Empire: World History - 47. Rebels Against the Raj

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Annie Besant. BG Horniman. Satyanada Stokes. Madeleine Slade. What do they call have in common? They were all Rebels Against the Raj. Listen as Anita and William are joined by Ram Guha to discuss what this means. Sign up to The Knowledge here: www.theknowledge.com/empire/ LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/empirepod. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arndon. And me, William Delrinpool. Was that a comically long pause because you're very, very important now? Is that what's happening in our lives now? It was almost not a pause.

It was sort of the pause has been and the pause has gone, I feel. Do you think? I don't know. I'm wondering whether there's a time difference or time. No, there isn't because you're answering my question is just fine. It's you messing with my head. Would I ever, Eater? Would I ever mess with your head?

And all the years we have been doing this sort of thing. You know, one day they're going to take me away in a straight jacket and it will just be pinned to my lapel. Cause of insanity. William Dalrymple. That's all. You won't be the first, Alita. You won't be the first.

I know. But all the doctors will just stand around me. And they'll just go, oh, we'll have to the ward, shall we? We'll have to build a new wing. Oh, my God. She's got to touch. The wards for the people that think they're Jesus and the ones that think they're King David. Yeah.

And then there's the Dalrym Politis ward, which is fast needing an adjunct wing. Hey, but you are grand. Aren't you grand now? Aren't you so glad? I don't know what you're referring to, and I just, oh, it's so exciting. So if you don't read newspapers or listen to radios, you won't have heard the news that everybody else is buzzing about,

which is William's fantastic book, The Anarchy, is about to become, and I quote from The Times, the answer to Game of Thrones. Tell us more. Oh, great one. Well, the line they're taking is that it's Game of Thrones meek succession, that it's not media moguls, but the real moguls.

Oh, yours even better. I'm so sorry. Forgive me. Forgive me. You're right. You're right. Go on. Go on.

But this is just the anarchy. Going into what we hope will be a big international TV three series spectacular. The trouble is that I've had, I've been here, as I'm sure you have, with all your books, many times before. And these things are enormously expensive to put on. And we need, you know, we're not going to step out unless we've got 1,000 elephants at least. the Battle of Placique. Okay. Well, listen, it's going to have fingers crossed, toes crossed.

It will make it through the mad world that is film. But who are you going to be? What's just the part you're going to take? I'm not interested in all the rest. I want to know the important stuff. What's you going to be? Well, Robin Lane Fox, when he sold his Alexander the Great to Oliver Stone, he demanded he be part of the Macedonian phalanx.

Yes. And had that written into his contract. And I would love to pretend that I had, I had my own war elephant as part of my contract, but somehow I neglected to add that clause. Oh, you fool. You fool. How many times when I told you never sign any. It's not too late for a war elephant. I'll tell you what, Empire listeners, what would you like William Dalrymple to be in the upcoming succession meets Game of Thrones? Which villain? Which portly plunderer? filling his pockets with jewels and leaving.

Listen, listen. It is very, it's very, very exciting. What was Clive's, what was Clive's famous line? He said, uh, my lords, I was astonished at my own moderation. He added another five gold ingots and his frock-coat pocket. Oh, yeah. No, I can see it. I can, I can actually see it.

Now listen here, Buster, you may be about to be an international Hollywood superstar cameo role, but The gardener Marley 6 Listen Pay attention now I need you to focus Because we need to put an end to this on Twitter

Focus has never been my strong card No I know Just look into the light Just look into the light Now listen here Who wrote Waltzing Matilda Once and for all

Could you please Please make the Bogleites happy And just clear this up please This is a reference To our Gallipoli podcast Which generates five emails every single day for the last three months. Plus texts.

Because I said that I loved the version of Waltzing Matilda sung by the Pogs. And I remember as a teenager going to hear the Pog sing Waltzing Matilda at the Hammersmith Odian. And they were fantastic. Although poor of Shane McGowan, even at that stage, could barely rise from a horizontal position. But I never said that the Pogs wrote it. Nobody cares about your childhood reverie. who bloody wrote Waltzian Matilda

But just For the record It was written by one Eric Bogle Who was a Scots folk musician Now living in Melbourne or Adelaide And he's obviously the most popular

Man in Australia Because every Australian Has rallied to his defence And sent us an email If not three And people are annoyed They are sending clips They're sending YouTube references

I've been accosted in the street By Eric Bogle No By this Eric has flown back from Melbourne, especially. No, no. It's Team Eric, and they just want you to know it wasn't the Poges. It was Eric Bogle.

Are we all happy now? This is publicly acknowledged this fact. Not that it was ever denied, I have to say. But yes, Eric Bogle wrote Waltzum Tilda. And anyone out there who is an Eric Bogle fan, we love him too. And it's a wonderful, wonderful song. And he's the greatest songwriter ever to write a song about Glippli. Okay.

So from now on, if you're going to tweet and text and ask us about this. We're just going to refer you to this podcast where we have this very much cleared up now and we never have to mention it again. Look, one person we do have to mention again because he is back after enormous popular demand. It's our second bonus episode of this week and it is... I'm allowed to say. Yes, you are. Just break the tension. It's Ram Gouha. Back again. Yes. We're thrilled about this. With his new book, not with Gandhi, which he did a few years ago, but his latest book, Rebels Against the Raj. Rebels against the Raj. Exactly. And there is a subheading, which will explain what the book is about, Western fighters for India's freedom.

First of all, we just must apologise for Ram Sound. There is a slight technical issue which we've sent to the great gods of audio to try and sort out, but it might be a little tiny bit hissy still. Rahm, welcome back to Empire. It is so brilliant to have you back. So this is about people who were not Indian, but who chose the Indian struggle as their own. And it's actually a really surprising number of people. First of all, what I really wanted is what motivated you to find out about them and write about them and how pivotal were they actually in the struggle generally, would you say? So this is very much a personal book. It's written totally out of personal motivation.

Unlike, say, some other books may be written to participate in historical debates and larger arguments. And I wrote this book because, I mean, I'll have to digress into a little bit of autobiography. I was an indifferent student of economics who knew I had to change what I was studying. And while I was in the state of confusion, I read the autobiography of a remarkable Oxford scholar who became an anthropologist of India's tribal people called Verrier Elvin. And reading Verrier Elvin, who lived in the forest of central India, wrote poetry, translated folklore, married a tribal girl, reading him, made me move to history and sociology.

I then wrote a book about Elwyn, paying my dues to the man who had saved my life. Fabulous book, Savaging the Civilized. Savaging the Civilized. It changed my life. And then in the course of that book, I found that Elvin had one abiding regret that although he had lived three decades in India, contributed enormously to Indian literary and public life,

had known Gandhi, had known Nehru. He had never been to prison in the Indian. cause. That was this kind of abiding regret. And I had resolved then. My book on Elvin came out more than 20 years ago. I said, I must sign a sequel about those foreigners, men and women, British and American, who actually courted, arrested, went to jail during the freedom struggle. So this book has been a long time in the making. I've been collecting stuff in the archives while working on other projects. But it's a kind of a, it's a homage to Elvin who changed my life that I wrote about his peer group. Yeah. That's beautiful.

And you're very specific. This isn't just indophiles. This isn't just people who built bridges, but these are people who actually had to put their convictions up for show by going to jail or standing against authority. Absolutely. So each one of them, William, so there's seven. Five were in prison, two were deported. And then, of course, we're able to come back after many years outside. So in a sense, a deportation is equivalent to. It's worse than it's banishment. So it's actually somebody's worse than an imprisonment as dissidents in Russia and places. would know. So yes, I did not want to write a broad, diffuse book about including, you know, teachers, schoolmasters, cricket coaches and all kinds of good people, doctors who worked in India. I wanted to talk about real rebels. And some of these rebels, I mean, the names will be

completely unfamiliar to people listening to this podcast. In India too, I think, as well as... I think that's probably true. But one name actually stands apart, because, I mean, particularly if you're a feminist historian, as I am, and you think about the nascent suffragette movement and the match girls struggle, the name Annie Bessent will not be unknown to you. But I must say that I thought I knew Annie and then I got to know Annie through your chapter. And I'm not sure I can thank you for it because I have now many more ambivalent feelings than I did before. I simply worship the woman before and now I have some trouble. Let's start off with a thumbnail sketch of Annie Besant, the woman that George Bernard Shaw referred to as a woman of swift decisions,

which I'm not entirely sure is a compliment, even in this day and age. But tell us about Annie Besant. Annie Besant is three quarters Irish, comes to India in 1893, having just embraced theology, which is a cult that tries to blend Hinduism and Christianity. And she comes to really give talks in India and stays till the end of her life, 40 years later. And then of course, first starts schools for women, starts a university. In 1916, when the home rule movement breaks out in Ireland, she starts a home rule movement for India and then becomes an important figure in Indian nationalists.

So this is a woman who was not automatically marked out for greatness. I mean, just like many other women in her time, she gets married. It's not a great marriage at first, is it? No, I mean, she's deeply unhappy. She tries to write fiction, which goes nowhere. She has a child. I don't think they have much of a relationship. But fortunately, she's able to escape it,

which is not always the case with women in bad marriages, they're not indeed now. And then she becomes their activist, joins the socialist and suffragette movement. And I think that really gives a meaning. But she, you mentioned George Bonachor, a woman of swift decisions. She moves from cause to cause to cause.

Yeah. I mean, she is a woman looking for meaning. That much is true. And sometimes she finds them in slightly barking mad places. Well, we'll come to that in a moment. A great influence in her life is Charles Bradlaugh, who is a secular thinker. And obviously, Annie's marked out as different because she wants to understand. She wants to lift the bonnet of the world and find out how things work.

And it's quite unusual to sort of seek those truths, those universal truths in secularism, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. She attaches herself to Braddoll. Braddlaw, by the way, he's elected an MP for, I think, three or four times and can never take his seat because he refuses to swear an oath on God. Right. And then she moves to socialism, becomes active in the feminist movement, in the Fabian society. And she's clearly a brilliant speaker. I mean, I get, I quote someone in the book who says, you never wanted to be on state after her. She's spoken. Yeah. She goes from being a secularist, though, to, as I said, looking in slightly bonkers places. You know, the theosophists. Now, Madam Blavatsky is an enormous influence of hers. Why? And what are they, first of all, the the and what is it that attracts somebody who loved secularism one day to something which is almost sort of a cultish to some. So I think a theosophist, as I said, they're a syncretic cult trying to mix Christianity in Hinduism. And they, Madam Blavatsky herself claimed that she was in

communion with Himalian masters, you know, stages living in the hills. And it's hard to believe, but how widespread theosophy became. I mean, this is a time of increasing travel by sea you know the American transidentalists like Emerson and Thoreau are discovering Hindu philosophy Max Muller and Oxford is translating Hindu texts so there's a great interest

in classical The period of sort of Edwardian spiritualism and all that sort of work At the seances and all that absolutely absolutely So it catches that moon and she just flips I think the thing about Mrs. Besant as she was known is that

the rapidity with which She embraces a cause is only exceeded by the speed by which she abandons it. For something else. So that's what happens. She comes to India because India is the home of theology. That's where true learning and spirituality is.

And Boydus, I mean, she's mind-body spirit, I mean, completely in. She's in it to win it when she comes to India. Subsequently, people have been quite critical about Madame Blavatsky have called her a complete fraud with sort of fake table tapping and so. on, but at the time this isn't known. It's true of many people around the world.

I mean, you, I was, you'll find towns in upstate New York and Syracuse and so on, whose libraries are full of theological literature. You know, I think the late 19th, the early 20th century with the time in which it's kind of like some of the gurus today, you know, like that Chinese cult, Falun Gong, you know, or the munis, you know, it was something that was usually popular at the time. But in India, she starts involving herself in education. as you say. She starts colleges, the Hindu Central College. She, now this is, so I start having problems now, thanks to you, because she has a really odd attitude to educating Indian girls.

So someone who's known here in this country for fighting for women's rights doesn't really feel that girls need to be educated all that much in India. No, they need to be educated to be better housewives. Well, right, okay. You have conversations with their husband on the dinner table when he comes back from work, but not to be independent agents in their own right. Yeah. I mean, I find that so utterly baffling and hurtful, considering what an icon she has been to the women's movement. How does she get involved, though, in the freedom struggle and with Gandhi personally? Because that is the link that's really important.

So, as I said, I mean, she's three-quarters Irish. And when the home rule movement breaks out in Ireland, just after the First World War starts, and the Congress party is also gathering strength. I mean, Tilak, who's a great leader from Puna, wants to start a home rule movement and Annie Besson starts an old home rule movement and she thinks she sees herself in the vanguard of the Indian freedom struggle

as a kind of mother of the movement inspiring young men fighting for home rule so not for full independence still with the kind of British overlordship so she is very well connected to the colonial establishment the governors and the viceroys

she has them to tea and so on but she does want a great degree of self-rule for Indians on the Irish model and it's inspired by her own Irish blood, which is awakened at the age of 60. So she becomes radical again at the age of 60. So the first time she actually almost face to faces with Gandhi, it's not a great success in 1915. She's introducing him. He's speaking before a crowd and he manages to annoy all of her patrons to the point where she's screaming at him by the end of it. It's not great.

It's a university she helped found in Banaras. So it's the inaugural ceremony of this. university. And there are many talks. The first talk is by the viceroy who behaves like a proper chief guest. He comes to five minutes and then flies off and leaves the lesser men to do the other kind of talking. And then Gandhi speaks. And he's and all these bejeweled Maharajas who are funded the university. And Gandhi tells them, take off your jewels, work for the poor, live like an ordinary Indian. What is this ridiculous exhibitionism

going to break on? And why are you speaking in English? Speak in an Indian language. And Mrs. Besson says, shut up. Quiet, quiet, shut up, shut up, shut up. And then finally, she forces him off the state. She says, that's enough. I don't, I mean, it's not a great start to a beautiful relationship, but it does become a beautiful relationship because they both find something in each other.

She really, she picks him out for greatness quite early on, doesn't she? Yeah, yeah. At the same time, there is an element of rivalry, and I think she feels overshadowed by this young man. And many of her, later on in 19, 1920, when the freedom struggle is gathering pace, many of our followers abandon her for Gandhi. You know, it's like people in the Conservative Party abandoning Boris Johnson for people more likely to achieve part.

I mean, that awful happens. You know, political opportunism. You pick the coming leader. And so it's a complicated relationship. Yeah. So, I mean, what ends her up in prison? Because she becomes involved in the propaganda side of fighting the British line, saying that actually home rule is very important for India.

What lands her up in clink? Well, it's because of her radicalism. You know, it's because of her, the newspaper she starts. She starts a newspaper called New India, which runs very militant editorials of the crime she would write in a suffragette phase in England in the 1880s. And there's a very, it's the war is on. So the British are worried about disaffection during the First World War. There's a very harsh press act. And finally, they decide, they first think of deporting her to England, that they think that would be too risky,

because the old woman sending her by ship and so on. So they send her to internal exile to the hill station of Oote, where she is for what, six months. And then there's a liberal secretary of state appointed Edwin Montagu, who is one of the few decent men in the apparatus of the Raj. And he orders the release, and then she comes out to this kind of triumphant welcome. And there's a lovely photograph in my book, which I sourced actually from the philosophical society. of this little lady on a table speaking and, you know, a crowd of men looking on adoringly at her.

It doesn't, the end is sort of a whimper rather than a bang, though, for poor old Annie. The relationship with Gandhi disintegrates. Just finally, let's talk about that. So, yes, essentially disintegrates because Gandhi overshadows her. You know, in 1916, 17, when Gandhi was obscure, Andy Bessent is the face of the Home Rule movement. By the 1920s, Gandhi is the acknowledged leader of his... Indian freedom struggle. He's younger, he's Indian, he speaks Indian languages, he's able to

motivate young men, and particularly people, you know, of lower class backgrounds in a way she isn't. And she feels eclipsed. I mean, she certainly feels eclipsed. She then feels doubly eclipsed because she adopts a beautiful Indian boy called Jidhu Krishna-Murthi and says you're this, you'll be the next world teacher and he walks out on her too. So she's sort of alone. I mean, there's this very painful thing that's in your book where, you know, they try and meet. And neither will travel to go and meet the other person. And so they're just, there she is, poor old Annie on her own. Now, we're handing the baton on because the next rebel, William, you've chosen.

Ram, tell us about Madeline Slade, again, a most unlikely rebel from a very establishment background. Childhood spent riding around on horses and home counties and playing the piano. Yeah. So she's from actually almost two generations after. Annie, so she's born in 1892. And as you say, she's well-born. Her father's and admiral. She rides horses, plays the piano as a country home,

tries to become a concert pianist in Britain after the First World War, fails probably because she's not good enough, but probably also because she likes Beethoven and Beethoven German composers are unfashionable. It's not a good moment to be a Beethoven after the First World War.

Yeah. And then, because she admired Beethoven, she goes to meet the French, writer Romano Rola, who's a great authority on Beethoven. And she asked him, and while she is there, Rola says, I'm working on a book on Gandhi. And she says, Gandhi, who? She's not heard of Gandhi. But then when the book comes out, because it's written by her French, a person she admires, Roman Rola, she reads the book on Gandhi,

abadens Beethoven for Gandhi and writes to him and says, I want to come and work with you and live with you. And Gandhi says, fine, but he first spent a year in England preparing yourself for this abrupt and dramatic transition, learn to eat with your hands, eat vegetarian food, spin your own cloth, become celibate and so on and so forth. And after a year, if you're ready, come out and she does this kind of penance for a year, she practices for a year, and then goes out and joins Gandhi in 1926 and becomes part of his inner circle. And paint us a picture of what Gandhi's up to in 1926. Where is he? And what's the state of the freedom struggle? He has just come out of two years in prison and he's biding his time. He's writing his autobiography. He's very much marooned

in his ashram in Ahmedabad where Madeline Slate very quickly learns to serve him to peel his oranges, to lay out his spinning wheel, to monitor his bowel movements with Gandhi was kind of obsessed with. Rather more of a penance than doing the spinning, presumably. That's right. And she's there. And then when the political temperature picks up and the the assault march happens, she goes to jail, then she comes out of jail, and then Gandhi sends her to England and North America to do propaganda for his cause. And by this time, she's changed her name and her identity. She's changed her name. She's called Mira instead of Madeline. She sees herself as Indian as part of Gandhi's inner circle. She has Indian friends. And but because she's British and well

connected, she's seen as a useful asset in taking the message of the Indian Freedom Circle abroad. So she comes to London, meets Winston Churchill, fails to persuade him that Indians deserve any rights, goes to America where she has greatest success with Eleanor Roosevelt, who again is a kind of feminist icon. Does she wear the whole Indian sari? Because, you know, the photos I've seen of her, this tall, willowy, pale creature in a white homespun. Does she meet Eleanor Roosevelt in the sari? Does she? She does. She does. So she is not able to wear a sari, which is slightly complicated. So she wears a dress called a Gagra, which is born in Guzran. and sometimes in Punjab, a kind of a long, flowing robe-like dress made of Khadi.

So, absolutely. She goes to New York and Washington in that dress. And there's a long profile of her in the New York Times because of how strange and exotic she is. And how do her family, how does the Admiral and his family react to the... I'm guessing not well. Not well. They really have no connection at all, you know. Absolutely at all.

And because she stays on for a very long time afterwards. What happens to her after, after Gandhi? Do we know? So again, there's a kind of very interesting romantic story because in Gandhi's art film she falls in love with a handsome bearded man from the Punjab who would be a revolutionary, had been in jail, in jail and embraced non-violence and come to work with Gandhi.

And Mira falls in love with this guy, desperately in love. And I quote the love letter, it's already quite sad and moving. And he has no interest in her. You know, he's completely resolutely indifferent to her charms. And then she does what many Indians do when the discontent. She goes to the Himalaya. She leaves Gandhi and goes to the Himalaya, sets up an ashthram there, and becomes an early environmentalist.

And that's very important work on saving hill forests and so on and so forth. So it's quite, quite, again, like Annie Besant, so many shifts and transitions in one life. But again, like Annie Besant, a sad ending. The Indo-China war breaks out. What happens to her then? So she then is unhappy about the direction. India is taking after Gandhi's death, the obsession with growing great. rich industrialization.

She feels that the betrayal of Gandhi's kind of legacy, Gandhi's emphasis on village renewal. And in 1959, Beethoven comes back to her and she moves back to Europe and takes the home near the Vienna Woods where she listens to Beethoven. She still writes about Gandhi. And while she's there, Richard Attenborough comes to see her.

He hears of her. And he interviews us several times in the late 60s and actually thanks her in the film for having inspired her. And in the film, she's rather, that she's portrayed by this rather glamorous young woman. Yeah, yeah. I think it's Emma Thompson,

and she says, she sees the early Russian film, and she says that I was never so good looking as the person. And she produces one final work on Beethoven, which is almost unpubishable. Although it has a forward by Yehudi Menloon, written out of compassion, she can't get it published anywhere in the West.

She tries the OUP, and then finally is published by a Gandhian publishing house in South India, out of kind of respect for her. It's a lovely story. It is a lovely story. It's so hard to choose this book for two of different clubs. It is honestly, it's a box of delight.

I mean, in part one, you heard Professor Ramachandra Agua breaking my heart over Annie Besson. Hopefully in part two, he'll be putting it back together with another of my favourite characters from his book, Rebels Against the Raj. Well, I'm going to be talking about BG Hornerman. What about you? I'm going to talk about Stokes, Saty and Anand Stokes, who is an extraordinary figure and a rather wonderful and inspiring,

but unlike that, it's American. Yeah, well, join us after this break. Welcome back to Empire with me, Anita Arnden. And me, William Del Rumpel. Okay, so, I mean, Ram, I don't know how I feel about sort of, you know, Annie Bessent now, but I do know that you've reinforced my love for another character in your book. Thank God. I mean, honestly, when your heroes tumble, B.G. Hornerman, who is the journalist's journalist.

So my research crossed a little bit with yours because of Jaliyama Barg and I've written about that. But let's go right back to who is BG Hornerman, where was he born and was he destined for this trajectory? He was certainly not destined for this trajectory. He was born, I think in the early 1880s in Portsmouth, in a naval family and became a journalist in a local newspaper. And when a job was advertised in the statesman of Calcutta, like a young Englishman-seeking adventure, he went there. And in 1913, by which time he'd been in India eight or nine years, he was headhunted for the job of editor at a new nationalist newspaper published out of Bombay called the Bombay Chronicle, which obviously was the founder editor and moving spirit for its early years. And so although it is said that when he was in Calcutta, he abandoned a Sahib's lifestyle. He liked wearing a loincloth. He liked eating Indian food. He wasn't happy going to the races.

Some of the signs of his turning native were visible in his ears with the stateable in Calcutta. But it's only been the Bombay Chronicle in Bombay that he becomes the great crusading fighter for Indian freedom that we know him as. Right. So, I mean, you know, his adopting of Indian culture and Indian dress and Indian ways. And, you know, peculiarly as some of the Raj may have called it, going native, sets him apart. But there are other things that also set him apart. I mean, he, you say in the book is gay. And that is not a thing that you can be in, you know, 19. anywhere in the world very easily? Absolutely.

You certainly can't be gay anywhere in the world. You can't be an Indian who's gay. It's even more difficult if you're an Englishman in India and who's gay. Because of the enormous prejudice and hostility towards homosexuality in that kind of British culture of the time. So he's gay. He's also a great proponent of the working class. So he's the editor who has his meetings in textiles mills.

So he's not just writing for the establishment, to the English-speaking English middle class. You know, he's taking up the causes of workers and peasants. He's fighting for the freedom of the press. He starts the first union for journalists in India. So he's radical in many ways, you know, politically, sexually, socially. Yeah, I mean, he is basically every conservative person's nightmare wrapped in skin at that time.

So, look, the war happens. And then there are some very strict rules which are brought in by the British Defense of India Act, which means that the press is. no longer free, that you cannot write what you want. Everything can be sedition and there is very little legal recourse. And he resists this and resists this, doesn't he? Yes, he does. He's often in court fighting cases on behalf of the funeral press.

And then, of course, in 1990, Janjaniwalabag happens and the massacre and the massacre and the massacre and there's huge censorship. There are no reports coming out. The first reports that come out are published anonymously by Hornemann in his newspaper, Bombay Chronicle, which really enraises the British. Because he's getting stories out, he's getting first-hand accounts out, he's also collecting documentation which will be pivotal in a case, a commission that will happen after that. He's also interesting, I mean, just before we skip over the war years, because despite his

feelings about the British Raj, he's also very, very sure that this is a fight that India has to become involved in because of the Germans, when it's going to be worse for Indians than it is already. He recognises how horrible the Russians are, as he calls them. And he, like Ali Besant, wants home rule. He doesn't want full freedom, but he wants independence for British, for India while retaining the British connection. Yeah.

So after Johnny Omanabakh, after he is publishing these incendiary columns and inches of writing, the British decide, right, they're going to have to do something about him. What do they decide to do to BG Hornerman? They go to his bungalow. The police catch hold of him, give him 20 minutes to collect whatever he has, take him down to Bombay's a port, take him down to seaside, put him on a ship and send him to England.

He's just deported. I mean, it's just unceremoniously dumped. To go back to a country, he no longer feels is his home. Absolutely. And he suffers. I mean, you know, he really, this is painful for him.

He terribly suffers. He's there for seven years. He's trying very hard to get back. He's writing deputations, petitions. He's getting people like Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells. George Lansbury leader of the Labour Party

to plead on his behalf and he's totally unsuccessful. And they actually take away his passport? They take away his passport. Then he says, I want to go on a holiday to France and they give him a passport for France and he goes to France and he takes a ship

and lands up in Madras, you know, a few weeks later, and the British can't stop him. So Netaji in reverse. Netaji in reverse, exactly. Netati in reverse. So he just lands up there. And the body stand, the defense of India rules have lapsed.

And then he takes a train across the subcontinent from Madras to Bombay, and which is received as a great hero at Victoria Terminist Station, now called Chathrapati-Sivadi Terminus, and resumes his job at the Bombay Chronicle, but then, of course, falls out with the management and so on. But the point about that return, he clearly loved India, and he was so upset at being away for India,

seven years being away from the home country he loved, identified with. But he, the question we don't know is, but he also loved the particular Indian, And that's what animated his extraordinary and daring return, illegal return by ship to India. And what's your suspicion on that? Do you think there was? The question is, is it one Indian? Is it more than one Indian?

I can't say. But certainly, there was a love interest. Apart from a political identification with India and with the freedom struggle, there was something else. So can we, I mean, can we maybe hope that there was a happily ever after for Biji Horneman, who suffered a great deal for his Indian, a leader. says. In a sense, yes, because he stayed on. He became a much admired and respected figure. He carried on editing newspapers, exposing the misdeeds of the Raj. He wasn't deported again, but he was often in court defending himself against charges of obscenities, sedition, and so on.

And his lawyer, whom I quote in the book, says he was much better than any lawyer in, you know, in understanding the law and exploitative loopholes in the law. And he dies in India. And there's a circle named after him, one of the most beautiful parks in Gothic Bombay. South Bombay, opposite the Asiatic Society, is called the Honourable Circle. So he's remembered. It's about the only one that isn't a Parsi name, isn't it? All of the rest of the Parcy. That's right.

So he's remembered and memorialized. That's it. It is a happy idea. Well, I thank goodness for that. So finally, we have Samuel Stokes. Again, a very different figure from the others. Yes. For one thing, he's American.

Quaker background? Quaker background. From Philadelphia, comes as a missionary. then leaves the church. He comes to Himachal Pradesh near the Shimla Hills. He sets up home not far from the Imperial Summer Capital and marries a local girl, which is not something... Honeyman probably had an Indian male lover.

And Annie Besson was too old to have any lovers when when she came. And Mira Ben was a Gandhian ascetic, so she was not allowed to have lovers. But Samuel Stokes marries a local hill girl and raises a happy family with her. Then joins Gandhi's freedom struggle. And the family are not, the family are not allowed to learn English. They're entirely brought up Pahari and Hindi. That's right. They learn English much later.

And then he joins the freedom struggle. He campaigns against the forced labour that colonial officials extract in the hills. You know, when they go on a shikar, hunting trip, you know, villagers are supposed to carry their loads and give them free milk and so on. And he launches a campaign to have that obnoxious system abolished. Then he joins the non-cooperation movements and six months in Lahore. jail, which is beastly hot for a man from Philadelphia living near Shimla. And he talks about what it means to be in Lahore in May and June in jail. Then he comes out of jail.

And then he does something really interesting, very American. He becomes an entrepreneur and plants apples. Brilliant. And lays the seeds of what is now a multi-billion dollar apple industry in the Indian Himalaya. So he's Johnny Appleton. And yet is a man also who opposes Nero's vision of an industrialized. India. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. And then he also turns spiritual, starts reading Hindu texts and converts. He says to become truly Indian, I must not just leave the church. I must embrace the faith

of my people in the hills, my wife's ancestors, and adopts her name Satyana, which is happy in the pursuit of truth. So again, quite remarkable life. Is he actually a Hindu? In what sense is he a Hindu. So he calls himself a Hindu. And the thing about being a Hindu, at least in the old days before the current regime took over power in India, you didn't have to be a member of a church. You know, you could be a church of one. And the beautiful thing, I mean, you know, with others who've gone native, if you like, their families repudiate him. But he has a beautiful relationship with his mother. And she accepts the family. She accepts his choices. And she grows to love them. And it's such a happily ever after story for Jawaral Al Appleseed. I just think we should

rename that Johnny Appleseed. But it's a lot of it. But it's a lot of it. It's a lot of lovely, an unusual acceptance. Yeah, and I think it's also, you know, it's very lucky for the biographer, Alita, because all these letters to his mother are there, you know. Here is a man devoted to his mother, writing twice a week to her from Shimla to Philadelphia. I mean, so if you think of how a letter would have got from Shimla, I used to Philadelphia. First by hand, there are a horse, then a train down from Shimla to Delhi, then another train to Mumbai, there are a ship to New York.

I mean, it's extraordinary. Each of those letters reached, and they are there for a historian to look at. And it's gorgeous. What happened to his mixed-race children? Do we know what's the happily ever after there, or is there one? They have many children who stay on, make good marriages. One of his daughters marries the first chief minister of the state of Himaltzapadesh.

A granddaughter-in-law is a local legislator of the Congress Party. A great-grandson, I know, is a fantastic photographer. of Buddhist sites in the Himalia. He still lives there, another great grandchild runs a school, whom I don't know personally, but I know of it. With his wife, he runs a school for his children.

So, I mean, the stokes are building India and renovating India and rebuilding India as we speak. I was obviously very interested in the book because, in the sense, it's a sort of a second wing of a diptic of some of the work I did 20 years ago on the white Mughals, who were the figures,

at the beginning of, colonialism, who likewise intermarry, likewise often reject their own culture and take lovers and wives or husbands in some cases from the other culture. And yet your guys suffer more than mine. My guys have quite a nice life. They're often in large palaces with the full luxuries of life. But your people have a rough have a rougher run by the 1940s. Yeah, very much so. Well, look, it is an absolute delight. and highly recommended by both of us.

The book is called Rebels Against the Raj, Western Fighters for India's Freedom. Once again, thank you very much for being a friend of this podcast. Ramachandra Gua, thank you very much indeed. Thank you, Ram. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, both of you. I've enjoyed it very much. Thank you.

So join us next week for the start of our new series on slavery. But until then, it's goodbye for me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye for me, William Durimpool.