Harald Fischer-Tiné

Indian Nationalism and the ‘world forces’: transnational and diasporic dimensions of the Indian freedom movement on the eve of the First World War

The present article takes a global perspective on the diasporic networks of Indian revolutionaries that were emerging on the eve of the First World War. It looks particularly at three important headquarters of their activities, namely London, New York and Tokyo. The narrative is centred on the ‘India Houses’ that were opened in these three cities and served as the institutional umbrella units for the revolutionary schemes. Finally, the political alliances forged and the ideological resources tapped in these three settings are sketched out and briefly analysed. The case study makes two points: to begin with, it is important to extend historical scrutiny beyond the geographical bounds of India to fully grasp the development of Indian nationalism in this first peak time of globalization; second, the existence of the sophisticated transnational anti-imperial propaganda networks that are the focus of this study raises doubts about the alleged watershed character of the First World War as the ‘global moment’ that decisively shook the imperial world order. The year 1905, it is argued, was at least as important in this regard.

Imagining Asia in India: Nationalism and Internationalism (ca. 1905-1940)

Asianisms, that is, discourses and ideologies claiming that Asia can be defined and understood as a homogenous space with shared and clearly defined characteristics, have become the subject of increased scholarly attention over the last two decades. The focal points of interest, however, are generally East Asian varieties of regionalism. That “the cult of Asianism” has played an important role on the Indian subcontinent, too—as is evident from the quote above—is less understood. Aside from two descriptive monographs dating back to the 1970s, there has been relatively little scholarly engagement with this phenomenon. In this article, we would like to offer an overview of several distinct concepts of Asia and pan-Asian designs, which featured prominently in both political and civil society debates in India during the struggle for Independence. Considering the abundance of initiatives for Asian unification, and, in a more abstract sense, discourses on Asian identity, what follows here is necessarily a selection of discourses, three of which will be subjected to critical analysis, with the following questions in mind: • What were the concrete motives of regional—in this case Indian—actors to appropriate the concept of Asianism? Is the popularity of supranational frames of reference solely to be explained as an affirmation of a distinctive identity vis-a-vis the imagined powerful West, or are there other motives to be found? • What were the results of these processes of appropriation, and how were these manifested politically and culturally? • What tensions resulted from the simultaneous existence of various nationalisms in Asia on the one hand and macro-nationalistic pan-Asianism on the other?

‘The drinking habits of our countrymen’: European Alcohol Consumption and Colonial Power in British India

Drinking did not only play an important role in the social life of the Raj, it also provides a useful lens to look at the structure of British colonial presence in the Indian subcontinent and the ideological constructs designed to legitimise it. The article looks specifically at the patterns of alcohol consumption of the middle and lower social classes of Europeans in India during the period between the suppression of the ‘Mutiny’ and the outbreak of the First World War and analyses the problems they entailed for colonial administrators. Case studies of alcohol abuse among European pilots, sailors, planters and ‘loafers’ reveal the existence of multi-layered drinking codes and throw the class divisions existing in British Indias ‘white society’ into stark relief. They also suggest that the drinking habits of ‘low Europeans’ in particular were seen as a vital threat to British rule as they debunked the myth of a British ‘civilising mission’ based on moral superiority and hence triggered various attempts by the colonial élites at inculcating virtues of temperance into the ‘white subaltern’ groups. [T]he drinking habits of our countrymen of all classes, are making a very injurious impression on the natives of India. 1 Than the loafer, the vagrant, the drunken uneducated or debased European, whose passions are under no control, and who is amenable to no public opinion, nothing can be more sad to the Christian and more alarming to the statesman. 2 Western Civilization, the greatest blot on which has been its drinking proclivities, has risen to condemn the habit on social and political grounds; and … social workers in India and Calcutta may seek illumination from the Temperance events transpiring in Europe and America. 3

‹Deep Occidentalism›? Europa und ‹der Westen› in der Wahrnehmung hinduistischer Intellektueller und Reformer ca.1890–1930

‹Deep Occidentalism›? Europe and the ‹West› in the Perception of Hindu Intellectuals and Reformers 1890–1930 The present article seeks to understand the counter-hegemonic politics pursued by Hindu elites around the turn to the 20th century. It argues that the West certainly played a central role as a point of reference, but that there have always been successful attempts at contesting its project of cultural hegemony. The first part looks at the intellectual and structural interfaces between ‹Europe› and ‹India› in the 19th century. In the subsequent sections, the representations and ‹translations› of Europe by three Hindu intellectuals of various backgrounds are analysed to demonstrate the broad scope of strategies deployed to contest western hegemonic claims: The popular ‹nativist› approach by Har Bilas Sarda at the same time challenged and presupposed ‹Western› criteria of civilization. Swami Vivekananda instead suggested a ‹universal division of labour›, in which ‹the West› was constructed as responsible for material well-being and ‹the East› as the spiritual teacher of mankind. Benoy Kumar Sarkar refused any ‹exoticising› essentialisation of India and tried to deconstruct European preconceptions and stereotypes about the Orient. Arguably, much of the intellectual effort in ‹provincializing Europe›, so in vogue today, is anticipated in his work.

Mass-Mediated Panic in the British Empire? Shyamji Krishnavarma’s ‘Scientific Terrorism’ and the ‘London Outrage’, 1909

This chapter explores the ways in which panic could be instrumentalized to silence anti-colonial critics and justify draconic ‘counter-terrorism’ measures in the British Empire. Focusing on the assassination of a high-ranking colonial official in London in 1909, the chapter explores how cliches about Hindus as simultaneously cowardly and violent were used as part of a new rhetoric about colonial ‘terrorism’. The actual perpetrators of anti-imperial violence were dismissed as brainwashed or mentally unstable by government officials and the press. The subsequent need to find a ‘puppet master’ of the deluded activists led to the demonization of the political work of the Indian anti-colonial activist Shyamji Krishnavarma. In the wake of the panic over the ‘London outrage’, Krishnavarma, a sober rationalist with liberal leanings, was reduced by the media to a two-dimensional religious fanatic and demonic wire-puller, allegedly manipulating weaker minds into merciless killing.

‘Unparalleled Opportunities’: The Indian Y.M.C.A.'s Army Work Schemes for Imperial Troops During the Great War (1914–1920)

ABSTRACT The present article aims to contribute to the global history of the First World War and the history of ‘imperial humanitarianism’ by taking stock of the Indian Young Mens Christian Associations Army Work schemes in South Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The outbreak of the war was hailed by some American secretaries of the Y.M.C.A. working in India as presenting overwhelming opportunities for their proselytising agenda. Indeed, the global conflict massively enlarged the organisations range of activities among European soldiers stationed in South Asia and for the first time extended it to the ‘Sepoys’, i.e. Indian and Nepalese soldiers serving in the imperial army. Financially supported by the Indian public as well as by the governments of Britain and British India, the US-dominated Indian Y.M.C.A. embarked on large-scale ‘army work’ programmes in the Indian subcontinent as well as in several theatres of war almost from the outset, a fact that clearly boosted its general popularity. This article addresses the question of the effects the Y.M.C.A.s army work schemes had for the imperial war effort and tries to assess their deeper societal and political impact as a means of educating better citizens, both British and Indian. In doing so, the article places particular emphasis on the activities of American Y-workers, scrutinising to what extent pre-existing imperial racial and cultural stereotypes influenced their perception of and engagement with the European and South Asian soldiers they wanted to transform into ‘better civilians’.

Introduction: Empires and Emotions

This book argues that the history of colonial empires has been shaped to a considerable extent by negative emotions such as anxiety, fear and embarrassment, as well as by the regular occurrence of panics. The studies collected in this volume examine the various ways in which panics and anxieties were generated in imperial situations and how they shook up the dynamics between seemingly all-powerful colonizers and the apparently defenceless colonized. Certain shared themes and features can be discerned. In particular, the pathologization of so-called native populations of colonized people as naturally violent, secretive, ignorant or hyper-emotional by colonial administrators lent itself to a continual state of anxiety over the potential loss of control. This pathologization, of course, was part of an overarching imperial ‘politics of difference’ that played out on various levels. The construction of bodies of scientific knowledge that accompanied the spread of colonial rule was one of them. Imperial knowledge generation sought to explain the difficulties encountered in colonial societies through claiming inherent difference between peoples. Medical expertise, anthropological research and intelligence-gathering played key roles in this respect. As various case studies demonstrate, this stereotyping was reinforced and inflamed through popular press reporting on events, which frequently exaggerated current fears by recycling tropes about colonial peoples to generate easily understood copy. At the same time, small and isolated communities of colonists became a ripe breeding ground for rumours and gossip, bringing the objects of panic into their homes and private lives.

The Other Side of Internationalism

This chapter represents an attempt to fruitfully combine two recent historiographical currents that have so far mostly existed in isolation from one another. For one, there have been increasing attempts over the last decade by historians of Asia and Africa as well as of colonial and imperial history to break free from the spatial fixation on the postcolonial nation-states that emerged as the result of the wave of decolonization from the 1940s to the 1970s.1 Building on an agenda that was first articulated in Benedict Anderson’s Under Three Flags,2 historians like Maia Ramnath, Manu Goswami and Kris Manjapra3 have recently posited a ‘transnational turn’ in the study of colonialism and imperialism, and advocated an intense engagement with the diasporic and cosmopolitan dimension of anti-colonial nationalisms. In like vein, literary scholars such as Leela Gandhi have reminded us of the existence of ‘affective communities’, that is, alliances between anti-colonial activists on the one hand and European and American critics of imperialism (and, occasionally, ‘Western civilization’ in its entirety) on the other.4