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Business News/ Opinion / My enemy’s enemy
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My enemy’s enemy

There existed a certain lack of Indo-Irish mutual awareness in the early years of the 20th century. But this is only partially true

Jawaharlal Nehru had in early 20th century found Ireland’s Sinn Fein movement similar to extremist movements in India.Premium
Jawaharlal Nehru had in early 20th century found Ireland’s Sinn Fein movement similar to extremist movements in India.

In 1907 a young Jawaharlal Nehru visited his cousin Brijlal in Dublin. Later he wrote a letter to his father. “Have you heard of the Sinn Fein in Ireland?" the young man wrote. “It is a most interesting movement and resembles very closely the so-called extremist movements in India. Their policy is not to beg for favours but to wrest them."

The Sinn Fein movement, he continued, “is causing consternation. They say that if its policy is adopted by the bulk of the country, English rule will be a thing of the past."

Nehru’s letter may convey a certain lack of Indo-Irish mutual awareness in the early years of the 20th century. But this is only partially true. Indian and Irish nationalists may have been strangers to each other, but that was not true of all people in either country. Many Irish soldiers served in India under the flags of both the British and the East India Company. Meanwhile in 1908 the first Indian restaurant in Dublin opened on Upper Sackville Street. (It was not a success.)

Keen-eyed readers will note the Irish dilemma here. They were at once the coloniser and the colonised. This is because at the same time that their soldiers were helping Britain control India, many Irish people back home, and a large, wealthy Irish-American diaspora, were working to eject the British from their island.

Thus here were two nationalist movements functioning at the same time, against the same enemy, sometimes using similar methods, but apparently functioning in isolation. This isolation, however, was about to end soon and in dramatic fashion.

The traditional narrative of India’s freedom struggle—the one we read in textbooks and school kids re-enact on stage—leaves little room for nuance. There are the good guys on one side, led by a scrawny child wearing a basketball bladder on his head and wire spectacles. And then there are the generic bad guys all wearing a bottle of Pond’s Dreamflower talcum powder each.

Usually there is little room in this narrative for other protagonist nations. But in fact many countries have played large and small cameo roles in the long story of India’s freedom. Russians, French, Egyptians, Americans, Germans, Ottomans and Japanese have all dipped their toes in the deceptively clear waters of India’s Independence struggle.

By no means the least of these foreign collaborators were the Irish Nationalists.

Irish and Indian revolutionaries based in the US had started working together around a decade before the First World War. But the collaboration really began to bloom after the founding of the Gadar Movement in San Fransisco in 1913. Right from the beginning the leaders of the movement worked closely with Irish-American revolutionaries. When Gadar leaders began to produce the Free Hindustan newspaper, the first copies rolled off presses belonging to the pro-Irish Gaelic American.

The Irish-American press wrote of the Indian freedom struggle in glowing terms. And the Gadar press responded likewise. One 1916 anti-British pamphlet had an article by Gadar leader Ram Chandra in which he referred to himself and his compatriots as Hindu Sinn Feiners. When the Gadarites ran dry of funds, they often sought and received donations from Irish-American leaders.

Alas, the Gadar movement and its goal of an armed uprising in India would eventually fall apart and fail, largely thanks to infiltration by British intelligence. A vast Indo-Irish-German network of conspirators were arrested. When Gadar leaders and their sympathisers were later tried in American courts, many found defence lawyers from the Irish-American community.

After the First World War, even as Gadar subsided, the links remained strong. One of the most famous expressions of this solidarity took place during the 1920 St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York. The parade included an Indian contingent with banners that read: ‘Up! The Republic of India’ and ‘315,000,000 of India with Ireland to the Last’.

When Ireland later attained most of its goals, albeit after a partition, many Irish leaders did not abandon their old friend. In 1932 Vithalbhai Javerbhai Patel, Sardar Patel’s elder brother, made a successful tour of Ireland where he exhorted the Irish to boycott British goods. A few months later An Phoblacht, the Sinn Fein’s newspaper, carried an advertisement for Indian Stores, a new shop in Dublin. The advertisement read: “Tea direct from India. Buy Irish first, then buy Indian.’

Years later, as we’ve written in this column before, Irish inputs would also be sought when India wrote its constitution. On 26 January 1950, when a reception was held in Birmingham to celebrate India becoming a Republic, the chief guest chosen was not an Indian or British luminary but Eamon De Valera, the Irish president.

Nowadays few recall these age-old links between Ireland and India. But if you are ever in the UK, pop over to the Republic. Indian tourists with UK visas get visas on arrival in Dublin. Why not drop in for a pint, some revolutionary conversation, and re-live old, once-resilient bonds?

Every week, Déjà View scours historical research and archives to make sense of current news and affairs.

Comment at views@livemint.com. To read Sidin Vadukut’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/dejaview

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Published: 22 Nov 2014, 12:46 AM IST
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