Pandurang Khankhoje at the Oregon Agricultural College

Subsequent to posting the review of Savitri Sawhney's book on her father Pandurang Khankhoje I visited Portland Oregon in early June 2013.While in Portland I visited the Oregon Historical Society and the Oregon State University (formerly the Oregon Agriculture College).There I searched the available historical records for details on the early days of Khankhoje in the U.S.Dr. Sawhney has chronicled how Khankhoje had struggled in those early days working in the lumber mills at Astoria(near Portland).This she dovetails with struggle to form the Ghadr party by organising the migrant Indian population(mostly from Punjab).Clearly this struggle of Khankhoje brought him closer to the struggling migrants and forged a bond with them.However there was another stark reality which these migrants faced.This was ethnic and racial discrimination they had come across in nearby Vancouver and elsewhere from where they had transited into Portland.This is well brought out in a recent article in the Oregon Historical Review.This article does suggest that Portland Oregon was relatively free from such discrimination.However it must be borne in mind that it was the struggle of these migrants and their well wishers that also contributed to a relatively discrimination free environment they built. It is here that Oregon records(not available to Dr. Sawhney) shed some light.The Oregonian in June 1911 carried a report on the graduation of the 1911 batch with the caption that 'The Oregon Agriculture College batch of 1911 is cosmopolitan'.This article mentions Pandurang Khankhoje right in the beginning and then details the break up of the composition of the class, showing how international students like Khankhoje formed a part of this cosmopolitanism and how the rest of the class comprised students from at least ten different states in the U.S. besides the students from Oregon.It is clear here that the Oregonian is giving a high premium to cosmopolitanism.Similarly the Weekly Gazette Times has a high opinion of the cosmopolitan character of the college.It is here that mention of Khankhoje becomes significant.The Oregon Agriculture College Barometer,a college newspaper carries a report in May 1910(vol.xvi) that Khankhoje along with B.D.Pandey of Allahbad and Mulk Raj Sui of Batala India with 15 other foreign nationals became the founding charter members of the Cosmopolitan Club of the College.The club's objective was to to promote international understanding and combat nationaland ethnic hatred by familiarising students with the diverse cultures, costumes, traditions of different nations. Another report in the Oregon Agriculture College Barometer(OAC Barometer)highlights that the club will become a chapter in the national association of cosmopolitan clubs in the U.S.Indeed by this time the Cosmopolitan Clubs movement had become very popular spanning 22 U.S. universities.Louis Lochner of the University of Wisconsin who pioneered the coordination of these clubs across U.S.was highly optimistic that these clubs would become an important movement to promote international peace and understanding at a time when war clouds were gathering in Europe.For this reason the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs also fostered a link with Corda Fratres,an association of students of various European universities(comprising 30,000-40,000 students) whose objective again was to promote international peace and fraternity.It is here in this context that Khankhoje made various speeches reported in the local newspapers upholding U.S.democracy vis a vis British colonialism.The OAC Barometer and the local papers also reveal that the Cosmopolitan Club gatherings were also fun filled affair. On one occasion Khankhoje and his friend B.D. Pande had their audience in splits while performing Indian juggling act.Soon after this B.D. Pande read a serious paper on the exploitation of the British colonialism in India.Similarly the issue of famine in India was raised by Khankhoje in one of the meetings. In a recent personal communication, Mr.Allen Mikaelin of the American Historical Association has pointed on the basis of his researches that important Ghadr activists like Lala Hardayal and Tarakhnath Das too addressed Cosmopoltan Club meetings in Washington University.The research on these themes is still very much work in progress.We still need to know how these clubs progressed in later years.Did they continue with the peace agenda or did they succumb to sectarianism? However in the years Ghadr party was being organised, the early years of Khankhoje do show an active attempt to curb national hatred and promote internationalism. The importance of this movement of Cosmopolitan Clubs was very important for the Indian immigrants,(many of whom joined the Ghadr Party),since they had faced this hatred on the way to Oregon.This cosmopolitanism also acquired prestige in the elite American circles.Some of the important American university Presidents wrote favorably about it.Many of these articles were published in Clubs's journal 'The Coswmopolitan Student'. On the whole then the movement perhaps did provide a relief to the Indian and immigrants of other nations in this area, Following are some of the documents from Oregon Historical Society and Oregon State University record rooms which are cited above:

Imagination versus Intellect? (DRAFT)

This piece is an attempt to investigate certain aspects of the enlightenment thought. We tend to take categories and concepts put forward by the thinkers of the 19th century at their face value. There is reason to believe that these have been arrived at after considerable intellectual effort. Two such categories that of imagination and intellect were deployed by Marx and Hegel in their writings I will be arguing that the way Marx takes up these Hegelian categories needs to be probed further.

Consider this paragraph of Hegel; “The concept of Monarch is therefore the hardest for ratiocination that is for the method of reflection employed by understanding. This method refuses to move beyond isolated points of view and deductive argumentation. Consequently it exhibits the dignity of the Monarch as something deduced, not only in its form but in its essence. The truth is, however, that to be something not deduced but purely self originating is precisely the concept of Monarchy. Akin then to this reasoning is the idea of the treating the Monarch’s right as grounded in the authority of God, since it is in its divinity that its unconditional character is contained.”

Marx replied to this; “In a certain sense every inevitable existent is purely self originating; in this respect the Monarch’s louse as well as the Monarch. Hegel, in saying that, has not said something special about the monarch. But should something specifically distinct from all other objects of science and philosophy of right be said about the Monarch then this would be real foolishness, correct only in so far as the one person idea is something derived only from the imagination and not the intellect” (both paragraphs from Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right)

Needs to be thought over I think. Hegel is urging going beyond isolated categories and finite points of view and deductive argumentation. What Hegel is urging is to move beyond “understanding.” Marx here by calling to the intellect again seems to be pushing Hegel back to understanding. However the great thinker does concede that this one person idea and self originating has a validity or correctness if it is derived from imagination. Let me respectfully submit here that historically there exists in the long transition of kinship societies to territoriality institutions like Rakhi among the Sikhs. These institutions embodied the idea or prelude as ideational reality prior to conquest or occupation of territory. (See Indu Banga, the Agrarian System of the Sikhs) These institutions were the driving spirit of kinship society till the 18th century. Another anthropologist Maurice Godelier has argued for a category ideal – real to understand the institutions of kinship society. The one person concept emerges from the dynamics of these institutions. The Monarch exhibits the ideality of the transition from kinship to territorial societies. He reflects the arbitrary, caprice filled moment in which perhaps the finality of decision to occupy the territory is rooted. The kinship system perhaps on its own will not make the transition but would rely on that one person to make the move. Since it is such a big step it evokes divine authority to conjoin with the temporality of the sovereign to carry out a task which it itself dare not undertake.

Marx points out that a great deal of confusion prevails here. According to him it is not the actual person who brings his actual content into existence, objectifies himself and leaves behind the abstraction of ‘person quand meme’. Thus in this process instead of recognizing the actualization of the person as the most concrete thing the state is to have the priority “In order that the moments of concept, individuality attain a mystical existence. Rationality does not consist in the reason of the actual person achieving actuality but in the moments of the abstract concept achieving it.”

Here again it looks like that the categories of rationality and reason seem to be employed as categories of “understanding”. In his philosophical notebooks Lenin did point out that the mystical does come in when figuring out things like “causation”.(V.I.Lenin,Philosophical Notebooks,vol.38,PPH)

As Hegel himself pointed out “but as we have seen, the abstract thinking of understanding is so far from being either ultimate or stable, that it shows a perpetual tendency to work its own dissolution and swing around into its opposite. Reasonableness, on the contrary, just consists in embracing within itself these opposites as unsubstantial elements. ”Thus the reason world may be equally styled mystical – not because thought cannot both reach and comprehend it, but merely because it lies beyond the compass of understanding.” (Hegel, Science of Logic)

Further Hegel elaborates on imagination, “The main point is that productive imagination is a truly speculative idea both in the form of sensuous intuition and in that of experience which is the comprehending of the intuition”. He takes the polemic much further, “there are those, who when they here talk of the power of imagination do not even think of the intellect, still of reason, but only of unlawfulness, whim and fiction (See Marx on Monarchy) ‘They can not free themselves from the idea of a qualitative manifold of faculties and capacities of the spirit. It is they above all who must grasp that the In – itself of the empirical consciousness is reason itself, that productive imagination as intuition and productive imagination as experience are not particular faculties quite sundered from reason. They must grasp that this productive imagination is only called intellect because the categories, as the determinate forms of experiential imagination are posited under the form of infinite, and fixated as concepts which also form a complete system within their own Sphere. Productive imagination has been allowed to get by easily in the Kantian philosophy, first because its pure idea is set forth in a rather mixed up way, like other potencies, almost in the ordinary form of a psychological faculty though an a priori one and because Kant did not recognize reason as the one and only a priori whether it be of sensibility of intellect or what have you. Instead he conceived of the a priori only under formal concepts of universality and necessity. As we shall see he turned the a priori back into a pure unity that is one that is not originally synthetic.” (From Hegel, 1802 Faith and knowledge)

My argument is that Hegel here both in terms of defining mystical and in defining imagination and intellect sets forth some very concrete arguments. His concern is to go beyond understanding as a means of grasping a reality like Monarchy. Further he makes a case very concretely for not separating the concepts of imagination and intellect. Marx on the other hand as we have seen in the Critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right sees the two categories of imagination and intellect in a dichotomy. In the Critique at least Marx does not take into account the way that Hegel has integrated the concept of imagination and intellect. For us to figure out why Marx uses these two categories in dichotomy we would need to probe his work a little further.
(The quotations are from i) Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right by Karl Marx(Internet Edition of www.marxists.org website ii) Indu Banga's Agrarian System of the Sikhs and Maurice Godelier's work on anthropology unless cited in the text.)

Pandurang Khankhoje

Savitri Sawhney, I shall Never Ask for Pardon: A Memoir of Pandurang Khankhoje, Penguin, New Delhi, September 2008.

The National Movement in India comprised individuals of various hues. The attempt by the imperialist historiography to portray them as self seekers in the institutional openings created by British indeed needs to be critiqued. The biography under review depicts a man who exemplified commitment to the nation and its downtrodden. However this was no sectarian, narrow or chauvinist commitment. Khankhoje made a link between the downtrodden in India and the downtrodden across national boundaries. It was thus a transition from an armed revolutionary to an agricultural scientist of repute in far away Mexico was made.

Khankhoje was what E.H. Carr has called a ‘romantic exile’. He left the country to explore avenues for training in arms and possibilities of a revolutionary overthrow of the British rule in India. This was at a very young age of 19 and after travelling through Japan, China and several other countries he reached the United States. Working as a labourer and restaurant waiter he studied at the Oregon University to earn a degree in agriculture. It is here that the foundations of the revolutionary Ghadr movement were laid. He depicted himself as a man of action and thus headed the ‘praharak’ (action) wing of the Ghadr movement. The casual way in which Khushwant Singh dismisses his association with Ghadr is not borne out by facts. Harish K. Puri in an article in Social Scientist in 1980 described Khankhoje as the head of the armed militant wing in the revolutionary organization of Ghadr. Similarly, his name comes up in the various accounts of the time. That he had to be low profile was a price he had to pay for organizing armed training and mobilization. Savitri Sawhney in her account tells us that he often disguised himself as a muslim and assumed names such as Pir Khan. She has done a signal service to the scholars of the national movement by bringing out an account based on Khankhoje’s personal papers. We get to know of Khankhoje’s trials and travails as he makes contact with democratic movements in China (where he meets Sun-Yat-Sen), Japan, Persia and Russia. The attempts at armed mobilization were not without danger as Savitri Sawhney tells us of the time when he was shot and wounded and was taken care of by a nomadic Persian tribe.

Khankhoje turned towards the left revolutionary politics in the 1920s. Along with Virendernath Chattopadhyay he met Lenin in Moscow in 1921 and submitted a thesis on the Indian question.

A revolutionary cannot be permanently plotting and carrying out armed revolution. Khankhoje in US had acquired degrees in agriculture at a US university. As Sawhney points out the inspiration to work on agriculture had initially come from his meeting with Sun-Yat-Sen. In his meeting with Lenin she tells us that Lenin had asked in detail about caloric and nutritional requirement of the Indian worker. It is these inspirations which fuelled Khankhoje’s research in agriculture when he took asylum in Mexico. His contribution in developing a new variety of corn is well documented in various histories of agriculture.

Savitri Sawhney’s account is indeed a tribute of a daughter to her father. There is nothing to be apologetic about that. Indeed her sparkling narrative tells us of the happy memories of her childhood and her father. In spite of the stresses and strains of the revolutionary commitment he managed to give that to his family is indeed an achievement.

Pandurang Khankhoje

Savitri Sawhney, I shall Never Ask for Pardon: A Memoir of Pandurang Khankhoje, Penguin, New Delhi, September 2008.

The National Movement in India comprised individuals of various hues. The attempt by the imperialist historiography to portray them as self seekers in the institutional openings created by British indeed needs to be critiqued. The biography under review depicts a man who exemplified commitment to the nation and its downtrodden. However this was no sectarian, narrow or chauvinist commitment. Khankhoje made a link between the downtrodden in India and the downtrodden across national boundaries. It was thus a transition from an armed revolutionary to an agricultural scientist of repute in far away Mexico was made.

Khankhoje was what E.H. Carr has called a ‘romantic exile’. He left the country to explore avenues for training in arms and possibilities of a revolutionary overthrow of the British rule in India. This was at a very young age of 19 and after travelling through Japan, China and several other countries he reached the United States. Working as a labourer and restaurant waiter he studied at the Oregon University to earn a degree in agriculture. It is here that the foundations of the revolutionary Ghadr movement were laid. He depicted himself as a man of action and thus headed the ‘praharak’ (action) wing of the Ghadr movement. The casual way in which Khushwant Singh dismisses his association with Ghadr is not borne out by facts. Harish K. Puri in an article in Social Scientist in 1980 described Khankhoje as the head of the armed militant wing in the revolutionary organization of Ghadr. Similarly, his name comes up in the various accounts of the time. That he had to be low profile was a price he had to pay for organizing armed training and mobilization. Savitri Sawhney in her account tells us that he often disguised himself as a muslim and assumed names such as Pir Khan. She has done a signal service to the scholars of the national movement by bringing out an account based on Khankhoje’s personal papers. We get to know of Khankhoje’s trials and travails as he makes contact with democratic movements in China (where he meets Sun-Yat-Sen), Japan, Persia and Russia. The attempts at armed mobilization were not without danger as Savitri Sawhney tells us of the time when he was shot and wounded and was taken care of by a nomadic Persian tribe.

Khankhoje turned towards the left revolutionary politics in the 1920s. Along with Virendernath Chattopadhyay he met Lenin in Moscow in 1921 and submitted a thesis on the Indian question.

A revolutionary cannot be permanently plotting and carrying out armed revolution. Khankhoje in US had acquired degrees in agriculture at a US university. As Sawhney points out the inspiration to work on agriculture had initially come from his meeting with Sun-Yat-Sen. In his meeting with Lenin she tells us that Lenin had asked in detail about caloric and nutritional requirement of the Indian worker. It is these inspirations which fuelled Khankhoje’s research in agriculture when he took asylum in Mexico. His contribution in developing a new variety of corn is well documented in various histories of agriculture.

Savitri Sawhney’s account is indeed a tribute of a daughter to her father. There is nothing to be apologetic about that. Indeed her sparkling narrative tells us of the happy memories of her childhood and her father. In spite of the stresses and strains of the revolutionary commitment he managed to give that to his family is indeed an achievement.

Afghanistan: The Scenario at the end of 19th century

Afghanistan: The Scenario At The End of 19th Century

Various scholars and historians have offered the view that Afghanistan was the focal point of ‘The Great Game’ being played between Russia and Britain in the late 19th century. This great game was ostensibly to prevent a Russian invasion of British territories. However, Malcolm Yapp has pointed out that the Britons used the term ‘The Great Game’ in late 1800s to describe several different things in relation to their interest in Asia. Moreover he argues the meaning of the ‘Great-Game’ which is currently popular with the historians does not reflect the real concerns of the British in relation to India in the 19th century. Yapp believes that the primary concern of the British authorities in India was the control of the indigenous population, and not preventing a Russian invasion. Examining the documents of this period ‘one is struck by both the prominence and the unreality of the strategic debates’. These debates he argues in fact obscure and cover up the challenge of internal control of India.

The challenge of internal control I am going to argue, stemmed from the nature of diverse regional polities which had developed in India. As the Chicago school historians have pointed out, these polities drew upon the resources of kinship & lineage societies which pre-dated the Mughal imperial structure. If we look at the structures of institutions of these societies (e.g. Punjab) we find a commonality in their basic assumptions transcending boundaries of Jammu& Kashmir and in of Afghanistan. There is plenty of evidence for the interrelationship between these Tribes in terms of alliances and wars. You had Afghan adventurers like Ahmed Shah Abdali forging right into the territories of Punjab. Similarly within the courts of Mughals and others there was an important component of Afghan nobility.

Various historians have drawn attention to institutions amongst these tribes which are best labeled pre-territorial. Indu Banga has described amongst the tribes of Punjab institutions like Rakhi which supplied the tribes ‘the idea of conquest before conquest’. Levies of Rakhi which basically meant a protection rent were on produce with the caveat that these were for the protection of the cultivators and not for acquiring of their territories. Territories may or may not be acquired but the crucial conceptions were of protection, of keeping up the status of both the protector and the protected. Similarly amongst Afghans these crucial markers of status were important. Keeping the nose in Afghanistan i.e. Puzu or Pozu was a crucial determinant in the relationships between the protectors and protected as Elphinstone has pointed out. Similarly for a host of other practices the notion of territory had not yet evolved in the modern sense.

The British who interfaced with the Indian and Afghan tribes in the 19th century however came with an evolved notion of territory. For them conquest meant setting up areas of delimitation rather there rights to produce or other products of land. Witness the number of delimitation commissions they set up in the 19th century. Controlling the indigenous population meant subjugating the pastoral, nomadic or mobile nature of the tribes in question and settling them down to definite territorial occupations like cultivation as Neeladri Bhattacharya has pointed out. However the presence of the tribal, nomadic and mobile groups did present an area of incomprehensibility. In the areas they could not subjugate they set up treaties and agreements with collectives of tribes. These treaties are at once witness to addressing to the territorial security concerns of the British as well as agreements of defence (non-territorial) of the tribals of the region spanning Punjab, Jammu& Kashmir, North West Frontier Province and Afghanistan.

To a certain extent the great game which received so much of strategic attention in Russian context when seen on the ground actually translates into these concerns of securing the local population. Treaties Engagements Sanads, a document of agreements with various tribal chiefs compiled by C.U. Aitchison actually testifies to the concerns regarding local indigenous population, keeping lines of communication like telegraph going through the areas which these tribes inhabit and securing boundary markers – the famous delimitation exercises carried on by the British.

Let me illustrate with a few examples from the document:

An agreement dated 14th January 1902, (P. 162 of Aitchison) is regarding payment of Tirni ie. the grazing tax. A definite delimitation exercise which subject the Suleman Khel tribes in the North West Frontier Province (Derajat) to certain definite territorial rules. By this they bound themselves to the British for:
paying a grazing tax in future both in the Zhob district and in the Wazristan district at rates which are fixed now at per head of the cattle. For example male camels 8 annas per head and female camel one rupee per head.

However, here concerns of how they would be viewed by other tribes for this act of delimitation also comes in. The agreement quotes “we hold ourselves responsible for the collection of the grazing tax with the assistance of the Govt. when necessary. We can however agree to this on the understanding that grazing tax at the same rates be taken from the Dottanis, who graze alongside us within the Waziristan limits. Otherwise, we shall disgraced in the eyes of the other Ghilzais”.

Thus the contract or agreement of territoriality incorporates the concerns of status. Suleman Khels will pay the tax at the same rates as the Dottanis or otherwise they will be disgraced. This concern is addressed to the British Government. Thus the British Government instead of operating on rule of law is ask to satisfy concerns of status and there by bring it as a criteria of governance. Thus a tribal criteria is brought to the fore.

Similarly in an agreement dated 20th February 1872, with the Dour tribe of the Derajat Frontier “That for due fulfillment of the above conditions (of behavior and crime) of this agreement we the people of entire tribe, unitedly and severally hold ourselves responsible for our own distinct clan, and if we fail, British government is authorized to lay an embargo on the property of the each faction and to impose punishment on our tribe according to the Frontiers Rules as is done with other tribes”. Moreover in order to testify the “ Free-Will and sincerity with which we have made this agreement, the following men respectable Maliks, British subjects and also Maliks of independent territory who frequent British territory are given as securities to have above named conditions fully carried out”.

So here again in a territorial contract the tribal notions of clan as responsible unit or security of individual men as in tribal practices is given to formalize a territorial agreement.

The Aitchison volume has similarly many agreements testifying to the tribal concerns which have crept into concrete territorial agreements of the British. The Great Game here seems to be addressing these concerns in the notions of territoriality of the British. The strategic debate around the threat of Russian invasion actually masks a number of these agreements effected on the ground. The Russian ‘outsider’ then coincides with the mythical outsider of the tribes against which territorial and tribal security is ensured by these agreements.

The Problem with History

We have been through a whole period of public debate and discussion on teaching of history in schools & universities. Ad nauseum we have been told that such and such curriculum has excluded this or included that. Hurt feelings and sentiments are touted again and again. In this din ironically what has been lost is that there are certain basics of teaching history. What we have been served up has so far been the political and ideological flavor of the broth of history, its basic ingredients relegated to the obscure background of forlon departments and obscure archives.

It needs to be pointed out that history is basically a reconstruction of the past. This reconstruction follows certain established procedures for gathering, interpreting and presentation of the data from the remains of the past. This reconstruction done by an individual historian for a particular theme is subjected to a process of review amongst fellow historian and then served up as material for our consumption. This process is repeated for a variety of themes historians tackle and then perhaps a group or a collective of historians renders these reconstruction into a text book and normally this serves as history. The historians and perhaps the text book writer is conscious of this aspect of reconstruction and knows that most of the findings are subject to further debate and questioning.

However, to most of the unsuspecting readers of this fare this aspect is never revealed. Even if mentioned, it becomes a matter of little importance and mostly is brushed under the carpet. The most glaring aspect of this omission is that in the debates on history so far not one writer has thought it fit to argue that this process of reconstruction can be within the purview of the learner of the history or that he can be empowered to participate in the process in any meaningful manner. In contrast in UK or the west this process gains an importance through a series of local workshops and history in the backyard strategies. The crux of these learning strategies place the learner centre stage and makes him an active partner in reconstructing his/her past and give insights into his/her own development process. This does not mean that the professional historian is belittled or what he has to say looses relevance. What actually happens is that the amateur spirit of the learner is tapped. He is encouraged to either search his local context or through an appropriate strategy of familiarizing him with sources and process of history writing he is brought into the method of writing history.

Here in India, for both pedagogical and political reasons this aspects never sees the light of day. Rather an attempt to ideologise history is the basic thrust. Here even the scientific writings are taken over and paraded to favor one ideological camp or the other. Ideologisation of course serves variety of political ends but for the process of teaching learning history it is seldom sufficient to generate the desired nature of historical sense. For this reason alone it is important that we delineate history from ideology. Of course an awareness of what ideologies are and what they do could also be a part of historical training. But the areas need to be demarcated and put across as such.