Abstract
On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to vacate seat reserved for whites on a Montgomery city bus that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, finally culminating in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. About a decade and a half earlier, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya while sitting in the ‘whites only’ section of a segregated train travelling across Louisiana denied to vacate her seat despite repeated interrogation by the ticket collector. The author maintains that while by refusing to move, Kamaladevi defied the legalised bigotry of the American South; by identifying and proclaiming herself as ‘coloured’ she expressed her solidarity with the millions of Afro-Americans who were subjected to the brutalities of segregation. Her self-description as ‘a coloured woman’ epitomised what the author calls ‘a coloured cosmopolitanism’ that transcended traditional racial distinctions, positioning both Indians and Afro-Americans at the vanguard of ‘darker races’ (pp. 1–2). The book under review has deftly studied the shared struggle of the United States and India. Though located in extremely distinct locations and situations, both these countries have had enough interconnectedness in terms of solidarity and sharing their struggle for injustices of racism, casteism and colonialism. Race, caste and nation have been dealt with, the theoretical underpinnings delineating their perceptive and conceptual meanings. The author rightly observes that despite differences, the social reformers drew analogies to compare and contrast the injustices of the United States of America and colonial India.
But in contrast to what Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and many others did in defence of Coloured Cosmopolitanism, that this solidarity was also jeopardised came to fore in the following three distinct ways. First, the differences between racial hierarchies across the world varied and many of them differentiated between Blacks and Indians. Second, some Indians in the United States used racial theories to self-identify as ‘Aryan’ and ‘Caucasian’ claiming legal whiteness and therefore not distancing themselves from poor African American but also their own countrymen belonging to lower castes described as Shudras and Atishudras. And third, a section of middle-class African American employed the rhetoric of Christian Civilisation that distinguished themselves from the ‘backward’ millions of Asians, Africans as well as many of their own ‘colored brethren’ back home who profess other religion than Christianity (pp. 7–8). Notwithstanding such challenges, Afro-Americans and Indians have, many a time, stood in solidarity and at times reinforced prevailing conceptions of race, nation, class, caste and gender. Many leaders, however, made comparisons in specific contexts. Swami Vivekananda, for instance, rather than comparing African Americans with low-caste Indians or Dravidians, juxtaposed freed slaves with all Indians. Nico Slate correctly observes that Vivekananda understated the horrors of slavery even while powerfully portraying the contemporary plight of the Afro-Americans (p. 20).
But the borrowings are immense. While Thoreau’s influence on Gandhi cannot be underrated, Booker T. Washington shaped Gandhi’s outlook about African Americans as well as his approach to social change and Gandhi in turn had even deeper influence on Martin Luther King Jr, the hero of Civil Rights era in America. Lala Lajpat Rai’s work on America titled The United States of America: A Hindu Impression has a detailed discussion on the struggles of African Americans. Despite his opposition to caste oppression, for a larger Hindu unity he portrayed caste inequality as less rigid than American racism (p. 41). Unlike many who used either race/caste or race/nation analogy, Lajpat Rai often compared Africans with both Dalits and Indians as a whole. But his race/caste parallel often ignored Dalit agency. Gandhi’s leadership in India’s struggle for freedom was widely debated in America both politically and academically. Blanche Watson used the term ‘The Greatest Man in the World’ for Gandhi. W.E.B Du Bois emphasised more on the mass mobilisation and colour dynamics rather than the leadership. It is noteworthy that neither of these two organic intellectuals Du Bois and Watson suggested adopting Gandhian techniques in struggle against racial injustices in America. Like some Indian socialists and communists, many African Americans toward left of the political spectrum tended to view him with suspicion and doubt his intentions. About four decades later, Martin Luther King Jr, one of the crucial Civil Rights leaders, claimed himself to be the follower of Mahatma Gandhi. Marcus Garvey’s UNIA faced many challenges similar to those faced by Gandhi’s Indian National Congress. Both these organisations forged solidarities based on a combination of race and nation along with reaching out to various oppressed groups across the world. Both sought to create a unified struggle bridging religious and class diversity. Gandhi himself, like Garvey, was inspired by the great Afro-American leader Booker T. Washington.
Gandhi compared and contrasted race and caste on four important counts. First, that there was no legal discrimination against Dalits, as they were entrenched in Jim Crow laws. Second, while brutal lynching of African Americans were common, savage violence against Dalits were impossible because of non-violent traditions. Third, he noted that individual Dalits became saints but he wondered if there were Afro-American saints. Fourth, he stated that prejudice against untouchability was fast weaning out as against racial prejudice. The author has aptly diagnosed the utopian and optimistic notions which were far from being true on the real surface. There were several other national leaders: Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Subhash Chandra Bose and Tarak Nath Das who, like Gandhi, minimised inequity of untouchability, fearing loss of India’s reputation abroad. Tagore’s flexible cosmopolitanism was often pitted against Gandhi’s anti-colonial nationalism for national and international discourse. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, in his tightly argued pamphlet ‘Which is Worse? Slavery or Untouchability?’ concluded that there was no doubt that untouchables were worse than slaves (pp. 60–62). In subsequent chapter ‘Soul Force’, the author tries connecting the two struggles at much higher plain of philosophy and spiritualism. Indian supporters of Gandhi strengthened Gandhi’s status among Afro-Americans as a ‘coloured messiah’. Sarojini Naidu who was in the United States to build American opinion about Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, noted that long ago, a noble white woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin lived in Cincinnati and had dedicated her genius to the deliverance of the Negroes from their pitiful bondage (p. 96). A religiously inspired commitment for social change also linked Gandhi’s tool of non-violence and civil-disobedience with Black Christianity that produced a leader like Martin Luther King Jr.
An important arena that needed due attention has been amply discussed. While intellectuals like Du Bois and Garvey used caste in India to highlight colour discrimination among blacks, they failed to recognise the brutality of caste oppression as well as potential solidarities between Blacks and Dalits (p. 79). Global Double Victory of course signalled a victory over both colonialism and racism. The diplomacy of double victory was indeed interesting. Walter White, a leader and executive director of NAACP used Indian opposition to American racism to pressurise American politicians who were afraid of losing India to Japan, to grant equal rights to African Americans (p. 127). In an attempt for ‘Building a Third World’, the failure of the Cold War civil rights framework looked inevitable. This failure resulted from the very nature of Cold War. In the US anti-communist witch-hunt narrowed the vocabulary with which Blacks and Indians expressed solidarities (p. 163). The last chapter, ‘Nonviolence and the Nation’ has a detailed discussion on non-violence as an ideology and the making of Black Gandhi also popularly called Montgomery’s Mahatma (p. 221). Contributions of lesser known leaders like A. Phillip Randolph John, Edward Bruce, Cyrill Briggs, Paul Robeson, William Lloyd Garrison, etc., have provided fruitful contributions in establishing a meaningful shared struggle between United States and India. On the Indian side too, leaders and intellectuals like Haridas T. Mazumdar, Surendra Nath Gupta, Dilip Singh Saund, Abdur Raoof Malik, Benarsidas Chaturvedi, Amiya Kanti Das, Shripad R. Tikekar, Nazir Ahmad Khan and several others have fruitfully contributed in terms of establishing contact and solidarities of cosmopolitanism. Nico Slate does justice to them all and many more who have conveniently been dropped from historical texts.