Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T23:30:22.484Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Imagining Asia in India: Nationalism and Internationalism (ca. 1905–1940)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2012

Carolien Stolte*
Affiliation:
Leiden University
Harald Fischer-Tiné
Affiliation:
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich

Extract

Asianisms, that is, discourses and ideologies claiming that Asia can be defined and understood as a homogenous space with shared and clearly defined characteristics, have become the subject of increased scholarly attention over the last two decades. The focal points of interest, however, are generally East Asian varieties of regionalism. That “the cult of Asianism” has played an important role on the Indian subcontinent, too—as is evident from the quote above—is less understood. Aside from two descriptive monographs dating back to the 1970s, there has been relatively little scholarly engagement with this phenomenon. In this article, we would like to offer an overview of several distinct concepts of Asia and pan-Asian designs, which featured prominently in both political and civil society debates in India during the struggle for Independence. Considering the abundance of initiatives for Asian unification, and, in a more abstract sense, discourses on Asian identity, what follows here is necessarily a selection of discourses, three of which will be subjected to critical analysis, with the following questions in mind:

  • What were the concrete motives of regional—in this case Indian—actors to appropriate the concept of Asianism? Is the popularity of supranational frames of reference solely to be explained as an affirmation of a distinctive identity vis-à-vis the imagined powerful West, or are there other motives to be found?

  • What were the results of these processes of appropriation, and how were these manifested politically and culturally?

  • What tensions resulted from the simultaneous existence of various nationalisms in Asia on the one hand and macro-nationalistic pan-Asianism on the other?

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 From Asianism and other Essays (Calcutta: Arya Publishing House, 1930)Google Scholar, 1. Banerji was Professor of English at Bangabasi College, Calcutta, and a friend of Chittaranjan Das, who propagated pan-Asianism in the Indian National Congress in the 1920s.

2 Among others: Saaler, Sven and Koschmann, Victor J., eds., Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism, and Borders (London: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar; Aydin, Cemil, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hotta, Eri, Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Szpilman, Christopher W. A., “The Dream of One Asia: Ôkawa Shûmei and Japanese Pan-Asianism,” in Füss, Harald, ed., The Japanese Empire in East Asia and Its Post War Legacy (München: Iudicium, 1997), 4963Google Scholar; Koschmann, Victor J., “Asianism's Ambivalent Legacy,” in Katzenstein, P. J. und Shiraishi, Takashi, eds., Network Power: Japan and Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Duus, Peter, “Imperialism without Colonies: The Vision of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 7, 1 (1996): 5472CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Prasad, Birendra, Indian Nationalism and Asia (1900–1947) (Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation, 1979)Google Scholar; and Hay, Stephen, Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China, and India (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also: Keenleyside, T. A., “Nationalist Indian Attitudes towards Asia: A Troublesome Legacy for Post-Independence Indian Foreign Policy,” Pacific Affairs 55, 2 (1982): 210–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Krása, Miroslav, “The Idea of Pan-Asianism and the Nationalist Movement in India,” Archiv Orientálni 40 (1972): 3860Google Scholar. For the resurgence of Asianist discourses in India since the 1990s, see Jaffrelot, Christophe, “India's Look East Policy: An Asianist Strategy in Perspective,” Indian Review 2, 2 (2003): 3568CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An excellent recent contribution, which unfortunately reached the authors too late for a thorough response, is Frost, Mark, “‘That Great Ocean of Idealism’: Calcutta, the Tagore Circle and the Idea of Asia, 1900–1920,” in Moorthy, S. and Jamal, A., eds., Indian Ocean Studies: Cultural, Social and Political Perspectives (New York and London: Routledge, 2010), 251–79Google Scholar.

4 Duara, Prasenjit, “The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism,” Journal of World History 12 (2001): 99130CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003)Google Scholar. See also Gong, G. W., The Standard of Civilization in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984Google Scholar).

5 See also Osterhammel, Jürgen, “The Great Work of Uplifting Mankind: Zivilisierungsmission und Moderne,” in Barth, B. and Osterhammel, J., eds., Zivilisierungsmissionen: Imperiale Weltverbesserung seit dem 18. Jahrhundert (Konstanz: UVK, 2005), 335425Google Scholar; Bell, Duncan, The Idea of Greater Britain Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 202–6Google Scholar; Mann, Michael, “Torchbearers upon the Path of Progress—Britain's Ideology of ‘Material and Moral Progress’ in India: An Introductory Essay,” in Fischer-Tiné, H. und Mann, M., eds., Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India (London: Anthem Press, 2004), 126Google Scholar; Sartori, Andrew, “The Resonance of ‘Culture’: Framing a Problem in Global Concept-History,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 47, 4 (2005): 676–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Spengler, Oswald, Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, 2 Bde. (München: C. H. Beck, 1923)Google Scholar. See also Farrenkopf, John, “Spengler's Historical Pessimism and the Tragedy of Our Age,” Theory and Society 22, 3 (1993): 391412CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Duara, Prasenjit, “The Imperialism of ‘Free Nations’: Japan, Manchukuo, and the History of the Present,” in Stoler, A. L., McGranahan, C., and Perdue, P. C., eds., Imperial Formations (Santa Fe, N.Mex.: School for Advanced Research Press, 2007), 214Google Scholar.

8 Bose, S., A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Ibid., 31.

10 Ibid., 68.

11 See, for example: Brennan, T., “Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism,” in Archibugi, D., ed., Debating Cosmopolitics (London: Verso, 2003), 4050Google Scholar; Duara, Prasenjit, “Transnationalism and the Predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900–1945,” American Historical Review 102, 4 (Oct. 1997): 1030–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cheah, P., “Given Culture: Rethinking Cosmopolitical Freedom in Transnationalism,” Boundary 2 24, 2 (Summer 1997): 157–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See, for instance, the poetry of the renowned Bengali writer Hem Chandra Bannerjee from the 1870s. Prasad, Indian Nationalism, 26–27.

13 Damen, Frans, Crisis and Religious Renewal in the Brahmo Samaj: A Study of the New Dispensation under Keshab Chandra Sen (Leuven: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1983)Google Scholar; and Kopf, David, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar. For a short discussion of Keshabs concept of Asia: Prasad, Birendra, “Keshab Chandra Sen: Prophet of Pan Asianism,” Quarterly Review of Historical Studies 15, 2 (1975–1976): 122–25Google Scholar.

14 Slater, T. E., Keshab Chandra Sen and the Brahma Samaj: Being a Brief Review of Indian Theism from 1830 to 1884; Together with Selections from Mr. Sen's Works (Madras: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1884), 135Google Scholar.

15 Dirlik, Arif, “Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism,” History and Theory, 35, 2 (1996): 96118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Lüddeckens, Dorothea, Das Weltparlament der Religionen von 1893. Strukturen interreligiöser Begegnung im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin-New York: De Gruyter, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Seager, Richard Hughes, The World's Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter, Chicago 1893 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

17 See Majumdar, Pratapchandra, The World's Religious Debt to Asia. Being the Substance of an Address Delivered at the Parliament of Religions, Chicago (Lahore: Punjab Brahmo Samaj, 1894)Google Scholar.

18 The speeches of Vivekananda at this forum are printed in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (Almora, 1955), vol. I, 122Google Scholar; and Rev. Barrows, John Henry, ed., The World's Parliament of Religions. An Interesting and Popular Story of the World's First Parliament of Religions Held in Chicago in Connection with the Columbian Exhibition of 1893 (Chicago: Parliament Publishing Co., 1893), vol. I., 102, and vol. II., 968–78Google Scholar. A good analysis is found in Hatcher, Brian A., Eclecticism and Modern Hindu Discourse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4770Google Scholar; and Chowdhury-Sengupta, Indira, “Reconstructing Hinduism on a World Platform: The World's First Parliament of Religions, Chicago 1893,” in Radice, William, ed., Swami Vivekananda and the Modernisation of Hinduism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1735Google Scholar.

19 Vivekananda, , “The Abroad and the Problems at Home,” in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1979), vol. V, 209–10Google Scholar.

20 Sareen, T. R., “India and the War,” in Kowner, Rotem, ed., The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War (London: Routledge, 2007), 239–50Google Scholar; Dharampal-Frick, Gita, “Der Russisch-Japanische Krieg und die indische Nationalbewegung,” in Sprotte, M. H., Seifert, W., and Löwe, H. D., eds., Der Russisch-Japanische Krieg 1904/05: Anbruch einer neuen Zeit? (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007), 259–76Google Scholar; and Dua, R. P., The Impact of the Russo-Japanese (1905) War on Indian Politics (Delhi: S. Chand, 1966)Google Scholar.

21 Their numbers rose from fifty-four in 1906 to well over a hundred in 1910. Fischer-Tiné, Harald, “Indian Nationalism and the ‘World Forces’: Transnational and Diasporic Dimensions of the Indian Freedom Movement on the Eve of the First World War,” Journal of Global History 2, 3 (2007): 325–44, here 336CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Fischer-Tiné, , “Indian Nationalism,” 341–43; Yukiko Sumi Barnett, “India in Asia: Okawa Shûmei's Pan-Asian Thought and His Idea of India in Early Twentieth-Century Japan,” Journal of the Oxford University History Society 1 (2004): 123, here 6–9Google Scholar; and Aydin, Politics of Anti-Westernism, 113–21. See also Bose, Arun Coomer, Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 1905–1922: In the Background of International Developments (Patna: Bharati Bhawan, 1971), 6781Google Scholar; and Sareen, T. R., Indian Revolutionaries, Japan and British Imperialism (New Delhi: Anmol, 1993)Google Scholar.

23 British Library, Asia, Africa and Pacific Collection, India Office Records (henceforth APAC, IOR), Pos 8959, Government of India, Home Department, Political Proceedings (B) 24 (July 1907–Sept. 1908), Prog. 145, “Weekly Report of the Director of Criminal Intelligence for the Week Ending July 27th 1907.” The Report quotes the letter sent by an Indian student in Japan. The writer complains that the thirty-five Indian students in Tokyo “have to face great difficulties,” not least because, “Japanese do not hesitate to treat them with contempt.”

24 See also Best, Antony, “India, Pan-Asianism and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance,” in O'Brien, P., ed., The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902–1922 (London: Routledge, 2004), 236–48Google Scholar.

25 Prasad, Indian Nationalism, 47.

26 Friedman, Irving S., “Indian Nationalism and the Far East,” Pacific Affairs 13, 1 (1940): 1729, here 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Rai, Lala Lajpat, Young India: An Interpretation and a History of the Nationalist Movement from Within (London: Home Rule for India League, 1917)Google Scholar.

27 A Suggestion for a Pan-Asian Union in Paris,” Indian Sociologist 5, 4 (1909): 16Google Scholar.

28 Prasad, Indian Nationalism, 94; and Mehrotra, S. R., “The Development of the Indian Outlook on World Affairs before 1947,” Journal of Development Studies 1, 3 (1965): 269–94, here 280CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Thampi, Madhavi, Indians in China 1800–1949 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2005), 200Google Scholar. See also Prasad, Indian Nationalism, 151–74.

30 Among other things, this solidarity found expression in the sending of a medical mission to China, received by one Hengchi Tao with the following words: “These Angels of Mercy have in their hands not only the cure for the wounded but also love to bind together the hearts of these two great nations.” Harijan, 22 Oct. 1938: 296.

31 For instance T. Kurose, who enlisted the support of many Bengali youths in Calcutta. APAC, IOR, L/PJ/12/158, Weekly Intelligence Report, 3 Dec. 1938.

32 The Indo-Japanese Society in Calcutta co-funded a monthly review to highlight the “Asiatic” and “anti-European side” of Japan's policy. Other examples include: “A Japanese Visitor,” Harijan, 24 Dec. 1938: 404; Japanese Professor T. Kurose, in the Singh Observer, Dec. 1938: n.p.; and the Tagore-Noguchi correspondence published in both Amrita Bazar Patrika and Visva Bharati Quarterly in September 1938.

33 At the subscription rate of 1 yen, a price probably aimed at both a wide circulation and a student readership. APAC, IOR, L/PJ/12/163, on Rash Behari Bose, British Embassy Tokyo, 31 May 1933.

34 IOR, L/PJ/12/158, British Consulate General at Kobe, 30 Sept. 1938.

35 For a general account, see Manela, Erez, The Wilsonian Moment. Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; and Manela, Erez, “Imagining Woodrow Wilson in Asia: Dreams of East-West Harmony and the Revolt against Empire in 1919,” American Historical Review 111, 6 (2006): 1327–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Keenleyside, “Nationalist Indian Attitudes,” 217. As Cemil Aydin has recently demonstrated, this was emphatically not the only attempt to combine pan-Islamism and pan-Asianism. Aydin, Politics of Anti-Westernism, passim. See also Esenbel, Selçuk, “Japan's Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945,” American Historical Review 109, 4 (2004): 1140–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 “Speech at the Special Session of the League of Nations, Geneva, 8 March 1932,” in Aziz, K. K., ed., Aga Khan III: Selected Speeches and Writings of Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah, Vol. II: 1928–1955 (London: Routledge, 1997), 900–1Google Scholar.

38 “Speech in the General Assembly of the League of Nations, Geneva, 3 October 1932,” in idem, 911. This sentiment is echoed in both Kalidas Nag's writings on Aryan civilization in Central Asia and Tagore's sojourn in Persia and Iraq (1932), where he, too, emphasized the ancient linkages of both these countries to India. See Tagore, Rabindranath, Journey to Persia and Iraq (Santiniketan: Visva Bharati, 1994)Google Scholar.

39 “Speech, General Assembly of the League of Nations, Geneva, 27 September 1934,” in Aziz, K. K., ed., Aga Khan III: Selected Speeches and Writings of Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah, Vol. II: 1928–1955 (London: Routledge, 1997), 1039Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., 1040.

41 For accounts of the Khilafat movement in India and its ties to (Pan-)Islamism in a wider sense, see Minault, Gail, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Hasan, Mushirul and Pernau, Margrit, eds., Regionalizing Pan-Islamism: Documents on the Khilafat Movement (Delhi: Manohar, 2005)Google Scholar; Qureshi, M. Naeem, Pan-Islam in British-Indian Politics: A Study of the Khilafat Movement 1918–1924 (Leiden: Brill, 1999)Google Scholar; Hasan, M., Pan-Islam versus Indian Nationalism: A Reappraisal (New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, 1995)Google Scholar; Özcan, A., Pan-Islamism, Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain 1877–1924 (Leiden: Brill, 1997)Google Scholar.

42 Examples of these bulletins are the Urdu-language Khilafat-I ‘Usmaniyya (a weekly, later continued as a daily under the name Khilafat), or the English weekly Khilafat Bulletin.

43 Editorial, Khilafat Bulletin (published by the Central Khilafat Committee of India, Bombay), 11 Aug. 1922: 2.

44 For an excellent account of the Khilafat movement and Congress, see M. Naeem Qureshi, Pan-Islam in British-Indian Politics.

45 M. Hasan, Pan-Islamism, XXVI, Sept. 1985, 10.

46 Krása, “The Idea of Pan-Asianism,” 246.

47 Ibid. See also Banerji, Asianism and other Essays.

48 Virendranath Chattopadhyaya was a revolutionary in exile, who succeeded M. N. Roy to the Indian leadership of the Comintern. At the time, Chattopadhyaya was the League Against Imperialism's secretary in Germany. For biographical details, see Barooah, Nirode K., The Life and Times of an Indian Anti-Imperialist in Europe (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

49 Nehru to Chattopadhyaya, 16 Jan. 1929, P. C. Joshi Archives, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, LAI file 7.

50 Mirza, Bakar Ali, “The Congress against Imperialism,” Modern Review 11, 5 (May 1927): 555–66Google Scholar.

51 Brecher, Michael, Nehru: A Political Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 109–10Google Scholar.

52 Joint Resolution by the Asian Delegations, International Institute for Social History, League Against Imperialism Archives, file 28.

53 Membership of the former was blocked by moderate sections in the All-India Trade Union Congress, but India received a seat on the latter. Eudin, X. J. and North, R. C., Soviet Russia and the East, 1920–1927: A Documentary Survey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), 268Google Scholar. See also Fowler, J., “From East to West and West to East: Ties of Solidarity in the Pan-Pacific Revolutionary Trade Union Movement, 1923–1934,” International Labour and Working Class History 66 (2004): 99117Google Scholar.

54 For details, see Prayer, Mario, “Italian Fascist Regime and Nationalist India, 1921–45,” International Studies 28, 3 (1991): 249–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Valdo, Ferretti: “Politica e cultura: origini e attività dell'IsMeo durante il regime fascista,” Storia contemporanea 17, 5 (1986): 779819Google Scholar.

55 Memorandum on the Asiatic Congress in Rome, 22–27 Dec. 1933, APAC, IOR, P&J/12/475.

56 Several prominent Indian pan-Asianists living in Japan were also part of the INA, such as A. M. Sahay and R. B. Bose, and as a movement it had its pedigree in pan-Asian thought. However, extensive treatment of the INA falls outside of our chronological and thematic scope here. For details, see S. Bose, K., A Beacon across Asia: A Biography of Subhas Chandra Bose (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1973)Google Scholar; Gupta, S. S., Our Struggle and Rash Behari Bose (Calcutta: Books of the World, 1951)Google Scholar; Oshawa, J. G., Two Great Indians in Japan: Shri Rash Behari Bose and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (Calcutta: Kusa Publications, 1954)Google Scholar; Ramu, P. S., Rash Behari Bose: A Revolutionary “Unwept, Unhonoured and Unsung” (New Delhi: The Freedom Movement Memorial Committee, 1998)Google Scholar.

57 Bombay Chronicle, 12 Mar. 1947.

58 Bombay Chronicle, 21 Jan. 1949.

59 Jansen, G. H., Afro-Asia and Non-Alignment (London: Faber, 1966), 51Google Scholar.

60 All three discourses have wielded considerable influence, but it is not argued here that they were the only or main architects of Indian pan-Asianism; other strong influences, besides the developments traced above, include the substantial interaction between South India and Southeast Asia, North India and Central Asia, Buddhist revivalism, networks of lascars, revolutionaries, and many others.

61 See Osterhammel, Jürgen, Die Entzauberung Asiens: Europa und die asiatischen Reiche im 18. Jahrhundert (München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1998)Google Scholar; Teltscher, Kate, India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India 1600–1800 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

62 King, Richard, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and “the Mystic East” (London: Routledge, 1999), 141–42Google Scholar; and Bevir, Mark, “The West Turns Eastward: Madame Blavatsky and the Transformation of the Occult Tradition,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62, 3 (1994): 747–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the political engagement of the Theosophical Society in India, by the same author, see “Theosophy as a Political Movement,” in Copley, Antony, ed., Gurus and Their Followers: New Religious Reform Movements in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

63 For Gandhi's involvement with theosophical ideas, see Bergunder, Michael, “Gandhi, Esoterik und das Christentum,” in Bergunder, Michael and Cyranka, Daniel, eds., Esoterik und das Christentum: Religionsgeschichtliche und theologische Perspektiven (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2005), 129–48Google Scholar.

64 Bharucha, Rustom, Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 The best biography still is Dutta, Krishna and Robinson's, AndrewRabindranath Tagore: The Myriad Minded Man (London: Bloomsbury, 1995)Google Scholar.

66 Kakuzo, Okakura, The Ideals of the East: With Special Reference to the Art of Japan (London: John Murray, 1904)Google Scholar.

67 A reworked version was soon published in English: Tagore, Rabindranath, Nationalism (London: Macmillan, 1917)Google Scholar.

68 Cited in Hay, Asian Ideas, 64.

69 Fischer-Tiné, Harald, “‘Deep Occidentalism’?—Europa und der Westen in der Wahrnehmung hinduistischer Intellektueller und Reformer (ca. 1890–1930),” Journal of Modern European History 4, 2 (2006): 189–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 It must be noted that for all his essentializing of Asia and the “Asian mentality,” Tagore remained a cosmopolitan to the end, cautioning repeatedly against full denial of the West, which he also recognized to have spiritual traditions. See Williams, Louise B., “Overcoming the Contagion of Mimicry: The Cosmopolitan Nationalism and Modernist History of Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats,” American Historical Review 112, 1 (2007): 69100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bharucha, Another Asia, 94–98.

71 Tagore, Nationalism, 59.

72 The Bengali Nobel Prize laureate was convinced that Japan, after it had overcome the “sickness” of westernization, would come into its own true Asian Self and rediscover spirituality and non-violence. Only after the Japanese invasion of China did Tagore find himself forced to rethink his optimism. See Tagore, Rabindranath, “A Letter to an Indian Friend in Japan,” Modern Review 63, 6 (1938), 622–26, here 623–24Google Scholar.

73 Hay, Asian Ideas, 116–18.

74 Tagore, Rabindranath, “International Relations (A Lecture Delivered in Japan),” The Visva-Bharati Quarterly 2, 4 (1925): 307–16, 316Google Scholar.

75 Described in greater detail in Sachsenmaier, Dominic, “Searching for Alternatives to Western Modernity: Cross-Cultural Approaches in the Aftermath of the Great War,” Journal of Modern European History 4, 2 (2006): 241–59, here 250–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dutta and Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore, 251–52.

76 “Speech to the Children of the Confucian School, Kuala Lumpur, on 6th August, 1927,” in Gupta, S. Das, Tagore's Asian Outlook (Calcutta: Nava Bharati, 1961), 66Google Scholar.

77 Tagore's address to the Chinese community at Penang, 24 July 1927, quoted in idem, 66.

78 See, for example, the writings of contemporary East Asian intellectuals close to Tagore's own position: Chao, Liang Chi, “China's Debt to India,” Visva-Bharati Quarterly 2, 3. (1924): 251–61Google Scholar; Zumoto, Matosada, “Japan and the Pan-Asiatic Movement,” News Bulletin of the Institute of Pacific Relations (Feb. 1927): 815Google Scholar; and Anahaki, Masaharu, “Western Pressure and Eastern Resistance,” Modern Review 61, 6 (1937): 617–18Google Scholar.

79 India and China,” Visva Bharati Quarterly (May 1937): 2934Google Scholar, here 32.

80 Tagore to Noguchi, letter dated 1 Sept. 1938, in Gupta, S. Das, Tagore's Asian Outlook (Calcutta: Nava Bharati, 1961): 138–51Google Scholar.

81 Harijan, 24 Dec. 1938: 394.

82 As demonstrated by Joseph Alter, particularly in his treatment of P. C. Bagchi's work. Yoga in Asia—Mimetic History: Problems in the Location of Secret Knowledge,” in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 29, 2 (2009): 213–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 C.F.A., Harijan, 4 Feb. 1939: 456.

84 Cited in Prasad, Indian Nationalism, 107.

85 Editorial, Young India, 1 Mar. 1928: 67.

86 “Mahatma to Address Inter-Asian Meet?” Bombay Chronicle, 24 Mar. 1947: 1.

87 “Questions and Answers between Gandhi and Delegates,” Harijan, 20 Apr. 1947: 113.

88 Ibid.: 116.

89 Ibid.: 117.

90 Kalidas Nag was not only an admirer of the Bengali poet but also a close collaborator, accompanying Tagore on his tour of France in 1920, and his tour of Asia four years later.

91 See Bayly, Susan, “Imagining ‘Greater India’: French and Indian Visions of Colonialism in the Indic Mode,” Modern Asian Studies 38, 3 (2004): 703–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “India's “Empire of Culture”: Sylvain Lévi and the Greater India Society,” in Bansat-Boudon, L. and Lardinois, R., eds., Sylvain Lévi (1863–1935): Études Indiennes, histoire sociale: Actes du Colloque tenu a Paris les 8–10 Octobre 2003 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2007), 193212CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 The popularity of Lévi spread far wider than the small circle of his students. Tagore invited him to Santiniketan in Bengal, where he was the first foreign visiting professor in 1921/22 at Vishva-Bharati, the university founded by the poet. See Lardinois, Roland, L'invention de l'Inde. Entre ésotérisme et science (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2007), 211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nag, Kalidas, Discovery of Asia (Calcutta: Institute of Asian African Relations, 1957), 1011Google Scholar.

93 Bayly, Susan, “French Anthropology and the Durkheimians in Colonial Indochina,” Modern Asian Studies 34, 3 (2000): 581622Google Scholar.

94 Lévi, Sylvain, L'Inde civilisatrice: aperçu historique (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1938)Google Scholar. A collection of his writings on the topic, which Lévi wrote with two of his students, was translated into English by P. C. Bagchi and published in India: Lévi, Sylvain, Przyluski, Jean, and Bloch, Marc, Pre-Aryan and Pre-Dravidian in India (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1929)Google Scholar.

95 Cited in Nag, Kalidas, “Sylvain Lévi and the Science of Indology,” Journal of the Greater India Society 3, 1 (1936): 313, here 12Google Scholar.

96 This was already evident from his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France. Lévi, Sylvain, Génie de l'Inde, Lardinois, Roland, ed. (Paris: Éditions Allia, 2008)Google Scholar.

97 Lévi and P. C. Bagchi belonged to a Paris society called “Les Amis des Orients” that was shadowed by the British C.I.D., suspected of involvement in “seditious activities.” “Afghans and Indians in Paris,” report by Col. Humphrys, 21 Dec. 1925, APAC, IOR, L/PJ/12/219.

98 Dasgupta, Paresh Chandra, “Cultural Affinity between India and Siam,” Journal of the Greater India Society 17, 1 & 2 (1958): 269308Google Scholar; and Gangoly, O. C., “On Some Hindu Relics in Borneo,” Journal of the Greater India Society 3, 1 (1936): 97103Google Scholar; Nag, Kalidas, Greater India (A Study in Indian Internationalism) (Calcutta: Greater India Society, 1926)Google Scholar; Bagchi, Prabodh Chandra, India and China (Calcutta: Greater India Society, 1927)Google Scholar; Chatterjee, Bijan Raj, Indian Culture in Java and Sumatra (Calcutta: Greater India Society, 1927)Google Scholar; Chakravarti, Niranjan Prasad, India and Central Asia (Calcutta: Greater India Society, 1927)Google Scholar; and Ghoshal, Upendranath, Ancient Indian Culture in Afghanistan (Calcutta: Greater India Society, 1928)Google Scholar; see also Sadananda, , Pilgrimage to Greater India (Calcutta: Swami Sadananda, 1936)Google Scholar.

99 R. C. Majumdar is seen as one of the most influential historians of his generation. Later in life he was known mostly for his monumental publication: Majumdar, R. C. et al. et al., eds., The History and Culture of the Indian People, 11 vols. (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1951–1977)Google Scholar. His work is criticized in part for its conservative Hindu-nationalist overtones. See also Rothermund, Dietmar, “Die Geschichtsschreibung im unabhängigen Indien: Bürgerlich-nationale, marxistische und subalterne Perspektiven,” Comparativ 11, 4 (2001): 3139, esp. 31–32Google Scholar.

100 See Handy, E. S. Craighill, “The Renaissance of Indian Culture: Its Significance for the Pacific and the World,” Pacific Affairs 3, 4 (1930): 362–69, 364CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Majumdar, R. C., Ancient Indian Colonies in the Far East, vols. 1 & 2 (Lahore: The Punjab Sanskrit Book Depot, 1927)Google Scholar. Interestingly, Majumdar's writings on “Greater India” were republished in the 1990s: History of the Hindu Colonization and the Hindu Culture in South-East Asia (New Delhi: Classical Publishers, 1996)Google Scholar.

102 Cited in Gottlob, Michael, ed., Historical Thinking in South Asia: A Handbook of Sources from Colonial Times to the Present (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 161–62Google Scholar.

103 Chaudhuri, Kirti N., Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 5859Google Scholar. For the background and content of this understanding of Hindu-“xenology,” see also Halbfass, Wilhelm, India and Europe: An Essay in Philosophical Understanding (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991), 172–96Google Scholar.

104 Tagore, Rabindranath, “Asian Cultural Rapprochement,” Modern Review 54 (Dec. 1933): 661–65, here 661Google Scholar. Contemporary Hindu-nationalist groups have employed a surprisingly similar rhetoric. See also Susan Bayly, “India's ‘Empire of Culture,’” 210–11.

105 It was also different from the perception of Greater India Society's Kalidas Nag, who was eager to search for “Aryan” remnants further west. Nag, K., Greater India; and India and the Middle East (Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar & Sons, 1954)Google Scholar.

106 Hindu Outlook, 27 July 1940: 13.

107 Hindu Outlook, 25 May 1940: 3.

108 Savarkar, Vinayak D., Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? (New Delhi: Bharati Sahitya Sadan, 2005), 17Google Scholar.

109 Rashbehari Bose to Savarkar, 11 July 1938, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Savarkar Private Papers, R6450/23.

110 Idem, letter dated 18 Aug. 1938.

111 Gokhale, B. G., “Theravada Buddhism and Modernization: Anagarika Dhammapala and B. R. Ambedkar,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 34, 1 (1999): 3345, here 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 APAC, IOR, P&J/12/480, Home Department, 9 Apr. 1934.

113 APAC, IOR, P&J/12/45, Far Eastern Department, 29 Aug. 1921.

114 Nehru, Jawaharlal, The Discovery of India (Repr. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992 [1946]), 200–10Google Scholar; and Glimpses of World History (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1964 [1934]), 101–5, 136–40Google Scholar.

115 See also Jaffrelot, “India's Look East Policy,” 38–40.

116 Report on the Proceedings and Documentation of the First Asian Relations Conference, New Delhi, March–April 1947 (New Delhi: Asian Relations Organization, 1948)Google Scholar.

117 See Amrith, Sunil, “Tamil Diasporas across the Bay of Bengal,” American Historical Review 114, 3 (2009): 547–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mann, Michael, Geschichte Indiens vom 18. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: UTB, 2005), 207–75Google Scholar.

118 For Southeast Asian skepticism, see also Keenleyside, “Nationalist Indian Attitudes,” 221.

119 In particular, “Long Live Greater Bharat,” Organiser, 16 Nov. 1949; “Bharat Must Save Tibet,” Organiser, 23 Nov. 1949; “Why India Should Recognize Israel,” Hindu Outlook, 4 Apr. 1950; “The International Aspects of Hindu Nationalism,” Hindu Outlook, 8 Nov. 1953; “Pan-Islam, A Living Force,” Organiser, 22 Feb. 1957.

120 For Sarkar's biography, see Frykenberg, Robert E., “Benoy Kumar Sarkar, 1887–1949, Political Rishi of Twentieth-Century Bengal,” in Berkemer, G. et al. et al., eds., Explorations in the History of South Asia: Essays in Honour of Dietmar Rothermund (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), 197217Google Scholar; and Mukherjee, Haridas, Benoy Kumar Sarkar: A Study (Calcutta: Das Gupta and Co., 1953), 325Google Scholar.

121 For a biography, see: Mukherjee, Tapan K., Taraknath Das: Life and Letters of a Revolutionary in Exile (Calcutta: National Council of Education, 1998)Google Scholar.

122 On the Swadeshi movement, see, inter alia, Goswami, Manu, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 244–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ray, Rajat Kanta, Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875–1927 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), 160206Google Scholar; and Sarkar, Sumit, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903–1908 (New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1973)Google Scholar.

123 Bhattacharya, Swapan Kumar, Indian Sociology: The Role of Benoy Kumar Sarkar (Burdwan: University of Burdwan, 1990), 4054Google Scholar.

124 Lecture at Clark University, Worcester, Mass., Nov. 1917, published as: Sarkar, Benoy Kumar, “The Futurism of Young Asia,” International Journal of Ethics 28, 4 (1918): 521–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 Sarkar, Benoy Kumar, The Futurism of Young Asia and other Essays on the Relations between the East and the West (Berlin: Springer, 1922), ivGoogle Scholar.

126 Sarkar, “Futurism of Young Asia,” 521. See also, Raina, Dhruv and Habib, Irfan S., “The Moral Legitimation of Modern Science: Bhadralok Reflections on Theories of Evolution,” Social Studies of Science 26, 1 (1996): 942, here 27–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127 Sarkar, Benoy Kumar, Hindu Achievements in Exact Sciences (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1918)Google Scholar; Public Finance in Ancient India,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 97 (Sept. 1921): 151–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology: Introduction to Hindu Positivism (Sacred Books of the Hindus, vol. 23) (Allahabad: The Panini Office, 1937 [1914]).

128 Sarkar, Benoy Kumar, “Sino-Japanese Buddhism and Neo-Hinduism,” Modern Review 20 (July 1916): 3947Google Scholar; The Democratic Background of Chinese Culture,” Scientific Monthly 8, 1 (1919): 5865Google Scholar; Reshaping of the Middle East,” Journal of Race Development 9, 4 (1919): 332–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Beginnings of the Republic in China,” Modern Review (Aug. 1920): 119–24; and “Persia and the Persian Gulf (1906–1919),” in Futurism of Young Asia, 38–47.

129 Sarkar, Benoy Kumar, “La Théorie de la Constitution dans la Philosophie Indienne,” Revue de Synthèse Historique 31 (Aug.–Dec. 1920): 4752Google Scholar; Die Lebensanschauung des Inders (Leipzig: Markert and Petters, 1923)Google Scholar; and Societá ed economia nell'India antica e moderna,” Annali di Economia 6, 2 (1930): 303–47Google Scholar.

130 In this context, the volumes of Benoy Kumar Sarkar—Barttamān Jagat (The world of today) (5 Vols., Calcutta: Grihastha Publishing House, 1915–1923)—must be noted, in which he brought to a Bengali readership the culture, society, and politics of the countries that he visited during his first long world tour. See also: Mukherjee, Benoy Kumar Sarkar, 19.

131 Sarkar, “Indo-Asian Contacts,” 133–34.

132 Sarkar, Futurism of Young Asia, 333.

133 Das earned a masters degree in Political Science from the University of Washington in 1911, and his doctorate in 1925 from Georgetown University. For further biographical details, see T. K. Mukherjee, Taraknath Das; Das, Ranendranath, Taraknath Das—Ein Lebensbild des indischen Revolutionärs, Freiheitskämpfers und Gelehrten (Berlin: Taraknath Das-Stiftung, 1996)Google Scholar.

134 On the activities and ideology of the Ghadar, see inter alia: Ramnath, Maia, “Two Revolutions: The Ghadar Movement and India's Radical Diaspora, 1913–1918,” Radical History Review 92 (2005): 730CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoover, Karl, “The Hindu Conspiracy in California, 1913–1918,” German Studies Review 8, 2 (1985): 245–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Puri, Harish K., Ghadar Movement: Ideology, Organisation, and Strategy (Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Josh, Sohan Singh, Hindustan Gadar Party: A Short History, 2 vols. (New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1978)Google Scholar.

135 Apparently he managed to travel the Far East disguised as a patent medicine salesman. APAC, IOR, P&J/12/166: File on Taraknath Das (1923).

136 Quoted in Mukherjee, Taraknath Das, 101.

137 Das, Taraknath, “Pan Asianism, Asian Independence and World Peace,” Modern Review (Jan. 1929): 4452Google Scholar. See also Das, Taraknath, “Awakened Asia and Germany in World Politics,” Calcutta Review (Oct. 1927): 107–13Google Scholar.

138 Steadman, John, The Myth of Asia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), 35Google Scholar.

139 Banerji, Asianism and other Essays, 1.