sail to America in 1920 for higher studies.4 Muzumdar, as a twenty-two year old, landed in Boston on 23 March 1920 on the passenger ship S.S. City of Lahore.5 He went to New York intending to join Columbia University but had arrived too late for the spring semester. Deciding to enrol in the next semester, Muzumdar took up various odd jobs to earn money as the $350 he had come with was depleting quickly. He worked successively as a messenger with Western Union, a lift operator, a switchboard operator, and a part-time job at the New York Public library allowed him to explore the treasures of the place and read extensively. He wrote an Open Letter to Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, which he printed and published at his own expense. He seems to have joined Columbia in the next semester and took on multiple odd jobs between 1920 and 1922 to support himself. In the evenings, he became a street-corner speaker to publicise the story of India’s struggle for freedom under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.6
