Notes
- Bob Light spoke at Kumar Goshal's funeral in South Norwalk, Connecticut in 1971. I have referred to “Kumar” throughout since this was what I called him and how I referred to him through twenty-five years of friendship. I would like to thank Gautam Chattopadhyay for encouraging me to complete this essay. I would also like to thank Ambunath Ghosal for his help and Sushila (Goshal) Gillis for lending me documents and photographs about her father's life. Harold Leventhal helped me to track down old friends of Kumar. None of those interviewed, however, is responsible for the views expressed here which are my own. My brother James Gordon assisted me by copying old photographs of Kumar.
- Most of the details about the family background of the Ghosals come from an interview with Ambunath Ghosal, Calcutta, January 25, 1985. A few details come from conversations I had with Kumar before I made my first trip to India in 1963. I met Jatindranath Ghosal, a physically powerful and sensitive man, and many other family members in late 1963. Although the Ghosals are kulin Brahmins, among the highest ranked of their caste, I never heard Kumar mention his own caste. Ambunath Ghosal told me of his father's revolutionary career. On Jatin Mukherjee and the German conspiracy, see Government of India, Sedition Committee, 1918, Report (Calcutta: Government of India Press, 1918). Some details about Kumar's family life also come from Mary Braggiotti, “Close-Up of Kumar Ghosal,” New York Post, August 1, 1944.
- Story told to me by Ambunath Ghosal.
- Braggiotti, “Close-Up,” and interview with Ambunath Ghosal.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- This assessment was made by Perry Bruskin, an experienced director and stage manager who knew Kumar in the 1930s, during an interview in New York, November 5, 1985.
- Reviewed in New Theater, the journal of the radical movement of the arts, 1936. The reviewer seems to have been Eleanor Flexner, a staff member. On the radical theatre scene, see Herbert Kline, New Theater and Film 1934 to 1937, An Anthology (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985). Kumar is also remembered from this period by Arthur Vogel, actor and playwright, who was a member of the Shock Troop.
- Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 1, 1936.
- Letter written by Aubrey Williams, Deputy Administrator, Works Progress Administration, to Senator Robert F. Wagner, January 24, 1938. Kumar had to remain a resident alien for a good part of his life. East Indians were originally classified as non-white Orientals and grouped with Filipinos as ineligible to become citizens of the United States in the 1920s. In 1946 a law was passed during the Truman administration allowing some East Indians and Filipinos to become naturalized American citizens. In 1947, Kumar became a citizen. Sushila Gillis has her father's citizenship papers. On the question of Indians becoming American citizens see Emma Wold, “The Restoration of the Right of Indians to American Citizenship,” The Modern Review 80 (Calcutta, October, 1946), 268–71.
- On some of the prominent Indians in the United States, see A. Guy Hope, America and Swaraj (Bombay: Vora, 1968), 17–23. The suggestion about the uniqueness of Kumar's involvement with the American left was given to me by Asok Dutt, interview, New York, May 5, 1985.
- Braggiotti, “Close-Up.”
- On Amerasia, see Frederick Vanderbilt Field, From Right to Left: An Autobiography (Westport, Connecticutt: Lawrence Hill, 1983), 127; David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 55–56.
- James C. Thomson, Jr., Peter W. Stanley, John Curtis Perry, Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia (New York: Harper Colophon, 1982), 230–32; Field, Right to Left, 116.
- Kumar Goshal, “India—A Key to Victory,” Amerasia VI: 1 (March 1942), 36–41. On the text series, see Institute of Pacific Relations, Biennial Report of American Council of I.P.R., Inc. 1944–46, 23, in files of the I.P.R., Box 273, Columbia University Library.
- Kate Mitchell and Kumar Goshal, Twentieth Century India, ed. by Maxwell S. Stewart (St. Louis: Institute of Pacific Relations and Webster Publishing Company, 1944). On the text series, see Institute of Pacific Relations, Biennial Report of American Council of I.P.R., Inc. 1944–46, 23, in files of the I.P.R., Box 273, Columbia University Library.
- Braggiotti, “Close-Up.” Details about his speaking are based on my own youthful impressions, comments of many other listeners including Theodora Peck, interview. New York, September 5, 1985, who heard him speak on many occasions.
- Braggiotti, “Close-Up.”
- Kumar Goshal, The People of India (New York: Sheridan House, 1944), 180.
- Based on conversations with Kumar Goshal. My father Reuben Gordon was a close friend of Kumar and Alphaeus Hunton. Also based on a telephone interview with Dorothy Hunton, wife of the late Alphaeus Hunton, April 25, 1985. Mr. Hunton taught at Howard University until 1941, worked with the Council on African Affairs from 1942 to 1955, and lived in Africa from 1960 to 1970. See Dorothea Hunton, Alphaeus Hunton, The Unsung Valiant (New York: Eppress Speed Print, 1986).
- Kumar Goshal, People in Colonies (New York: Sheridan House, 1948), 14.
- Goshal, Colonies, 29.
- Goshal, Colonies, 83, 289–90. This is true of his many articles in the National Guardian, which contain numerous references to the Soviet Union over the years. Two Western scholars who have investigated this idealization of the communist nations are: David Caute, The Fellow-Travellers, A Postscript to the Enlightenment (New York: Macmillan, 1973) and Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba (New York: Harper and Row, 1983).
- Cedric Beitrage, letter to Kumar Goshal, July 7, 1948.
- Caute's The Great Fear, cited above, is an excellent study of the period. On the Goshal family in this period, interviews with K. P. Dalal, New Delhi, 1985; Enuga Reddy, New York, April 24, 1985; and Sushila Gillis.
- Interview with Asok Dutt, New York, March 5, 1985.
- Caute, Great Fear, 174; Field, Right to Left, 206; Thomson, Perry, Stanley, Sentimental Imperialists, 217.
- Interview with James Aronson, New York, March 5, 1985.
- Letter to this writer from Cedric Belfrage, August 2, 1985, from Cuernavaca, Mexico. On Kumar's oral and fundraising abilities: interview with Theodora Peck, September 5, 1985. Even the account by Cedric Belfrage and James Aronson, Something to Guard: The Life Story of the National Guardian 1948–1967 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 54, which does not contain many generous comments about the staff who made the paper, mentions Kumar's oral talents. Interview with Harry Magdoff, New York, February 27, 1985; and with Carl Marzani, by telephone, July 23, 1985.
- Guardian, December 5, 1960.
- On Africa: Guardian, “Africa Today: The Newest and Biggest Battleground for Human Freedom,” April 13, 1959; on South Asia, Guardian, December 7, 1953.
- Guardian, January 6, 1958.
- For example, see his articles in the Guardian, January 2, 1956 and January 27, 1958. His article on Nigeria, after a brief visit to that country appeared August 21, 1961. Although the Guardian was positive about the international communist movement, it also retained its independence, and criticized the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, was most unhappy with Soviet atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and placed some blame for the Cuban missile crisis on the Soviets.
- See his articles. Guardian, November 7, 1955, January 2, 1956, January 7, 1957, January 21, 1957, and March 7, 1960. On the need for the Chinese at the conference table, Guardian, October 13, 1958. He reiterated this often.
- Goshal in the Guardian, February 6, 1961; March 13, 1961; May 1, 1961; March 5 and 26, 1962. The Guardian refused to select between Kennedy and Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, but ran a long article by Corliss Lamont favoring a vote for Kennedy.
- Guardian, May 22 to October 30, 1961, contains the articles he wrote on his trip and a description of it. On the Congo, articles of July 25, August 1, 15, 22, September 12, November 7, 21, December 5 and 19, 1960.
- Guardian, August 14, 1961.
- Guardian, July 31, August 7 and 14, September 4, 1961; on Cuba, August 10 and 17, 1959.
- Guardian, June 12, 1961.
- Guardian, October 16, 23, and 30, 1961.
- Guardian, January 29, 1962
- See their articles, Guardian, November 5 and 29, December 6 and 20, 1962.
- See “A Fool's Game,” Review of the Month, Monthly Review 14: 9 (January 1963): 465–86. Although I think much of this piece is accurate, I think that they have a simplistic view of the ruling class in India, an inaccurate vie w of Nehru, a great underestimation of the power of nationalism, and an unwillingness to see any fault in the Chinese occupation of Tibet, or the Chinese Imperial claims put forth by a government espousing Marxism. On the other hand, the Indians are, as they say, putting forth the claims of a former imperial government and unwilling to make a sensible bargain on the boundry. Kumar, I believe, also, erred in arguing that the Chinese had all kinds of ulterior political motives. And Kumar did not see the weaknesses of the Indian case on the boundary and their foolishness in precipitating the armed conflict for which they were unprepared. The best book on the border conflict remains Neville Maxwell, India's China War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970). Maxwell is much more acute and informed about the Indian shortcomings, motivations, and confusions than he is about the Chinese.
- Guardian, January 17, 1963.
- Guardian, February 28, 1963.
- See Belfrage and Aronson, Something to Guard, 178; Caute, Great Fear, 239–40; the Guardian, from 1953 to 1955 has many articles on the deportation fight. After his deportation, Belfrage was called editor-in-exile.
- This is my own view after talking with Aronson, Peck, and Bob and Peggy Joyce (Shelter Island, August 3, 1985), and with Elmer Bendiner, by telephone, March 4, 1985. I also saw Kumar numerous times after he left the paper and talked with Bob Light at the time.
- New World Review, October 1966, 19.