Meerut and a Hanging - “Young India,” Popular Socialism, And the Dynamics of Imperialism -...

2. On international impact see Pennybacker, From Scottsboro to Munich,
146– 70.
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
Vol. 33, No. 3, 2013 • doi 10.1215/1089201x-2378139 • © 2013 by Duke University Press
360
Meerut and a Hanging “Young India,” Popular Socialism, and the Dynamics of Imperialism
Franziska Roy and Benjamin Zachariah
T his art icle addresses the wider meanings of Meerut, focusing on the period extending from the
run-up to the Meerut Conspiracy Case, which was directed against the “communists” supposedly
conspiring to deprive the king-emperor of his sovereignty in India, up until the hanging of Bhagat
Singh of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha. Through a study of youth movements and the attempted mobiliza-
tion of youth, it explores the impact of Meerut on a wider public and the wider meanings that the trial
acquired for India and an international public opinion, for a burgeoning popular appreciation for social-
ist ideas and ideals, and for the administration of the Empire.
The Meerut Conspiracy Case, as is well known, was directed largely at the emerging radical trade
union and workers’ and peasants’ movements in India, while aiming its blow more specifically at an in-
ternationalist communism or socialism, which was perceived as providing a foothold for foreign radicals
(such as Lester Hutchinson, Philip Spratt, and Benjamin Francis Bradley) and Russian influences. The
prosecution also targeted the rising youth movement in India, though this is often forgotten. In the
Meerut case, youth figured large in the minds of the prosecution — as it had for colonial officials ever
since the (however inept) exploits of Maharashtrian and Bengali terrorism, associated as they were with
the Youngman’s Association, a group that, during this period, exhibited marked socialist tendencies and
had a militant wing, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA), and whose members were some-
times mere college students or even schoolboys.
The public impact of Meerut, however, was not unidirectional or confined to leftists. Outside the
circle of prisoners and communist sympathizers, Meerut came to epitomize the arbitrariness of impe-
rial authority, and it was part of a larger process that created divisions and solidarities at the same time.
Intended by the government to drive a wedge between legitimate nationalists and fanatical communists
in the eyes of an Indian and imperial public, the staged trials ended up creating public sympathy for the
prisoners and a legitimation of a broad language of civil liberties that even conservatives had to pretend
to believe. The trials attracted international attention, became the focal point of international public
opinion of a liberal civil liberties variety, and were condemned by French intellectual Romain Rolland
and German physicist Albert Einstein, among others.

3. See the other essays in this issue of Com-
parati ve Studie s of S outh Asi a, Afri ca and the
Middle East, esp. Raza, “Separating the Wheat
from the Chaff”; Stolte, “Trade Unions on Trial”;
and Louro, “Meerut and the League against
Imperialism.”
these solidarities, see Louro, “Meerut and the
League against Imperialism,” in this volume.
361Franziska Roy and Benjamin Zachariah • Meerut and a Hanging • Meerut Conspiracy Case
Three trends are significant in regard to this
public impact of the Meerut case. First, the state,
in a long period of preparation and thereafter in
the staging of the trial as an act of political theater,
used Meerut as a means to persecute leftists, to de-
fine communism, and to separate the antinational
communists from the more palatable nationalists,
a move that seemed to legitimize nationalism as
long as it was delinked from radical politics of any
description. The state targeted internationalists
in particular: those who linked India with a wider
world and with solidarities beyond the boundaries
of India or the British Empire.
Second, the statist repression that was dem-
onstrated at Meerut had, at least for a while, the
contrary effect of bringing together a wide vari -
ety of anti-imperialist activists, within and outside
India, in a nonsectarian manner, as the very vis-
ible fact of a show trial demonstrated that colonial
justice worked less through a harmonious rule of
law and more through the creation of exceptional
powers.
national public opinion moved toward anti-
imperialist solidarities with the Meerut prisoners,
the Comintern’s message regarding the proper
cause of action with regard to the nationalist
(petty) bourgeoisie in the Comintern’s “class
against class” line of , and therefore its defin-
ing and separating proper communists from non-
communists at the beginning of Stalinism, seemed
to reinforce the government’s aim. In many ways,
Indian communists’ responses to Meerut, backed
in part by their British communist comrades,
showed that a top-down directive from Moscow did
not in fact have the impact that it was supposed to.
Meerut was thus the pivotal point that went a
long way toward defining the politics of the s,
both within and outside India. From the late s,
hastened along by the Meerut Conspiracy Case,
one can see a sharper drawing of political bound-
aries. If the Cawnpore (Kanpur) Conspiracy Case
a few years earlier elicited much interest and com-
munists themselves ascribed the popularizat ion
of their ideology to the case, Meerut did so to a
greater extent. The trial was held in much grander
style, and the accusations essentially amounted
to thought crimes more than anything concrete,
which of course resulted in ideological matters
being discussed threadbare over the course of the
trial. At the same time, the orthodox Comintern
and Soviet attempts to div ide communists from
noncommunists, combined with the Indian gov-
ernment’s attempts to do the same, meant that the
resistance to both their agendas often created the
very transpolitical solidarities against imperialism
and imperialist repression that were to be feared.
At the same time, there paradoxically emerged
into prominence in Indian politics persons who
spoke with Marxist voices and from the perspective
of Marxist world views, without being members of
the Communist Party.
the developments and conventions of public de-
bate at a time when the division of politics in India
was starting to be shaped more clearly around no-
tions of progress and a political Left. A macabre
logic connected the Meerut case, where the sever-
est punishment on offer was transportation for
life, to a hanging that defined the parting of ways
of Left and Right. The wedge that the government
created through Meerut was successful in ensuring
that Mohandas Gandhi refused to put the ques-
tion of clemency for Bhagat Singh on the agenda
of his talks with the viceroy after he unilaterally
withdrew his own civil disobedience movement in
March . The crucial role of organizing youth
and fears about loss of control as related to this
demographic segment are thus the subjects of this
essay, which illustrates the wider trends described
above. This essay, therefore, examines the three
dynamics identified here in connection with their
relevance to the youth movement in India.

6. See Zachariah, Gandhi , chap. 3.
7. See Chandavarkar, Origins of Industrial Capi-
talism in India.
9. See Nehru, Soviet Russia.
10. See Overstreet and Windmiller, Commu-
nism in India, 101–21.
11. See Habib, To Make the Deaf Hear.
12. See Raza, “Separating the Wheat from the
Chaff.”
14. On Sehgal, see Habib, To Make the Deaf
Hear , 141.
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:3 • 201336 2
Background to the Meerut Case
A reminder of the contexts in which the Meerut
case operated is in order here. From the perspec-
tive of the government, Meerut was a necessary
measure to combat an increasingly militant and
well-organized anti-imperialist movement that
of self-expression of much of the political debate
that was becoming increasingly self-assertive by the
end of the s was — even when vaguely art icu-
lated and unsystematically understood — that of
socialism. S. A. [Shripad Amrit] Dange, one of the
Meerut accused, had written Gandhi versus Lenin
in , and across a large section of a politically
aware public, a burgeoning interest in the princi-
ples of the Russian revolution threatened to over-
come the by-now Gandhian Congress’ insistence
on nonviolence. It is by now clear how much Gan-
dhi’s own mobilization in the noncooperation/
Khilafat movement of – relied on his sub-
contracting groups with no more than a necessary
strategic commitment to ahimsa (nonviolence),
such as the Bengali terrorist groups whom Chit-
taranjan Das delivered to the Gandhian movement
at Calcutta. After the loss of momentum following
the end of the noncooperation movement, argu-
ably the only really successful movement Gandhi
ever led, alternatives were more actively sought.
In the late s, politics was pulling away
from the so-called constructive program. A wave of
industrial strikes took place all across the country
and was particularly effective in the Bombay cot-
ton mills, under the leadership of the Communist-
dominated Girni Kamgar Union. was the
year of the Brussels Congress of Oppressed Peo -
ples, which established the League against Impe-
rialism (LAI); many international solidarities were
built there. The Congress, and later the All-India
Trade Union Congress, established affil iations to
the LAI, with Jawaharlal Nehru as the link figure
who brought this about. The Nehrus, father and
son, visited the Soviet Union in November on
the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Oc-
tober Revolution, and Nehru junior returned to
India with great enthusiasm for the Soviet experi-
ence. What might be called a second wave of com-
munism in India can be dated to this period, with
sympathizers rather than recruited activists taking
the lead in promoting a more leftist politics: intel-
lectuals as well as trade unionists and activists. This
was more a Menshevik situation than a Bolshevik
one, as many realized, where good intentions and
broad sympathies rather than vanguardist posi-
tions predominated, and the problem of mobiliza-
tion and of numbers of ideologically sound follow-
ers still had to be solved.
From the point of view of the emergent Com-
munist Party of India (CPI) and the Comintern,
the way forward was through front organizations
such as the LAI itself, where communists took the
lead in organizations that were coalitions with
noncommunists and then gradually took over the
organizations. To this end, Workers’ and Peasants’
Parties (WPPs) were formed across India. But
their aims were not that simple to carry out. From
the burgeoning Youth Leagues that came into
being were often proclaimedly socialist, but what
“socialism” meant in this context varied strongly.
An element of communist and socialist thinking
could be found in many public statements. Bha-
gat Singh’s Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS) had
been drawn into the politics of the Left and the
language of Marxism, and crossovers into a more
Marxist orientation from unlikely beginnings were
not uncommon, as Ali Raza shows for the Kirti
Kisan Party’s Sohan Singh Josh, former Akali and
latterly communist. Many other groups and activ-
ists began to embrace languages and positions in-
fluenced by Marxism or the Soviet model, includ-
ing M. A. (Abdul) Majid (of the Hijrat movement,
the Tashkent school, the Peshawar Conspiracy
Case, and again the Meerut Conspiracy Case), a
communist sympathizer and member of the NBS
from the latter’s founding in , and Kedar
Nath Sehgal, another NBS activist and co-accused
at Meerut.
munist Movement, 2:10.
17. Haig to Langford James, confidential, 29
April 1929, Documents of the Communist Move-
ment, 2 :56 – 57.
ments of the Communist Movement , 2:58.
19. See Narayan, Why Socialism?
20. See Carritt, A Mole in the Crown.
21. Muzaffar Ahmad’s discussions with G. Ad-
hikari, Documents of the Communist Move-
ment , 2:4.
22. H. G. Haig, Secy, Home Dept Pol Br. 20 Feb-
ruary 1929, note, Documents of the Communist
Movement, 2:51–53. On the question of apply-
ing the Public Safety Bill to Spratt and Bradley,
see ibid., 90– 92. A suitable “European” com-
mitting magistrate and sessions judge also had
to be found. See ibid., 91.
36 3Franziska Roy and Benjamin Zachariah • Meerut and a Hanging • Meerut Conspiracy Case
In the run-up to the Meerut trial, the govern-
ment contemplated how to deal with British sub-
jects who were not Indians and had been agitating
in India against imperialism — via the Public Safety
Bill or the trial itself. In the Public Safety
Bill, intended to exclude undesirable British sub-
jects from India, had failed by one vote. The gov-
ernment attempted to reintroduce the bill in the
House with some changes in March , shortly
after the Meerut arrests had been made. The
speaker of the assembly, Vithalbhai Patel, was firm
in his view that either the Meerut case be dropped
and the Public Safety Bill passed, or the Meerut
case continue and the bill dropped. The govern-
ment refused to drop the case, and Patel ruled
that as the bill affected the sub judice Meerut case,
it therefore could not be discussed. Hutchinson,
one of the accused who was in fact arrested not
in March but in June, summarizes the reasons be-
hind the timing of the Meerut Conspiracy Case.
The arrests on March came just a day before the
second legislative assembly sitting over the Public
Safety Bill. An opportunity had arisen to divide
nationalists from communists in the Public Safety
Bill debate and to deter European communists
from getting involved in Indian affairs. The next
strike was expected at Bombay after the soon-to-
be-published Fawcett Commission findings, and
there was a need to find a legal reason to outlaw
the communist movement in India. But although
the government was in a hurry, things did not en-
tirely go according to plan. Alongside and after
the arrests, so much (mostly written and printed)
material had been confiscated in various raids on
organizational and private premises that it was im-
possible to process them in time for a swift start to
the trial. The prosecutor appointed by the gov-
ernment, Langford James, urged patience — Did
the government want a swift start to the case or a
speedy conclusion? “You may say that the earlier
the case can be started the better from your point
of view, [and] you later speak of an earlier deci-
sion. I am not at all sure that an earlier start means
an earlier decision, but I most certainly do feel that
in this case we must at any rate know what stuff we
have got before we can start.”
Langford James did not live to see the end of
the trial, which lasted until , and the ban on
the Communist Party of India and of its organiza-
tions was not achieved until . That was the year
of the founding of the Congress Socia list Party,
which swiftly became another united front organi-
zation, this time the lead being given by non–Com-
munist Party members with a Marxist background,
such as the former Communist Party of the United
States of America (CPUSA) member from Madi-
son, Wisconsin, (and the future “Gandhian”) Jay-
aprakash Narayan. The Comintern followed with
the Popular Front line in , a year later.
That Meerut was going to be a form of politi -
cal theater on both sides was soon clear. The Brit-
ish imperial power was intent on using the trial as
a theatrical gesture. CPI members responded in
kind: the trial was bound to be long and sentences
probably severe. So why not use this public oppor-
tunity to present their cause? They believed that
they had missed a trick earlier, by failing to turn
the Cawnpore Conspiracy Case into a stage for
the trial of British imperialism, and they were able
to agree that the mistake should not be repeated
at Meerut. Theatrical conditions thus prevailed
on a world stage, but unfortunately without a jury
(which is why the trial was at Meerut rather than
Bombay or Calcutta, where, given that there was
a high court, there would be trial by jury). Meerut
had a branch of the WPP and so could plausibly
be the venue for the trial. Englishmen Spratt and
Bradley, the government reasoned, would be un-
likely to ask for a separate trial from their Indian
comrades and so would accept being treated on
par with their Indian comrades even if it meant
forgoing the benefit of trial by jury.

2:94 – 95.
Meerut Conspiracy Case, 110.
No. O-3, 1928, f. 65, All-India Congress Commit-
tee Papers (AICC), Nehru Memorial Museum
and Library, New Delhi (hereafter NMML).
26. See, i.a., Joachim Alwa, Law College,
“Youths, be prepared,” Bombay Chronicle, 24
March 1929, file 724, A (I), 1929, S-29, Maharash-
tra State Archives, Mumbai (hereafter MSA).
27. Idea of To-Day , a minute book of the Bengal
Jute Mill Workers’ Association, Meerut Conspir-
acy Case ( MCC) Exhibits, P. 284. The document
was likely penned by Gopal Basak, one of the
Meerut accused, who was the secretary of the
Bengal Jute Mill Workers’ Association and pres-
ident of the Socialist Youth Congress.
28. Study circles were a feature of practically
all youth leagues and similar organizations, in-
cluding trade unions, to train up a cadre of the
organization well-versed in the theory and or-
ganisation of progressive politics. See, e.g., The
Workers’ and Peasants’ Part y, “A Call to Action,
‘Organisation,’” Exhibits, P. 523, MCC.
The prosecution was of the opinion that
since communists talked freely about revolution in
India, the phrase “depriving of the King-Emperor
of his sovereignty” in Section – of the Indian
Penal Code could easily be made to apply. The
intention to use secret evidence from “Home,”
i.e., Britain, was a sticking point in the prepara-
tions for the trial: the home authorities were un-
comfortable that they would be on dubious legal
grounds in providing material gathered via under-
hand intelligence methods, but “under a certain
amount of pressure they have agreed to do what is
required.”
The Meerut trial, at the time and in hindsight, is
most commonly interpreted as a British reaction
against the early Red Scare and a blow aimed at the
nascent labour and peasant movement. A third pil-
lar, equally important in the nationalist attempts
at mass mobilization as well as the trial, has so far
been ignored: the youth movement. The day after
the arrest of the Meerut accused (minus Hutchin-
son, who was arrested later), Jawaharlal Nehru
stated publicly that the conspiracy case (and the
related house searches) was mounted to “str ike
terror” in the hearts of those who worked for the
labour or youth movement and that it was “primar-
ily directed against the Labour movement and the
Youth League.” “I believe in Youth Movements so
much that I am prepared to sacrifice all other work
to the organisation of youths in India,” Nehru had
written in , and it was clear that the mobiliza-
tion of youth was the work of the future. Members
of the nascent youth (league) movement also in-
terpreted the Meerut arrests as a countermeasure
to the political awakening and crystallizing unity
of youth. Among the reams of material collected
from the raids accompanying the Meerut arrests
were pamphlets and leaflets connected with the
mobilization of youth. A not untypical one, re-
produced below, came in fact from a trade union
organization:
As we take our bold stand on the threshold of the
inception of the second quarter of the twentieth
century — a century replete with tremendous up -
heaval in world factors — a century when phenom-
enal problems are passing through kaleidoscopic
changes — a century rich in the recalcitrant impet-
uosity of the proletariat to break away from the
fetters of oppression and dogmatism — a century
ushering in a new innovation in the realm of sci-
ence; we discern before our eyes that the whole
world [is] on the march of a mighty onrush, and
everything rotten, superanuated [sic ], supersti-
tions is [sic ] shattered to pieces with iconoclastic
zeal of a stupenduous [sic ] magnitude.
New ideas and ideals completely radical in their
outlook are surging through the masses with tor-
rential force and rapidity, the whole world being
in a state of unstable equilibrium. . . .
To-day youth is the prime factor in heralding the
dawn of a new era, unfurling the standard of re-
volt against the old, breaking the barriers of cus-
toms, restrictions thereby raising the moral force
of the world on a plane of ethereal effulgence.
The history of the modern world is the history of
and awakening of the Youth Movement.
Youth leagues and study circles had taken off in
India in a big way around and mushroomed
over the next few years, with the Meerut trial and
Bhagat Singh’s trial and hanging forming the high
point, before the typically vaguely socialistic youth
leagues faded and were absorbed into the broader
volunteer movement . The leagues were built,
however, on a longer-standing discourse about
the particular propensities of youth and a move-
ment in India and the world by and large. A self-
conscious, nationalist Indian youth movement had
begun to emerge from the time of the Gandhian

30. On youth and age as a category, see Hawes
and Hiner, “Hidden in Plain View,” 43–49;
Mintz, “Reflections on Age,” 91 – 94; and Mintz,
“Why the History of Childhood Matters.”
31. See “Record of Proceedings of a Meeting
Relating to the Meerut Conspiracy Case,” 6
June 1929, Home, Poll. 10/IV, 1929, National Ar-
chives of India (NAI). Cited in Documents of the
Communist Movement , 2:61– 65. This was the
consideration material to the evidence for the
trial, but there were other pragmatic judicial
reasons for including Hutchinson in the con-
spiracy case. James thought extraditing him or
prosecuting him under other laws might have
undermined the case.
of British India about the activities of Com-
munists in India, prior to the Institution of the
Meerut Conspiracy Case,” Documents of the
Communist Movement , 2:28.
mass campaigns in the early s, when bodies
such as an auxiliary Congress youth wing (the Hin-
dustani Seva Dal, ), young men’s conferences
(about ), and, in , the Rashtriya Swayamse-
vak Sangh (RSS) were set up.
Whereas Hindu Mahasabhaites such as B. S.
Moonje admired Mussolini’s Italy for the militar y
education and discipline among the youth and the
Black Shirts especially and tried to set up move-
ments modelled along those lines, Congress or-
ganizers such as N. S. Hardikar, who organized
the de facto youth wing of the Indian National
Congress (INC), the Hindustani Seva Dal, drew
inspiration from examples as varied as the Czech
Sokols, the Russian Pioneers, and the Kuomintang
(Guomindang). As we shall see, especially in pop-
ular political discourse, political distinctions that
seem apparent in retrospect, such as that between
fascism and Bolshevism, were not always clearly
drawn. The cognizance of a world spirit of revolt
and change permeated all of these movements
to an unusually high extent. Near ecstatic or, less
often, dystopian invocations of the special place
destined for youth in this tide of change were com-
monplace. Globally, the first half of the twentieth
century was, indeed, the age of youth.
Youth, more generally, funct ioned as the
corporeal link between present and future, and
thus it connected notions about historic failure or
a golden age with utopias or dystopias in a more
concrete way. Youth, in the interwar period espe-
cially, came to carry a variety of attributes that, as a
signifier, functioned irrespective of the actual age
of the individuals concerned. These included en-
ergy, physical vigor, bravery, zeal, a broad outlook
or “world-mindedness,” desire for national renewal
and change, and purity of intent as well as passion,
lack of self-control, a volatile temper, malleability, a
tendency to violence, and impatience. Youth, then,
was a relational and near-metaphysical category for
the active and politicized layers of society, which
swayed from accepted frameworks for engaging in
the public sphere or challenged the more conser-
vative sections of their own parties. Youth was to be
feared because it deviated from the norms of social
behavior and the status quo; its particular propen-
sity for change and renewal could adapt to a rap-
idly changing world — and no one doubted that it
was just that, especial ly after the Great War — and
an India that needed to change just as rapidly if it
dared hope to win freedom.
Among the Meerut accused, a number were
intimately linked with the youth movement and
held important positions. Hutchinson, himself not
a card-carrying member of the Communist Party
but rather a “fellow traveller” ( poputchik ), was in-
cluded in the trial at the express wishes of Lang-
ford James in order to better establish the connec-
tion between the Bolshevik conspiracy and the
Indian Youth Movement via the then prominent
“study circles” (referred to as “Circle Studies”).
Study circles gained prominence in connection
with Jawaharlal Nehru’s involvement in the Alla-
habad Youth League and were an important area
of organization and mobilization. In this period,
concerns in the youth movement shifted toward
hitherto rather un(der)explored fields of concrete
economic and social problems. Internationalism
always had formed the broader horizon for many
youth organizat ions — left, Congress, and r ight —
albeit with different models. The three English
accused in the Meerut case, Spratt, Bradley, and
Hutchinson, were all involved in the organiza-
tion of youth leagues and study circles. Sehgal
and Majid were principal organizers of the NBS.
Gopal Basak, described as “Spratt’s agent in East-
ern Bengal,” doubled as secretary of the Bengal
Jute Mill Workers’ Association (cited above) and
youth organizer in his function as president of the
Socialist Youth Congress. The young Puran Chand
Joshi was the principal organizer of the Allahabad
Youth League.
nism in India, 101 – 121.
34. See Ghosh, Meerut Conspiracy Case, esp.
26 – 31.
India could identify with as Asian, ancient,
and cultured thanks to the wide circulation of
Pan-Asian sentiments, was a powerful sym-
bol for the worldwide uprising against impe-
rialism. The medical mission scheme made
its way into Congress debates, where it got
remodeled (Hardikar envisioned the mission
on the same lines as a volunteer movement
in India — he wanted to take 2000 people to
China) and severely downsized to a few doc-
tors and nurses by Nehru and Goswami, MLA
from Calcutta, who took over the lead. It was
based on the earlier medical mission to Turkey
under Dr. Ansari (and under the banner of The
Red Crescent) in 1912. See Minault, The Khilafat
Movement, 22–23. The sympathies were quite
clear for these two. Nehru had just returned
from the1927 Brussels Oppressed People’s Con-
gress and Goswami freely acknowledged that
the Chinese struggle was at once communist
and nationalist since they were fighting “the
most barbarous form of capitalist exploitation
known to man” (Goswami, “Voice of Human-
ity,” 259–61.) The government immediately got
extremely suspicious of the intention behind
such a mission despite the fervent public dis-
play of strict neutrality by the Congress and the
pledge to abide by all the rules laid down for a
medical mission by the Red Cross. Ultimately
they rejected to provide passports for the mis-
sion despite the Congress having raised money
and volunteers (the response was enthusiastic,
see for the governmental correspondence and
newspaper reports: Home Dept. [Spcl] , 355
[58] A, 1927, MSA). An Indian medical mission
to China, consisting of five doctors, was ulti-
mately organised in 1938, under the aegis of
Congress President S. C. Bose, following the
Japanese invasion. On that mission, see Bose,
Congress President , 9:36–38 (for his public ap-
peal and farewell message to the mission). On
the engagement of the international Left with
the Chinese struggle, see Petersson, ‘“We Are
No Visionaries.” See 63–86 on the Hands Of f
China campaign from 1925 and 98– 100 for the
wider importance for the LAI ; and 135–37 for
Nehru at the Brussels Conference.
36. Statement of Sohan Singh Josh in Meerut
Court, 304 – 7, MCC.
The two functions, labour and youth orga-
nizer, cannot thus be clearly delineated — in many
cases one was seen as an adjunct to the other as
far as communists as well as noncommunists were
concerned. Organizing and educating the young
workers in study circles was of primary importance
for the progress of the labour movement and for
creating a conscious, avant-garde cadre of workers
not hidebound by old customs, traditions, and su-
perstitions, while youth and students were seen as
the potential (petty bourgeois) vanguard.
The Contest for Youth
around, closely followed by the civil disobedience
movement. These were the watershed years, when
distinctions among political groups were clearly
drawn — to those who wished for that clarity. In the
contest for organizing and appropriating youth to
one side or another, the Meerut Conspiracy Case
was pivotal.
changed the game. With the breakdown of the
united front between the Kuomintang and the
Communists in China, the Sixth Congress of the
Communist International met, and its executive
committee (ECCI) put forward the new line on
the relationship between the national (petty) bour-
geoisie and the working class. As Josef Stalin grad-
ually took control of the international communist
movement in the name of “socialism in one coun-
try,” and the Comintern’s Third Period, respond-
ing to the Chinese debacle of , pitted class
against class from , the Workers’ and Peasants’
Parties in India found themselves theoretically re-
dundant at their moment of inception. Before
they had had a chance to adjust to the situation,
they were in the throes of the Meerut Conspiracy
Case. As a result, the Comintern’s directives were
difficult for them to follow, and indeed they were
not followed.
cal mission to China, organized under the aegis
of the Congress’ youth wing, fell through around
this time because the government would not hand
out passports to the small troupe. The move to
organize a medical mission to China came after
the Shanghai massacre on April against
communists by Chiang Kai Shek and the right-
wing Kuomintang. The massacre was followed by
a systematic purge that ult imately led to a split in
the Kuomintang, ending the alliance with Soviet
Russia forged by Sun- Yat Sen in , and to a civil
war. The move was pioneered by Hardikar of the
INC’s Seva Dal and then taken on board by the
INC under the lead of Nehru, freshly returned
from the Brussels conference, and T. C. Goswami,
a member of the legislative assembly.
In , the Punjab NBS was started at Am-
ritsar, its launch taking place from the platform of
a Punjabi youth conference, announced as Punjabi
Young Men’s Associations, a term then Indianized
to make up the NBS. And, as is well known, this
in turn was the front for the Hindustan (Socialist)
Republican Army. also saw a veritable flurry
of youth conferences. The major ones were the

Elderly Leaders,” Bombay Chronicle, 22 January
1928, Home Dept. ( Spcl.) 72 4, 1927 – 1928, S-23,
MSA.
39. “Prepare for Grim Struggle Ahead” [sum-
mary of Bose’s speech at the Midnapur Youth
Conference], Bombay Chronicle, 25 December
1929, Home Dept. (Spcl.), 724 (Z), 1929, S-61,
MSA.
zine Youth. For more details, see Bing, “British
Youth,” esp. 278. See also Bing’s report high-
lighting the need for youth to work for peace
after they had stumbled blindly into the disas-
ter of the Great War, cf. “Report on the World
Youth Peace Conference,” F. No. O- 3, 1928 f.
179, AICC, NMML. For a vivid overview of par-
ticipants and organization at the camp, as well
as the prevailing spirit, see Matthews, Youth
Looks at World Peace.
gress, Eerde, 16–26 August 1928 by Nalinaksha
Sanyal, F O-3, 1928, ff. 181–203, AICC, NMML.
See also the invitation and program, aims, and
objects of the conference as well as the youth
charter by the British Federation of Youth (one
of the principal organizers) and the World
Youth League (Weltjugendliga) who inspired
the movement. See F. No. O-3, 1928, AICC,
NMML. “Youth’s Charter” aimed at establish-
ing “a sound body in a sound mind,” the oppor-
(All-India) youth conferences that grew out of the
First and Second Bombay Presidency Youth Con-
ferences in January and December . The Bom-
bay Youth Conference in January set up — by a
resolution — the Bombay Presidency Youth League.
The attendees on that occasion overlap to
some extent with the Meerut accused: Shaukat Us-
mani is there, the elderly Dhundiraj Thengdi, and
Philip Spratt. And then there were the emerging
youth leaders in Bombay: K. F. [Kurshed Framji]
Nariman and Yusuf Meherally. The conference
set the tone for the new incarnation of the Indian
youth movement. I. K. Yajnik, chairman of the re-
ception committee, spoke on the new ideas and
morality emerging among youth who were prom-
ising to change the earth; the “young blood” was
setting out to change the relations between men
and women, aspired to internationalism, and pro-
claimed war on communalism. It was at the same
time a challenge to the old political and social
leaders with their high talk and little action, their
“dangerous sophistications” and “puerile quib-
blings.” Yajnik took to task a ventriloquist but le-
thargic patriotism that was “apt to be radical in
politics and conservative in social matters” and,
referring to the noncooperation movement, a pre-
vailing “dangerous mixture of religion with politics
and its reactionary economic outlook.” Bombay
Presidency, especially Bombay city, and Allahabad
formed special nodal points for the outwardly ra-
diating appeal of the socialist hype among youth.
These conferences were followed by the
All-India Youth Conference at Calcutta and the
All-India Congress Committee (AICC) session in
December, which was presided over by Nariman,
with Subhas Chandra Bose as chair. That congress
was noteworthy not least for Bose’s martial display,
with himself on horseback in full military fantasy
uniform (modeled on Mussolini) and his new
band of volunteers in their uniforms. The display
of volunteers was not meant as idle demonstration
of strength. At the Midnapur Youth Conference in
December , Bose wove an entire speech about
a “new programme” to be launched during the
next national campaign without ever spelling out
what that program entailed. He stated that the old
noncooperation program had failed but that a new
band of workers was needed for a new program to
be put into effect. It would be better, Bose claimed,
to remain silent to avoid the attacks by the old
Congress guard that would follow, but all of his en-
ergies were directed into building this new band
of workers. This sounded dangerously like an in-
ternal coup d’etat, and that was what the (mostly)
tactfully staged battle for predominance between
the young hotheads and the old guard within the
Congress of those years was indeed.
Not a week seemed to go by in those years
without mult iple youth meet ing or parades. The
usual messages were delivered about holistic
change and youth as the discontent factor in so-
ciety, as a separate organization, and as a rebel
against the old institutions that had failed to de-
liver. The trend was so stark in India that it held
sway in the wider world, with youth camps and con-
ferences held in many places, at times on a strik-
ing scale. In August , the World Youth Peace
Congress took place in Eerde, Netherlands, with
some youth from different groups, claim-
ing to represent some nations and more than
, youths in all. The Congress was organized
by a conglomerate of youth organizations, not least
of which was the British Federation of Youth under
Harold F. Bing. It aimed to establish “world
brotherhood” and peace fueled by a utopianism
born out of the cataclysm of the Great War. India
would remain a member of the connected World
Youth Congress Movement until such endeavors

construction of peace. See ibid., f. 232.
42. This episode and the fascinating interna-
tional connections that emerge from this are
outside of the purview of the current study
merely for lack of space. On the Youth Con-
gress Movement, however, see FD 10, pt. I, 1936,
AICC, NMML.
43. See Report by Sanyal, in F. No. O-3, 1928,
f. 189, AICC, NMML. His detailed report of the
proceedings is fascinating given his close en-
gagements with the problems of peace, world
brotherhood, and the task of youth in building
a more stable future with equality and justice
for all. He wrote with verve about the effort-
lessly desexualized nature of European nudism
and the importance of the Wandervogel move-
ment for the self-understanding of the Youth
Peace Conference, where it was portrayed as
the mother of all youth movements. See Gen-
eral report, World Youth Peace Congress, Eerde,
16–26 August 1928, by Nalinaksha Sanyal, F. No.
O-3, 1928, ff. 181–203, AICC, NMML.
44. B. C. Guha [Indian delegation to the World
Youth Peace Congress], “World Youth Move-
ment — Its Ideals, Hopes, and Achievement[s],”
Bombay Chronicle, 18 December 1928, Home
Dept. (Spcl.) 724, A, 1928, S-209, MSA.
45. Resolutions of the AICC, December 1929, F.
No. 32, 1929, f. 106, AICC, NMML.
46. See Sarkar, Modern Indi a, esp. 261–62,
266–69.
through youth associations in Bengal, see
WBSA, Office of DIG of Police, CID, IB, file 1324,
1932 (Dinajpur branch of the Jugantar and the
local Young Men’s Association as its front); on
the Youth Association in Jessore and its varied
connections to revolutionaries, see WBSA, Of-
fice of DIG of Police, CID, IB, 271–Y, 1928. For a
brief summary of the trend, see Sarkar, Mod-
ern India, 266–69. T he Revolt Groups or “New
Violence Party” were a reaction to the march
through the institutions by Anushilan and Ju-
gantar leaders who were so busy playing power
games within the Congress that they had los t
touch with the base of the younger generation,
who grew up with the romantic image of dar-
ing dacoits and, much more pragmatically, suf-
fered from the economic conditions and con-
tinued high academic unemployment.
were mostly boys (the youngest being thirteen
years) under the leadership of Surjya Sen a nd
his lieutenants. The boys had been recruited
as Congress volunteers through the District
Congress Committee (DCC) after Sen and his
group had taken over the body in 1929. From
among the volunteers for the local Congress
session that year, drill master Bidhu Bushan
Bhattacharjee siphoned off likely adolescents
for the secret group while Ananta Singh had
become instructor to the local akharas on the
lines of the well-established success formula
for such recruitment. On the Chittagong Ar-
moury Raid, see Chatterjee, Do and Die, esp.
41–44, and chap. 3.
were cut short by the outbreak of the Second World
War. A number of Indian delegates partook of
the Eerde proceedings; Rajendra Prasad came and
went in a hurry but delivered public messages from
the Mahatma and C. F. Andrews. The writing of
one of the delegates to the conference, B. C. Guha,
can stand for the general admixture of sentiments
and ideas that youth was supposed to represent.
Youth, he wrote, realized amid the misery of the
postwar period that the future of the world rested
on them. This was the driving force of the global
youth movement. A youth movement did exist be-
fore, in particular in Germany, but not one that
realized it would have to take over “leadership of
the world.” As a result, in future international com-
plications, youth would be a force to reckon with.
From , the AICC called on “the people
of the country” to organize youth, workers, and
peasants for an impending nationwide campaign.
After the lapsing of the Congress-dictated dead-
line for the Nehru Report, Purna Swaraj (complete
independence) was declared the goal of the INC.
From , the insult delivered by the composi-
tion of the all- white Simon Commission, which
consisted of members of the British Parliament
who were sent to India to assess the state of con-
stitutional reform in the colony, the heated atmo-
sphere prevailing in the country due to public out-
rage and political opposition to the commission,
and the death of Lajpat Rai had made for a daring
attitude among some, notably the HSR A and the
youth by and large. Material on the campaign
around the Simon Commission turned up in the
Meerut case exhibits time and again. A new “wave
of terrorism,” as the Intelligence Bureau was wont
to call it, was gathering momentum around the
same time, in part in reaction to the governmen-
tal repression of these years. The radical factions
were unraveling as the newly formed violent “re-
volt groups” (in the police files often appearing as
the “revolted groups”) were not satisfied with sit-
ting still any longer or partaking in the internal
Congress fights. Surjya Sen, the lieutenant of the
Chittagong Armoury Raid (which featured, promi-
nently, teenage boys), and other such splinter
groups, along with the HSRA under Bhagat Singh,
demonstrated the disaffection with the older ter-
rorist leadership through a new series of attacks.
Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt’s murder of
Deputy Commissioner of Police Saunders (on
December ) was supposed to avenge the death
of Lala Lajpat Rai, who died some weeks after
being hit with a lathi-charge of the police at an
anti–Simon Commission demonstration at Lahore
on October . The intended victim, Police
Chief Scott, feared for his life and was lying low, so
Saunders had to do. The legislative assembly bomb
detonated “to make the deaf hear,” as the accom-

49. See Habib, T o Make the Deaf Hear , 33–34,
91–96.
the Peshawar Conspiracy Cases, see Adhikari,
Documents of the History of the Communist
Party , 26–41; on Kanpur see Petrie, Commu-
nism in India, 7–62.
51. Copy of resolution from Calcutta AICC, let-
ter dated 18 January 1929, G-35, 1928, f. 7, AICC,
NMML.
Jubbulpore, who wants to join “his” league
after he heard of the arrests. L etter dated 23
March 1929, G-39, 1928, f. 173, AICC, NMML. See
also the letter to Nehru by two youths from
Nawargrahi, Dhulia (West Khandesh) who
wanted to attempt to start a youth league
even though their town was “out of the way”
and therefore not susceptible to the social and
political currents that swept through India. But
having heard of the “challenge” of the govern-
ment, they intended to start a league immedi-
ately and asked Nehru for guidance. Letter by
S. W. Paliskar and B. S. Shandarkar [?] to Nehru,
dated 13 May 1929, ibid., f. 191. See also the let-
ter by a student who had been a member of
the Seva Dal and now organized a youth league
in Bangalore and who had been visited by a
CID officer purporting to interview him for a
job just bef ore the Meerut case. He felt more
defiant after the event, which he reported to
Nehru (whom he addressed as “Comrade”) in
great detail and described the arrests at aimed
against labour leaders and youth. See letter by
A. L. N. DiEugar [??], ibid., f. 181–83. A host of
requests to Nehru to send the rules and regula-
tions of the youth league after the beginning of
the Meerut case arrived, but since many were
just stating the request or sending pos tcards,
we cannot draw a definite connection.
53. See, e.g., the rules of the Lucknow Youth
League. For a conference to be held in August
of all youth and student groups in the area,
communal organizations were specifically ex-
cluded. G-39, 1928, f. 207, AICC, NMML.
54. See, i.e., Nehru’s famous presidential ad-
dress at the Second Bombay Presidency Youth
Conference, Poona, 12–13th December, Home
Dept. (Spcl.), 724, A, 1928, S-185, esp. S-185 G
(p. 4), MSA.
panying leaflet was titled, was thrown on April
, at the session debating the reintroduced Pub-
lic Safety Bill, shortly after the Meerut arrests on
March.
communist rhetoric and symbols. When one looks
at progressive media and leaders of the late s
and early s, one might be forgiven for think-
ing that everyone was a socialist. A number of in-
fluences and strands conspired to bring about this
shift toward the designated Left in these years.
There was, of course, the economic crisis leading
to the strike wave. The arrests of the accused in the
Meerut Conspiracy Case were the government’s
final attempt to crush the burgeoning communist
and socialist (and labour) movement by a series of
show cases. It is not too astonishing that in ,
even before the arrests of left-leaning labour lead-
ers in March at the onset of the Meerut Conspiracy
Case, members of some youth leagues were also ar-
rested (members of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha
and the Student Union in Punjab, among others),
and raids on youth leagues continued in the wake
of the initial Meerut arrests along with the tide of
searches conducted in the days after.
At this stage, the raids and arrests made the
leagues more attractive as they became framed by
the halo of anti-imperialism. There are instances
of youths from far-out places who had no organiza-
tion but felt moved to establish youth leagues in
an answer to the challenge the British had thrown
at “Young India” with Meerut. In the beginning
the case was perceived as a conspiracy trial not
only of communist and trade unionists but also of
“Youth.” A host of youth leagues in various places
came into being from May on. These leagues
were often more decidedly anticommunalist, po-
litically radical, and socially progressive than other
amorphous youth groups, but we find among them
groups close to the Servants of India or those with
moderate political views as well.
The question, at this point, was not so much
between Left and Right (there was no self-defined
Right as yet and the Left prior to Meerut was still
whipping itself into a dist inct shape). Those who
were labeled “radicals” and “moderates,” which
contemporaries like Subhas Bose equated with
Left and Right, were further designated as commu-
nist, socialist, or neither. It was in the early s
that these distinctions became more important.
Both Nehru and Bose at their various speeches
at youth conferences articulated their visions of
a socialist future, a socialist commonwealth, and
a “republic of youth” in very similar terms. But
nothing in these speeches could be distinguished
at this point from the almost universal proclama-
tions of speakers regarding the tasks of youth at
the time.
May, Bose, at a speech at a Naujawan Bharat Sabha
conference, referred to this battle within the
Congress. He spoke about the disputes between
the youth movement and the Congress and the
counterproductive mistrust of the elders against
the young radicals (for the youth movement was

ganizations, among others. Bose claimed that
socialism, too, was a universal principle. As
humankind in the East and West had always
dreamed about an ideal society, there were
common principles in their different sociopo-
litical ideals, namely justice, equality, freedom,
discipline, and love. The sum of these universal
principles was the essence of socialism. Logi-
cal corollaries to these principles were equal
opportunities, a living wage, and f air distribu-
tion of wealth. The youth movement existed to
destroy the old order and create a new one by
carrying their utopian ideals into society. Thus,
training centers for human mental and physi-
cal development and a widespread net work
were necessary. “Presidential Address at the
Karachi Conference of the All-India Naujawan
Bharat Sabha,” http://subhaschandrabose.org
56. On the distinction between “fuzzy” and
“enumerated” communities, see Kaviraj, “The
Imaginary Institution of India.”
no. 20, 14 December 1929, Home Dept. (Spcl)
724 A (Z), 1929–31, S-55, MSA.
58. See Roy, “Jawaharlal’s Speech,” 2:183–88.
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:3 • 2013370
defined by its impatience, the wil l to destroy, and
its radicalism) despite those radicals being their
future. At the same time, Bose called on youth
not to undermine the Congress, since it stood for
and was coterminous with the nation. The INC
had to move slowly to take the nation with it. The
Naujawan — which Bose saw not as a local or na-
tional group but as a broad movement under dif-
ferent names representing a “universal phenom-
ena [sic ]” — should understand itsel f as a “feeder
movement” for the INC, and youth “should act in
a spirit of helpfulness, and if they so desire . . . may
act as a lever inside the Congress, in order to influ-
ence the Right wing or the conservative section in
the Congress.”
who cla imed to place nat iona l harmony above
everything else and feared any kind of internal
struggle: the Congress elders and Gandhians, who
believed in trusteeship and the paternal respon-
sibility of the capitalists, and the self-consciously
Hindu elements who saw socialism as a Western
fad that had nothing to do with India. As the later
s marked the progressive shift in the Indian
nationalist movement overall, it was in many ways
the idealistic and activist high point of the progres-
sive Indian (youth) movement. It was a t ime when
the organizational structure was actually geared
toward implementing the rhetorical demands for a
“Republic of Youth,” before the later s dashed
those hopes with the looming war, rising commu-
nal tension, and the crystallization of politics, and
when sharper l ines between ideological commu-
nists (in accordance with the current Comintern
line) and others would be drawn.
Left and Right thus remained, for a longish
time, a happy and fuzzy tangle. A good exam-
ple — one of an entire legion of similar utterances
epitomizing the wider popular political imaginaire
of the t imes — published in the socialist Vanguard
is the letter by J. J. Vakil regarding the need for
a revolutionary party in India. After a scathing
(if not wholly unjustified) attack on the INC,
who are characterized as a xenophobic, capital -
ist, zamindar-led body, or “an anti-revolutionary
body playing at revolution in the interests of in-
digenous vested interests,” the author refers to
Russia, China, and those Indian leaders who un-
derstood how to truly organize whereas the INC
was blatantly incapable of organizing or leading
the masses. “The cry ing need of the hour is the
formation of a party to implement this revolution-
ary ideology in all spheres of life, religious, social,
economical and political. Not the kind of parties
which we have in this country but a disciplinarian
organisation like that of the Fascisti in Italy or the
Bolsheviki in Russia.” The world forces may bring
India freedom sooner rather than later, Vakil
stated, and if no well-organized party existed by
then, there would be a long spell of anarchy simi-
lar to the one following Mughal rule or the Man-
chu Empire.
marks about the structural similarity between fas-
cism and Bolshevism, which merely offered the
choice between Lenin and Mussolini but were
similar in their “insensate violence and intoler-
ance,” M. N. [Manabendra Nath] Roy warded
off such glimmerings of a totalitarian analysis by
opposing the contention that the mere use of vio-
lence rendered fascism and Bolshevism similar,
on the grounds that the latter defended the rights
of the people and had turned to violence merely
to defend its program against external violence.
Roy asserted that Bolshevism was no more violent
than Gandhism, and he pointed out that fascist
tendencies were inherent in the Indian national-
ist movement by way of its “reactionary jingoist”

MCC.
Chronicle, 15 December 1928 [being the sum-
mary of Nehru’s speech at a youth meeting
at Blavatsky lodge], Home Dept. (Spcl.), 724 ,
A, 1928, S-203, MSA. Others, like N. V. Gadgil,
then the president of the Poona Youth League,
echoed this sentiment, for instance at the First
Bombay suburban youth conference held at
Khar, when he stated that the real purpose of
the Youth Movement was to create a “revolu-
tionary mentality.” “Purpose of Youth Move-
ment,” Bombay Chronicle, 20 May 1929, Home
Dept. (Spcl.) 724, A, I, 1929, S-107, MSA. Yet any
number of similar utterances could be cited.
Kamaladevi, for instance, proclaimed that “the
Youth Movement is one of the greatest, one of
the most powerful forces, influencing the mod-
ern thought of life, or playing a significant part
in the history of the world. Youth stands for a
clear and far-seeing vision and with its bound-
less spirit and enthusiasm paves the way for
the regeneration of life. Nowhere can its im-
portance be minimised, and certainly not in a
country like India, where a new life needs to
be built up on the demolition of the old.” Cf.
“Youth Must Take a Deep Plunge” [summary of
Kamaladevi’s speech at the Ahmedabad Youth
Conference], Bombay Chronicle, 16 December
1929, Home Dept. (Spcl.), 724 A (Z), 1929–31,
S-9, MSA.
Young Comrades’ League,” Exhibits, P.158 (23),
MCC.
Lenin at the Third All-Russia Congress of the
Young Communist League in 1920. Lenin out-
lined a program that aimed at creating the
“New (Soviet) Man” through the self-education
of young people within these leagues, where
they would familiarize themselves with com-
munism and train themselves to act accord-
ingly. The idea was from the beginning a amal-
gamating of theory and prac tice that would
allow youth to remould society in a totalizing
way. See Lenin, Tasks of the Youth Leagues, esp.
7 – 20.
tendencies: “When our disillusioned lower middle
class forsakes Gandhism it hails Mussolini as the
prophet.”
tirely new movement, overhauling the very fabric
of society. It was up to the youth to combat the in-
herent reactionary tendencies of all organizations
that were led by “middle-aged men,” as the Young
Comrades League (YCL) proclaimed. The INC’s
program was hopelessly out of date and unsuited
to the “present conditions.” Youth growing up in
the twentieth century, in the “epoch of wars and
revolutions,” could discard all relics of the past,
social customs, superstitions, and a nonscientific
outlook.
imperialism and nationalism — that is, reformism
and “terrorism” — at this point began to be seen
as futile and, in the case of “individual terrorism,”
an idealist or romantic but archaic stance from a
different time as far as the self-declared emerging
Left was concerned. A “realistic revolutionism” was
needed, the YCL asserted — a sentiment echoed
across the board by figures as diverse as Sarojini
Naidu, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Nehru, Bose,
and a host of lesser-known figures from different
parts of India. It was the prime function of youth
to lead the vanguard in this revolution in the mind
of the masses, and Nehru did, indeed, on occasion
speak of a youth-led “revolutionary psychology.”
The Young Comrades League, a youth wing
of the CPI front organization, and the Workers’
and Peasants’ Part y — another group who natu-
rally surfaced in the Meerut case — similarly advo-
cated a turning away from a “nineteenth-century
constitution-mongering” as well as “the romantic
impossibilist revolutionary policy” that marked
the earlier terrorist/youth movement. Revolution
had become a necessity of world history, a logical
conclusion of linear development and, of course,
historical material ism — something not really in-
vented by Marx, but rather a discussion about the
applicability of natural laws to the pattern of his-
tory and societies. And so, the YCL could proclaim
with a certain confidence that “revolut ion is no
longer the dream of a few isolated intellectuals,
scorned by all political realists; it is an actuality,
already taking place all over the world, and requir-
ing scientific study and practical organisation.”
The youth leagues, as a phenomenon grow-
ing out of the various Young Men’s Associations
of the early s, became prominent only in the
year or two preceding the Meerut trial. The name
itself deserves a brief line. While various shapes
and forms of youth movements had sprung up in
the s, the “Youth League” was a reference to
Lenin’s construct of the same. The Indian youth
leagues subscribed to a very similar model when
we consider the program that Nehru laid out for
them — of course, the reality was different, and the
youth league became in effect yet another loose
platform, a catchall phrase for groups and confer-
ences held at the time with varying agendas but
suffused in many cases with at least the aesthetic
reference to socialist symbolism.
later became the official Congress youth wing,
came into being around this t ime as a common
platform. A draft resolution of the IYC in
called for the boycott of British goods, complete

gress, 1928, Exhibit P.164, p. 31, MCC.
65. Exhibit P.164, p. 32, MCC.
66. “The Indian Youth Congress” [constitution,
rules, and regulations], G-39, 1928, f f. 307 – 11,
AICC, NMML. The president of the INC was to
act as chief advisor of the IYC and the AIWC
would also form the board of the IYC, mean-
ing the Congress was from the beginning firmly
embedded in the Congress as one of its wings.
The membership was open to people between
the ages of twenty and thirty ; associates could
be between twelve and twenty; and advisors
were people over thirty-five who were will-
ing to help the Congress and participate in its
deliberations.
67. Nehru to H. D. Rajah, 1 May 1929, G-39, 1928,
f. 179, AICC, NMML. The government shared
that opinion: see “Government’s View of the
Youth Movement,” extract from secret report
dated 30 December 1928, Box 7 –38–1, Krüger
Papers, Zentrum Moderer Orient (ZMO), Berlin.
68. A handbill of the Bombay Presidency Youth
League, signed Y. J. Meherally, A. R. Bhat [s.a.],
proclaimed in big, block letters: “Youth Must
Know / That Organisation is the secret of suc-
cess. / Bureaucracy is organising / Congress is
organising / Communalists are organising /
Why not Youth?” The bill goes on to plead for
the boycott of British goods, for Hindu-Muslim
unity, and for all young people to get compul-
sory physical and military training (somewhat
of a contradiction, admittedly, and yet a good
example of the collapsing of voluntarism and
compulsory duty). Cf. F. No. O-3, 1928, ff. 239,
AICC, NMML. The interesting part here is not
even the compulsory military training but the
credo of organization itself. The framework for
all groups was that of efficient organization,
and efficient organization was an abstract s ci-
entific principle that entailed discipline, train-
ing, fitness, dedication, and obedience. The
league’s other fear was being left behind, of
losing out in the race for organization.
69. Bombay Presidency Youth Conference,
appeal, sd. Y. J. Meherally, dated 15 December
1927, G-39, 1928, f. 325, AICC, NMML. Next to
these physical articles we find, once again,
calls, along with the fight against commu-
nalism and antiquated customs, to promote
swadeshi , primary education, independent
sal brotherhood, and an international outlook.
70. Naturally, as it is so hard to track individuals
among the rank and file, these reports are few
and far between, but see a letter by a member
of a youth league to Nehru during the crack-
downs on the leagues, G-39, 28, f. 182, AICC,
NMML.
independence, and a youth rebellion against an-
tiquated social customs from child marriage to
dowry and inequality of the sexes. It also stated,
“This Congress tenders its fraternal greetings
to the youth and Organisations of the world,
and expresses its determination to co-operate
with them and br ing into existence a new world
order.” In addition, it advocated international
anti-imperialist organizations. As i n so many
other pamphlets of this t ype, there is also a call
for a “physical renaissance” for both sexes through
outdoor games, woodcraft, physical exercise, and
volunteer corps. The imperative behind such ex-
hortations is explicit: all this is to be undertaken
“with a view to the future usefulness [of the indi-
vidual] to the country and humanity at large.”
The scope of activity included creating brother-
hood and performing service; guarding the safety
and honor of country, religion, and women; and
fighting adharma in whatever form it may appear
through peaceful means or passive resistance
movements, depending on the directive of the
executive council.
India Youth Congress with Nariman as its first
president and Meherally as general secretary. Both
men were committed socialists and acted in the
same positions for the Bombay Provincial Youth
League, thus shaping the formations of these
leagues throughout the province and beyond. Con-
sidered alongside Nehru’s enormous influence, the
All-India Youth Congress and the youth leagues
were factually synonymous. The league served as
a platform for the socialists and progressive fac-
tions from early on, at least in Bombay, which was
regarded as at the helm of the Indian youth move-
ment. But the calls for compulsory physical train-
ing and the rhetoric of militaristic jingoism can be
found here as elsewhere, too, making it clear that
such tendencies — beyond any political notions —
cut across such differences effortlessly.
But the leagues took different shapes in di f-
ferent regions in accordance with their platform
character. The youth leagues did not fill the brief
of normal volunteer bodies, as they lacked the
corporeal agenda of the latter, even though they
too advocated physical and military training. They
also did not have the structure of the akhara move-
ment, which strove to resurrect traditional Indian
gymnastic and martial practices. It is difficult to
generalize, as “youth league” is really only a vague
demarcation signaling that these were neither des-
ignated student bodies nor organized volunteers
(though they could be or merge into either, and
members sometimes switched back and forth or
held memberships simultaneously).
ally were was shared by contemporaries. Nehru, as
one of stringent advocates of the youth leagues,
received a rather worried letter by one Bhagwat
Dayal, a tutor at one of the Allahabad colleges.
Dayal stated that he heard from his students all
manner of things: some said that the youth leagues
stood for communism, others said they advocated

Pathshala University College Allahabad, to
Jawaharlal Nehru, Anand Bhavan, Allahabad,
dated 28 March 1929, G-39, 1928, ff. 149–50,
AICC, NMML.
G-39, 1928, ff. 153–59, AICC, NMML.
73. Rajah together with Meherally and Nariman
had active international contacts. Rajah, for in-
stance, also wrote articles for Youth, the mag-
azine of the British federation of Youth, while
its general secretary, Harold Bing (of the Brit-
ish Youth Federation, and one of the organiz-
ers of the Eerde conference), wrote articles for
the Young Liberator . Rajah kept in touch with
other international youth organizations such as
the World Federation of Youth. They also had
friendly relations with the British communists
and socialists in Bombay (such as Hutchinson).
74. Opening page of the Young Liberator [s.a,
Sept/Oct? 1928] by the “manager,” G-39, 1928,
f. 281, AICC, NMML.
terrorism, and some said that both were the same,
really. He sought clarification from Nehru on
whether any of this was true, in part icular the
recent renaming of the Allahabad Youth League
as the “UP Comrade League,” which added to
his premonition. Nehru replied in a six-page
letter, explaining, first, that he had talked about
the necessity of setting up a youth league but had
nothing actively to do with it, even though he had
commented on draft constitutions and given his
advice. He could not understand what might have
given the students or Dayal the strange idea that
the league advocated that “monstrous” scheme
of terrorism or stood for communism. The name
was an “unhappy” one, Nehru thought, but since
Joshi had been arrested so recently (in the Meerut
case), the members felt (after Nehru’s communi-
cation with them, we might add) that it was not
a good time to change it back. He claimed that
youth should understand communism, as it was
important in world politics; though he was criti-
cal, Nehru said he himself was attracted by it. The
youth league in his mind was an open platform, in-
dependent of creed or dogma, for all young men,
including communists, who were dissatisfied with
the present conditions and wanted to better them.
But, Nehru added, as Dayal must know, the aver-
age student knew precious little of communism or
socialism. The league was meant as a study circle
where young people could educate themselves and
prepare for active work. They might do work in
the league as well (especially developing contact
with “the masses,” boycotting foreign goods, and
occasionally participating in national demonstra-
tions) but this was not so much for the sake of the
thing they did but for training and educational
purposes. But then, none of this was for him to
say since youth leagues were to be organized by
young people themselves. The idea of the youth
league, in Nehru’s mind, was thus a combination
of the concept of the suprapolitical youth move-
ment united and demarcated by their impatience
and the necessity of channeling those energies
and stalling them somewhat by prescribing a sort
of self-educating apprenticeship among peers. He
wrote that it was better if young people did not do
active work before they were “clear in their own
minds what to do and how to do it.”
The Young Liberator was the self-appointed
journal of the youth league movement, started in
late . It was published from Bombay and man-
aged by H. D. Rajah. It similarly set the task be-
fore youth as no less than the reconstruction of the
whole of social, political, and economic life, and it
was thus somewhat more action-oriented than what
politicians like Nehru, Annie Besant, or Kripalani
(all of whom were involved with their local youth
leagues) had in mind. Compared to the earlier
romantic-nihilistic features of the revolutionary
exhortations directed at youth, the Young Liberator
displayed novel features. While it also dealt with
the utopian visions of youth, the euphoria regard-
ing revolutionary change, and the dawn of a new
civilization to come, its slant was toward themes
such as capitalism, labour, the poor, agrarian and
economic politics, equality of the sexes, and ac-
tive international cooperation instead of the more
overtly spiritualist and corporeal self-elevation and
(politically empty) sacrificial obedience. What it
retained, however, were other features of the mil-
lenarian and militaristic rhetoric.
of Youth in Madras exemplifies these trends. It was
addressed to the “Comrades in service” and restated
a familiar trope: youth today was up in arms. Ac-
cording to the address, this was the most exhilarat-
ing episode in all of history. “A new spirit is abroad.
Everywhere one hears the new slogan — ‘Univer-
sal Brotherhood.’” That and service were youth’s
watchwords. Youth was holding the banner of revolt
proclaiming the message of peace. They were the

elpathi, T. P. Venkatraman, S. Chandrasekara
sastri, A. S. Mahbala Rai, and R. Parthasarathi,
G-39, 1928, ff. 247 – 50, AICC, NMML. The League
of Youth in Madras, established in 1924, had
their headquarters at the Servants of India
Society Home. The league became more pop-
ular in the late 1920s. Membership was open
to people of both sexes between fifteen and
thirty years of age, and the permanent league
was conceptualized as a study circle cum lec-
ture series, with the aim to direct the energies
of use into proper and useful channels of social
service. In their affiliations, they were politi-
cally closer to the moderate factions and the-
osophist circles; in terms of social work, they
tended toward Gandhian principles, while their
rhetoric at times sounded socialist. In their self-
descriptions, their hope was “to realise the
great dream that strengthens, beautifies and
perfects that sacred edifice — The Nationhood
of India.” See League of Youth in Madras pam-
phlets, G-39, 1928, esp. ff. 253, 258, 260 – 66,
AICC, NMML.
cle, “Why I Am a Socialist,” and then proposed
that Nehru join the board of the V anguard (in
an honorary position, since Nehru was much
too busy to be an active member). The Van-
guard aimed at the intelligentsia while trying
to expound (and convert them to) the princi-
ples of socialism. New Leader and the Nation
were models for the Vanguard . Nehru was en-
thusiastic (by his standards) and grudgingly
agreed to be one of the directors — with Nari-
man and Dr. Sumant Mehta, Urmilla Mehta,
and N. V. Gadgil. Proposed authors included
Laski, Scott Nearing, B. Russell, Col. Wedge-
wood, Furtwängler, and Upton Sinclair. See
correspondence between Mehrally and Nehru,
G-39, 1928, AICC, NMML. See also “The Youth
Movement — ‘Vanguard,’” Home Dep t. ( Spcl),
724 (VI), 1929, S-3–, S-5, MSA. The first issue of
the Vanguard opened with a piece by deValera
in the Irish struggle and carried a review of The
Well of Loneliness — which gives a good indica-
tion of just how unusual it was in certain re-
spects (especially on gender and sex). See Van-
guard 1, no. 1, September 1929. In the second
issue, the Vanguard carried an article decon-
structing why the young generation was disil-
lusioned with Gandhi and turned away from his
doctrines and proclaimed India to be the heart
of the global youth movement. See Vanguard 1,
no. 2, 28 September 1929.
78. For more information, see the Young Libera-
tor ’s column “Youth on the March,” which re-
ported on youth league activities. See also the
constitution of the Lucknow Youth League, G-
39, 1928, ff. 369–86, AICC, NMML.
79. See, e.g., “Outline of the Mordabad League
of Indian Youth,” G-41, 1928, ff. 60–61, AICC,
NMML, as well as the rules of the Naujawan
Bharat Sabha, which for the purposes here can
be seen in the same frame, F. No. 10, 1930, ff,
1–13, esp. f. 3, AICC, NMML.
pioneers and heroes of the coming age, aiming to
establish a new social order. They would go down
in the chronicles of history as examples of “lofty
idealism, unremitting toil for the commonweal[th],
and uncompromising determination to uphold all
that is right, all that is just, and all that is true.” The
youth movement was “as broad as the blue vault
overhead” and did not recognize any “frontiers of
colour or class.” In India, there was ample “splen-
did material” to mobilize, and the youth were tak-
ing “their place in the great Army of the Young, out
to storm the citadels of unyielding autocracy and to
dispel the forces of darkness, ignorance and preju-
dice.” The future of India and the world depended
on a solution to the problems of “hide-bound or-
thodoxy.” To address this problem, social evils
needed to be dispelled such as purdah, the “demon
of Drink,” and child marriage. In addition, the ad-
dress proclaimed, better conditions for the poor
and intercommunal harmony were needed, as well
as the “emancipation of our sisters” from the yoke of
convention; international fellowship, affirmation of
the dignity of labor and liberation of the oppressed;
mass education; a solution to unemployment; the
“enthroning of social Justice”; and “elevation of the
Motherland.” All this demanded the attention and
zeal of Young India. Youth’s privilege was to serve. It
was for each of them to contribute, and the organiz-
ers called on them to be prepared to “do and die.”
After the commencement of the Meerut trial,
the Young Liberator took on a more radical tone,
publishing articles on labour unrest, the trials, and
the Communist scare, along with “youth-related”
topics. Rajah called on youth to carry on the work
of the arrested labour leaders. The Young Libera-
tor can be seen in the same bracket as Meherally’s
overtly socialist Vanguard . In practice, many of
the youth leagues did not look dissimilar to the
var ious volunteer bodies mushrooming in India
at the time. They, too, did lathi play and physi-
cal training, hawked khaddar, organized swadeshi
(things “of our own country”) fairs, had lectures
and study circles, organized libraries, spread pro-
paganda through meetings and lectures on spe-
cific topics, and held camps. The leagues of the
time were, however, concerned with socialism and
the poor not just on the level of rhetoric but in an
attempt to further an economic program and cre-
ate an active anticommunalism. In fact, many had
explicit clauses against communalism or the par-
ticipation of their members in any body that pro-
moted communal representation in their rules.
There was a drive toward an economic program,
and labour issues gave more concrete shape to the
metaphysical revolutionary aspirations — or so the
socialists wanted.
more fuzzy in the tangled alliances and subversion

dent of the Ahmedabad Youth Conference in
late 1929, for instance, was in good company
when she criticized the trend sharply by refus-
ing to sign any more proclamations and empty
resolutions, like those for complete indepen-
dence, if they were not followed up by ac tion.
See “Youth Must Take a Deep Plunge,” Bom-
bay Chronicle, 16 December 1929, Home Dept.
(Spcl.), 724 A (Z), 1929–31, S-9–11, MSA.
81. Student numbers had risen significantly
over the preceding years while the job market
remained stagnant. After the 1919 reforms, ed-
ucation had been transferred to the provinces,
and the percentage of students in the total
population had risen from just over 5 percent
in 1922 to 6.91 percent in 1927. See Sarkar, Mod-
ern India, 266.
83. See Raza, “Separating the Wheat from the
Chaff.”
of existing bodies as well as the shifting programs
of socialists and communists themselves. While
their stance on specific str ikes might have been
very concrete and definite, the incessant acrimo-
nious discussion among the Left revealed the dif-
ficulties of distill ing an overarching political line.
And, in many ways, the youth movement, l ike its
grown-up counterparts, remained confined to ab-
stract discussions, a trend both recognized and
relentlessly criticized at the incessant meetings of
youth around the t ime. The rising student un-
employment formed a socioeconomic basis for the
discontent of the young, educated middle class.
But the youth leagues provided a corrective to the
seemingly ubiquitous self-obsessed self-reform
helped youth grapple with the political, in the
sense of concrete goals rather than abstract ideals,
more fully. Tension remained between the popular
political imagination and the youth leagues, the
latter being more interested in clarifying the divi-
sion between Right and Left, but even their views
were not free from awkward crossovers.
In the immediate aftermath of the arrests,
Meerut helped unify the youth movement. But the
splitting and seeds of discord sown by the diver-
gent political trends did work among the youth
as well. The overtly displayed hostility toward the
old Congress leadership could not but lead to ten-
sions. Hutchinson’s arrest in the summer of is
certainly one example. Hutchinson, who had orga-
nized a study circle and edited the New Spark after
M. G. Desai’s arrest, was one of the more coherent
and biting critics of Gandhi and of Gandhian poli-
tics within youth league circles, and the INC was
far from happy about this. A split in the Bombay
Youth League occurred after Hutchinson’s arrest ,
where a meeting that was to debate the issue was
adjourned and could not continue. Congressman
Velji Lakhamsi Napoo and the president of the
Matunga League resigned in “disgust.” The ad-
journed meeting, after Napoo’s resignation, ended
in blows between the pro-Congress and procom-
munist youngsters and in chaos. The youth league
split along these lines as well; the article “Split in
Bombay Youth League,” published in the Times of
India , described the communists as “anti-Gandhi,
anti-Nehru[,] and anti-everything.”
tween “acceptable nationalists” and “unaccept-
able communists” or radicals that the government
sought to create in the Meerut trial were replicated
in the vicissitudes of the youth movement in India.
This division, with the opposite normative conno-
tations, was the same as that now propagated by
the Comintern’s Third Period; it did not, however,
cause the same sharp divisions among a broadly
(self-)conceived Left among youth movements
themselves. On the contrary, it ended up creating
the space for a Marxist understanding of politics
outside of an official communist party, as in the
Naujawan Bharat Sabha, or even to some extent
within t

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