by Hew Strachan
By the spring of 1915 the revolutionary movement within India and within the Indian army had shot its bolt. Only in Bengal did the Indian nationalists retain a foothold in the subcontinent. Germany had played no part in the events. And yet what had happened was enough to convince Germany that the basis for revolution existed.
Germany’s pre-war attitude to the revolutionary movement was justifiably sceptical. Although the Kaiser and the general staff hoped that the north-west frontier would tie down significant British forces, until 1907 they assumed that the source of the threat would be Russia. After 1907 the possibility of a native uprising became more important in their calculations. But their focus was on the Muslims, not on the Sikhs or Hindus. Graf von Luxburg, the German consul-general in India, went furthest in anticipating a Muslim rising, noting the support of Indian Muslims for the Turks in 1912 and 1913, praising their manly and military qualities, and even adumbrating the possibility of cooperation with the Hindus. But the general tenor of Germany’s attitude was to buttress British rule, not undermine it. As a colonial power in East Africa, Germany stood to lose if the principle of white supremacy was undermined. Between the late 1880s and 1913 Germany’s share of India’s exports tripled; commercial considerations therefore determined that Germany would avoid giving offence to the British in India.205
The initiative in involving the Germans in the cause of Indian nationalism was taken not by the Germans but by the Indians themselves. Two Indian students in Germany in August 1914, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya and Abinash Bhattacharya, made contact with Clemens von Delbrück, the minister of the interior. In September an office for Indian activities was opened in Berlin. Religious tensions cut across much of the office’s work, not least in its efforts to subvert Indian troops in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Although Chattopadhyaya and Bhattacharya were Bengali and Hindu, the Germans—largely thanks to Oppenheim—tended to place their contribution in an Islamic and Turkish context. Har Dayal had been sufficiently impressed by Deutschland und der nächste Krieg, in which Bernhardi had highlighted Britain’s vulnerability in India, to have made contact with the German consul in San Francisco in 1913.206 Either of his own volition, or because he was recruited by the German consul-general in Geneva (accounts vary), he went to Constantinople in September. Dayal had extraordinarily grandiose notions. He hoped to launch an invasion from Afghanistan, and to establish an enclave in Kashmir from which terrorism could flourish throughout India. The other notable recruit to the Berlin group, Barkatullah, was wedded to a similar approach. But many were less sure; Indian nationalism stood poised to be usurped by German imperialism or Turkish pan-Islamism. Neither the grand old man of the revolutionaries, Shyamaji Krishnavarma, now resident in Geneva, nor Lajpat Rai, a leading Punjabi in the United States, would join the Berlin Committee. India, the latter argued, must gain its independence through its own efforts.
In December 1914 these views found at least some reflection within the Berlin Indian Committee. It threw off Oppenheim’s suzerainty and affiliated itself directly to the foreign office. Its members did not dispense entirely with the Islamic link and the overland route. But their preference was to generate revolution from within India itself, and to use the revolutionary communities already established in the United States, Shanghai, Siam, and the Dutch East Indies in order to prepare the ground. Oppenheim’s departure for Constantinople in 1915 and Barkatullah’s participation in Hentig’s expedition both confirmed the diminution of the Islamic thread in Berlin. The dominant influence now was Chattopadhyaya. Under his guidance the Berlin Committee was directed by Indians in the interests of Indian nationalism. But it had made two interlocking decisions, both of which weakened its chances of success. It had emphasized political purity rather than military effectiveness. And it had also based itself in Germany, and so dented its claim to neutrality.
The willingness of the German Foreign Ministry to accommodate Ghadr’s approach was a reflection both of weakness and of ignorance. Lacking naval power and recognizing that Niedermayer’s expedition was a long shot, the Germans could do little but accept what opportunities there were. Moreover, the advice which they took confirmed the reasonableness of what was now proposed. None of Germany’s former consuls in India, whose judgements might have had a distinctly sobering effect, was consulted. Instead, the report of the Austro-Hungarian consul-general in Calcutta, Count Thurn, was circulated. Thurn had left India on 3 October; he reckoned that there were 250 secret societies in existence, and that 10,000 revolutionaries could possess themselves of weapons and would act at the first indication of outside support.207 Thurn had, of course, served in Bengal, and it was the situation there, rather than in India as a whole, which spurred his excessive optimism.
Therefore, not until the New Year of 1915 was any link forged between Ghadr and Germany. The co-ordination of the two was in the hands of H. L. Gupta, the Berlin Committee’s emissary in America and then the Far East, and Johann Heinrich Graf von Bernstorff, Germany’s ambassador in Washington. Until 1917 the United States took a lenient view of Ghadr. The state secretary, William Jennings Bryan, had written supportively of Indian nationalism. The Germans were careful to cover up their more flagrant breaches of American neutrality. And the British ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, took the view that a protest against Ghadrs activities in the United States would provoke anti-British feeling.
Bernstorff reckoned in December 1914 that $2.5 million would be required to purchase arms in the United States and ship them to India. Germany spent a great deal, but probably not as much as that. Franz von Papen, the military attaché, bought over 10,000 rifles and 4 million rounds through Krupp’s American representative, announcing that they were destined for Mexico. They were loaded on a small schooner in San Diego, the plan being that they would be transshipped to a tanker, the Maverick, for the onward journey to Batavia. Twice the two ships failed to rendezvous. In June the schooner returned to the United States and the arms were seized. A second consignment of 7,300 rifles, 1,920 revolvers, ten Gatling guns, and 3 million rounds was collected in New York for shipment in a vessel belonging to the Holland-America Line. British intelligence traced the cargo, tipped off the line, and the company refused to carry the goods.
The empty Maverick arrived in Batavia on 19 July 1915. Emil Helfferich, Germany’s agent in the Dutch East Indies, felt understandably frustrated. During the course of the previous six months he had established contact with Jotindra Nath Mukherjee, the leader of a revolutionary group in Bengal. Mukherjee reckoned that, if he could win over the 14th Rajput Riles at Calcutta and cut the line to Madras at Balasore, he could be master of Bengal. He intended to strike on Christmas day, when the Europeans’ revelries would slow their responses. His emissaries had persuaded Helfferich that Maverick’s cargo should be landed not in Karachi, as Helfferich intended, but in Bengal. But then, early in July, assuming that 50,000 rifles would arrive, the Bengalis said they needed only 15,000 of them and that the rest could go to Karachi and Pondicherry.
Smaller shipments to different destinations would indeed have presented British intelligence with a more difficult task. As it was, an increasingly effective organization was established with its base in Singapore. With no existing network in the Far East in 1914, and with little time to develop one, Dudley Ridout, the military commander on the island, put his main effort into counter-espionage on his own patch rather than into far-flung activities elsewhere. Thus, the confusion in the plans emanating from the Dutch East Indies was compounded by the activities of two double-agents. ‘Oren’ warned the British consul-general in Batavia of Maverick’s passage and of its links with Mukherjee. The latter was killed on 9 September and his organization crushed. The second agent, Georg Vincent Kraft, a German planter in the East Indies, had been court-martialled in Germany. He saved his skin by persuading the Berlin Committee of a plan to use German settlers in a raid on the Andaman Islands. They would release the political prisoners held there (including Vinayak Savarkar), and then the two forces wou
ld combine to land on the Indian coast. Having conceived this fanciful design and had it accepted, Kraft then sold its details to the British when captured by them in August 1915. Efforts in Shanghai to ship arms for the expedition were also betrayed. In December 1915 the Berlin Committee cancelled the operation.
MAP 31. INDIA
The second major base for revolutionary operations against India in 1915 was Siam. The rugged and remote northern mountains adjacent to the Burmese border appealed to Ghadr before the war. They could be a training ground and a base for agitation among the Sikhs and Punjabi Muslims of the Burma police. By July 1915 several hundred Indians as well as three German military advisors were active. What they lacked were arms. The efforts of a Chicago antiques dealer and two other German-Americans to run guns from Manila were thwarted by a British representation to the American authorities. In Bangkok the British ambassador asked that the Siamese government intervene. The ambivalence of the Americans and the Dutch as to what constituted a breach of neutrality found no reflection in Thailand. Six Indian revolutionaries were arrested, and one of them turned informer. On the basis of his evidence Ghadr’s organization in Siam was smashed.208
The effect of failure in Thailand and Indonesia was to force the Indians to launch their efforts from further afield. The most obvious base was China; at one stage there was even talk of smuggling arms into India by the overland route. But its physical position apart, China had other attractions. Civil strife meant that arms were to be found; Sun Yat-sen was supportive; and a sizeable German community continued to live and work in the treaty ports, particularly Shanghai. Britain’s answer to German and Indian use of China’s ports was to inveigle China into the war. Such a policy had the additional bonus that the Entente powers would then be able openly to buy arms in China in order to re-equip Russia.
However, Yuan’s offer in November 1915 to bring China into the war, while it buttressed British policy in relation to India, did not support Japan’s policy in relation to China. Tokyo stood to lose much of what it had gained through its participation in the war and through the twenty-one demands. Japan successfully blocked Yuan’s proposal. But India, therefore, served to underscore the ambivalence in Anglo-Japanese relations. Japan’s naval contribution was a vital element in Britain’s ability to control the illicit arms trade across the Pacific. Japanese warships pushed south, operating out of Singapore into the Indian Ocean. But this assistance, vital in the short term, carried with it a long-term challenge to Britain’s grip on the economy of the subcontinent. In 1916 Grey remained loyal to his broader perspective and to the needs of the war: he therefore advocated that Japan’s growth should be recognized and accommodated. But for others, not only in India but also in the embassies of the Far East, Japan took on the mantle of bogeyman once enjoyed by Russia.
What served to underpin these fears was Japan’s ambivalent handling of the Indian revolutionaries. Japanese sponsorship of Sun Yat-sen and the rebels of southern China confirmed for Indian intelligence that the real danger by 1916 lay not in China but in Japan. Pan-Asian groups in Japan had played host to Indian nationalists since 1910. Barkatullah had used the country as a base for propaganda that fused three disparate strands—pan-Islam, Asia for the Asians, and Indian revolution. In 1913 he had been appointed to a lectureship in Urdu at the University of Tokyo. British protests led to his removal in March 1914. But in May 1915 Delhi’s fears were re-excited when Rash Behari Bose entered Japan after his flight from India, posing as the agent of the Indian author Rabindranath Tagore. H. L. Gupta joined Bose in August. When the British appealed to Ishii’s government to deport the two revolutionaries, the Japanese gave the fugitives sufficient notice to enable a pan-Asiatic protest to be mounted by the Japanese nationalists. Gupta made his escape to the United States. Bose went into hiding in Japan. Britain had refused to set up an intelligence network in Japan before the war; it now did so. Furthermore, its focus became not its Indian enemy but its Japanese ally. By 1917 the British felt clear that the Japanese police were protecting Bose, and began to suspect that the minister of the interior, Baron Goto Shinpei, was not entirely averse to the Indians’ hope that Japan might be prised from the Entente.209
India increased the tension in Anglo-Japanese relations in the war. But in the final analysis it did not undermine them. By the beginning of 1916 the threat to Indian domestic order posed by Ghadr could be regarded with justifiable complacency. On 20 January the navy guaranteed that no major landing was possible, and expressed the view that even if a landing was affected it was unlikely to get support.210 Although false illusions continued to appear in the German Foreign Ministry, Germans closer to the action were increasingly contemptuous. The Indian nationalists, one agent reported in a dispatch destined to fall into British hands in May 1916, ‘are heroes only in words . . . Until the day for action arrives they are prodigal of grandiloquent phrases— when it comes they at once seek, and always find, reasons to avoid their obligations.’211
In January 1916 the Indian Committee in Berlin began to share these reservations about Ghadr. It sent Dr C. K. Chakravarty to co-ordinate its American operations. Chakravarty was bullish; the organization in India, he claimed, was complete; all that was required were arms. Although Lansing had become secretary of state in place of Bryan in August 1915, and although the evidence of the Lahore trials could be used to substantiate the accusations against Ghadr, Spring-Rice remained reluctant to push the Americans on the Indian issue. And when he did push, the Americans did nothing. India’s counter-intelligence therefore adopted a more indirect approach. The division between the Bengalis and the Sikhs reappeared. The latter claimed that they made the greater financial contribution; the former argued that the Sikhs were prompted by British agents. Both were right. The Berlin Committee advised the German Foreign Ministry to suspend payments to Ghadr. In January 1917 Ghadr conducted an internal review of its accounts. A British agent, Pratap’s erstwhile emissary Harish Chandra, said that Ram Chandra, who had succeeded H. L. Gupta in the United States late in 1915, had misappropriated funds. The Sikhs used Harish Chandra’s report to turn on Ram Chandra; the Ghadr movement split into its two component parts in February 1917.
Meanwhile the head of British intelligence in America, William Wiseman, passed directly into the hands of the New York police the details of a bomb plot implicating Chakravarty and linking Indian revolutionary activity to Germany. Wiseman therefore undercut the procrastination of the United States federal authorities and of Spring-Rice. On 17 March 1917 the American government agreed to act against the Indian revolutionaries in the United States. One hundred and twenty-four Indians were indicted on charges of conspiracy to breach American neutrality. The trial, held in San Francisco between November 1917 and April 1918, was a showpiece; only thirty-five of the accused were apprehended and the sentences were mild. But it confirmed that Ghadr had destroyed itself as much as it had been destroyed from outside. A Sikh, convinced that Ram Chandra was a British agent, shot and killed him in court.212
Ghadr re-emerged in the United States after the war, although its German associations and the racism of labour organizations limited its influence. But American entry into the war completed its extinction as an effective belligerent. Siam followed the United States’s lead and declared war on the Central Powers on 22 July 1917. China did so a month later. Thus, all but the Dutch East Indies were removed as possible neutral bases within the Pacific.
The failure of the Hindus and the Sikhs, the hopelessness of operations involving sea-power—both of these had been anticipated in Berlin before the war. Germany’s preferred area of operations had always hinged on the activation of the north-west frontier and on the potentiality of its appeal in pan-Islamic circles. The Muslim population of India was a minority, but it nonetheless mustered 57 million. Furthermore, it was concentrated in the north, adjacent to Afghanistan. And yet the Islamic challenge to British rule in India proved even more feeble than that of Ghadr.
Ostensibly, pan-Islamic feeli
ng had made considerable inroads among younger, better-educated Muslims before the war. As elsewhere, the defeat and the reduction of Turkey in Europe and in Libya triggered a popular response. Indians collected funds, sent medical aid, and bought Ottoman bonds. In 1913 the society for the servants of Kaaba, Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-Kaaba, was founded in order to form a military force to protect the holy places. The viceroy insisted that the purposes of the society were political; its members were less sure. It was not unaffected by the example of the Young Turks or by the propaganda of the Committee of Union and Progress. During the war it actively encouraged Indian soldiers to desert to the Turks.
Moreover, it seemed that the corollary of this growth in pan-Islamic sentiment was an estrangement from British rule. As a minority group, Muslims had profited from British protection against the Hindu majority. But after Curzon’s departure it seemed that Britain’s response to the growth in political activism in India would be to give way to the larger, more vocal, and more violent groups. The partition of Bengal which had so roused the Hindus had suited the Muslims. But it was annulled in 1911. The proposal to create a centralized Muslim university at Aligarh was overthrown in favour of local, residential universities. And a minor issue—the realignment of a road in Cawnpore so that it required the demolition of a mosque’s washing-place— triggered violent riots in 1913.
When the war broke out both of these themes found expression in the Muslim press. The hope in August was that war between the Christian powers of Europe would create the opportunity for a neutral Turkey to recover its losses. Al-Hilal, an Urdu weekly edited by A. K. Azad, blamed Britain for France’s acquisition of Morocco, Russia’s of Persia, and Italy’s of Tripoli. Despite a police warning, it went on in October to describe the British withdrawal from Antwerp as evidence of cowardice. Al-Hilal was closed. It was also more outspoken than most. Other journals confined their doubts about the Entente to criticism of Russia. When Britain and Turkey found themselves at war with each other in November, most bemoaned a situation that demanded they divide their loyalties. But for all their formal allegiance to Britain, sympathy for Turkey and anxiety for the security of the holy places could never free them for a wholehearted commitment to the war effort. Most of the more obviously anti-British publications were silenced by the end of 1914. Mohamed Ali, the owner and editor of two newspapers, and his brother Shaukat were interned in 1915. Nonetheless, the news of the Arab revolt in 1916 still revealed a range of responses potentially more worrying to the British. Rather than welcoming the revolt as an Islamic response to Turkish misrule, and as an indication that Britain had in the Arabs active Muslim allies, most Indian Muslims condemned the rising. Furthermore, such sentiments were not confined to pan-Islamic radicals. Loyalty to Britain could be justified by the need to accept the established temporal authority; by the same token, the Arabs should have acknowledged Ottoman rule, especially when the Turks were their co-religionists. All Muslims were alarmed that the Sherif of Mecca had made the holy places a battleground; many were not reassured by British assurances that the sites would be respected. The Government of India liked to see its own military initiative in Mesopotamia as the principal bulwark against pan-Islamism; it concluded that the Arab revolt was an impediment to the effectiveness of the campaign and stopped all reporting from the Hejaz.213