Ambedkar Again

In my previous post(which is work in progress still) I have started putting together the material I have gathered and am still gathering from different sources on B.R. Ambedkar's exposure to the Cosmopolitan Club movement and ideas of cosmopolitanism.It is very much a work in progress and I welcome critical comments and suggestions.The following tracks are emerging in the course of my investigation: 1. Ambedkar stayed at New York's Columbia University Cosmopolitan Club in late July/early August 1913.This was at a time when hectic discussions were going on at this club regarding the diverse ideas on cosmopolitanism and the club's role in the international students peace movement led by the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs(ACC).At around this time the ACC was holding its 8th students congress whose culmination was in a function at New York at the end of August 1913.Indian students were present as delegates at this function.This was the context for Ambedkar as he arrived at the Columbia university and stayed at its Cosmopolitan Club.The university newspaper, the Columbia Spectator is emphatic that both foreign and American students fervently participated in the ongoing discussions at the time about the ACC and the cosmopolitan peace movement.Ambedkar's participation in or exposure to these discussions then cannot be ruled out.These evidences are from Columbia University's newspaper Columbia Spectator and the New York Times of that period.Dhananjay Keer's work on Ambedkar is the source for the latter's stay at the Cosmopolitan Club. 2. With the outbreak of world war 1 the situation changed in the Columbia university.The peace movement came under attack and even George Nasmyth the former President of the ACC argued that now there was a need for studying the society and the causes of war within it rather than becoming a peace hustlers(C.Roland Marchand,American Peace Movement and Social Reform,1973).The debates on cosmopolitanism and peace within Nasmyth's Polity Club at the Columbia university and at the the Teachers College(where a large number of students were members of the Cosmopolitan Club) indicate that the students took this seriously.Ambedkar in this context took up the the study of society seriously indeed and offered courses with the eminent anthropologist Alexander Goldenweiser and the famous educationist John Dewey amongst others. 3. At the Columbia university teachers such as John Dewey,Alexander Goldenweiser and Franz Boas engaged extensively with various strands of thinking on Cosmopolitanism.In fact we have evidence from the Columbia Spectator that Franz Boas often spoke at the Cosmopolitan Club meetings.Goldenweiser too was billed as an important contributor to the ideas on Cosmopolitanism.Ambedkar engaged with these teachers at the Teachers College(with John Dewey) and with Goldenweiser and Boas elsewhere in the university.Years later Ambedkar was still corresponding with Boas on issues of race and caste as is evident from the letters he wrote to Boas. 4. Most of Ambedkar's papers of that period are not available so it is difficult to precisely delineate his contribution to the debates.An important contribution of Ambedkar in this period is on 'Castes in India'which was written up as a dissertation under the supervision of Goldenweiser which was published later in Indian Antiquary and is available to us.This gives us some pointers. 5.The dissertation drew upon the famous anthropologist Gabriel Tarde who in his work 'Laws of Imitation'(1903) explicitly makes arguments about cosmopolitanism. 6.The Cosmopolitan Club movement and various strands of cosmopolitanism were based on the idea of being open to the stranger.For example the stranger as a foreign student or an immigrant was to be welcomed.In fact Franz Boas explicitly states in his writings(eg.An Anthropologist's view of War,1912), that in contrast to the closing off of the stranger in premodern societies, being open to the stranger will make the cosmopolitan universal law of peace between modern nations possible.Ambedkar himself experiences this hospitality at the Cosmopolitan Club and in his ideational and other engagements with his teachers like Boas,Goldenweiser and Dewey. 7.In fact this notion of the interplay of openness and closure becomes a conceptual underpinning of his article on caste in India written under Goldenweiser's supervision and published in Indian Antiquary.(p.18,Castes in India,Collected Works of Ambedkar,MEA) 8. Ambedkar in fact draws upon this notion of openness to point to an 'open door character' of the class system of the society in India(a point which I had raised at the seminar given by Christophe Jaffrelot at IGNOU last Friday).The Indian society points out Ambedkar then turned in to social groups of self enclosed units of caste system through imitation and ex-communication.Ambedkar though retained this notion of openness as an underpinning in his analysis of caste in the rest of the article too.Interesting here is his argument that caste as a singular unit is an unreality.(p.20,Castes in India,Ambedkar Collected Works).A caste unit he says has to be viewed within the caste system which has castes in plural again formed by imitation of superior caste. Perhaps Ambedkar is here pointing too to the unreality of closure against the singular individual-the stranger and so is arguing for openness?It is significant that Ambedkar takes the example of stranger and interactions with him to demonstrate a sociological point in this very article.(p.19) Further updates on this theme will be posted on this blog.Again comments are welcome!

B.R. Ambedkar at the University of Columbia Cosmopolitan Club

Dhananjay Keer in his biography of Ambedkar titled Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission notes that Dr. Ambedkar stayed at the university of Columbia Cosmopolitan Club after he arrived at the University of Columbia to do his post graduate studies(p.26).This was sometimes beginning from late July/early August 1913.Towards end of August and till the 18th of September the 8th World Student Congress started at Ithaca,New York at Cornell which included in its itinerary a visit to Columbia University and a grand session and dinner at New York city near Columbia University.The New York city session(which included British India student delegates) was hosted by the New York Peace society for the delegates of the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs and Corda Fratres and it was the culmination of what the report of the Proceedings of the 8th World Students Congress called 'one of the most cosmopolitan and international gatherings ever held in the U.S'.The event in the New York city itself concluded with the performance of the dance-drama 'When the Dreams Come True' depicting the welcome accorded to new immigrants to the United States.At the New York city session and dinner Prof.William M.Sloane of Columbia University acted as the chief toastmaster and the event was extensively covered and commented on by the New York Times. Though we have very little from Ambedkar on these events except that he was around at the Cosmopolitan Club of Columbia at the time,we do have from the University newspaper the Columbia Spectator that the Cosmopolitan Club there was engaged in a hectic discussion amongst its members and guests about its future role in the international peace movement and its role in lessening ethnic and racial tensions in the U.S. and the countries of its members and foreign guests including India.This included creating a friendly environs for the newly arrived members which included B.R. Ambedkar in late July/early August in 1913.We have given a sketch of the international peace movement in which the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs was involved in an earlier post titled'Pandurang Khankhoje at Oregon Agricultural College'.The 8th World Students Congress was an attempt to take this peace movement forward and to assert in the face of the gathering war clouds that 'Above all nations is Humanity'.The cosmopolitan clubs movement attempted to do this by bringing together all shades of understandings on cosmopolitanism in the U.S. and the European students peace movements.The different Cosmopolitan Clubs could have their differences as the Columbia University Cosmopolitan Club did but these were sought to be resolved.A letter to the Editor in November 1910 reported to the Columbia Spectator that 'for some time Columbia University has had a Cosmopolitan Club which confines its activities to monthly social gatherings of its members,students of foreign and American birth mostly enrolled in the Teachers College.However the name Cosmopolitan Club stands for a program one essence of which is expressed in the motto "Above all Nations is Humanity"and which is represented in other American Universities and colleges by over 20 organisations which are united in Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs(ACC).The ACC in turn is affiliated to the international association of students called the Corda Fratres.Columbia University as yet is not represented in this association but the Cosmopolitan Club is preparing to do so after having accomplished its reorganisation by giving a broader scope to both its activities and membership.A meeting of the students has been called and it is hoped that a sufficient number of foreign and American students of all departments of Columbia University will follow the invitation and join the club so that it will apply for admission to the ACC with a membership worthy of an alma mater.We are confident that Columbia will not stand back in this movement.'It is significant that the above letter points out that the Columbia Cosmopolitan Club was preparing to become a member of ACC and Corda Fratres.As the sixth convention of ACC report at Philadelphia had pointed out that there were various categories of the chapters of the ACC which included full members,associate members and some clubs which were preparing to become members.This preparation involved hectic discussions and parleys which contributed to the richness of the debate in the peace movement regarding issues,objectives and diversity of ideas on cosmopolitanism and peace.This debate on diversity of ideas on cosmopolitanism probably had an important influence on Ambedkar's ideas of cosmopolitanism as we will later attempt to show.Here it is interesting to note that large number of students in the Cosmopolitan Club of Columbia University were from the Teachers College.It is at Teachers College that John Dewey the famous educationist and a profound influence on Ambedkar taught at that time.As Arun Mukerjee and following him Ananya Vajpayee have noted that Ambedkar was to borrow the concept of social endosmosis from John Dewey.Social endosmosis meant the natural flow and exchange of ideas, values, practices, knowledge and energies between and across groups in a society which Ambedkar found lacking in Indian society due to the caste system.Dewey himself engages with the issues of cosmopolitanism.In his early work on Leibniz he praised the latter for his cosmopolitan approach in both philosophy and diplomacy and how the two shaped each other.In his work on Ethics Dewey highlighted the origins of ethical universalism and moral individualism in the cosmopolitanism of Greek Stoics and showed the culmination of these ideals in the Enlightenment philosophy of Immanuel Kant.Ambedkar was familiar with these aspects of Dewey's work and as also with Dewey's Democracy and Education(1916) and German philosophy(1915).Ambedkar was aware as his writings show that Dewey had argued that'early cosmopolitans imagined a universal moral community lying beyond actually existing political communities with their biases and corruption;cosmopolis was a moral ideal beyond concrete institutions'.Ambedkar was further aware that for Dewey the enlightenment, then moved towards a 'wider and freer society-toward cosmopolitanism..as membership in humanity,as distinct from the state...(in which) man's capacities would be liberated .. the emancipated individual was to become the organ and agent of a comprehensive and progressive society.'At the Teachers College where Ambedkar would have interacted with John Dewey and with the members of the Cosmopolitan Club he would definitely have been exposed to these ideas and the debates surrounding them.That there was a build up to these debates amongst the students and teachers of the university is shown by the following account in the Columbia Spectator about the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs led 8th World Students Congress to be held in 1913. The Columbia Spectator in 1912 gave a detailed report of the mobilisation for the 8th World Students Congress at the Cosmopolitan Club at the Columbia University.It reported that a 'joint smoker' was held at Earl Hall at Columbia University by the Cosmopolitan Clubs of the Columbia University and the Cornell University on 28th December 1912.The report said that'inspite of the fact that the gathering took place during the holidays both Ithacans and New Yorkers appeared in good numbers.The first speaker was Mr.Hopp of Cornell.He gave a short history of the Cosmopolitan Club movement and showed its rapid growth since its inception in 1904.He also announced that plans are already being made for the International Convention to be held in Ithaca in 1913.Some of the European chapters have considered chartering a boat for this occasion.....After a few humorous songs by Mr. Hagemann, Professor Shepherd was introduced who urged a greater friendship towards foreigners on the part of Americans whom he accused of being the only people who spoke of their own land as God's own country.The last speaker was Prof. J.B. Moore.He expressed himself as heartily in favour of peace but advocated its pursuit by friendly rather than warlike means.A better idea of the foreign people and their ideals was to be striven for.Accordingly he voiced his hearty support for the local Cosmopolitan Club...'The campaign for the Cosmopolitan Club movement continued through the days and months of the World Students Congress and in the later months too as a communication to the Columbia Spectator in November 1913 showed. In this communication a detailed history of the Cosmopolitan Club movement was given and it was pointed out that the objective of the movement was to create 'an international mind'. With the outbreak of the first world war in 1914 the situation changed in the Columbia university too.Nicholas Butler, the President of the Columbia university and a director of the Carnegie peace endowment suggested in 1915 that the endowment should project no future course of action till the war ended and the terms of peace determined.Butler organised a campaign to set up international polity clubs in the university and colleges in late 1914 and a series of summer schools and lectures in 1915 as a part of peace education.But he warned that 'the lecturers should avoid all purely contentious questions and any special propaganda in reference to the unhappy conditions that now prevail.There are no shortcuts to peace.'George Nasmyth who had been the President of the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs in 1913 had now become one of the Polity Club organisers in the Columbia University and in other universities and colleges.He emphasised that his group was seeking to engender a scientific enquiry in to the society and causes of war in 'Carnegie Endowment tradition and was not a group of peace hustlers'.(C.Roland Marchand, American Peace Movement and Social Reform,Princeton,1973) Clearly the emphasis had now shifted in the direction of scientific study of war and society rather than on peace activism in the Columbia university.In this respect the change in the stance of George Nasmyth, the former President of the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs and an important organiser of the 8th World Students Congress in 1913, is quite significant. It is in this milieu Ambedkar developed and honed his skills as a serious scholar of society.His focus on academic work carried forward this serious tradition of studying society and he found renowned scholars he could grow with.We have already mentioned John Dewey.Alexander Goldenweiser,an eminent student of the famous anthropologist Franz Boas(both of them were engaged with debates on cosmopolitanism of that time) perhaps introduced him to Franz Boas's well known 1912 essay titled,'An Anthropologist's View of War' where Boas had examined war as a social phenomenon from the earliest times and suggested that a universal law for peace could be enacted.It was under Goldenweiser's supervision Ambedkar wrote his article on caste in India which was later published in the Indian Antiquary.Franz Boas had brought forward an idea of openness in his piece on war by positing an openness to a stranger for enacting a law for universal peace. Ambedkar brought in the idea of openness and closure in his article by showing how the caste system negates openness by a practise of closure by imitation-a concept he takes from the French sociologist/anthropologist Gabriel Tarde.Secondly, the notion of openness to a stranger which Boas posits was the cosmopolitan ideal of the time which had become the basis for the peace movement championed by the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs.Ambedkar who quotes extensively Tarde's concept of fashion imitation to explain the caste system in India and uses Gabriel Tarde's laws of imitation too would have been aware that for Tarde'Cosmopolitanism indeed is not the exclusive privilege of our own time.It flourished in all those periods of antiquity and medievalism in which fashion imitation held sway.Cosmopolitanism says J.Burckhardt is a sign of an epoch in which new worlds are discovered and men no longer feel at home in the old'(Tarde Laws of Imitation,1903).Thus a concept of stranger akin to Boas would have been noted by Ambedkar in the context of linking up to the study of cosmopolitanism of that time.It is perhaps in such a background that Ambedkar remarked to Mahatma Gandhi that 'Gandhiji I have no homeland'.[ Work in Progress]

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.