Abstract
The year 2024 interestingly marks the completion of 75 years of diplomatic relations of India with Ireland and Finland. This is the occasion for this special edition of SIH to emerge.
In 1949, Ireland and Finland initiated the establishment of embassies and exchanging legions with India. All three nations—India, Ireland and Finland, while different from each other in geo-historical context, evolved from their anti-colonial/anti-invasion politics. The development of foreign policies became crucial following the end of the Second World War. The interwar period has been described as a highly internationalist one in South Asia, marked by the emergence of distinct internationalisms—communist, anarchist, social scientific, socialist, literary and aesthetic. 1 The internationalization of India had already begun in 1919 with participation in the Paris Peace Conference, the Washington Conference on Naval Armaments of 1921, the London Naval Conference of 1930, the Disarmament Conference of 1932 and the annual interwar conferences of the International Labour. However, the leaders of the Indian national movement were inclined towards non-governmental bodies such as the League Against Imperialism (1927–30), the Anti-War Congress of 1932, the World Peace Congress of 1936 and the International Peace Campaign Conference.
The main reason behind the nationalist censure of the League was its inability to take up the question of the independence of colonies. The question of reconstruction of the Indian economy was also absent from the League’s agenda. However, the Indian nationalists did not reject the League in principle. As a result, the United Nations (UN) became a key element of Indian foreign policy after 1947 and supported the concept role in talks regarding arms, UN supervisory and peacekeeping for economic and social activities.
By 1934, only 72 Europeans had represented India at Geneva, while 101 Indians had been part of one or the other delegations internationally. 2
Scholars have largely agreed that ‘the seeds of Indian foreign policy in the UN were sown in furrows ploughed before 1947, and India, unlike most other newly emerging states, acquired the outlines of an international personality before the attainment of independence’. 3 Historians of Indian foreign policy and internationalism use the term ‘Nehruvian era’ to refer to the formative years between 1947 and 1964. However, Nehruvian foreign policies were not solely Nehru’s doing. Nehru’s main adviser, V. K. Krishna Menon, and ministers, like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and G. B. Pant, exercised reasonable influence in shaping Indian internationalism. 4
Nehru, however, was the chief architect of India’s foreign policy of non-alignment. It was based on the following Five Principles (Panch Shila): mutual respect for other nations’ territorial integrity and sovereignty; nonaggression; noninterference in internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence. Suranjan Das has applied a Gramscian phrase, ‘passive revolution’, to describe the political transfer of power on 15 August 1947, which he claims was divorced from a socio-economic transformation. 5 Nevertheless, basic Nehruvian values of secularism, pluralism, welfarism and non-alignment were aimed at helping the country out of the crisis at that point.
The most persisting element of independent India’s diplomacy is the vision of military non-alignment with alignment to accelerate India’s economic development. After the Second World War, India received substantial aid from both sides of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe contributing to commercial gains as well as technical support. The iron and steel industries were established and grew under collaborations with the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and what was then known as West Germany.
Irish were occupied in the War of Independence (1919–21), which was a conflict between Irish nationalists (republicans) and the British (who wished to preserve Ireland’s union with Great Britain).
At the start of the Second World War, Ireland clearly defined its position of absolute neutrality
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to oppose any act of hostility that one belligerent may attempt against another on our neutral territory (including the territorial sea); to refrain from any act of such a kind as to interfere with the military operations of one of the belligerents against another outside our territory; and to maintain the most complete impartiality in our relations with the two belligerents, abstaining from any action that might amount to auxiliary aid to one of the combatants.
Eamon de Valera, as taoiseach (Prime Minister; 1932–48), laid out in clear terms some key elements of Ireland’s foreign policy
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These two main considerations—the partition of our country and the struggle to maintain and enhance our national distinctiveness as a necessary means of maintaining our separate and State life—must form the background to our activities and must colour our relations with foreigners and foreign Governments. The development of external trade is, of course, of the utmost importance, and the prosperity of our country depends upon it to no small degree. But that aspect of our external relations depends also on the extent to which we can make the country known and esteemed abroad. We are pioneers in a great cause and we must work like pioneers.
Finland, on the other hand, according to Aunesluoma, became an ‘interesting test case of Britain’s newly discovered, or rediscovered, source of power in the post-war world’. 8 Finland, as a Nordic country, stood out as a nation capable of retaining its sovereignty. Western countries viewed Finland as an East European country that the Soviet Union would sooner or later completely dominate. This view changed after 1948. Finland could carve a distinct position for itself and could more than survive the emerging Cold War blocs.
There is a striking similarity in terms of adopting the policy of neutrality in the post-colonial/post-invasion (case of Finland) scenario.
Recently, that seems to change. Finnish president, Sauli Niinistö, declared that ‘the era of military non-alignment in our history has come to an end’ as Finland became the 31st country to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in April 2023.
History and Internationalism: Legacies of War and Revolution
E. H. Carr in his book, The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939), claimed that liberal internationalism, or ‘utopianism’, had failed to explain and predict international politics after 1919. 9 Both Utopian socialism and eighteenth-century European physiocracy, for Carr, were based on aspiration rather than on analysis. The teleological aspect of the science of international politics from the outset had been conspicuous. The passionate urge to prevent war had motivated this science, which had been characteristically utopian.
There was a trend towards the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of six or seven highly organized units around which lesser satellite motion revolved without any independent motion of their own. The victors of 1918 lost the peace in Central Europe because they pursued the principle of political and economic disintegration. The United States strengthened their hold over the American continents. Great Britain created a sterling bloc and laid the foundations of a closed economic system. Germany reconstituted Mitteleuropa 10 and pressed forward into the Balkans. The Soviet Union developed its vast territories into a compact unit of industrial and agricultural production. Japan, under its domination, created a new unit of Eastern Asia. Carr propagated a realist approach to international politics as a starting point for analysis. Realism, after the Second World War, had acquired centrality in the study of international relations (IR) among academics and policymakers.
An important debate in international studies is related to the claim that we may be witnessing not just the end of the Cold War or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such. This refers to the endpoint of people’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. 11 It has also been suggested that 1989 brought to an end a period of history that began in 1789 with the French Revolution.
In a similar vein, Hannah Arendt argued that crucial to any understanding of revolutions in the modern age is that the idea of freedom and the experience of a new beginning should coincide. 12 Within the institutionalized research and teaching on IR, wars and revolutions receive differential treatment.
Fred Halliday claimed that the discipline of IR has long had an uneasy relationship with revolution. He asserted that one should examine not only how revolutions affect IR but also how far proper consideration of the international context can pose questions for established sociological or political explanations of revolution. 13 Revolutions represented for Halliday, a breakdown in an otherwise orderly world. In contrast to the realists and behaviourists, historical materialists regard revolutions differently, in a positive manner. Within the international context, although defined historically by capitalism and imperialism, the individual revolution was to be located. Some of the literature focuses on the issue of ‘new diplomacy’, that is, the role of ideology and unconventional action in the foreign policy of revolutionary pasts. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) promoted revolution abroad effectively not in the 1920s, when it was weak, but in the 1940s, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and in the 1970s, when the United States was challenged by a tide of Third World revolution states.
Historically, the wars of the 1760s contributed to the French Revolution, which led to the Napoleonic wars. The pressure on the Ottoman Empire led to the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which precipitated the Balkan wars and hence stimulated the First World War. The First World War led to the Bolshevik Revolution, which determined Russia’s role in the Second World War. The other important point is that States have not been isolated units: they existed in an international context. However, the idea of ‘interdependence’ too easily presumes replication. Capitalism and the modern state developed in an international context, not the other way around.
Addressing the Gap: Anti-Colonialism and Internationalism
This special issue seeks to address and fill in the gap between the historical process of anti-colonialism, internationalization, emerging nationalisms and lessons of the World Wars and Revolutions in the twentieth century. All papers are situated within the setting of an empire and the emerging blocs during and around the World Wars. Finland was caught up geo-strategically in the hegemony of the Soviet Union right at the beginning of the war. As World Wars had necessitated the emergence of international alliances, the revolutions in history necessitated transnational alliances that were more marked at the unofficial levels. Apart from the diplomatically and officially sealed treaties, the end of the First World War saw a variety of nationalist leaders/freedom fighters aligning across the British Empire against imperialism. Both Irish and Indian nationalists and revolutionaries were constantly engaging in different methods of resistance, ranging from non-cooperation, passive resistance and armed resistance to forming armies and alliances. Eminent Indian freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose had developed contacts with both the Left (Soviet) and Right Bloc (Germany/Japan) to free India.
Scholarship exists on ways of approaching revolutions in history and the subsequent emergence of IR. A bloc of states, dominated by the USSR, which had since the 1940s been engaged in great power competition with the West and which had, in the form of the USSR itself, been challenging the Western world since 1917, collapsed.
This special volume is centred around the claim that the Indian Freedom Movement was a world event—linked to global events (First & Second World Wars, and the Revolution of 1917). It reflects on events that were mostly violent outcomes of colonial oppression, such as the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, the hanging of individual revolutionaries and territorial partition. Transnational networks reworked themselves in several ways—institutional/associational transnationalism, for example, the League Against Imperialism and the India-Ireland Freedom League. Ideological influences also found channels of exchange through individuals (although most revolutionaries would never have met). Notable landmarks of this internationalism became evident with the Home Rule movements, the 1916 Easter Rising, the 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent emergence of blocs. Internationalism manifested itself through the making of the constitutions, memorials, heritage and finally diplomacy and foreign policy. To study the evolution of the State after the revolution and the anti-colonial struggles, Fred Halliday’s pioneering work on IR is highly useful and has identified the following three visions of internationalism: Hegemonic, Revolutionary and Liberal.
The opening article of this issue by Michele Louro explores Agnes Smedley’s correspondence and work with the Indian revolutionaries in San Francisco, Seattle and New York City. She highlights Agnes’ initiatives in establishing the Friends for the Freedom of India (FFI), a transnational organization linking India’s freedom struggle with sympathetic activists based in the United States. Louro had discovered a full file on Agnes at PMML in New Delhi. The archives revealed that a file was opened against her in 1917 in the United States for her collaboration with Indian nationalists such as Lajpat Rai, M. N. Roy, Tarak Nath Das and Virendranath Chattopadhyay, amongst others.
Although varying in its method for articulation for freedom, the FFI also extended support for Gandhi’s non-cooperation programme in the 1920s. Agnes conceptualized the Indian independence movement as part of an international struggle for emancipation, which included a battle against racism, injustice and patriarchy.
Smedley took up the issue of deportation of the Indians by raising it in the press. The Ghadar Party increasingly turned to Soviet Russia for support and funding.
The Indian Ghadar Party, founded in 1913, was an organization of Indian expatriates (students and workers) who campaigned for political freedom for India from the British Empire. They initiated an armed struggle that involved the smuggling of arms to India and also inciting military mutiny among Indian soldiers during the First World War. Families and, in particular, women were central to the politics of anti-colonial resistance of Indians in North America.
Smedley established the Hindu Defence Fund in February 1919 in order to raise funds for the legal representation of South Asians who ‘sacrificed themselves for liberty’ and sought the political asylum articulated by the founding fathers of the United States.
By March 1919, the Hindu Defence Fund emerged as a transnational hub in the form of FFI. With its centre of activism in New York City, FFI gained tremendous momentum in its work for India and the Indian diaspora in the United States. FFI outlined that its mission was ‘to maintain the right of asylum for political refugees from India’ and ‘to present the case for the Independence of India’. The latter goal revealed the necessity of organizers to persuade American public opinion to see India’s freedom struggle as relevant to their lives and worthy of their support.
There were Americans who supported the cause of Ireland’s independence and the Bolshevik Revolution, which prompted Agnes to argue that Indians shared in their struggle for freedom, yet unlike the Russians and Irish in the United States, Indians lacked financial and political resources. Taraknath Das, in charge of FFI and a colleague of Smedley, fell out with Ghadar Party leadership over a controversy involving borrowing money without repayment and attempting to ‘disrupt’ the work of the FFI.
Smedley’s outsider profile as an American woman working among and for Indian men afforded her a unique position as an intermediary among Indians and between Indians and Americans.
Elsewhere I have extended the argument about how shared histories of Ireland and India are contained within the colonial context and Western women largely figured as ‘maternal imperialists’ or ‘extensions’ of the empire. 14
There were important links not only between the two independence movements (of India and Ireland) but between the mysticism of the Celtic Revival and the often sympathetic engagement of these European women with spirituality and Hinduism.
To cite an interesting dimension of the debate on revolutionary women, Loomba has argued that feminist–political subjects in the twentieth century emerged in collaboration and contestation with Indian nationalist, liberal-feminist and European left-wing models of womanhood. She engages with the lives and subjectivities of revolutionary and communist women from the beginning of the communist movement in India in the 1920s till the 1960s. 15
The next pioneering article by Gronow traces the varied Indian political responses to the 1939 Winter War in Finland. While it was quite clear that the Indian leaders were inclined towards the Soviet Union, the aggressive invasion of Finland by the Soviet Union was an anomaly for them. In the years following India’s independence, Stalin had been clearly anticipating that India would join the Soviet bloc. 16 Using diverse archival material (in English and Finnish), this article highlights the evolving political landscape through the lens of Indian views, using Finland as a case study to illustrate the development of India’s nationalist foreign policy. The primary sources include Indian English-language newspapers, writings from freedom movement leaders and British Indian civil service reports from the National Archives of India, complemented by biographies and other secondary materials. Gronow contextualizes the approach of the Finnish press and the public towards the ongoing freedom movement in India. The relationship between India, its independence movement and Finland from 1939 to 1945 was largely shaped by the events of the Second World War. Despite being geographically distant and politically disconnected, these two nations found common ground in their shared aspirations for freedom from foreign rule during a transformative period in IR. Finland gained its independence in 1917 from the Russian Empire and saw some similarities in the Indian struggle for freedom from British rule. The ways to achieve freedom in India varied from constitutional to armed struggle but also included revolutionary methods. Foreign political ideas of the Indian independence movement were generally evolving during the 1930s and 1940s. The eminent nationalist leaders Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose had different positions and understandings of Finland and its foreign policy. This article explores the lesser-known and under-researched aspects of the independence movement—the relationship between the Indian independence movement and Finland. Indian nationalists’ engagement in the anti-imperialistic movement contributed to their views on the Soviet Union and Finland. In addition, Indian positioning towards rising military blocks in Europe had an impact on its position in Finland.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, signed on 23 August 1939 between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, shocked the nationalist leaders. It is widely established that in 1939 different opinions emerged on the issue of supporting British war efforts within the Congress Working Committee meetings. On 14 December, the Council of the League of Nations passed a resolution on the ‘expulsion’ of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations and condemned the ‘action of the USSR against the state of Finland’. Gronow points out the support from the Jute Industry Congress in Calcutta (with support from British–Indian authorities). One million sacks were donated to Finland for use as sandbag barricades. In addition, some Indian Maharajas donated money to Gripenberg, the wife of the Finnish minister in London. Subhas Bose considered both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as the common enemies of Britain. He hoped that they could have formed an Asian front and supported India’s armed struggle for independence. The position of J. P. Narayan, the leader of the Congress Socialist Party, a socialist faction within the INC, has also been discussed. Indian radical left nationalist students were also divided regarding Finland.
Nehru said that he would support Britain in its hour of distress by increasing necessary production and controlling strikes. He even threatened a violent response in case Japan or Bose’s army invaded India.
The Finnish Winter War was a defining moment in Indo–Finnish history. The Finnish resistance against the larger Soviet force garnered international sympathy and support. The Indian Left was influenced by Soviet propaganda, claiming that ‘Firstly fascist Finland was being made the base of attack on Soviet Russia by all imperialist powers… Secondly that some Finnish territories were necessary for the effective military protection of the Soviet’.
The interim government of India, headed by Nehru in 1946 from the newly elected Constituent Assembly, had the task of assisting the transition of British India to independent India. Nehru evolved the position that the treaties themselves were a compromise of those respective blocks and that India did not wish to join any bloc.
Despite its status as a neutral country in the Cold War, Finland, from the 1950s, went on to have the support of the UN to enable its international presence. However, until 1955, the Soviet Union blocked Finland’s effort to join the UN. 17
Eunan O’Halpin in this special issue writes about Roger Casement and Subhas Chandra Bose. He explores significant parallels in the experiences of these two men as nationalist revolutionaries. The two men hold significant positions in the national histories of their respective countries, and the article is not a comparison of their significance. Casement died long before Bose came to prominence in Indian nationalist politics.
Casement was an Irish Protestant appointed at the British Foreign Office in Africa and South America. He had participated in symbolic events upholding the British Empire—such as a memorial service in a mission church in the Congo Free State in 1901 to commemorate the passing of Queen Victoria. 18 In 1911, he received a knighthood for his humanitarian campaigns from King George V. After Casement retired in 1913 from the Foreign Office with a pension, he transformed into a rebel. However, as a British official, Casement was secluded from popular politics, whereas Bose, after university, rose to become one of the three key figures in the Indian National Congress movement before he broke from it in 1939.
Bose approached Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, imperial Japan and the Soviet Union. Each travelled to Germany to seek military and political support. Each was betrayed by a trusted travelling companion. Each sought to persuade fellow countrymen who were prisoners of war to fight alongside their captors for national freedom. Each eventually left Germany disappointed, secretly by submarine. Their movements became visible to their British enemy, due to the vulnerable code and cipher systems of the great powers whom they entrusted with their lives. In 1919, key Irish rebel organizer Liam Mellows joined Indian revolutionary Lajpat Rai at a public meeting of the ‘Friends of Indian Freedom’, founded on the model of the American ‘Friends of Irish Freedom’, while Eamon de Valera’s trusted subordinate Harry Boland ‘collaborated with anti-colonialist lobbies such as the Indian Friends of Freedom’.
Much of Britain’s information on both Irish and Indian conspiracy in the United States came from conventional counter-espionage operations, including the use of informers, observation of Irish and Indian emigré organizations and liaison with various American law enforcement agencies. Between 1915 and 1917, these efforts were augmented by a most secret source: decoded cable traffic between Berlin and the German embassy in the United States, which disclosed German support for Irish and Indian revolutionaries.
Scholarship on transnational anti-colonialism has been looking at the evolving alliance of the Entente Cordiale and the Western fears of anti-colonialists working with Germans. The problems arose in cooperation between French and British France continued its liberal tradition of granting asylum to foreign refugees. 19 There was public resistance in France to the manner in which anti-colonialists were being treated.
Mulvagh, in his article, explores the evolution of the political space for the Indian students in colonial Ireland. There were administrative and political reasons why Dublin became an attractive city for some Indians who wished to study law in Ireland rather than England. The article focuses on V. V. Giri, who belonged to a small group of Dublin’s Indian law students studying between the King’s Inns and University College Dublin. Giri became the fourth president of independent India. Giri was in Dublin in the years before the Easter Rising of 1916 and wrote a memoir of his time in Ireland. In 1976, Giri published My Life and Times, Volume 1, describing various aspects of his life, including his term as the fourth president of India, 1969–74. As a labour leader, Giri led some of the most successful pre-independence campaigns in Indian trade unionism. It is evident that Giri applied much of what he witnessed in Dublin to his own trade union organizing in India. Mulvagh describes proximities between Giri and the Irish Volunteers and argues that just as with nationalist thought, there was a synergy between what Giri was experiencing in the classroom and what he was witnessing on the streets of Dublin both during the 1913 Lockout and the prelude to the 1916 Rising. The Indian students were impacted by interracial relations, political subversion, intelligence gathering and political violence coming under the spotlight.
Mulvagh explores the changes in the policies for lodging Indian students in England and Ireland. He contextualizes the reasons for choosing Ireland over England—the obvious reasons being surveillance, racism and change in admission policies.
Mulvagh brings forth a new social base of support for the Indian revolutionary, Madan Lal Dhingra. The endorsement of Dhingra’s killing of policemen by Irish feminist Helena Molony was an interesting development.
The article is an extremely valuable addition to diaspora studies and the concept of immigrational transnationalism. Discussion on his theme is beyond the scope of this special volume, but the aspect of immigration has immensely influenced foreign policy. The migrants forge and sustain familial, economic, cultural and political ties and identities that cross national borders. This transnationalism does not erase local identifications and meaning systems; instead, transnational ties are sustained by local ties.
Significance
The commemorative aspect of this special issue gives scholars an opportunity to explore the links between the national movements and the evolution of State policies, along with internationalism and globalism.
Indians encountered three different varieties of interaction with the Irish. One was more prominent—tactic and strategy-centric revolutionary connections; the second was the imperial variety—Irish as extensions of the Empire; the third was the cultural and philanthropic variety—impacting Indian education, cultural and national movement and life.
A few scholars have done a sustained transnational exploration of Indo–Irish–American connections in the broader context of emerging nationalist challenges to imperial rule in a world transformed by the Great War, the collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. 20
In recent years in Ireland and India, historical mutinies (the 1857 Revolt and the 1920 Connaught Rangers Mutiny by Irish soldiers in India) have come to be interpreted against the backdrop of revisiting the empire and, to some extent, reimagining India and Ireland, with the notion that there was a revolutionary shared past linked with the global convulsions caused by success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Such transnational histories help understand the process of decolonization and how events with commonality of purpose have been recalled and re-examined, although most such studies conclude that nationalism rather than socialism was the main driver of revolution for colonized peoples.
Historically, Irish–American connections were appropriated in diplomatic avenues for political purposes by both American and Irish leadership. The nineteenth-century Irish leader Charles Stuart Parnell stated how Irish leaders longed to emulate the achievements of America, particularly the principles of liberty, equality and justice.
The archival elaboration of the Finnish experience with the Indian anti-colonial movement lays the foundation of research on more linkages as Finland progressed through interesting stages of democracy, revolution and neutrality. Along with other Nordic countries, it stands out as a ‘model’ society, well known for its high level of economic prosperity, social equality and political stability. In terms of legacies of the Nordic model, the historical study of the contemporary Nordic societies becomes highly significant as Nordic foreign and security policy, domestic politics and the rise of the populist right, immigration and integration, crime and justice, gender equality and environmentalism draw the attention of the world.