The Indian Freedom Struggle and the Kenyan Diaspora

The connections between the Indian Freedom movement and the Kenyan Indian diaspora after the First World War led to the involvement of the Indian National Congress and Gandhi in the struggle of the Kenyan Indians for equality and equal treatment with the British white settlers in Kenya. The Congress considered that the success of the equality struggle in Kenya would also lead to equal treatment of Indians in India itself. This was consistent with the prevailing political goal of the freedom movement in India in 1919, which was self-rule through Dominion Status under the British Crown. But when the struggle of the Kenya Indians failed and equality was denied to them by the famous Devonshire Declaration in 1923, there the Indian freedom movement realized that this signalled unequal status and a denial of self-rule to India itself. Historic consequences followed. This was the turning point and over the years immediately after the Kenyan decision (1923–1929), the Indian National Congress changed its political aim from Dominion Status to Full Independence as a Republic, realized over the 17 years to 1947.

Gandhi, Indian Nationalism, and Temperance Resistance against the Raj

Chapter 7 follows Mahatma Gandhi’s embrace of prohibitionism as resistance against Britain’s “narco-military empire,” first in South Africa and then in India. Gandhi understood that the British system of imperial dominance was built upon trafficking addictive opium and alcohol, the revenues from which paid for military occupation. Nationalists Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari adopted temperance tactics such as picketing liquor stores as part of their noncooperation activism. Their Prohibition League of India—a “social” rather than “political” organization—provided organizational safe haven for nationalists of the Indian National Congress when the British clamped down on Gandhi’s nationalist efforts. Making common cause with transnational temperance norm entrepreneurs such as “Pussyfoot” Johnson added greater legitimacy to both Indian nationalism and prohibitionism, which became utterly synonymous in Gandhi’s quest for independence.

Assembly Elections of India, 2021: Revisiting Assam

In India, Assembly Elections were held in Assam, West Bengal, Kerela, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in the first half of 2021. Driving this study is an attempt to analyse the election results of the state of Assam where Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies, Mitrajot or National Democratic Alliance (NDA), successfully defeated the Indian National Congress (INC), and its allies, Mahajot (Grand Alliance). Drawing primarily upon secondary data and applying GIS techniques, the study makes a critical analogy of how Mitrajot managed to accomplish victory. This is a solicited article. Submitted: 10 May 2021; Accepted: 24 June 2021.

Ayodhya Dispute and Responses of India’s Islamic Neighbors and Hindu Nationalism in India

India has been noted for its independence movements including the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements under the leadership of the Indian National Congress in general and Mahatma Gandhi in particular. However, in this South Asian country, there is another kind of nationalism that roots in Hinduism. The objective of the article is to explain the nature of Hindu nationalism in India. To gain this aim, the author is going to implement three tasks including giving a brief overview of the Ayodhya dispute; reporting the reactions from India’s neighbors to the Ayodhya issue; and explaining the relations among the Ayodhya related legal fights and responses from Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as Hindu nationalism. As a result, the study is helpful to comprehend the politics of India and its nationalism. Received 25th September 2020; Revised 2nd January 2021; Accepted 20th February 2021

Documents on the history of the Indian National Congress from the archive of viceroy of India Minto

The subject of this research is the documents from the archive of the viceroy of India Minto, which contain the records about the Indian National Congress. The author examines the history of studying the archive of Minto in foreign scientific literature. Special attention is given to correspondence of Minto with the Secretary of State for India Lord John Morley and their deputies that covers the period from the first Partition of Bengal (1905), split in the Indian National Congress (1907), and draft of the Morley-Minto reform, which involved the members of the Indian National Congress. The article also discusses the activity of the Indian Parliamentary Committee in the British House of Commons, and the response of the colonial authorities to hire pro-Indian parliamentarians in London. The conclusion is made that the documents on the history of the Indian National Congress from Minto’s archive reveal the peculiarities of interaction between the British colonial administration and the national elites, which was aimed at preserving the loyalty of the most moderate representatives of the Indian National Congress, as well as at weakening the national liberation movement that manifested in countering by the colonial administration the significant extension of rights of the Indian nationals and implementation of “separate electorates: within the framework of the Morley-Minto reform.  The documents from Minto’s archive reflect the perspective of the colonial administration on the path of further development of India within the empire by preserving British power.

Mecca between China and India

Through the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) and the Nationalist–Communist War (1946–9), several Chinese Islamic pilgrimage delegations set out on their journeys across the Indian Ocean. Mecca was more than a simple endpoint destination. These travels encompassed transits and sojourns in cities in between Nanjing/Shanghai and Mecca, offering the pilgrim-cum-delegates venues of encounters with foreign dignitaries and diaspora populations. This chapter examines the published records and private diaries of members of the Chinese Islamic Goodwill Mission to the Near East (1937–9) who had been aligned with the Republican Nationalist Party, with a focus on their actions and rhetoric in Calcutta, Bombay, Karachi, and Lahore. Claims to anti-imperial Islamic solidarity and routes of the pilgrimage provided accessible channels for the Chinese Muslim delegates to conduct meetings with leaders of both the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress Party, while simultaneously attempting to garner support from Cantonese/Shandong diaspora populations and Turki refugees from the war-stricken Xinjiang Province. The practices and networks of informal diplomacy that consolidated in wartime would outlast the Second Sino-Japanese War itself.

To the History of the Formation of the Indian Parliamentary Committee in the British House of Commons

The aim of this article is to study the history of the formation of the Indian Parliamentary Committee (IPC) in the British House of Commons in 1893. To achieve this aim, the following objectives are envisaged: determination of reasons for establishing the IPC; analysis of the activities of the Indian National Congress and British liberals; analysis of the election campaign of Dadabhai Naoroji, which enabled him to get a seat in the House of Commons in 1892. The sources of the study are the pamphlets of the Indian National Congress members, which explain the need for Indian representatives to participate in the British Parliament; records of parliamentary hearings on the Indian issue; materials of the press describing the course of the election campaign of 1892 and the tasks of the Indian Committee in Parliament. In the course of the study, the author came to the following conclusions. The moderate branch in the Indian liberation movement considered the British Rule in India to be a progressive phenomenon in the Indian life. The defects of the British administration were due to the fact that the English people and Parliament did not understand the problems that the Indian population faced under the British Rule. The Parliamentary Committee dealing exclusively with the Indian issue could contribute to solving this problem. The main conductor of this idea in India was the National Congress, which, since its inception, began work on the formation of the IPC. In the late 1880s, an Indian political agency, which intensified attempts to organize an Indian committee in Parliament, was established in London. The interests of the Indians in the House of Commons at that time were defended by the Liberal MP Charles Bradlaugh. On the basis of the proposals of the National Congress, he prepared a bill on Indian councils, which came into force in 1892. Nevertheless, the creation of the Indian Parliamentary Committee became possible only in 1893, when Dadabhai Naoroji and William Wadderburn (founders of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress) were elected to the House of Commons as Liberal MPs. In general, the creation of the IPC was a progressive step in the development of the Indian liberation movement because the IPC gave the moderate nationalists and their British liberal supporters new tools of fighting for the rights of Indian subjects of the British Empire. The appearance of supporters of Indian reforms in Parliament was the evidence of the success of the IPC’s course of expanding political agitation in England, although it did not guarantee significant achievements in solving of the Indian question.