When Bruce Dickson, a British bureaucrat who had served in South Africa, attended lectures on India at the University of Illinois in 1910, he was shocked by the way Britain’s colonisation of the subcontinent was presented by professors.
“I twice heard that ‘the Indians were our cousins,’ and on another occasion ‘that there were more Indians starving in India than there were people in the United States,’” Dickson wrote in a letter to the Secretary of State for India in London. “This latter fact is not refuted, and if it were, it would still be believed by the average American.”
The bureaucrat said there were “many Hindus” enrolled in American universities who were “bitterly opposed to [the] British rule in India” and lost no opportunity “of enlisting American sympathy against our work there”.
In American universities, where debates were encouraged, Dickson might have considered arguing against pro-Indian independence views. But the fear of more influential American academics taking the side of the Indian students prompted the bureaucrat to, instead, complain to higher-ups in London.
“Where such statements are made by the Professors in these Universities, it is small wonder that their students [make] still wilder statements,” Dickson added. “Such questions as to when England will stop draining India of her resources have been constantly put to me.”
Since most articles in the American press about India were written by British correspondents, people like Dickson took it upon themselves to find out how academics were forming pro-India opinions. His search led him to a booklet titled The Deeper Meaning of the Struggle that had been written by Colombo-born philosopher and scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy and gifted by an Indian student to the University of Illinois library.
Call for freedom
Born in 1877 to a Tamil father and English mother, Coomaraswamy was raised in Britain and by the time he was in his early 30s, he had attained expertise in geology and botany, as well as in Indian art and languages and Hinduism and Buddhism.
He is a revered public figure in Sri Lanka, which named one of the main thoroughfares in the heart of Colombo after him. Coomaraswamy, who spent most of his life in Britain and the United States, helped bridge Eastern and Western thought, writing books on Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as introducing Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) and Indian art to the West.
From his booklet published in 1907, it is clear that he chose to identify as an Indian.
“The difficulties which have been pointed out in connection with the idea of self-government for India undoubtedly exist,” Coomaraswamy wrote. “But assuredly the growth of national feeling amongst us will so far unite us, as to make the administration of our own affairs a possibility.”
Speaking out against the Raj, Coomaraswamy wrote, “Every day in India the gulf between Englishmen and Indians widens.” He denounced the concept of empires, while batting for Indian nationalism. “We feel that loyalty for us consists in loyalty to the idea of an Indian nation, politically, economically and mentally free; that is, we believe in India for the Indians; but if we do so, it is not merely because we want our own India for ourselves, but because we believe that every nation has its own part to play in the long tale of human progress, and that nations which are not free to develop their own individuality and own character, are also unable to make the contribution to the sum of human culture which the world has a right to expect of them.”
He argued it was not in Britain’s best interests to have an empire. “For it seems to us that the master is not truly freer than the slave, that England herself is not free so long as the burden of a great dominion hangs about her shoulders,” Coomaraswamy said. “So long as England’s ideal is set upon an achievement of dominion over others, she can neither be free nor truly great.”
While admitting that “difficulties beset the path of Indian Nationality,” Coomaraswamy said, “The one thing strange to us is the delight with which Englishmen insist upon them, as though the possibility of an Indian Nation, conscious of its past, and led by hope of days to come, were in itself an evil thing.” He added, “Why is there not rejoicing at a nation’s birth, or rather adolescence? For to all men the gift is given, and to all is brough the fame.”
He said Indians neither had an “ingrained and ineradicable hatred” for the English nor the kind of bitterness that the Irish had for England.
India: A Nation
In the booklet, Coomaraswamy attacked the notion that the Indian nation was a construct that came into being as a result of the British Empire.
In the chapter India: A Nation, he wrote, “I have above alluded to the welcome accorded by most Englishmen to whatever goes to show that India has never been and can never be an united people. This attitude is perhaps more to be regretted from the English point of view than from the Indian, as it prevents those who hold it from understanding the progress of events, and so from contributing to their due development.”
Coomaraswamy was convinced of the existence and legitimacy of the Indian nation. “We ourselves are aware of the fundamental unity which unites us; and apprehend that as soon as that unity is realised (it does not require to be created), it will become a matter of comparative indifference to us whether or not its existence is admitted elsewhere,” he said.
The scholar insisted India had the prerequisites to be considered a nation, adding that there were “two essentials” – a “geographical unity” and a “common historic evolution or culture”. “These two India possesses super abundantly, beside many lesser unities which strengthen the historic tradition. The fact of geographic unity is apparent on the map, and is never, I think, disputed. The recognition of social unity is at least as evident to the student of Indian culture.”
Coomaraswamy made a case for Ceylon to be considered a part of India, arguing that every province fulfilled a necessary part in the completion of the Indian nation. “Take for example, Ceylon (whose people are now the most denationalised of any in India); Can we think of India as complete without Ceylon,” he asked. “Ceylon is unique as the home of Pali literature and Southern Buddhism, and in its possession of a continuous chronicle invaluable as a check upon some of the more uncertain data of Indian chronology.”
He said Ceylon preserved some customs of ancient India. “Sinhalese art, Sinhalese religion, and the structure of Sinhalese society, bring most vividly before us, certain aspects of early Hindu culture, which it would be hard to find so perfectly reflected in any other part of modern India.”
The booklet ended with credos in the form of affirmations, such as “I believe in India for the Indian people to live for and to die for”, and an English translation of Vande Mataram.
British anxiety
While it was easy for the British to ban any literature in India they deemed seditious, the United States was a different ballgame. Dickson’s letter to London indicated a growing anxiety about the power of Coomaraswamy’s booklet.
“There are a few Englishmen here – both students and members of the staff to whom such statements as are made, are extremely mortifying – but they are quite powerless to do or say anything as their statements would be discounted because they are Englishmen – and therefore prejudiced,” Dickson wrote.
The bureaucrat managed to find that the booklet was given to the university library by HM Gangulee, a student from Barisal (now in Bangladesh), who was completing his studies in agriculture. “The facts which I have set out here may be of interest to you – considering the disloyalty at present rampant in parts of Bengal and other provinces,” Dickson said.
An official from the India Office in London wrote back to Dickson and told him that the Secretary of State for India, Viscount Morley, was aware of this “agitation”. “With a view of counteracting the influence” on the US of Coomaraswamy’s writings, the official said, London would supply its embassy in Washington DC and consulates in New York and San Francisco with official publications relating to the British administration of India. These were meant to refute “false statements made to the disadvantage of British rule,” the official said.
A little over a decade after his booklet created waves in American campuses, Coomaraswamy moved to the United States. In America, he wrote books about Indian and Asian art, culture and philosophy, while also working as a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He died a few weeks after India attained independence in 1947. Given what he wrote in his 1907 booklet, the partition of the country would not have made him a happy man.
Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.
