Rebels Against the Raj: Western Fighters for India's Freedom

by Ramachandra Guha

Overview

An extraordinary history of resistance and the fight for Indian independence—the little-known story of seven foreigners to India who joined the movement fighting for freedom from British colonial rule.

Rebels Against the Raj tells the story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence from British colonial rule.
 
Of the seven, four were British, two American, and one Irish. Four men, three women. Before and after being jailed or deported they did remarkable and pioneering work in a variety of fields: journalism, social reform, education, the emancipation of women, environmentalism.

This book tells their stories, each renegade motivated by idealism and genuine sacrifice; each connected to Gandhi, though some as acolytes where others found endless infuriation in his views; each understanding they would likely face prison sentences for their resistance, and likely live and die in India; each one leaving a profound impact on the region in which they worked, their legacies continuing through the institutions they founded and the generations and individuals they inspired.
 
Through these entwined lives, wonderfully told by one of the world’s finest historians, we reach deep insights into relations between India and the West, and India’s story as a country searching for its identity and liberty beyond British colonial rule.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101874844
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/22/2022
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	496
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

RAMACHANDRA GUHA has taught at Yale and Stanford universities, the University of Oslo, the Indian Institute of Science, and the London School of Economics. His books include Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948, Gandhi Before India (a 2014 New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year), and the award-winning India After Gandhi. He has written on social and political issues for The New York Times, and for the British and Indian press, including columns in the Daily Telegraph and the Hindustan Times. He lives in Bangalore, India.
 

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
Mothering India

I

In the year 1893, three Indians destined for greatness made their mark in countries outside India. In April of that year, Mohandas K. Gandhi enrolled as a lawyer at the Natal Bar, en route to becoming the leader of the Indian community in South Africa and in time the leader of the freedom movement in his homeland. In July 1893, his fellow Kathiawari, Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji (always known as ‘Ranji’), played for Cambridge versus Oxford in the annual University Match at Lord’s, en route to becoming the first great cricketer of Indian origin. In September of that year, Swami Vivekananda made a stirring speech in the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago, en route to becoming the authoritative voice of a Hindu Renaissance.

These overseas debuts, all in the same year, were intimations of much more than personal fame. They presaged three different ways in which Indian culture was to profoundly impact the world. Gandhi’s leadership of the freedom movement inspired anti-colonial struggles across Asia and Africa, as well as movements for racial justice in North America. Ranji’s success on the playing fields of England was the forerunner of the emergence of cricket as India’s national sport, and of India as the epicentre of world cricket. Swami Vivekananda blazed the trail for other Indian seers and prophets to travel overseas, taking their ideas with them. The subsequent spread of Hindu spirit-uality and of the practice of yoga across the world, owe their distant origins to that famous speech made by the Swami in Chicago.

In a striking juxtaposition, even as Gandhi, Ranji and Vivekananda were seeking to take their ideas and expertise outside India, a Western woman was making the reverse journey, bringing her ideas and (as it were) expertise to India. For it was also in 1893 that the first of our renegades, Annie Besant, arrived on these shores.

Mrs Besant (as she was usually known)1 was born Annie Wood in London on 1 October 1847. She was three-quarters Irish. Her father, a doctor who went into the City, died when she was five. Annie was brought up by her mother and a wealthy aunt. As a teenager, she travelled with her aunt in Germany and France, while reading widely and learning the piano.

The young (and talented) Annie was courted by a Cambridge-educated priest named Frank Besant. They married in December 1867, and moved to Cheltenham, where Frank had a job as a teacher. The bored housewife wrote short stories while having two children – a boy and a girl – in quick succession.

By 1871 – merely four years into the marriage – Annie and Frank had begun to quarrel. The next year she became interested in Nonconformism, before moving on further afield, to atheism. In September 1873 the couple separated, each keeping one child. Annie was now living in London, spending long hours in the British Museum, reading Darwin, Spinoza, John Stuart Mill and the like. In August 1874 she heard the legendary atheist Charles Bradlaugh speak for the first time. He was forty; she, just twenty-six. Soon Annie became an active member of Bradlaugh’s National Secular Society. Before the year was out, she was speaking from its platforms, and making a name as an orator. With Bradlaugh she travelled up and down the country, speaking on secularism, science, and the rights of women. Her mentor was a famous public speaker, but his young protégée was not far behind, being described in the provincial press as ‘a lady of refinement [and] genius’ with a ‘matchless power of reasoning and eloquence’.2Audiences were not always so generous; at several places the duo were heckled by devout churchmen and even had stones thrown at them.

Under Bradlaugh’s influence, Annie became a fervent republican, opposed to imperialism and all its works. In 1876 she organized a petition to oppose the Prince of Wales’s forthcoming trip to the subcontinent. She got more than 100,000 people to sign the petition, which, almost a mile in length, was presented to the House of Commons. (The Prince’s trip went ahead regardless.)

In 1877 Mrs Besant’s first book appeared, a collection of her essays called My Path to Atheism. She was now seriously studying religious texts, all the better to refute them. Her critical gaze began turning Eastwards, as she read books on Buddhism and Hinduism and the religions of ancient Egypt. A newer faith that came to her notice was Theosophy, a mystical movement begun by a Russian émigrée called Madame Blavatsky and her American associate Colonel H. S. Olcott. Apart from the United States, Blavatsky also found disciples in Ceylon and in India, where her Theosophical Society had purchased a large and beautiful tract of land on the banks of the Adyar river in Madras.

Culturally as well as geographically, India was vital to the devel-opment of Theosophy. Mrs Blavatsky spoke of being in communion with spiritual masters in the Himalaya. She was inspired by the Bhagavad Gita and by the works of the great Oxford Sanskritist F. Max Mueller, and herself visited India in 1879–80. Among the early converts to Theosophy was Allan Octavian Hume, the ornithologist and reformist civil servant who helped found the Indian National Congress. As one historian of Theosophy has written: ‘India, Blavatsky maintained, was the source of all human knowledge. Everything the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Jews, Greeks and Romans knew, they had learned from the Indians.

Annie Besant’s own first impressions of Theosophy were under-whelming. In an article of 1882 she dismissed it as ‘a dreamy, emotional, scholarly, interest in the religio-philosophic fancies of the past’.4 She was herself now moving rapidly to the Left, befriending Karl Marx’s disciple (and future son-in-law) Edward Aveling and the socialist playwright George Bernard Shaw. The playwright had great affection and admiration for Mrs Besant, for her intelligence and force of character, and especially her oratorical skills. Of one public debate where he had to take the podium after her, Shaw wrote that when a speaker on the other side had finished, ‘Mrs Besant got up and utterly demolished him. There was nothing left to do but gasp and triumph under her shield.

In 1885 Mrs Besant joined the Fabian Society, and threw herself into socialist causes, leading marches of underpaid workers and craftsmen. In 1888, Theosophy entered her life once more. Sent a book by Madame Blavatsky to review, she was drawn to, indeed enchanted by, its contents, writing in her autobiography of how 

as I turned over page after page the interest became absorbing; but how familiar it seemed; how my mind leapt forward to presage the conclusions, how natural it was, how coherent, how subtle, and yet how intelligible. I was dazzled, blinded by the light in which disjointed facts were seen as part of a mighty whole, and all my puzzles, riddles, problems, seemed to disappear.

Mrs Besant asked to meet the author of the book. The meeting took place in a house in London, where Mrs Blavatsky – a large, corpulent figure dressed in black, with her head covered and her piercing eyes looking out – ‘talked of travels, of various countries, easy brilliant talk, her eyes veiled, her exquisitely moulded fingers rolling cigarettes incessantly’. One meeting was enough to convert the once sceptical Irishwoman, and two months later Mrs Besant was formally inducted as a member of the Theosophical Society, kneeling before Madame Blavatsky and receiving, through her, the blessings of the Himalayan Masters she claimed to communicate with.

When Mrs Besant joined the Theosophical Society, its three aims were: ‘To found a Universal Brotherhood without distinction of race or creed; to forward the study of Aryan literature and philosophy; to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the psychical powers latent in man.’ (The second aim, with its unfortunate racial tinge, was later modified to mean the study of comparative religion.) By June 1889, the middle-aged convert was writing essays for Lucifer, the magazine of the Theosophical Society. In the same year, Mohandas Gandhi, then a law student in London, was writing a series of essays for the journal of the Vegetarian Society of London. The young Gandhi was becoming increasingly interested in Theosophy, and almost certainly attended a series of lectures that Annie Besant delivered in August 1889, of which Lucifer remarked that ‘the Hindu gentlemen who were present, conspicuous by their quiet mien, nodded their frequent approval in silent but significant manner.

In her early years as a Theosophist Mrs Besant retained her interest in socialist causes. However, after Madame Blavatsky’s death in May 1891, she ‘perceived she had a higher mission’. She undertook three lecture tours in the United States in quick succession, her words and her energy leading to her being hailed by the Chicago Tribune as ‘the most prominent theosophist of the day . . . on whom the mantle of Madame Blavatsky has fallen. 

The moving spirits of the Theosophical Society, Colonel Olcott and C. W. Leadbeater, wanted Mrs Besant – at this time regarded ‘as the greatest speaker of her sex in either Europe or America’9 – to tour India, where, they thought, the growing English-speaking middle class could provide ready converts to this hybrid faith, which (unlike Christianity) treated Hinduism with respect. Mrs Besant herself was extremely keen to visit the land where her teacher’s own teachers were believed to reside. On 20 September 1892 she sailed from New York to London, and, after a brief halt there, carried on to Marseilles, where she took the steamer Kaiser-i-Hind, bound for Colombo. The plan was for a brief, six-week tour of Ceylon and India in the cold weather, following which she would return to England.

She stayed forty years.

Editorial Reviews

12/06/2021

Brits and Americans who joined India’s struggle against British rule are remembered in this vibrant historical study. Historian Guha (India After Gandhi) profiles seven Westerners who moved to India and participated in its 20th-century independence movement: Annie Besant, a British-born theosophist and leader in the Indian National Congress; Benjamin Guy Horniman, a British pro-independence newspaper editor; Samuel Stokes, an American-born missionary and farmer who converted to Hinduism; Mira Behn, a British-born concert pianist who became Mohandas Gandhi’s ardent ashram disciple—even monitoring his bowel movements—and envoy; Philip Spratt, a Communist organizer from England who drifted from Marxism to Gandhism; Dick Keithahn, an American missionary and organizer; and Catherine Mary Heilemann, another British-born ashram student of Gandhi. Guha gives a lively recap of their exploits—crafting defiant articles and speeches, organizing peasants and workers, sparring with imperial officials, stewing in jail—but at heart their stories are about Anglo-Americans falling in love with Hindu culture and spirituality; with Gandhi, the charismatic “Mahatmaji” whom they revered; or, in some cases, with ordinary people. Guha’s elegantly written group portrait ably conveys the passion and idealism of the Gandhian independence movement and its hold over the Western imagination. Photos. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year

“Insightful… Captivating… Guha’s previous works have distinguished him as an exceptional chronicler of India’s modern history. His latest volume provides fresh perspectives on the independence struggle that will appeal to those seeking more obscure eyewitness accounts. And since the book’s main figures were born outside of India, Rebels Against the Raj may strike a chord with contemporary outsiders who themselves have been seduced by India’s history and culture.”
—Samir Puri, New York Times

"Mr Guha’s new book [is] a reminder of how many outsiders held (and hold) deep affection for India and its democratic cause... The stories of his seven subjects—four men and three women—are deftly interwined... Mr Guha does not overstate the role of these foreigners... His account does not change the broad narrative of how Indians won freedom for themselves. Its real point is as much about the future as the past—an argument for the tolerant, outward-looking country India could once again become."
—The Economist

"Fascinating and provocative reading... Guha organizes his material expertly and presents it clearly and stylishly, illuminating an aspect of Raj history which is often forgotten or neglected but which is nonetheless crucial... This superb book... add[s] a new dimension to the histories both of subject India and of imperial Britain – and [is] a thoroughly good read."
—Bernard Porter, The Literary Review

"In an age of bigotry and narrow nationalisms, Ramachandra Guha’s new book is a welcome reminder that people’s opinions, passions and life’s work do not have to be dictated by their ethnic identities or their countries of birth."
—Victor Mallet, Financial Times

"Guha has done well to remind us of these forgotten stories, all the more as India, like much of the world, is becoming more xenophobic and intolerant, believing all the virtues lie within national frontiers."
—Mihir Bose, Irish Times

"Told through the lives of seven emigrants from the West who devoted themselves to India, the book offers a novel perspective of India’s fight for independence, from early in British rule through holding post-independence rulers to account…. For those looking for a new perspective on India’s fight for independence and beyond, and what drives people to devote their life and freedom to a cause not their own.”
—Library Journal

"Compelling minibiographies of a group of fighters for Indian independence who were born outside India but were fiercely devoted to the cause... An inspiring education tool for those researching India and nonviolent independence movements."
—Kirkus

"Guha’s elegantly written group portrait ably conveys the passion and idealism of the Gandhian independence movement and its hold over the Western imagination."
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

02/04/2022

Told through the lives of seven emigrants from the West who devoted themselves to India, the book offers a novel perspective of India's fight for independence, from early in British rule through holding post-independence rulers to account. Each was drawn to India for various reasons, with some becoming disillusioned with their initial path and instead forging ties with local communities. All had various levels of contact and involvement with Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, and often overlapped or had fleeting encounters with each other. While Gandhi plays a large role in each of their lives, the narrative is driven by the individuals' lives and actions. Guha (India After Gandhi) profiles how these immigrants moved to India and adapted to local ways of life, language, and religion. They also accepted consequences (prison terms; deportation; professional ruin) for advocating change they believed in. It will be helpful for context and geography if readers of Guha's book have some background knowledge of India and its struggle for independence, though isn't necessary. VERDICT For those looking for a new perspective on India's fight for independence and beyond, and what drives people to devote their life and freedom to a cause not their own.—Zebulin Evelhoch

Library Journal

2022-01-11
Compelling minibiographies of a group of fighters for Indian independence who were born outside India but were fiercely devoted to the cause.

Guha, a Bangalore-based author of multiple books about Gandhi, among other works, compares these seven exemplary individuals to the International Brigade who fought against the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War as well as the “white South Africans who took a stand against apartheid” and fought for “a multiracial democracy.” In India, these figures “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.” Guha weaves into the story of independence the public and private battles of Englishwoman Annie Besant (1847-1943), who embraced theosophy and Indian home rule and, in 1917, was elected president of the Indian National Congress; and Gandhi colleague and journalist Samuel Stokes, a lapsed American missionary who wrote in 1919, “Christianity and Hinduism need each other. The best in each is incomplete without the other.” Mira Behn, “Gandhi’s adopted daughter,” learned traditional weaving and spinning at Gandhi’s side and advocated for the educational connection between that work and political freedom. B.G. Horniman, a British-born journalist who became a fearlessly outspoken editor at the Bombay Chronicle, was exiled from India for seven years before returning. In 1946, Sarala Devi (formerly Catherine Mary Heilemann) established a social service–oriented ashram for girls within an extremely conservative society. Dick Keithahn was a displaced American Christian who continued the practices of Gandhi after his death by helping establish a center for rural renewal through education, health care, and agricultural practices. Martin Luther King Jr. visited in 1959 and declared the fight for social justice in India “of inestimable value.” As Guha demonstrates, all of these individuals dedicated their lives to the causes for which Gandhi was so passionate.

An inspiring education tool for those researching India and nonviolent independence movements.

Kirkus Reviews