Rebels Against the Raj

  ALSO BY RAMACHANDRA GUHA

  The Commonwealth of Cricket

  Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World

  Gandhi Before India

  India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy

  A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport

  The Use and Abuse of Nature (with Madhav Gadgil)

  Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, and India Environmentalism: A Global History

  The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2022 by Ramachandra Guha

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Simultaneously published in hardcover in Great Britain by William Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, London.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Guha, Ramachandra, author.

  Title: Rebels against the Raj : Western fighters for India’s freedom / Ramachandra Guha.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021047324 (print) | LCCN 2021047325 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101874837 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781101873526 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781101874844 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Dissenters—India—Biography. | Europeans—India—Biography. | Americans—India—Biography. | Europeans—Political activity—India. | Americans—Political activity—India. | India—History—British occupation, 1765–1947—Biography.

  Classification: LCC DS479.1.A2 G83 2022 (print) | LCC DS479.1.A2 (ebook) | DDC 954.03—dc23/eng/20211027

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047324

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047325

  Ebook ISBN 9781101874844

  Original cover art by Tarini Sharma, based on an image from The Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman.

  Cover design by Janet Hansen

  a_prh_6.0_139201566_c1_r0

  For Jean Drèze

  A foreigner deserves to be welcomed only when he mixes with the indigenous people as sugar does with milk.

  Mohandas K. Gandhi, speaking to a friend in January 1946

  If India had been deprived of touch with the West, she would have lacked an element essential for her attainment of perfection. Europe now has her lamp ablaze. We must light our torches at its wick and make a fresh start on the highway of time. That our forefathers, three thousand years ago, had finished extracting all that was of value from the universe, is not a worthy thought. We are not so unfortunate, nor the universe, so poor.

  Rabindranath Tagore, writing in 1908

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Prologue

  PART I: CROSSING OVER, CHANGING SIDES

  1. Mothering India

  2. Home Ruler, Congress President

  3. Freedom-Loving Englishman

  4. Anti-Colonial American

  5. Daughtering Gandhi

  6. Blowing Up India

  7. Retreat of the Matriarch

  8. Seekers North and South

  PART II: SEEING OUT THE RAJ

  9. The Second Innings of B. G. Horniman

  10. Going Solo

  11. Recovering Revolutionary

  12. From Samuel to Satyanand

  PART III: INDEPENDENT INDIANS

  13. The Elusive Search for ‘Bapu Raj’

  14. Reading from Left to Right

  15. A Himalayan Heroine

  16. Keithahn Soldiers On

  17. The Last Gandhians

  Epilogue

  Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  Anne Besant sitting in the gardens of the Theosophical Society (courtesy of the Theosophical Society)

  Annie Besant lecturing to a crowd after her release from internment (courtesy of the Theosophical Society)

  Studio portrait of Annie Besant (courtesy of Theosophical Society)

  Studio portrait of B. G. Horniman (author’s collection)

  Madeleine Slade as a young woman in London (courtesy of the Sabarmati Ashram Archives)

  Samuel Stokes in his Gandhian phase (courtesy of Professor Vijay Stokes)

  Satyanand Stokes with wife Agnes and daughter Satya (courtesy of Professor Vijay Stokes)

  Mira Behn helping Gandhi repair his spinning wheel (courtesy of the Sabarmati Ashram Archives)

  Mira Behn feeding a calf in her Pashulok Ashram (author’s collection)

  Mira Behn being visited at her Himalayan ashram by the President of India, Rajendra Prasad (author’s collection)

  Philip Spratt and his wife Seetha (courtesy of Bob Spratt)

  Philip Spratt at work (courtesy of Bob Spratt)

  R. R. Keithahn and his wife Mildred (author’s collection)

  Citation of award presented to Dick Keithahn (author’s collection)

  Sarala Behn (courtesy of Lakshmi Ashram, Kausani)

  Sarala Behn with her students and disciples (courtesy of Lakshmi Ashram, Kausani)

  Prologue

  Loyalty is a virtue much cherished by humans, and those who are disloyal often face criticism. In the modern world, the gold standard of loyalty is loyalty to one’s nation. Men are chastised for leaving their wives, politicians attacked for changing their parties. But the scoldings they face are nothing compared to those aimed at individuals who betray their countries. From Benedict Arnold to Lord Haw-Haw, there is a veritable rogues’ gallery of men (and they are virtually all men) who threw in their lot with a country at war with their own.

  Very occasionally, however, history and morality permit, and even encourage, individuals to identify with, and devote their energies to fulfilling, the aspirations of a country that is not their homeland. Among these exceptions is the International Brigade which fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Here were Frenchmen, Britons, Irishmen and Americans who took up arms to defend the democratic traditions of Spain and the individual liberties of Spaniards. Their heroism and sacrifice were much celebrated at the time, and have since been commemorated in a steady stream of novels, memoirs, biographies, historical studies, and films.

  The International Brigade was formed in September 1936. It was disbanded two years later, by the Spanish Government, as a tactical move, in the hope that this would shame Hitler and Mussolini into stopping the sending of troops and money to the other side in the Civil War. Before the foreigners left for their own countries, they were given a stirring farewell in Barcelona. At a massive public gathering, Prime Minister Juan Negrín promised Spanish citizenship to those who chose to return. Then the celebrated orator Dolores Ibárruri, ‘La Pasionara’, spoke in praise of these foreign fighters. In years to come, she said, Spaniards would tell their children of

  how, coming over seas and mountains, crossing frontiers bristling with bayonets…these men reached our country as crusaders for freedom. They gave up everything, their loves, their country, home and fortune…they came and told us, ‘We are here, your cause, Spain’s cause is o
urs.’ It is the cause of all advanced and progressive mankind.[1]

  Rebels Against the Raj tells the story of another group of people who chose to struggle for the freedom of a country other than their own. This story remains much less known, although it is in some ways more remarkable. Those who joined the International Brigade came to Spain as temporary travellers. They would, sooner or later, go back to the nations from which they had come. The men and women profiled in this book came to India for the duration. They exchanged their old homeland for their new one unreservedly, and unequivocally – once in India, they knew they would almost certainly die in India too. The foreigners who fought in Spain stayed for the most part within their racial and religious boundaries, whereas the freedom fighters of my narrative turned their back on their compatriots to identify with people who were neither Christian nor white. They did so for what should certainly have been ‘the cause of all advanced and progressive mankind’; namely, the ending of European imperialism and the liberation of colonized people.

  One of the battalions in the International Brigade was named for Abraham Lincoln. Its members were all Americans. Yet, as the very name of the Lincoln Battalion suggests, for these fighters identification with the Republican cause in Spain did not mean a disavowal of their own country, but, rather, an affirmation of its noblest values. Abraham Lincoln was an American president who stood forthrightly for democracy and justice, at home; these compatriots who invoked his name would struggle for democracy and justice, abroad. To keep at bay the Fascists, to save Spain from the awful fate that had befallen both Italy and Germany, was therefore an act of transnational solidarity through which universal values could be pursued regardless of an individual’s background or theatre of enactment.

  In the same manner, by coming out to India the renegades of this book were not necessarily rejecting their land of origin. British fighters for India’s freedom were upholding the dissident culture within Britain itself, which urged them to be identified with the underdog.[2] By doing what they did in India, for India, they were calling their British compatriots to their better selves. And the Americans in my story saw themselves as acting in the anti-imperialist tradition of their homeland. Like the foreign radicals in 1930s Spain, these foreign radicals in colonial India were not being ‘disloyal’ to the nation of their birth; rather, they saw in another nation the possibility of pursuing social and political ideals that make human life more appealing everywhere. If imperialism was immoral and unjust, then ending it was in the interest of the colonizer as well as the colonized. If women sought equal rights in Britain or America, then surely they should get equal rights in India too.

  The thirty thousand-odd foreigners who came to Spain in the 1930s left behind memories, warm and affectionate memories no doubt. However, they did not have any tangible influence on the history of the country whose cause they briefly made their own. The Civil War was lost by the Republican side they fought for. On the other hand, the seven individuals featured in this book did much more than bravely take a stand for Indian freedom. Through their work, and through their writings, they contributed enormously to public debate within India. They challenged Indians to pay closer attention to the fault lines of class and gender that preceded the coming of the British and which would – if left unattended – persist after the British left. They offered fresh, arresting, insights into how a free India could best promote economic development, equal access to education, and (most farsightedly) environmental sustainability.

  The lives of these white-skinned heroes and heroines of India’s past may yet be relevant for India’s future. And – since the ideals they strove for were universal rather than parochial – for the future of the world too.

  * * *

  —

  In December 1945, Mahatma Gandhi met with a group of British Quakers in Calcutta. Animated by ideals of peace and brotherhood, these social workers had come to aid the victims of the Bengal famine. The Second World War had just ended; there was a rising tide of nationalist aspirations awaiting fulfilment. One Quaker asked whether it was better if non-official Englishmen stayed away from India for the time being. Gandhi answered: ‘Any friend, who is a real friend, and who comes in a spirit of service, not as a superior, is bound to be welcome.’ He gave the example of the Anglican priest Charles Freer Andrews (1871–1940), who had worked as a bridge between the Raj and Indian nationalists. A close friend of Gandhi as well as of the great poet Rabindranath Tagore, Andrews worked tirelessly to end indentured labour in the colonies. His Indian admirers lovingly named him ‘Deenbandhu’: friend of the poor.

  Gandhi told the Quakers that anyone of any nationality was welcome, so long as they came, like Andrews, in the spirit of disinterested service. He added: ‘India, when she comes into her own, will need all such assistance.’ Aside from C. F. Andrews, Gandhi also mentioned a man named Samuel Stokes, a lapsed missionary, originally from Pennsylvania, who lived for many years in the mountains around the imperial summer capital, Simla. Stokes concluded that if he wished to serve India he had to become Indian in character and orientation. So he married a local Rajput woman, for which, said Gandhi, ‘he was boycotted by the Rajputs. The Government distrusted him too in the beginning. But he has lived down the distrust of both the Government and the Indians.’

  Gandhi told the British Quakers who had come to see him in Calcutta that

  if then, even a C. F. Andrews and a Stokes and others had to labour under distrust, for you to be distrusted may not be wondered at. So far Indians have known Englishmen only as members of the ruling race – supercilious when they were not patronizing. The man in the street makes no distinction between such an Englishman and a good, humble European, between the Empire-builder Englishmen of the old type that he has known and the new type that is now coming into being, burning to make reparation for what his forefathers did. Therefore if one has not got the fire of sacrifice in him I would say to him: ‘Do not come to India just now.’ But if you are cast in a heroic mould there will be no difficulty. You will in the end be taken at your worth if you persevere.[3]

  Of the duo mentioned by Gandhi, Samuel Stokes is a central character in this book, whereas C. F. Andrews is not. For all his love for India and Indians, Andrews remained within the Church, and maintained close relations with viceroys and archbishops. It was Stokes who more radically transgressed the boundaries of race and religion. He married an Indian named Agnes, and raised a large family with her, of children who grew up as Indians. He left the Church, and grew ever closer to Hinduism in his spiritual outlook, even changing his first name from Samuel to Satyanand (meaning ‘the joy of truth’). And, perhaps most significantly, he took part in Gandhi’s anti-colonial struggle, and spent a spell in prison as a result.

  Charlie Andrews was a bridge-builder. There is a wonderful book waiting to be written about him and his ilk. It might include Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble), the Irishwoman who attached herself to the great Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda, moving to Bengal to work for and with him; Marjorie Sykes, the Quaker teacher who translated Tagore and ran schools in the Nilgiris before joining a movement to save the Narmada valley from being destroyed by large dams; Laurie Baker, the Quaker architect who ran a clinic with his doctor wife in the Himalaya before returning with her to her native Kerala to become a pioneer of low-cost housing; or Verrier Elwin, the Gandhian theologian from Oxford who was thrown out of his Church and cast out by the Mahatma en route to becoming the foremost authority on the tribes of India.[4]

  The focus of this book, however, is on individuals who decisively changed sides, identifying completely with India, meeting Indians on absolutely equal terms as friends and lovers, and as comrades on the street and in prison too. Detention in British India (or externment from British India) is a sine qua non for inclusion here. Imprisonment or banishment signified the depth of their commitment to the cause.

  The rebels of this book are to be distinguished from bridge-buil
ders on the one side; and, on the other, from those whom the writer William Dalrymple has called ‘White Mughals’, who ‘responded to their travels in India by slowly shedding their Britishness like an unwanted skin, and adopting Indian dress, studying Indian philosophy, taking harems and adopting the ways of the Mughal governing class they slowly came to replace’.[5]

  If ‘White’ represents the skin colour of these adventurers, then ‘Mughals’ accurately captures their luxurious lifestyle. On the other hand, the rebels I write about endured poverty and hardship, disease and incarceration. (Even the men among them could not have remotely contemplated ‘taking harems’.) To live like the Indians whose struggle they made their own was at once a manifestation of their courage and the source of their credibility.

  The ‘White Mughals’ of Dalrymple’s construction came to India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when racial boundaries were more fluid. At the time, much of the subcontinent was still under the rule of native princes; even the parts controlled by foreign mercenaries were governed loosely rather than rigidly. However, in 1858 all of India came under the direct rule of the British Government; now, racial boundaries became ever more fixed and exclusive. To live like a White Mughal in the early days of colonial expansion was one thing; to become a renegade when the clash between imperialism and nationalism was at its most intense, quite another. The first path was associated with romance and a certain kind of hedonistic voyeurism; the second path with idealism and a certain kind of reckless bravery.

  * * *

  —

  Of the seven rebels featured in this book, four were men and three were women. Five came from Great Britain, while two were Americans by birth. Some came from elite families – one was the daughter of an admiral – while others came from more plebeian homes. In terms of religious affiliation, two arrived in India as Christian missionaries, one as a militant atheist, a fourth as a Theosophist.