Of a dream shattered
PARTHO DATTA
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A historic moment when hopes were raised in the colonies by Wilson’s call for self-determination
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THE WILSONIAN MOMENT — Self- Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism: Erez Manela; Oxford University Press Inc., 198, Madison Avenue, New York 10016. $ 29.99
Erez Manela’s unusual book is a history of the hopes raised in the colonies by President Woodrow Wilson’s call for self-determination after the First World War. This “Wilsonian Moment” — from the autumn of 1918 when Allied victory seemed imminent until the spring of 1919 when the true intentions of the imperial powers emerged — generated huge enthusiasm for the U.S. Manela charts in detail this “pro-American” bubble in international politics.
Rhetoric
Wilson’s support of American colonisation of the Phillipines meant that he was unlikely to support self-determination elsewhere. So his call remained rhetorical. The European powers at the Paris Conference in 1919 were also unlikely to support such a move and they nipped in the bud any demands from the subject colonies about autonomy or independence. It was this failure to deliver that led to a fresh bout of political uprisings throughout the colonial world. The British had to cope with Zaghlul’s movement in Egypt and Gandhiji’s satyagraha in India. The Koreans launched the March First agitation against Japanese rule and the Chinese their May Fourth movement.
The history of Wilson’s intervention has therefore been viewed with scepticism and individual histories of the emerging nation-states often ignore the ramifications of Wilson’s call. However, as Manela shows skilfully it is also possible to do a history of nationalism “outside-in” instead of the standard “inside-out” accounts. What he means by this is that nationalism as an ideology and as a form of political practice needs to be seen within a broad international context. For this facet too was a galvanising force in the colonies.
Wilson’s vague advocacy of self-determination and the League of Nations despite all its shortcomings did offer for a time a more equitable model of international relations. In June 1919, for instance, a relatively unknown 28-year-old kitchen assistant from French Indochina, Nguyen Tat Thanh, took the trouble to write to Wilson a letter entitled “The Claims of the People of Annam”. His gesture shows how widespread was Wilson’s appeal. Thanh however quickly grew disenchanted and embraced Bolshevism and became famous throughout the world as Ho Chi Minh.
Attempts in India
Indian nationalists too made attempts to reach out to the U.S. One forgotten episode in Indian history textbooks concerns Sir Subramanya Aiyar, a retired Madras judge, who was also the honorary president of the Home Rule League. Outraged at the arrest of Annie Besant on charges of sedition he wrote an appeal to Wilson which was smuggled out of India to evade British censors by Henry Hotchner, an American theosophist. The letter was given wide publicity and was even reprinted in The Times, London, provoking outrage in the British political establishment. Aiyar was later rebuked by Viceroy Lord Chelmsford and he resigned his knighthood in protest. King George himself suggested that the colonial government should terminate his pension. Aiyar was spared this punishment because the government did not want to make a political martyr of “this silly old man.”
Parallel developments
Indian revolutionaries in the U.S. like Ram Chandra, a leading activist of the Ghadr movement, tried establishing contacts with the Wilson government. However, the Ghadrs were shunned because they had connections with the enemy Germans. More successful in this endeavour was Lala Lajpat Rai who campaigned throughout the war years in the U.S. for India’s freedom. Interestingly, Rabindranath Tagore who was also touring U.S. during this time was so enthused about self-determination that he even thought of dedicating his book Nationalism to Wilson.
With mounting nationalist pressure the colonial government in India appointed two loyal representatives, S.P.Sinha and Maharaja of Bikaner, Ganga Singh, to the Peace Conference. The latter impressed everybody by winning India a seat in the League of Nations and throwing extravagant parties in Paris. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the official representative of the Indian National Congress, not surprisingly, was denied a visa to attend the Paris Conference. He managed to reach London and used his energies to mount a propaganda campaign for India trying in vain to win Wilson’s attention. This was a cautious and moderate Tilak, in a new phase of his political career, following the path that Dadabhai Naroji had initiated in England decades ago.
Manela’s book makes fascinating reading especially since it also dwells on the exciting parallel developments in Korea, China and Egypt at the same time.
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