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Abstract
This article traces the biographies of Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, Agnes Smedley and Somerset Maugham to map a global network of Indian nationalist resistance to the British Empire. Maugham and Smedley fictionalized their experiences with the British Secret Intelligence Service and the Ghadar Party, respectively. I analyse the representation of Chattopadhyaya in Smedley's autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth and Somerset Maugham's short story ‘Giulia Lazzari’ to consider the limitations of fiction in the production of historical knowledge of the Indian nationalist movement abroad.
Notes
1. Seigel, ‘Beyond Compare’, 63. I am extremely grateful to Patrick Brantlinger, Anne Delgado and Radhika Parameswaran for their helpful comments on this article. All errors, of course, are mine.
2. Ibid.
3. See Robert Young's Postcolonialism and Brent Hayes Edwards’ Practice of Diaspora.
4. Marcus, ‘Ethnography in/of the World System’, 110.
5. Arun Coomer Bose's Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 1905–1922 remains an exemplary study of the transnational reach of the Indian independence movement, covering the activities of nationalists in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, the Soviet Union and East Asia. Many scholars use the term ‘revolutionaries’ to describe those elements of the Indian nationalist movement that subscribed to armed struggle. Because these groups did not by and large attempt mass educational campaigns nor did they affiliate with labour struggles, I use the term ‘nationalist’ instead of ‘revolutionary’ to describe them; I qualify ‘nationalist’ with the adjective ‘constitutional’ to signify the mainstream non-violent strand of the independence movement.
6. Marcus, ‘Ethnography in/of the World System’, 110.
7. Bose, Organizing Empire, 27.
8. I have gleaned the outline of Chattopadhyaya's biography from A.C. Bose's, Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 1905–1922 and Nirode K. Barooah's excellent study, Chatto.
9. A.C. Bose, Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 15.
10. Chattopadhyaya, ‘Virendranath Chattopadhyaya's Speech’, 85.
11. Barooah, Chatto, 62.
12. Ibid., 321–3.
13. Ibid., 137.
14. For an account of Maugham's espionage work, see Selina Hastings’ Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham.
15. Barooah, Chatto, 137.
16. Cordell, Somerset Maugham, 43.
17. Ibid., 52.
18. Maugham, The Favorite Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, 210–11. Further citations to this work are given in the text.
19. Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, 6.
20. Ibid., 5.
21. Ibid.
22. Manjapra, ‘Illusions of Encounter’, 369.
23. Ibid., 365.
24. Bose, Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 85.
25. Barooah, Chatto, 135–6.
26. Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, 229. Thomson was also involved in the unsavoury dissemination of Roger Casement's diaries, following his capture for attempting to ship arms from Germany to Ireland as part of the 1916 Easter Rising. Casement was highly regarded by humanitarian societies for his fact finding missions that exposed human rights violations in the Congo and Peru. The scandal generated by the diaries focused on Casement's homosexuality and turned public opinion against him, thereby increasing popular support for his execution. See Noel Rutherford's ‘Thomson, Sir Basil Home (1861–1939)’ and D. George Boyce's ‘Casement, Roger David (1864–1916)’.
27. Barooah, Chatto, 136–7.
28. Ibid., 154.
29. Forster, Aspects of the Novel.
30. Said, Orientalism, 2.
31. See Lidiya Eduardovna Karunovskaya's description of Chattopadhyaya's generosity in Barooah, Chatto, 316–17 and Smedley's similar assertion in Battle Hymn of China, 14.
32. This representation exemplifies what Mrinalini Sinha describes as the ‘effeminate Bengali’ babu in her superb study, Colonial Masculinity.
33. Williams, Marxism and Literature, 122.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 123.
36. I have culled the details in this paragraph from Janice. R. MacKinnon and Stephen R. MacKinnon's remarkable, Agnes Smedley; Ruth Price's magisterial Lives of Agnes Smedley; and Smedley's account of her life in Battle Hymn of China (1943), later reprinted as China Correspondent (1984).
37. MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 46. In addition to working with Indian nationalists, she was also active in Margaret Sanger's birth-control movement and was accused of violating a local ordinance for distributing birth-control information during her indictment under the Espionage Act.
38. For an excellent analysis of Smedley's writings on China, see Carolyn Nizzi Warmbold's chapter, ‘Agnes Smedley: Correspondent for the “Common People of All Lands” ’, in Women of the Mosquito Press: Louise Bryant, Agnes Smedley, and Margaret Randall as Narrative Guerrillas.
39. Quoted in MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 345. From Smedley's letter to Margaret Sloss.
40. Walker, ‘Foreword’, 3–4.
41. Foley, Radical Representations, 284.
42. Smedley, Daughter of Earth, 219. Further citations to this work are given in the text.
43. Talvar Singh's character is based on Sailendranath Ghosh, who with Smedley, was arrested for posing as ‘diplomatic commissioners’ of the fictitious, India Nationalist Party. Under this guise, they sent letters to a number of governments, including Brazil, Russia, Panama, Denmark and Chile requesting aid to establish an Indian Republic. Smedley signed the letters as ‘Marie Rogers’, secretary to the fictitious Pulin Behari Bose, the name she would give to the narrator of her autobiographical novel. See ‘Hindu asks Wilson to Receive “Envoy” ’ and ‘Indict 7 for Plot to Deceive Wilson’.
44. Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic, 24–5.
45. In real life, these leftists included Margaret Sanger, who very much hoped that Smedley would devote herself to birth-control activism and raised Smedley's $10,000 bail to secure her release from the Tombs. Smedley alludes to her in the novel without using her name. See Daughter of Earth, 340. See also Margaret Sanger's An Autobiography, 252–3.
46. Smedley, Battle Hymn of China, 17.
47. Ibid., 23.
48. MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 73.
49. Smedley, Battle Hymn of China, 15.
50. Quoted in MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 77. From Smedley's letter to Florence Becker Lennon.
51. Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 105.
52. MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 42.
53. Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 440.
54. Quoted in MacKinnon and MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley, 78. From Smedley's letter to Florence Becker Lennon.
55. Ibid., 87.
56. Ibid., 142.
57. Quoted in Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 143.
58. Ibid., 44.
59. Jensen, Passage from India, 183.
60. Ibid.
61. Naidis, ‘Propaganda of the Gadar Party’, 251.
62. Ibid., 259–60.
63. Jensen, Passage from India, 186.
64. Ibid.
65. See Puri, ‘Revolutionary Organization: A Study of the Ghadar Movement’.
66. Price, Lives of Agnes Smedley, 51.
67. Ibid., 52.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Jensen, Passage from India, 236–41. The description of FFI in this paragraph in based on these pages in Jensen's chapter ‘Friends of the Freedom of India’.
71. Raucher, ‘American Anti-Imperialists’, 97–8.
72. Said, Orientalism, 240.
73. Ibid.