Hindu–German Conspiracy

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"The seditious conspiracy" links here. For the legal concept, see seditious conspiracy

The Hindu–German Conspiracy

Ghadarite
movement and arrested key figures. Mutinies in smaller units and garrisons within India were also crushed.

The Indo-German alliance and conspiracy were the target of a worldwide British intelligence effort, which successfully prevented further attempts. American intelligence agencies arrested key figures in the aftermath of the Annie Larsen affair in 1917. The conspiracy resulted in the Lahore conspiracy case trials in India as well as the Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial — at the time the longest and most expensive trial ever held in the United States.[1]

This series of events was pivotal for the

Indische Legion and the Indian National Army, and in Italy Mohammad Iqbal Shedai formed the Battaglione Azad Hindoustan
.

Background

Indian revolutionary, while in Punjab the rural and military society sustained organized violence.[11]

Other related events include:

Parts of the conspiracy also included efforts to subvert the British Indian Army in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I.

Indian revolutionary underground

Main article: Anushilan Samiti
See also:
Delhi–Lahore Conspiracy, Rash Behari Bose, Jugantar, and India House
February plot

The controversial

Chandernagore, had sufficient strength to all but paralyze the state administration.[15][16][17]

The earliest mention of a conspiracy for armed revolution in India appears in Nixon's Report on Revolutionary Organization, which reported that

pan-Islamic movement began to develop, mainly in the North and North-West regions of India. At the onset of the war in 1914, members of this movement formed an important element of the conspiracy.[19]

See also: Sinn Féin, Roger Casement, and John Devoy

At the time of the

Sir W. H. Curzon Wyllie, political aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India. In the aftermath of the assassination, the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office rapidly suppressed India House.[28] Its leadership fled to Europe and to the United States. Some, like Chatterjee, moved to Germany; Har Dayal and many others moved to Paris.[20][21]

Organizations founded in the United States and in

Father Peter Yorke and Larry de Lacey.[1] These pre-war contacts effectively set up a network which the German foreign office tapped into as war began in Europe.[1]

Ghadar Party

An immigrant Punjabi family in America. c. 1900s
Main article:
Ghadar Party
See also: Har Dayal, Sohan Singh Bhakna, and Tarak Nath Das

Large-scale Indian

Ghadar movement.[31]

socialist
literature, was banned in India in 1913.

The Ghadar Party, initially the 'Pacific Coast Hindustan Association', was formed in 1913 in the United States under the leadership of Har Dayal, with Sohan Singh Bhakna as its president. It drew members from Indian immigrants, largely from Punjab.[17] Many of its members were also from the University of California at Berkeley including Dayal, Tarak Nath Das, Kartar Singh Sarabha and V.G. Pingle. The party quickly gained support from Indian expatriates, especially in the United States, Canada and Asia. Ghadar meetings were held in Los Angeles, Oxford, Vienna, Washington, D.C., and Shanghai.[34]

Ghadar's ultimate goal was to overthrow

dominion status as modest and its constitutional methods as soft. Ghadar's foremost strategy was to entice Indian soldiers to revolt.[17] To that end, in November 1913 Ghadar established the Yugantar Ashram press in San Francisco. The press produced the Hindustan Ghadar newspaper and other nationalist literature.[34]

Towards the end of 1913, the party established contact with prominent revolutionaries in India, including

Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy of 1912, led the British government to pressure the American State Department to suppress Indian revolutionary activities and Ghadarite literature, which emanated mostly from San Francisco.[35][36]

Germany and the Berlin Committee

Main article: Berlin Committee
See also:
Imperial Germany, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, Arthur Zimmermann, and Franz von Papen

With the onset of

Jugantar Party member and at the time one of the leading revolutionary figures in Bengal.[15][20][39][40] The office of the 25-member committee at No.38 Wielandstrasse was accorded full embassy status.[41]

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg authorized German activity against British India as World War I broke out in September 1914. Germany decided to actively support the Ghadarite plans.[37] Using the links established between Indian and Irish residents in Germany (including Irish nationalist and poet Roger Casement) and the German Foreign Office, Oppenheim tapped into the Indo-Irish network in the United States. Har Dayal helped organise the Ghadar party before his arrest in the United States in 1914. He jumped bail and made his way to Switzerland, leaving the party and its publications in the charge of Ram Chandra Bharadwaj, who became the Ghadar president in 1914. The German consulate in San Francisco was tasked to make contact with Ghadar leaders in California. A naval lieutenant by the name of Wilhelm von Brincken with the help of the Indian nationalist journalist Tarak Nath Das and an intermediary by the name of Charles Lattendorf established links with Bharadwaj. Meanwhile, in Switzerland the Berlin committee was able to convince Har Dayal that organising a revolution in India was feasible.[2]

Conspiracy

See also: Komagata Maru incident and Ingress into India Ordinance, 1914
English Bay
, 23 May 1914. The Canadian government banned the passengers from landing in Canada and the ship was forced to return to India. The events surrounding the Komagata Maru incident served as a catalyst for the Ghadarite cause.

In May 1914, the Canadian government refused to allow the 400 Indian passengers of the ship

Komagata Maru to disembark at Vancouver. The voyage had been planned by Gurdit Singh Sandhu as an attempt to circumvent Canadian exclusion laws that effectively prevented Indian immigration. Before the ship reached Vancouver, German radio announced its approach, and British Columbian authorities prepared to prevent the passengers from entering Canada. The ship was escorted out of Vancouver by the protected cruiser HMCS Rainbow
and returned to India.

The incident became a focal point for the Indian community in Canada, which rallied in support of the passengers and against the government's policies. After a two-month legal battle, 24 of the passengers were allowed to immigrate. On reaching Calcutta, the passengers were detained under the Defence of India Act at Budge Budge by the British Indian government, which tried to forcibly transport them to Punjab. This caused rioting at Budge Budge, resulting in fatalities on both sides.[42] Ghadar leaders like Barkatullah and Tarak Nath Das used the inflammatory passions surrounding the Komagata Maru event as a rallying point and successfully brought many disaffected Indians in North America into the party's fold.[43]

The British Indian Army, meanwhile, contributed significantly to the Allied war effort in World War I. Consequently, a reduced force, an estimated 15,000 troops in late 1914, was stationed in India.[44] It was in this scenario that concrete plans for organising uprisings in India were made.

In September 1913 a Ghadarite named Mathra Singh visited Shanghai to promote the nationalist cause amongst Indians there, followed by a visit to India in January 1914, when Singh circulated Ghadar literature amongst Indian soldiers through clandestine sources before leaving for Hong Kong. Singh reported that the situation in India was favorable for revolution.[43][45]

By October 1914, many Ghadarites had returned to India and were assigned tasks like contacting Indian revolutionaries and organizations, spreading propaganda and literature, and arranging to get arms into the country.

Siam. Tehl Singh, the Ghadar operative in Shanghai, is believed to have spent $30,000 on helping revolutionaries to get into India.[47] The Ghadarites in India were able to establish contact with sympathisers in the British Indian Army
and build networks with underground revolutionary groups.

East Asia

Efforts had begun as early as 1911 to procure arms and smuggle them into India.[48] When a clear idea of the conspiracy emerged, more earnest and elaborate plans were made to obtain arms and to enlist international support. Herambalal Gupta, who had arrived in the United States in 1914 at the Berlin Committee's directive, took over the leadership of American wing of the conspiracy after the failure of the SS Korea mission. Gupta immediately began efforts to obtain men and arms. While men were in plentiful supply with more and more Indians coming forward to join the Ghadarite cause, obtaining arms for the uprising proved to be more difficult.[49]

The revolutionaries started negotiations with the Chinese government through James Dietrich, who held

Genyosha nationalist secret society.[50]

The Indian

Count Okuma, a former premier, in an attempt to enlist support for the Ghadarite movement.[51] Tarak Nath Das urged Japan to align with Germany, on the grounds that American war preparation could actually be directed against Japan.[51] Later in 1915, Abani Mukherji— a Jugantar activist and associate of Rash Behari Bose— is also known to have tried unsuccessfully to arrange for arms from Japan.The ascendancy of Li Yuanhong to Chinese Presidency in 1916 led to negotiations reopening through his former private secretary, who resided in the United States at the time. In exchange for allowing arms shipments to India through China, China was offered German military assistance and the rights to 10% of any material shipped to India via China. The negotiations were ultimately unsuccessful due to Sun Yat-sen's opposition to an alliance with Germany.[52]

Europe and United States

Main article: Annie Larsen affair
See also: Black Tom explosion
Hitler's rise to power. Papen was key in organising the arms shipments
.

The Indian nationalists then

Italian anarchists, with explosives manufactured in Italy. Barkatullah, by now in Europe and working with the Berlin Committee, arranged for these explosives to be sent to the German consulate in Zurich, from where they were expected to be taken charge of by an Italian anarchist named Bertoni. However, British intelligence was able to infiltrate this plot, and successfully pressed Swiss police to expel Abdul Hafiz.[54]

In the United States, an elaborate plan and arrangement was made to ship arms from the country and from the

Colt revolvers with 100,000 cartridges, and 250 Mauser pistols along with ammunition.[55] The schooner Annie Larsen and the sailing ship SS Henry S were hired to ship the arms out of the United States and transfer it to the SS Maverick. The ownership of ships were hidden under a massive smokescreen involving fake companies and oil business in south-east Asia. For the arms shipment itself, a successful cover was set up to lead British agents to believe that the arms were for the warring factions of the Mexican Civil War.[2][47][56][57][58][59][60] This ruse was successful enough that the rival Villa faction offered $15,000 to divert the shipment to a Villa-controlled port.[2]

Although the shipment was meant to supply the mutiny planned for February 1915, it was not dispatched until June. By then the conspiracy had been uncovered in India, and its major leaders had been arrested or gone into hiding. The shipment itself failed when disastrous co-ordination prevented a successful rendezvous off

Johann von Bernstoff's attempts to take possession, insisting it was meant for German East Africa.[61] The Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial opened in 1917 in the United States on charges of gun running and at the time was one of the lengthiest and most expensive trials in American legal history.[1]
Franz von Papen attempted to sabotage rail lines in Canada and destroy the Welland Canal. He also attempted to supply rifles and dynamite to Sikhs in British Columbia for blasting railway bridges. These plots in Canada did not materialise. Among other events in the United States that have been linked to the conspiracy is the Black Tom explosion when, on the night of 30 July 1916, saboteurs blew up nearly 2 million tons of arms and ammunition at the Black Tom terminal at New York harbour, awaiting shipment in support of the British war effort. Although blamed solely on German agents at the time, later investigations by the Directorate of Naval Intelligence in the aftermath of the Annie Larsen incident unearthed links between the Black Tom explosion and Franz von Papen, the Irish movement, the Indian movement as well as Communist elements active in the United States.[62][63]

Pan-Indian mutiny

Main article:
Ghadar Conspiracy
See also: 1915 Singapore Mutiny and Ingress into India Ordinance, 1914

By the start of 1915, many Ghadarites (nearly 8,000 in the Punjab province alone by some estimates) had returned to India.

Benares.[15][39][40] A plan was made for a unified general uprising, with the date set for 21 February 1915.[15][39]

February 1915

Outram Road
, Singapore, c. March 1915

In India, unaware of the delayed shipment and confident of being able to rally the Indian

Howrah Station
the next day (which would have been cancelled if Punjab was seized) and was to strike immediately. However, Punjab CID
Giani Pritam Singh, Swami Satyananda Puri and others fled to Thailand.[43][57]

On 15 February, the

SMS Emden, who were asked by the mutineers to join them but refused and actually took up arms and defended the barracks after the mutineers had left (sheltering some British refugees as well) until the prison camp was relieved.[66] The mutiny was suppressed only after French, Russian and Japanese ships arrived with reinforcements.[67][68] Of 200 people tried at Singapore, 47 mutineers were shot in public executions,[69][70] and the rest were transported for life to East Africa, or given jail terms ranging between seven and twenty years.[67] In all, 800 mutineers were either shot, imprisoned or exiled.[66] Some historians, including Hew Strachan, argue that although Ghadar agents operated within the Singapore unit, the mutiny was isolated and not linked to the conspiracy.[71] Others deem this as instigated by the Silk Letter Movement which became intricately related to the Ghadarite conspiracy.[19]

Christmas Day plot

Main articles:
German plot and Bagha Jatin
See also: Jugantar
Bagha Jatin, wounded after his final battle at the banks of Burha Balang, off Balasore. His enterprise was deemed one of the most significant threats to British India in autumn 1915.

In April 1915, unaware of the failure of the Annie Larsen plan, Papen arranged, through

Madras at Balasore and thus take control of Bengal.[73] Jugantar also received funds (estimated to be Rs 33,000 between June and August 1915) from the Helfferich brothers through a fictitious firm in Calcutta.[75] However, it was at this time that the details of the Maverick and Jugantar plans were leaked to Beckett, the British Consul at Batavia, by a defecting Baltic-German agent under the alias "Oren". The Maverick was seized, while in India, police destroyed the underground movement in Calcutta as an unaware Jatin proceeded according to plan to the Bay of Bengal coast in Balasore. He was followed there by Indian police and on 9 September 1915, he and a group of five revolutionaries armed with Mauser pistols made a last stand on the banks of the river Burhablanga. Seriously wounded in a gun battle that lasted seventy five minutes, Jatin died the next day in Balasore.[15][76]

To provide the Bengal group enough time to capture Calcutta and to prevent reinforcements from being rushed in, a mutiny coinciding with Jugantar's Christmas Day insurrection was planned for Burma with arms smuggled in from neutral Thailand.

Swatow to smuggle arms through.[79] However, the Thai Police high command, which was largely British, discovered these plans and Indian police infiltrated the plot through an Indian secret agent who was revealed the details by the Austrian chargé d'affaires. Thailand, although officially neutral, was allied closely with Britain and British India. On 21 July, the newly arrived British Minister Herbert Dering presented Foreign Minister Prince Devawongse with the request for arrest and extradition of Ghadarites identified by the Indian agent, ultimately resulting in the arrest of leading Ghadarites in August. Only a single raid into Burma was launched by six Ghadarites, who were captured and later hanged.[76][79][80]

Also to coincide with the proposed Jugantar insurrection in Calcutta was a planned raid on the

Christmas Day 1915 by a force of nearly one hundred Germans. Knipping made plans for shipping arms to the Andaman islands. However, Vincent Kraft was a double agent, and leaked details of Knipping's plans to British intelligence. His own bogus plans for the raid were in the meantime revealed to Beckett by "Oren", but given the successive failures of the Indo-German plans, the plans for the operations were abandoned on the recommendations of both the Berlin Committee and Knipping.[82]

Afghanistan

Main articles: Niedermayer–Hentig Expedition and Provisional Government of India
See also:
Silk Letter Conspiracy, Oskar von Niedermayer, and Werner Otto von Hentig
Mahendra Pratap (centre) at the head of the Mission with the German and Turkish delegates in Kabul, 1915. Seated to his right is Werner Otto von Hentig.

Efforts were directed at drawing Afghanistan into the war on the side of the Central Powers, which it was hoped would incite a nationalist or pan-Islamic uprising in India and destabilise the British recruiting grounds in Punjab and across India. After Russia's defeat in the 1905 Russo-Japanese war, her influence had declined, and it was Afghanistan that was at the time seen by Britain as the only power in the sub-continent capable of directly threatening India.[83]

In the spring of 1915, an

north-west India.[86][87] The Indo-German mission pressed Emir Habibullah to break from his neutral stance and open diplomatic relations with Germany, eventually hoping to rally the Emir to the German war effort.[88][89] Habibullah Khan vacillated on the mission's proposals through much of the winter of 1915, hoping to maintain his neutral stance till the course of the war offered a concrete picture. However, the mission opened at this time secret negotiations with the pro-German elements in the Emir's court and advisory council, including his brother Nasrullah Khan and son Amanullah Khan. It found support among Afghan intellectuals, religious leaders and the Afghan press which rallied with increasingly anti-British and pro-Central articles. By 1916 the Raj was forced to intercept copies of the Afghan newspaper Siraj al Akhbar sent to India.[90] It raised to the Emir a threat of a coup d'état in his country and unrest among his tribesmen, who were beginning to see him as subservient to British authority even as Turkey called for a pan-Islamic Jihad
.

In December 1915, the Indian members founded the Provisional Government of India, which it was hoped would weigh on Habibullah's advisory council to aid India and force the Emir's hands. In January 1916, the Emir approved a draft treaty with Germany to buy time. However, the Central campaign in the Middle East faltered at around this time, ending hopes that an overland route through Persia could be secured for aid and assistance to Afghanistan. The German members of the mission left Afghanistan in June 1916, ending the German intrigues in the country.[91] Nonetheless, Mahendra Pratap and his Provisional Government stayed behind, attempting to establish links with Japan, Republican China and Tsarist Russia. After the Russian revolution, Pratap opened negotiations with the Soviet Union, visiting Trotsky in Red Petrograd in 1918, and Lenin in Moscow in 1919 and he visited the Kaiser in Berlin in 1918.[92] He pressed for a joint Soviet-German offensive through Afghanistan into India. This was considered by the Soviets for some time after the 1919 coup in Afghanistan in which Amanullah Khan was instated as the Emir and the third Anglo-Afghan war began. Pratap may also have influenced the "Kalmyk Project", a Soviet plan to invade India through Tibet and the Himalayan buffer states.[93][94]

Middle East

See also: Middle Eastern theatre of World War I

Another arm of the conspiracy was directed at the Indian troops who were serving in Middle East. In the Middle Eastern theatre, members of the Berlin Committee, including

Bushire, and Kut-al-Amara.[19][97] M. P. T. Acharya's own works were directed at forming the Indian National Volunteer Corps with the help of Indian civilians in Turkey, and to recruiting Indian prisoners of war. He is further known to have worked along with Wilhelm Wassmuss in Bushire amongst Indian troops.[96][97] The efforts were, however, ultimately hampered by differences between the Berlin committee members who were predominantly Hindus, and Indian revolutionaries already in Turkey who were largely Muslims.[95] Further, the Egyptian nationalists distrusted the Berlin Committee, which was seen by the former as a German instrument.[96]

Nonetheless, in culmination of these efforts, Indian prisoners of war from France, Turkey, Germany, and

Amba Prasad Sufi, attempted to organise incursions to the western border of India from Persia, through Balochistan, to Punjab. Amba Prasad was joined during the war by Kedar Nath Sondhi, Rishikesh Letha and Amin Chaudhry. These Indian troops were involved in the capture of the frontier city of Karman, Uzbekistan and the detention of the British consul there, and also successfully harassed Percy Sykes' Persian campaign against the Baluchi and Persian tribal chiefs who were aided by the Germans.[99][100] The Aga Khan's brother was killed while fighting the rebels.[101] The rebels also successfully harassed British forces in Sistan in Afghanistan, confining them to Karamshir in Balochistan, and later moving towards Karachi. Some reports indicate they took control of the coastal towns of Gawador and Dawar. The Baluchi chief of Bampur, having declared his independence from British rule, also joined the Ghadarites. But the war in Europe turned for the worse for Turkey and Baghdad was captured by the British forces. The Ghadarite forces, their supply lines starved, were finally dislodged. They retreated to regroup at Shiraz, where they were finally defeated after a bitter fight during the siege of Shiraz. Amba Prasad Sufi was killed in this battle, but the Ghadarites carried on guerrilla warfare along with Iranian partisans until 1919.[100][102]
By the end of 1917, divisions had begun appearing between the Ghadar Party in America on the one hand, and the Berlin Committee and the German high command on the other. Reports from German agents working with Ghadarites in Southeast Asia and the United States clearly indicated to the European wing a significant element of disorganisation, as well as unrealism in gauging public mood and support within the Ghadarite organisation. The failure of the February plot, the lack of bases in Southeast Asia following China's participation in the war in 1917, and the problems of supporting a Southeast Asian operation through the sea stemmed the plans significantly. Infiltration by British agents, change in American attitude and stance, and the changing fortunes of the war meant the massive conspiracy for revolution within India never succeeded.[103]

Counter-intelligence

Main article: British counter-intelligence against the Indian revolutionary movement during World War I

British intelligence began to note and track outlines and nascent ideas of the conspiracy as early as 1911.

Komagata Maru incident had already alerted the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the existence of a large-scale network and plans for pan-Indian militant unrest. Measures were taken which focussed on Bengal—the seat of the most intense revolutionary terrorism at the time—and on Punjab, which was uncovered as a strong and militant base in the wake of Komagata Maru.[105][106] Har Dayal's extant group was found to have strong links with Rash Behari Bose, and were "cleaned up" in the wake of the Delhi bomb case.[106]

In Asia

See also: Charles Tegart, Oren, Vincent Kraft, and Kirpal Singh

At the outbreak of the war, Punjab CID sent teams to Hong Kong to intercept and infiltrate the returning Ghadarites, who often made little effort to hide their plans and objectives.[105] These teams were successful in uncovering details of the full scale of the conspiracy, and in discovering Har Dayal's whereabouts. Immigrants returning to India were double checked against a list of revolutionaries.[107]

In Punjab, the CID, although aware of possible plans for unrest, was not successful in infiltrating the conspiracy for the mutiny until February 1915. A dedicated force was formed, headed by the Chief of Punjab CID, and including amongst its members Liaqat Hayat Khan (later head of Punjab CID himself). In February that year, the CID was successful in recruiting the services of Kirpal Singh to infiltrate the plan. Singh, who had a Ghadarite cousin serving in the 23rd Cavalry, was able to infiltrate the leadership, being assigned to work in his cousin's regiment. Singh was soon under suspicion of being a spy, but was able to pass on the information regarding the date and scale of the uprising to British Indian intelligence.[108] As the date for the mutiny approached, a desperate Rash Behari Bose brought forward the mutiny day to the evening of 19 February, which was discovered by Kirpal Singh on the very day. No attempts were made by the Ghadarites to restrain him, and he rushed to inform Liaqat Hayat Khan of the change of plans. Ordered back to his station to signal when the revolutionaries had assembled, Singh was detained by the would-be mutineers, but managed to escape under the cover of answering the call of nature.[108]

The role of German or Baltic-German double-agents, especially the agent named

Mahendra Pratap's Provisional Government in Kabul were also compromised by Herambalal Gupta after he defected in 1918 and passed on information to Indian intelligence.[110]

Europe and the Middle East

See also:
East Persia Cordon

By the time the war broke out, the

Somerset Maugham, who was recruited in 1915 and used his cover as an author to visit Geneva without Swiss interference.[112][113]

Among other enterprises, the European intelligence network attempted to eliminate some of the Indian leaders in Europe. A British agent named Donald Gullick was dispatched to assassinate

John Ashenden after himself and Chandra Lal after Virendranath. The short story "Giulia Lazzari" is a blend of Gullick's attempts to assassinate Virendranath and Mata Hari's story. Winston Churchill reportedly advised Maugham to burn 14 other stories.[114][115]

The

Habsburg subjects, were presumed to support Germany, but were involved in spying on German and Austrian diplomats. Voska had begun working with Guy Gaunt, who headed Courtenay Bennett's intelligence network, at the outbreak of the war and on learning of the plot from the Czech European network, passed on the information to Gaunt and to Tomáš Masaryk who further passed on the information the American authorities.[117][119]

In the Middle East, British counter-intelligence was directed at preserving the loyalty of the Indian sepoy in the face of Turkish propaganda and the concept of The Caliph's Jihad, while a particularly significant effort was directed at intercepting the

Kabul Mission. The East Persian Cordon was established in July 1915 in the Sistan province of Persia to prevent the Germans from crossing into Afghanistan, and to protect British supply caravans in Sarhad from Damani, Reki and Kurdish Baluchi tribal raiders who may have been tempted by German gold. Among the commanders of the Sistan force was Reginald Dyer who led it between March and October 1916.[120][121][122]

United States

See also:
W. C. Hopkinson

In the United States, the conspiracy was successfully infiltrated by British intelligence through Irish and Indian channels. The activities of the

Taraknath Das.[123]
The Home department of the British Indian government had begun the task of actively tracking Indian seditionists on the East Coast as early as 1910.

Francis Cunliffe-Owen

Francis Cunliffe Owen, the officer heading the Home Office agency in New York, had become thoroughly acquainted with

Ghadar Party was incidentally established after Irish Republicans, sensing infiltration, encouraged formation of an exclusively Indian society.[33]

Following this, several approaches were adopted, including infiltration through an Indian national named Bela Singh who successfully set up a network of agents passing on information to Hopkinson, and through the use of the famous American

Pinkerton's detective agency.[33][125] Bela Singh was later murdered in India in the 1930s. Hopkinson was assassinated in a Vancouver courthouse by a Ghadarite named Mewa Singh, in October, 1914.[126]
Charles Lamb, an Irish double agent, is said to have passed on the majority of the information that compromised the Annie Larsen affair, and ultimately helped the construction of the prosecution. An Indian operative, codenamed "C" and described most likely to have been the adventurous Chandra Kanta Chakravarty (later the chief prosecution witness in the trial), also passed on the details of the conspiracy to British and American intelligence.[127]

Trials

Main articles:
Lahore Conspiracy trial and Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial

The conspiracy led to several trials in India, most famous among them the

Ferozepur conspiracy cases, and the trials of those arrested at Budge Budge.[128] At Lahore, a special tribunal was constituted under the Defence of India Act 1915 and a total of 291 conspirators were put on trial. Of these 42 were awarded the death sentence, 114 transported for life, and 93 awarded varying terms of imprisonment. Several of these were sent to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands
. Forty two defendants in the trial were acquitted. The Lahore trial directly linked the plans made in United States and the February mutiny plot. Following the conclusion of the trial, diplomatic efforts to destroy the Indian revolutionary movement in the United States and to bring its members to trial increased considerably.[129][130][131]

In the United States, the

US Marshal
.

In May 1917, a group of Indian nationalists of the Ghadar Party were indicted by a federal grand jury on a charge of conspiracy to form a military enterprise against Britain. In later years the proceedings were criticised as being largely a show trial designed to appease the British government.[11] The jury during the trial was carefully selected to exclude any Irish person with republican views or associations.[132] The trial lasted from November 20, 1917, to April 24, 1918, and resulted in the convictions of 29 people, including 14 Indian nationalists. British colonial authorities hoped the conviction of the Indians would result in their deportation back to India. Had the nationalists been deported to India, they would've faced much harsher sentences, including execution. In contrast to the mass executions in India, the Indian nationalists convicted in the San Francisco trial received prison terms ranged from 30 days to 22 months, as they faced far less serious charges of violating U.S. neutrality laws.[133]

Strong public support in favour of the Indians, especially the revived Anglophobic sentiments following the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles which were perceived as being overtly favorable towards Britain, allowed the Ghadarite movement to be revived despite British concerns.[134]

Impact

Main article: Impact of the Hindu–German Conspiracy

The conspiracy had a significant impact on Britain's policies, both within the empire and in international relations.[3][35][135][136][137][138] The outlines and plans for the nascent ideas of the conspiracy were noted and tracked by British intelligence as early as 1911.[104] Alarmed at the agile organisation, which repeatedly reformed in different parts of the country despite being subdued in others, the chief of Indian Intelligence Sir Charles Cleveland was forced to warn that the idea and attempts at pan-Indian revolutions were spreading through India "like some hidden fire".[104][139] A massive, concerted, and coordinated effort was required to subdue the movement. Attempts were made in 1914 to prevent the naturalisation of Tarak Nath Das as an American citizen, while successful pressure was applied to have Har Dayal interned.[137]

Political impact

Main articles:
Amritsar Massacre
See also: Defence of India Act 1915

The conspiracy, an important set of events in the Indian independence movement, according to the British Indian Government's own evaluation at the time, as well as those of several contemporary and modern historians, and it was one of the significant threats faced by the Raj in the second decade of the 20th century.[140][141]

Amid the British war effort and the threat from the militant movement in India, the British passed the

Bolshevik links to the militant movement in India, especially in Punjab and Bengal. On the recommendations of the committee, the Rowlatt Act, an extension of the Defence of India Act 1915, was enforced in India.[142][143][144][145][146]

The events that followed the passage of the Rowlatt Act in 1919 were also influenced by the conspiracy. At the time, British Indian Army troops were returning from the battlefields of Europe and

Mohajirs who had fought on behalf of the Turkish Caliphate and later in the ranks of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War had also begun to reach India. The Russian Revolution had also cast its long shadow into India.[149] It was at this time that Mahatma Gandhi
, until then relatively unknown on the Indian political scene, began to emerge as a mass leader.

Ominously, in 1919, the

Amritsar massacre, as well as responses before and after it, was the result of a concerted plan of response from the Punjab administration to suppress such a conspiracy.[150] James Houssemayne Du Boulay is said to have ascribed a direct relationship between the fear of a Ghadarite uprising in the midst of an increasingly tense situation in Punjab, and the British response that ended in the massacre.[151]

Lastly, British efforts to downplay and disguise the nature and impact of the revolutionary movement at this time also resulted in a policy designed to strengthen the moderate movement in India, which ultimately saw Gandhi's rise in the Indian movement.[4]

International relations

See also:
Anglo-Japanese relations

The conspiracy influenced several aspects of Great Britain's international relations, most of all

Anglo-American relations during the war, as well as, to some extent, Anglo-Chinese relations
. After the war, it also influenced Anglo-Japanese relations.

At the start of the war, the American government's refusal to check the Indian seditionist movement was a major concern for the British government. By 1916, a majority of the resources of the American department of the British Foreign Office were related to the Indian seditionist movement. Before the outbreak of the war, the political commitments of the

Yangtze River. Several incidents followed, including the SS Henry S, which were defended by the British government on grounds that the seized ship planned to foment an armed uprising in India. These drew strong responses from the US government, prompting the US Atlantic Fleet to dispatch destroyers to the Pacific to protect the sovereignty of American vessels. Authorities in the Philippines were more cooperative, which assured Britain of knowledge of any plans against Hong Kong. The strained relations were relaxed in May 1916 when the Britain released the China prisoners and relaxed its aggressive policy seeking co-operation with the United States. However, diplomatic exchanges and relations did not improve before November that year.[152][153][154]

The conspiracy issue was ultimately addressed by

William G. E. Wiseman, head of British intelligence in the United States, when he passed details of a bomb plot directly to the New York Police bypassing diplomatic channels. This led to the arrest of Chandra Kanta Chuckrevarty. As the links between Chuckervarty's papers and the Igel papers became apparent, investigations by federal authorities expanded to cover the entire conspiracy. Ultimately, the United States agreed to forward evidence so long as Britain did not seek admission of liability for breaches of neutrality. At a time that diplomatic relations with Germany were deteriorating, the British Foreign Office directed its embassy to co-operate with the investigations resolving the Anglo-American diplomatic disputes just as the United States entered the war.[153][154]

Through 1915–16, China and Indonesia were the major bases for the conspirators, and significant efforts were made by the British government to coax China into the war to attempt to control the German and Ghadar intrigues. This would also allow free purchase of arms from China for the

Sun Yat-Sen and rebels in southern China laid the foundations for deterioration of Anglo-Japanese relations as early as 1916.[155] After the end of the Great War, Japan increasingly became a haven for radical Indian nationalists in exile, who were protected by patriotic Japanese societies. Notable among these were Rash Behari Bose, Tarak Nath Das, and A. M. Sahay. The protections offered to these nationalists, most notably by Toyama Mitsuru's Black Dragon Society,[156][157] effectively prevented British efforts to repatriate them and became a major policy concern.[157][158]

Ghadar Party and IIC

The IIC was formally disbanded in November 1918. Most of its members became closely associated with

League Against Imperialism and was able to convince Jawaharlal Nehru to affiliate the Indian National Congress with the league in 1927. He later fled Nazi Germany for the Soviet Union but disappeared in 1937 under Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.[160]

The Ghadar Party, suppressed during the war, revived itself in 1920 and openly declared its communist beliefs. Although sidelined in California, it remained relatively stronger in East Asia, where it allied itself with the Chinese Communist Party.[34][160]

World War II

Main articles:
Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind

Although the conspiracy failed during World War I, the movement being suppressed at the time and several of its key leaders hanged or incarcerated, several prominent Ghadarites also managed to flee India to Japan and Thailand. The concept of a revolutionary movement for independence also found a revival amongst later generation Indian leaders, most notably

Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind in Southeast Asia.[164][165]

See also:
Indische Legion

Commemoration

Victoria Memorial Hall, Singapore

The Ghadar Memorial Hall in San Francisco honours members of the party who were hanged following the Lahore conspiracy trial,

Bhai Paramanand, and Rash Behari Bose.[168]
Several other revolutionaries are also honoured through India and the Indian American population. A memorial
Komagata Maru was unveiled by Jawaharlal Nehru at Budge Budge in Calcutta in 1954, while a second plaque was unveiled in 1984 at Gateway Pacific, Vancouver by the Canadian government. A heritage foundation to commemorate the passengers from the Komagata Maru excluded from Canada was established in 2005.[169]
In Singapore, two memorial tablets at the entrance of the
Victoria Memorial Hall and four plaques in St Andrew's Cathedral commemorate the British soldiers and civilians killed during the Singapore Mutiny.[170]
In Ireland, a memorial at the
Robert Goheen, Philip Talbot, Anita Desai
and SAKHI and Joseph Elder.

Note on the name

The conspiracy is known under several different names, including the 'Hindu Conspiracy', the 'Indo-German Conspiracy', the 'Ghadar conspiracy' (or 'Ghadr conspiracy'), or the 'German plot'.

Annie Larsen plot in the United States, and the ensuing trial of Indian nationalists and the staff of the German Consulate of San Francisco for violating American neutrality. The trial itself was called the Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial, and the conspiracy was reported in the media (and later studied by several historians) as Hindu–German Conspiracy.[132] However, the conspiracy involved not only Hindus and Germans, but also substantial numbers of Muslims and Punjabi Sikhs, and strong Irish support that pre-dated German and Turkish involvement. The term Hindu (or Hindoo) was used commonly in opprobrium in America to identify Indians regardless of religion. Likewise, conspiracy was also a term with negative connotations. The term Hindu Conspiracy was used by the government to actively discredit the Indian revolutionaries at a time the United States was about to join the war against Germany.[132][177][178]

The term '

Rowlatt committee
set up investigate the events referred to them as "The Seditious conspiracy".

See also

Notes and references

Notes

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  6. ^ Desai 2005, p. 43
  7. ^ Desai 2005, p. 93
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References

Further reading
Preceded by
Anushilan samiti, Jugantar
 Revolutionary movement for Indian independence Succeeded by
Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, Jugantar, Indian National Army

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