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‘We Must Send a Gift Worthy of India and the Congress!’ War and political humanitarianism in late colonial South Asia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2018

MARIA FRAMKE
MARIA FRAMKE*
Affiliation:
Historical Institute, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany Email: maria.framke@uni-rostock.de
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Abstract

The interwar period has recently been described as a highly internationalist one in South Asia, as a series of distinct internationalisms—communist, anarchist, social scientific, socialist, literary, and aesthetic1—took shape. At the same time, it has been argued that the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 drew to a close various opportunities for international association (at least, temporarily). Taking into account both these contradistinctive developments, this article deals with another—and thus far largely overlooked—South Asian internationalism in the form of wartime Indian humanitarianism. In 1938, the Indian National Congress helped organize an Indian medical mission to China to bring relief to Chinese victims of the Second Sino-Japanese War. By focusing on this initiative, this article traces the ideas, the practices, and the motives of Indian political humanitarianism. It argues that such initiatives, as they became part of much wider global networks of humanitarianism in the late 1930s and early 1940s, created new openings for Indian nationalists to establish international alliances. This article also examines the way in which political humanitarianism enabled these same nationalists to perform as independent leaders on an international stage, and argues that humanitarianism served as a tool of anti-colonial emancipation.

Type
Forum
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 51 , Special Issue 6: Institutions and Economic Development in South Asia , November 2017 , pp. 1969 - 1998
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Introduction

The interwar period has recently been described as highly internationalist. With regard to South Asia, internationalism took multiple forms—communist, anarchist, social scientific, socialist, literary and aesthetic—and was characterized by global interactions and transnational interventions.Footnote 2 Although it has also been rightly argued that, with the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, various opportunities for international association drew (temporarily) to a close,Footnote 3 this article reveals that at the same time the war functioned as a source of new and revitalized connections.

To this end, it examines Indian perceptions of, and engagements in, the war in Asia of 1937–1945 by taking up the example of the Indian medical mission to China. By focusing on this mission, it traces ideas, practices, and motives of Indian political humanitarianism in the late colonial period. Humanitarian relief is, despite contrary claims, rarely apolitical, but comprises intrinsically political dimensions.Footnote 4 However, when applying the term ‘political humanitarianism’ in this article, I refer to a form of humanitarianism in which political motivations are particularly overt. To understand ‘humanitarianism as a form of politics’ also implies, according to Daniel Laqua, that we take into account the humanitarians’ views on domestic politics and the international order.Footnote 5

In the case of Indian relief initiatives during the war of 1937–1945, this understanding translates into three interconnected arguments. First, Indian political humanitarianism was closely linked to nationalist claims for sovereignty from British colonial rule; it became an unequivocally anti-colonial endeavour which reflected a stridently independent foreign policy approach. Secondly, Indian humanitarian initiatives created a new opening for international linkages, as they became part of global networks of humanitarianism and leftist solidarity in the late 1930s and early 1940s. And finally, the Indian medical mission to China symbolized the climax of changing Indian (political) perspectives of, and relations with, East Asia. Taking a closer look at this mission thus enhances our understanding of the war in Asia as both a rupturing force and a globalizing historical force.

Nationalist India's relations with China and Japan

The Indian public, especially nationalist politicians and intellectuals, took a strong interest in political, economic, and cultural developments in China and Japan from the early twentieth century onwards. Japan's victory over Russia in 1905 had changed Indian perceptions of the East Asian country and deeply affected Indian nationalism. Japan's success not only contradicted the myth of the ‘supremacy of the white race’, it also revealed the possibility of a non-Western, Asian modernity.Footnote 6 Its economic expansionism from the late nineteenth century on—made visible, for instance, by new Japanese steamship routes to Indian ports—also added to the increasing cultural and political Indian interest.Footnote 7 As a result, intellectuals on the subcontinent developed pan-Asian ideas that featured prominently in public debates until the 1950s.Footnote 8

The initial enthusiasm for Japan found expression in growing economic relations, an intensification of educational transfers, and in Indian efforts to win Japan's assistance in the anti-colonial freedom struggle.Footnote 9 For the latter reason, several Indian nationalists, such as Mohammed Barkatullah, Rashbehari Bose, M. N. Roy, and Lala Lajpat Rai, visited Japan, which had become a hub for Asian revolutionaries in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Here, Indians met fellow nationalists from China like Sun Yat-sen and also became associated with anti-British organizations and movements.Footnote 10 Yet, although the connection to Japan remained important for some Indian revolutionaries and travellers during and after the First World War,Footnote 11 Japan's reputation as supporter of anti-colonial struggles suffered after 1915 as a consequence of its foreign policy ambitions. Japan's role in the First World War, its policies towards Korea and China, as well as its attitude during the peace negotiations in Paris, were critically discussed by the Indian public in the late 1910s. Some Indian commentators refused to support Japan's efforts to safeguard its territorial expansions and backed Chinese and Korean demands for self-determination instead.Footnote 12

During the interwar period, Indian politicians and intellectuals came closer to developing bilateral cooperative relations with their Chinese counterparts. The well-known cosmopolitan and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, for instance, visited China on an invited lecture tour in 1924. Although his host, the prominent Chinese historian Liang Quichao, and other members of Chinese intellectual circles received Tagore with great interest, it soon became apparent that the majority of his audience and especially the (radical) student movement shared neither his concept of Eastern civilization nor his criticism of nationalism.Footnote 13 Nonetheless, as a staunch advocate of Asia's cultural unity, Tagore ensured that Chinese studies were taught at his Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan by the invited scholar Tan Yunshan in 1927. In the following years, Tan would emerge as an important diplomatic intermediary between the GuomindangFootnote 14 and the Indian National Congress (hereafter INC) and would act as an institution builder, as evidenced by his leading role in establishing the Sino-Indian Cultural Society.Footnote 15 The first branch of this society was established in Nanjing in 1933, and an Indian section began its work only one year later at Visva Bharati. This was followed by the foundation of Cheena Bhavana, the Institute of Chinese Language and Culture, in Santiniketan in 1937. The INC and the Guomindang nourished high hopes for both initiatives as they were understood as vital tools of cultural diplomacy between India and China.Footnote 16

Closer relations between Indian and Chinese politicians were also established outside the cultural realm, for instance during the Brussels Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism in 1927. The Brussels Congress had been organized by the German communist Willi Münzenberg with the support of the Communist International (Comintern). It brought together left-wing democrats, socialists, communists, pacifists, trade unionists as well as anti-colonial activists and politicians from Asia, Africa, and Latin America with a view to linking all anti-imperial forces. In order to form a ‘united front’ against (imperial) exploitation and oppression, the meeting inaugurated a permanent organization, the League against Imperialism (LAI), of which the INC became a member.Footnote 17 Utilizing this opportunity to meet, discuss, and envision shared themes, the delegates of the INC and of the Guomindang signed a joint declaration calling for mutual understanding and joint cooperation.Footnote 18

Furthermore, in the late 1920s and during the 1930s, the Indian public closely followed internal events in China, as well as the country's conflict with ‘Western powers’. Indian politicians and the nationalist media were also concerned with Japan's aggressive foreign policy towards its East Asian neighbour, especially with the so-called Manchurian incident. In September 1931, Japanese troops occupied the city of Shenyang (Mukden) in northeast China in the aftermath of a bomb explosion and subsequently invaded the whole of Manchuria, facing hardly any resistance by the Chinese nationalist troops. The invasion and the following establishment of the Japanese-controlled puppet state Manchukuo was rejected by the League of Nations, which declared Japan the aggressor. However, Manchukuo remained a reality until 1945.Footnote 19 Although public discourses in India contained many critical voices regarding Japanese expansionism, neutral or supporting positions also circulated in the Indian media and were taken up by several Indian politicians and intellectuals. Such pronouncements appeared frequently in pan-Asianist circles that continued to portray Japan as important for the awakening of Asia: Raja Mahendra Pratap and Rash Behari Bose exemplify this stance.Footnote 20 Labour Asianisms, as envisaged in the international engagements of the Indian trade union movement, and academic Asianisms, which conceptualized Asia as a unitary civilization comprising common spiritual, religious, and cultural identities, provide further examples.Footnote 21 Furthermore, Japan's economic policy was viewed as a role model for India's development,Footnote 22 while its foreign policy was sometimes interpreted as reflecting a form of ‘Realpolitik’ that was unavoidable. In adopting this perspective, Indian authors refrained from passing any direct moral or ethical judgements and presented such policies as displaying Japan's essential need for building an empire that would allow it to survive as a nation.Footnote 23 Despite its rising militarism, Japan's importance in uniting Asia also continued to preoccupy Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore, who visited Japan for the third and last time in 1929, grew more and more disenchanted with Japanese aggression in China in the following years. Although, he still believed in the message of Asia and even expressed his sympathy for the Japanese people, Tagore unequivocally denounced Japan's expansionism after its invasion of the Chinese mainland in 1937 and the outbreak of an all-out war.Footnote 24

As in Tagore's case, the Second Sino-Japanese War ended, or at least severely interrupted for a number of years, most ‘sympathetic’ pronouncements as well as almost all ongoing projects for Asian unity and solidarity in India. Japanese pan-Asianist ideas ceased to be seen as role models in India.Footnote 25 However, after the outbreak of the Second World War, and even more so after the Sino-Japanese conflict became part of it in 1941, Indian nationalists increasingly saw Japan as a potentially important ally for the Indian freedom movement.Footnote 26 At the same time, for the majority of nationalist politicians, intellectuals, and so forth, China remained a vital partner for (future) cultural and political cooperation: the downtrodden ‘friend’ with whom India needed to side in the common battle against imperialist suppression.Footnote 27 A series of mutually planned and realized visits as well as Indian publications on China strengthened this view of a close connection between the two countries.Footnote 28 Additionally, India expressed its solidarity with China by sending humanitarian aid in the form of an Indian medical mission in 1938. This mission was by no means the first Indian engagement in international humanitarian assistance. It was, however, the most overtly political humanitarian engagement thus far, as the following section will demonstrate.

International Indian humanitarianism before 1938

Indian initiatives to provide humanitarian assistance during international conflicts were first launched in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1899, when war broke out between England and the two Boer republics—the Transvaal and the Orange Free State—Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was working as a lawyer in South Africa at the time, aligned himself unhesitatingly with the British empire and formed an Indian Ambulance Corps to assist wounded soldiers.Footnote 29 Gandhi's efforts were not organized in India but in South Africa. However, the next Indian humanitarian initiative involved dispatching several medical missions from South Asia to Turkey. In 1912, after the outbreak of the Balkan wars, Indian civil society actors—mostly members of the Indian Muslim community—collected funds to send these missions to the Ottoman empire to help wounded soldiers and refugees.Footnote 30

In the First World War, India fought on the side of Great Britain and its contributions in terms of men, materials, and money became a crucial source to draw on for the Allied powers. While soldiers of the British Indian Army served in Europe, Africa, and Asia, extensive Indian humanitarian initiatives emerged to help wounded military and civilian war victims in Great Britain, Mesopotamia, and India.Footnote 31 In London, Gandhi decided to set up an Indian Field Ambulance Training Corps that was to assist Indian victims in Europe. In India, the Indian St John Ambulance became highly active. In cooperation with the British Red Cross Society, it provided help to prisoners of war. Besides financial and material contributions to different national Red Cross societies, the association also set up and equipped hospitals in India, Great Britain, and France, and sent ambulance units to East Africa and Mesopotamia. In its activities, the St John Ambulance was supported not only by donations from British people living in India, but also from wide sections of upper and middle-class Indian civil society.

The nature of Indian humanitarianism during the Great War was closely intertwined with the imperial framework, a characteristic that was to change in the interwar period. An early instance of planned political humanitarianism in an international conflict (which was, however, never implemented) occurred in 1927. The ongoing Chinese national revolution had challenged Britain's formal presence in China. Britain's reaction—dispatching the Shanghai Defence Force, which also included Indian soldiers—was heavily criticized by the INC.Footnote 32 The latter condemned the British use of Indian troops and money for what it perceived as imperialist action and decided to send an ambulance corps to China.Footnote 33 Preparations were already well underway when the Government of India, in agreement with London, refused to grant the ambulance corps the necessary passports, secretly fearing that the proposed medical mission would serve political purposes by being used ‘as a demonstration against the British policy in China’.Footnote 34 Although this first instance of politically motivated humanitarianism could not be realized, humanitarian help in armed conflicts and civil wars developed into an area of engagement for the Indian nationalists. While fighting for India's independence, in the course of the 1930s the INC and civil society actors provided ideological support as well as financial and material humanitarian assistance to Abyssinia and the Spanish Republic.Footnote 35 The eventual dispatch of an Indian medical mission, however, only materialized in connection with a conflict taking place in Asia.

Boycott and medical help

Since 1931, the two powers, China and Japan, had fought intermittently in localized engagements. In 1937, however, these conflicts turned into a full-scale war between the Japanese empire and the Republic of China governed by Chiang Kai-shek's Guomindang, which entered into an alliance with the Chinese communists. The war, which began with a local conflict near Beijing (known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident), ushered in four years of Chinese resistance against an expanding enemy, before it became part of the global Second World War, following Japan's simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbor and European colonies in Southeast Asia in 1941.Footnote 36

After the outbreak of all-out war between China and Japan, the INC quickly sided with the Chinese people. In October of the same year, the All India Congress Committee issued a resolution condemning Japan's ‘imperialist aggression’ and declaring its sympathy with China. In so doing, the Congress displayed, according to William Kuracina, its belief in the ‘commonality of anti-imperialist struggles which implied the Congress's favouring any nationalist movement striving against a foreign exploiter’.Footnote 37 Applying this notion of commonality to both the Guomindang and the Communist Party of China, the official INC discourse—decisively shaped by Jawaharlal NehruFootnote 38 —did not differentiate between these two major Chinese forces fighting the Japanese. The resolution of the All India Congress Committee also called upon the Indian people to boycott Japanese goods as a sign of their solidarity with China.Footnote 39 Indian newspapers and journals widely discussed the appropriateness of this boycott. Different Indian nationalist politicians and journalists such as Jawaharlal Nehru, K. F. Nariman, and S. A. Brelvi supported the idea time and again.Footnote 40 Their appeals seemingly met with success as Indian import figures of Japanese goods decreased substantially.Footnote 41

One can argue that the efforts of the INC to bring about a boycott of Japanese commodities, and thereby express solidarity with China, were part of a global network of protest activities against Japan's aggression.Footnote 42 This is hardly surprising when taking into account that the official stance of the INC towards external affairs in the 1930s was linked to ideas and transnational mobilizations on the political left. The rise of fascist and new imperialist powers, their expansion in the interwar period, and the ‘weak’ responses of the great powers lastingly influenced the Congress's emergent foreign policy. While dissociating itself officially from Britain's foreign policy, the Congress also became increasingly disillusioned with the League of Nations.Footnote 43 The League embodied, as Mark Mazower convincingly argues, an influential brand of imperial internationalism. Its imperial dimension led to widespread distrust in India of the League's political aims and seems to have strengthened Indian engagements in alternative forms of internationalism, such as in global networks of humanitarianism and left-wing solidarity.Footnote 44 Rejecting the League's concept of collective security, which evidently perpetuated the imperial world order, the INC repeatedly expressed its sympathy with victims of fascism and imperialism and, as a result, launched solidarity campaigns for Abyssinia and the Spanish Republic. Especially in the latter case, the mobilization of Indian nationalist solidarity, displayed by boycotts, appeals, and humanitarian aid, was pursued by the same actors and partly within the same (leftist) networks of transnational activism.Footnote 45 The humanitarian endeavours for China, therefore, reveal continuities with preceding Indian campaigns for ‘victims’ of imperialism and fascism.

The forging of the global network of protests against Japanese aggression can be seen in the nature of the correspondence from this period. For instance, Nehru received a telegram from John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Romain Rolland exhorting the Indian people to join their anti-Japanese protest.Footnote 46 In his answer to Dewey—publicized in the Indian press—Nehru reaffirmed the Congress's willingness to participate in the global cause ‘for humanity, peace and democracy everywhere’.Footnote 47 Nehru, whose interest in foreign policy matters dated back to the 1920s, was well connected with European (especially British) political and intellectual circles.Footnote 48 A few of these connections had emerged from Gandhi's global networks; however, the majority of his contacts had been developed and/or deepened during his European stay in 1926–27 and in the course of his work for the League against Imperialism.Footnote 49 During his European trip in the summer of 1938, Nehru not only repeatedly discussed the question of boycotting Japanese goods, but he also further disseminated the idea of showing global solidarity with the victims of imperialist and fascist aggression.Footnote 50

Another example is the participation of Indian nationalists in demonstrations and solidarity meetings for China that were organized in Britain. One of Nehru's closest associates in Europe, V. K. Krishna Menon, played a particularly important role in these activities. In 1929, Menon had organized the India League, an organization that was campaigning vigorously for India's independence in the United Kingdom during the 1930s and which increasingly combined forces with the Communist Party of Great Britain.Footnote 51 Menon became involved in humanitarian relief activities, first in connection with the Spanish Civil War and subsequently for China. He was active in different British and international organizations that leaned (strongly) towards the left and/or pacifist milieu and which had taken up China's cause, such as the China Campaign Committee (CCC) and the International Peace Campaign.Footnote 52 He participated in many protest meetings as well as fundraising campaigns in the United Kingdom by delivering speeches and organizing cultural events in support of China.Footnote 53 On these occasions, Menon often passed on the greetings of the INC and explained its policy towards the Sino-Japanese War to British audiences. Unofficially representing the INC, and Nehru in particular, Menon acted as a transnational broker, bringing certain metropolitan and colonial groups closer together—as is revealed by, among other things, the financial support of the Indian medical mission by the CCC.Footnote 54

In India, in September 1937, January 1938, and July 1938, the Congress organized solidarity days for China in different cities to which Chinese diplomats were invited as speakers.Footnote 55 Indian help for China did not end there. Direct bilateral appeals from China to India—both at institutional and individual levels—were also made.Footnote 56 General Zhu De of the Eighth Route Army, for instance, wrote to Nehru in November 1937 asking for Indian support and noted the national significance for India of such support. The general reminded Nehru that a Japanese victory could become a threat to India's independence.Footnote 57 He explained:

We know that we are fighting not only the battle of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people but we are fighting the battle of the people of all Asia, and that we are a part of the world army for the liberation of oppressed nations and oppressed classes. It is with this consciousness that we feel justified in asking you, [. . .] to help us in our struggle by any and all means. We would welcome financial help in the name of the Chinese Volunteers, we would welcome medical supplies and surgical instruments, we would welcome trained war surgeons and nurses and we would welcome volunteers who might wish to express their solidarity with us in our fight by fighting in volunteer units with our army.Footnote 58

Having been directly petitioned by various Chinese leaders, Nehru felt it necessary to extend Indian support. As a result, the Congress started a China Relief Fund, organized by its Foreign Department. Although the Chinese had asked for comprehensive assistance, including military support, the INC decided to focus on the delivery of medical supplies—as did organizations in Britain.Footnote 59 At the same time, Indian politicians and public leaders also discussed the idea of sending an Indian medical mission to China. Having received quite a number of applications for such as mission,Footnote 60 the Congress initially hesitated to organize it, foreseeing ‘very great difficulties in the way of sending volunteers’.Footnote 61 Expenditure was clearly a major concern—whether enough money could be raised to equip, send, and maintain the unit.Footnote 62

The decision to send an Indian medical mission to China—comprising a fully equipped ambulance, medical supplies, and five Indian doctors—was finally made by the Working Committee of the INC in May 1938. Aware that the collection of substantial funds was vital, Congress president Subhas Chandra Bose called upon his fellow countrymen to donate liberally.Footnote 63 To further ensure the success of the fundraising campaign, the INC actively strove to mobilize its institutional and human resources. Thus, a number of circulars were sent to the provincial Congress committees instructing them to organize collections for China.Footnote 64 Likewise, in the course of two solidarity days held for China in June and July 1938, appeals were made for donations and collection processions were carried out by Congress workers and Desh Sevikas.Footnote 65 The fundraising campaign proved successful and by the end of July more than the necessary amount of Rs 30,000 had been collected in India.Footnote 66 Aside from the money raised by the provincial and district Congress committees, the Chinese Relief Fund received donations directly from (industrial) companies; trade unions; cultural, political, youth, and workers societies; schools and colleges, and also from individuals, among them Rabindranath Tagore, who contributed the generous amount of Rs 500.Footnote 67 While a large share of the donations came from within the subcontinent, Indian communities living in Southeast Asia also answered the Congress's call, donating not only money but also an ambulance.Footnote 68 Finally, an amount of £500 in support of the Indian medical mission was raised in Great Britain during and after Nehru's visit there in summer 1938. Among the donors were British-China support groups, along with different Indian societies, such as the Federation of Indian Students in Great Britain and the Indian Medical Association, as well as Asian students’ bodies like the Oxford and Cambridge Majlis.Footnote 69 Here again, one can see that Indian humanitarian initiatives were embedded in wider global and transnational networks.

The administration of the funds and the organization of the medical unit were entrusted to a committee appointed by the Working Committee of the INC in May.Footnote 70 Since the Congress had already received quite a number of applications for the mission before any official call went out, and after it became clear that it would only be possible to send a small batch of people, the committee now invited applications for just four ‘qualified doctors, preferably experienced surgeons [. . .] willing to serve for at least one year’Footnote 71 without any salary. By the end of July the candidates had been selected from nearly 700 applications received ‘from all over India, East Africa, Mauritius, Syria and England’.Footnote 72 These four doctors were: M. R. Cholkar from Nagpur, D. S. Kotnis from Sholapur, and B. K. Basu and D. Mukherjee from Calcutta.

The committee appointed Dr Madan Mohan Lal Atal to be the leader of the mission. He seemed particular qualified for the position as a result of his work for the Spanish Medical Aid Committee—a left-wing organization supporting the Republican side—during the Spanish Civil War. This work had not only provided him with crucial experience in cooperating with a humanitarian organization in armed conflicts, but it had also made him the ideal candidate in political terms.Footnote 73 Personally close to Jawaharlal Nehru and a faithful supporter of the INC, Atal's activities in Republican Spain (and later in China) were driven as much by humanitarian considerations as by his leftist anti-fascist sentiments. He was one of the few Indians actively involved in ‘the global Popular Front’.Footnote 74

The British government, both in Great Britain and in India, closely monitored the international interconnectedness of the Congress's humanitarian efforts with leftist, communist, and pacifist groups as well as individuals.Footnote 75 On the subcontinent, India's colonial intelligence branches intercepted the correspondence of Congress members regarding the mission and anxiously gathered information about the applicants. Of particular interest was the question of whether the applicants for the medical unit had previously been politically active or even been convicted. The anxiety of the colonial state, however, did not stop there. In a precautionary measure, it also made enquiries about whether certain former detainees had conveyed interest in the mission.Footnote 76 Although these activities indicate a growing concern about the unwelcome politicization of the medical mission within British-Indian government circles, the colonial state did not prevent the unit's despatch this time around. However, it did intervene in one case. Its suspicions that Indian communists might exploit the mission and use it as an opportunity to go to China led the central government in Delhi to involve itself in the decision of the Congress-led government in Bombay to withhold granting a passport to Dr Ranen Sen, an active member of the Communist Party of India. In his place Dr Bijoy K. Basu, who was himself a Communist Party member, was selected to join the mission. The available sources do not elucidate this conundrum, but two explanations seem likely.Footnote 77 Either Basu's affiliation with the communists was unknown to the British administration in charge, and/or he was not as high profile and influential a party member as Sen and thus appeared as less a threat to the colonial state.Footnote 78 The limited intervention by the British Indian government in the despatch of the Indian medical mission seemed to be closely linked to the growing strength of the Congress in the 1930s. Its success in the 1937 elections for the provincial governments not only showed that the Congress enjoyed considerable support by the general public, but it also facilitated its further emergence as a ‘parallel government’Footnote 79 and helped translate its claims that it was pursuing a distinct Indian foreign policy leading to concrete initiatives of political humanitarianism.

The Indian medical mission in China

A large number of citizens, politicians, and Chinese representatives attended the departure of the mission that sailed from Bombay to Hong Kong in September 1938.Footnote 80 Initially, the unit was supposed to remain in China for one year. While Mukherjee and Cholkar returned to India in 1939, it soon became clear that Atal, Kotnis, and Basu would stay longer (until 1940, 1942, and 1943 respectively).Footnote 81 Thus, the INC endeavoured to collect further funds to support its work but met with limited success.Footnote 82

After reaching Hong Kong in mid-September, the mission was received by Chinese government officials and Indian residents. Within the context of several social functions, it met members of the Chinese political establishment, representatives of political and humanitarian organizations as well as other foreigners who actively supported China.Footnote 83 Perceived as representatives of the INC and at times as ‘ambassadors of goodwill from the people of India’,Footnote 84 the medical mission continued to receive invitations to lunches, dinners, and other festivities held in their honour in the next few months. Its members met, among others, Mao Zedong, Song Qingling (Madame Sun Yat-sen), Song Meiling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek), Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, Lin Sen, and Dai Jitao. They furthermore made the acquaintance of British authors Charlotte Haldane and Freda Utley as well as the American journalists Agnes Smedley and Edgar Snow.Footnote 85 The doctors passed through different places held by the Guomindang and took up work in military, municipal, and Red Cross hospitals in Yichang and Chongqing.Footnote 86

However, their final destination for service was Yan'an, seat of the communists, which the unit eventually reached in early 1939. While Cholkar and Mukherjee started teaching in the Medical College of Yan'an, Atal, Kotnis, and Basu ran a new hospital known as the Eighth Route Army Model Hospital.Footnote 87 Keen to help the Chinese victims of war, the members of the medical mission were happy to work under the auspices of the Chinese National Red Cross, which supposedly had a better reach into the Chinese-held areas.Footnote 88 After different assignments at the front and in mobile medical units, Basu was employed as surgeon-in-charge of the ‘Ear Nose Throat and Eye’ department in the International Peace Hospital in Yan'an, while Kotnis started teaching at the Bethune International Peace Hospital and Medical School near Fuping. He also became the director of this institution in 1941.Footnote 89

The International Peace hospitals were situated in China's northwest border regions. This area not only saw heavy fighting against the Japanese but was supposedly in particular need of support as it did not receive much aid from the Chinese government. They were established and maintained by funds from the United States, Canada, and Britain which were collected by organizations such as the CCC and Madame Sun Yat-sen's China Defence League. To a certain extent these hospitals were internationally linked leftist hubs—not just in regard to finances but also to its personnel. Alongside the members of the Indian medical mission, doctors, nurses, and miscellaneous personnel from Canada, the United States, Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other countries provided politically informed humanitarian help in China. Some of these humanitarians—just like Atal—had already gained experience in the Spanish Civil War.Footnote 90 The work of the Indian medical mission in China can therefore be understood as an integral part of the global political humanitarianism of the late 1930s and early 1940s—a humanitarianism that was characterized by its strong leftist, anti-imperialist attributes.

Beyond humanitarianism? Indian motives for assisting China

The Indian medical mission spawned a significant legacy in terms of the bilateral relations between China and India. In this context, particular emphasis is put on Dwarkanath Kotnis who is nowadays best remembered in both countries.Footnote 91 As soon as the conflict came to an end, Kotnis, who had died of epilepsy in China in late 1942 while on duty, quickly emerged as a martyr to the anti-fascist cause and as a symbol of the bond of solidarity between India and China.Footnote 92 To this day Chinese politicians remain keen to visit Kotnis's household during state visits to India.Footnote 93 This raises the issue of how the value of this humanitarian initiative and its reach was assessed by Indian and Chinese politicians, which brings us to the question of the motives for its organization.

In the 1930s, Jawaharlal Nehru emerged as one of the influential voices that explained and framed the foreign policy ideas of the INC. Humanitarian help was part of these political formulations on foreign policy. Reviewing the international situation, Nehru believed that a ‘world conflict is going on in which democracy is pitched against imperialism and fascism’,Footnote 94 in which Japanese imperialism stood against the political emancipation and freedom of China.Footnote 95 As India was siding uncompromisingly with the democratic forces against the powers of imperialism and fascism—a theme that Nehru dwelt upon repeatedly in his speeches and writingsFootnote 96 —all possible support and assistance had to be given to China. In China itself, the cultural and religious heritage the country shared with India was equally flagged as a reason to help.Footnote 97

While these motives most probably influenced the decision of the INC and motivated Indian donors to contribute to the Chinese Relief Fund, Nehru was also aware of the political benefit that India's initiative could produce.Footnote 98 During his stay in Europe in the summer of 1938, he reported back to the Working Committee of the INC in India that ‘the decision by us to send a medical mission has had the happiest results’.Footnote 99 By pointing to the important global role that China would be likely to play in the future, Nehru suggested further increasing Indian contacts with its neighbour.Footnote 100 In a letter to J. B. Kripalani, he proposed that the medical mission should be accompanied by someone who would take care of establishing political contacts and reporting on the mission's work back in India. Nehru explained: ‘A mission of doctors alone will be very one-sided and will not do us as much good as we ought to expect. [. . .] the main thing is intelligent political contacts with prominent people there.’Footnote 101 In the end, his proposal was not implemented. Finally, he was convinced that the humanitarian mission to China would serve the foreign propaganda efforts of the Indian National movement.Footnote 102 To further substantiate these efforts, the humanitarian help was usually depicted as a matter that concerned every nationalist-minded Indian and was therefore important for every INC member. Nehru embedded Indian humanitarianism in the political realm and attached a range of possible positive results to the medical aid delivered to the Chinese victims of the war. One of the most obvious benefits stemmed from the aforementioned Chinese appeal for help to the Indian nationalists, and especially the request for military support, which allowed the Congress to engage in international affairs. By providing (humanitarian) aid to another country, the Congress's representatives, and especially Jawaharlal Nehru, acted as if they were the de facto representatives of a sovereign nation state, well before India actually became independent. This episode displays once again the ‘parallel government’ that Congress had been able to establish by the late 1930s.

While not everybody in the Congress shared Nehru's strongly anti-fascist stance, replete with ideas of collective security and India's envisaged responsibility for it,Footnote 103 there seems to have been a broader consent on the necessity of humanitarian assistance. Thus, even acting Congress President Subhas Chandra Bose—whose foreign policy approach in the late 1930s focused on India's self-interest and who sought to keep all options open—participated actively in aid efforts for China. Bose was aware that the practical value of the Indian medical mission was limited, but he credited it with a moral value during a meeting in Calcutta in mid-August 1938. Pointing to India's own problems, he declared: ‘We are painfully conscious of the fact that we can do very little to help China in her present difficulties. But we have our heart with the Chinese people and as a token of our sympathy we are sending out a small medical mission to China.’Footnote 104 Shortly before the departure of the unit, however, Bose also linked India's humanitarian efforts with politics by writing in a press statement: ‘It is not a small thing that India is appearing on the international stage today as a bulwark against forces of imperialism, autocracy and spiritual wickedness. [. . .] Let us, therefore, [. . .] pray for the success of their [the units, M.F.] noble mission.’Footnote 105

Although the humanitarian contribution of the Indian national movement never amounted to more than this one medical mission in the course of the 1937–1945 war, it seems that it, at least partially, achieved its humanitarian, moral as well as political goals. The immediate bilateral consequences of a mission that was highly appreciated in China was the increased correspondence that emerged between Nehru and Chinese politicians, from both the communist and nationalist camps,Footnote 106 as well as mutual visits and plans for closer cooperation between India and China in the areas of economics, politics, culture, and education.Footnote 107 Mao Zedong thanked Nehru and the INC personally for their medical and material aid in a letter in May 1939 and expressed his hope ‘[. . .] that in future the INC and the Indian people will continue to help and aid us and thus together drive out the Japanese imperialists’.Footnote 108 Furthermore, the nationalist and communist Chinese press frequently ran articles on the situation in British India that supported the Indian independence movement during the Second World War.Footnote 109

In the years following the end of the war, independent India and the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC) continued to foster the pre-existing relations, thereby repeatedly emphasizing their long-standing close links, their shared Asian heritage, and their friendship based on the common anti-imperialist struggle.Footnote 110 Both countries closely cooperated and/or supported each other on multiple occasions, such as the PRC's admission to the United Nations, the Korean War, the Indochina question, the Bandung Conference, and so on.Footnote 111 Apart from pointing to their interlinked past, the language of this cooperation was not only framed in terms of friendship and commonalities of problems, but initially it also drew heavily on pan-Asian concepts of Asian unity and power, and was directed against a new kind of ‘imperial internationalism’ that emerged in the context of decolonization and the Cold War.Footnote 112 One way of countering this new imperial internationalism lay in the continuation of aid by the post-colonial Indian government. Thereby, the mixture of motives attached to aid provision during the 1930s—its political and moral dimensions—remained important in Nehru's and the Congress's conception of relief work as well as development assistance after independence.Footnote 113 In the late 1940s and early 1950s, India's foreign policy aims comprised, in Nehru's words, striving for world peace, combating racism and imperialism, reviving Asia, and the politics of non-alignment.Footnote 114 Accordingly, when Nehru became India's first prime minister, the country provided both diplomatic and material support for the Indonesian fight for independence by despatching a medical mission with large supplies of medicine to Indonesia.Footnote 115 Similarly, during the Korean War India sent a medical unit to South Korea to help the victims of war. The country, however, refrained from giving any military assistance to South Korea, as requested by the United Nations.Footnote 116 These examples seem to suggest that in the early post-independence years, Indian humanitarian assistance was motivated not only by political ambitions, such as pursuing an independent foreign policy that was not aligned to any of the emerging power blocs and which highlighted India's potential as a regional power, but it was also influenced by a sense of anti-imperialist solidarity with former colonies and a moral concern to work for a peaceful, just global order.

Despite the Chinese appreciation of the Indian medical mission and the close cooperation between the two Asian countries in the late 1940s until the mid-1950s, Indian-Chinese relations had deteriorated noticeably by the end of the decade, culminating in the Sino-Indian War in 1962.Footnote 117 The war left Nehru disillusioned and with a sense of betrayal. Neither the long-cherished belief in Asia's unity and power nor the idea of India's and China's common cultural and political (anti-imperialist) heritage, which had once informed the work of the Indian medical mission, had been able to prevent the collapse of Chinese-Indian friendship due to regional and international geostrategic and foreign policy differences. Yet, in the decades following the war, the Indian medical mission emerged again as a ‘token’ of Indian-Chinese friendship. Its legacy of mutual sympathy and support has been—and still is—invoked regularly by both governments to reinforce present and future bilateral relations.Footnote 118

Conclusion

In a recent article, the historian Vinay Lal claims that Kotnis and the Indian medical mission, while being still highly venerated in China, have been all but forgotten in India.Footnote 119 If we give credence to his assertion, the Indian medical mission would have shared the fate of many humanitarian initiatives of the 1930s that have faded into obscurity and/or have been ignored by the recent historiography on humanitarianism.Footnote 120 However, in our case, Lal's judgement seems to be an oversimplification—not only when thinking about the mission's diplomatic legacy. Over the last seven decades, numerous books have been published about the medical unit and in particular about Dwarkanath Kotnis, starting with Khwaja Ahmad Abbas's 1944 account . . .And one did not come back!.Footnote 121 Based on Abbas's novel, the Indian director V. Shantaram made the movie Dr. Kotnis ki amar kahani/The immortal tale of Dr. Kotnis, which became one of India's most celebrated films. Shot in 1946, the movie contributed substantially to the remembrance of the Indian medical mission and even created, as Neepa Majumdar argues, ‘in the public mind and in subsequent scholarly and popular accounts [. . .] a complete blurring of the boundaries between Dr. Kotnis and Shantaram's Kotnis [. . .]’.Footnote 122 Furthermore, the famous and widely circulated comic book series Amar Chitra Katha published a title called Doctor Kotnis in China in 1984. The Amar Chitra Katha comics were usually published in English and then translated into Hindi and occasionally into other regional languages.Footnote 123 Thus, in the 1980s, a generation of Indian children who grew up with Amar Chitra Katha comics became familiar with the story of the Indian medical mission. Nonetheless, despite these ‘cultural’ forms of engagement, the mission has thus far largely escaped scholarly attention as a significant example of Indian political humanitarianism.

As the article has shown, different Indian actors and groups—in our case, especially members of the Indian national movement—discussed and actively engaged in humanitarian initiatives in the interwar period. These initiatives aimed to bring relief to victims of the conflict taking place in China since 1937. They also signified a shift in Indian pan-Asianism. For many Indian leaders and thinkers, the outbreak of the war discredited Japan's appeal as both a pioneer of Asian solidarity and a role model for many nationalist-minded people in India. At the same time, the same conflict strengthened Indian relations with China, especially in the arena of transnational humanitarian solidarity.

Nationalist protest, the emergent ‘parallel government’ of the INC, and multiple forms of expanding internationalisms provided a changed framework for British India in the 1930s, unravelling the tension created due to its colonial status, on the one hand, and its ‘independent’ posturing on international platforms and in organizations, on the other. While the British Indian government officially formulated India's foreign policy, often in consultation with London, Indian nationalists rejected Delhi's stance on international matters many times. Although being listed on international bodies as a country with a ‘free voice’, most importantly in the League of Nations, members of the Indian national movement did not feel represented there and dissociated themselves from any involvement in an imperial internationalism, which proved antithetic to their own international ambitions. Instead, the INC built connections and cooperated with international networks and pressure groups, for instance in the field of humanitarian assistance and left-wing solidarity during the Second Sino-Japanese War. By creating and implementing its own humanitarian programme, the Congress not only attempted to orchestrate a politics of moral superiority for itself, but also, by using this humanitarian initiative as a political instrument to chart out an independent vision of foreign policy, the Indian medical mission to China became a tool for India's emancipation.

Footnotes

*

I am indebted to the editors of this Forum issue, and to Daniel Laqua, Alexandra Pfeiff as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and criticism.

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45 See footnote 35.

46 n. a., ‘Appeal for world-wide boycott’, p. 103.

47 Ibid. NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File 30/Press statement China, issued by Jawaharlal Nehru, 18 December 1937.

48 Brown, J. M., ‘Jawaharlal Nehru and the British empire: The making of an “outsider” in Indian politics’, South Asia, vol. 29, 1, 2006, pp. 73–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Owen, The British left, pp. 235–241 and 247–251; Louro, M., ‘Rethinking Nehru's internationalism: The League against imperialism and anti-imperial networks’, Third Frame, vol. 2, 3, 2009, pp. 79–86 Google Scholar. Nehru's correspondence and networks were, however, not confined to Europe but also included non-European politicians and activists (see his Selected Works; Louro, ‘Rethinking Nehru's internationalism’, pp. 86–93; and Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, Vol. 1, pp. 216–217).

49 Louro, ‘India and the League against imperialism’; Petersson, Willi Münzenberg. Nehru was introduced to Romain Rolland by Gandhi in 1926. His relationship with the French writer and activist deepened over the next years due to their shared views on anti-fascism and anti-imperialism. See Nehru, J., ‘To Romain Rolland’, in SWJN, Vol. 2, Gopal, S. (ed.), Orient Longman, New Delhi, 1972, pp. 230–231 Google Scholar; Francis, R. A., ‘Romain Rolland and Gandhi: A study in communication’, Journal of European Studies, vol. 5, 1975, pp. 291–307, here pp. 298 and 306CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Nehru, J., ‘Interview to the press—29 June 1938’, in SWJN, Vol. 9, p. 30 Google Scholar; J. Nehru, ‘Greetings to Spain and China—17 July 1938’, in ibid., p. 77; J. Nehru, ‘Spain, China and India—31 July 1938’, in ibid., pp. 91–92. Nehru's ideas of collective security in the shape of a united peace front constituted, however, only one school of thought among others circulating in the Congress: see Owen, The British left, pp. 249–251.

51 For Krishna Menon and the India League, see Chakravarty, S., V. K. Krishna Menon and the India League 1925–47, 2 vols, Har-Anand, New Delhi, 1997; Owen, The British left, pp. 241–247Google Scholar. For his relationship with British intellectuals, see Moscovitch, B., ‘Harold Laski's Indian students and the power of education, 1920–1950’, Contemporary South Asia, vol. 20, 1, 2012, pp. 40–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Clegg, Aid China; Buchanan, ‘“Shanghai-Madrid axis”’; Buchanan, East wind. The CCC was founded in London in August/September 1937 and brought together different groups interested in displaying solidarity with China and working for its relief, such as the League against Imperialism, the Friends of Chinese People, the Union of Democratic Control, and the Left Book Club. The International Peace Campaign was part of the peace movement and worked for the revival of the League of Nations and collective security. As the British branch of a French-based movement, the International Peace Campaign championed communist ideas.

53 Clegg, Aid China, pp. 21, 26, 77 and 127; BL, APAC, IOR/L/PJ/12/323, ‘Extract from New Scotland Yard report, No. 100, 6 October 1937’, ‘Extract from New Scotland Yard report, No. 136, 8 March 1939’, ‘Extract from New Scotland Yard report, No. 145, 12 July 1939’; BL, APAC, IOR/L/PJ/12/451, ‘Extract from New Scotland Yard report, No. 115, 4 May 1938’; BL, APAC, IOR/L/PJ/12/293, ‘Report about Nehru's address to the Left Book Club, 6 July 1938’.

54 WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38: ‘Special Cable: Medical unit for China. Send off to Dr. Atal, 14 July 1938’.

55 NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File 39/Foreign Department, Newsletter No. 26, 30 September 1937; n. a., ‘“China day” in Bombay’, Times of India, 8 July 1938, p. 12; K. N. C., ‘An appeal from China’, Modern Review, vol. 63, 1, 1938, p. 113.

56 n. a., ‘How to help China’, Modern Review, vol. 63, 1, 1938, p. 103; Nehru, ‘The need for help to China’, p. 735; K. N. C., ‘An appeal from China’, p. 113; ‘Letter by A. Smedley to J. Nehru’, in A bunch of old letters: Written mostly to Jawaharlal Nehru and some written by him, J. Nehru (ed.), Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1958, p. 250.

57 ‘Letter by C. Teh to J. Nehru—26 November 1937’, in Nehru (ed.), A bunch of old letters, pp. 250–252.

58 Ibid., p. 252.

59 NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File 30/Press statement China, issued by J. Nehru, 18 December 1937; J. Nehru, ‘Letter to R. Tagore—9 January 1938’, in SWJN, Vol. 8, p. 734; Nehru, ‘The need for help to China’, p. 735. For British initiatives to deliver medical humanitarian help to China, see Buchanan, East wind, pp. 74–79.

60 For the applications, see NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File F38/1937, Chinese Relief Fund; WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38. The applicants often referred to newspaper reports about the alleged despatch of the Congress mission.

61 NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File F38/1937, Chinese Relief Fund, Letter by A.I.C.C. to R. S. Ghosh, 3 February 1938.

62 NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File 8/1938, misc. correspondence Lohia, Letter by the C. T. Feng to R. M. Lohia, 15 March 1938; NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File G5/Correspondence Nehru, Letter by R. M. Lohia, 21 March 1938.

63 NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File P-1/1938, A.I.C.C. circulars to P.C.C., Press statement by S.C. Bose, 27 May 1938, and Press statement by S. C. Bose, 27 June 1938.

64 NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File P-1/1938, A.I.C.C. circulars to P.C.C., Circular No. 5 by General Secretary, n. d.; Circular No. 6 by General Secretary, 6 June 1938; and Circular No. 7 by General Secretary, 28 June 1938.

65 n. a., ‘India's sympathy for China’, Times of India, 14 June 1938, p. 13; n. a., ‘China day’, Times of India, 8 July 1938, p. 12; n. a., ‘Calcutta meeting: Processionists collect money’, Times of India, 8 July 1938, p. 12.

66 n. a., ‘Congress Chinese Ambulance unit’, Times of India, 30 July 1938, p. 20; n. a., ‘Medical mission to China’, Times of India, 1 September 1938, p. 12. Additionally, medicine and medical equipment were donated for the mission to take to China: see n. a., ‘Medical unit sails for China’, Bombay Sentinel, 2 September 1938, p. 9; K. A. Abbas, . . . And one did not come back! The story of the Congress medical mission to China, 4th ed., Sound Magazine, Bombay, 1944, pp. 17–18.

67 Lists of donors can be found in: NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File F38/1937, Chinese Relief Fund, here especially ‘List of donors for China Relief Fund’ and ‘List of Donors for China Relief Fund—Second Installment’; WBSA, Intelligence Files, File 21/1938, File 221/38: ‘Extract from A.B.P., dated 1.8.38’; J. Nehru, ‘To R. Tagore—9 January 1938’, in SWJN, Vol. 8, p. 734.

68 NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File F38/1937, Chinese Relief Fund, Letter by R. M. N. S. Pillay to S. C. Bose, 24 June 1938; K. A. N. Aiyer, ‘Ambulance for China’, Modern Review, vol. 64, 1, 1938, pp. 116 and 118.

69 J. Nehru, ‘Letter to S. C. Bose—14 July 1938’, in SWJN, Vol. 9, p. 58; n. a., ‘Jawahar on India's sympathy for China’, Bombay Chronicle, 16 July 1938, p. 7; n. a., Times of India, 1 September 1938, p. 12.

70 n. a., ‘The working committee proceedings, 15–19 May 1938’, in The Indian annual register, Vol. I 1938, H. N. Mitra (ed.), Gian Publishing House, New Delhi, 1990, pp. 323–324. The members of the organizing committee were: Dr Jivaraj Mehta, Dr Sunil Chandra Bose, Dr R. M. Lohia, G. P. Hutheesing, and Subhas Chandra Bose.

71 NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File P-1/1938, A.I.C.C. circulars to P.C.C.: Press statement by S. C. Bose, 27 May 1938. The INC promised to take care of expenses for equipment, room, and board in China and also to give a small allowance to the doctors. It seems that, originally, there had been hopes that it would be possible to send a bigger unit that would have included stretcher-bearers, compounders, dressers, etc. Due to a lack of finances, however, the committee decided to concentrate, for the moment, on the despatch of surgeons (NMML, A.I.C.C. Papers, File F38/1937, Chinese Relief Fund, Letter by R. M. Lohia to S. C. Bose, 1 April 1938; WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38: ‘Extract from interception—Letters by R. M. Lohia, 9 June 1938’). All applications received by the Congress were forwarded to the organizing committee (WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38: ‘Extract from interception—Letter by R. M. Lohia, 21 May 1938’).

72 n. a., Times of India, 30 July 1938.

73 WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38: ‘Extract from interception—Letter by R. M. Lohia, 27 May 1938’ and ‘Special Cable—Medical Unit for China. Sent off to Dr. Atal, 14 July 1938’. For Atal's experiences in Spain see: ‘From our correspondent, “Epic stand: Dr. Atal's impressions of the Spanish struggle”’, Bombay Chronicle, 15 August 1937, p. 10; ‘From our own correspondent, “Fascist attempt on Indian doctor's life”’, Bombay Chronicle, 24 February 1938, p. 8. For the Spanish Medical Aid Committee see: Alpert, M., ‘Humanitarianism and politics in the British response to the Spanish Civil War, 1936–9’, European History Quarterly, vol. 14, 1984, pp. 423–440CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pretus, G., Humanitarian relief in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, 2013, pp. 230–231 Google Scholar.

74 ‘From our own correspondent’, Bombay Chronicle, 24 February 1938, p. 8; n. a., ‘Medical unit sails for China’, Bombay Chronicle, 2 September 1938, p. 9. For further information on the ‘global Popular Front’ and other individuals who were closely involved in helping the Spanish and Chinese cause, see Buchanan, ‘Shanghai-Madrid Axis’. Dr Atal was a cousin of Nehru's wife Kamala and accompanied her to Europe in the mid-1930s for medical treatment: Brown, J. M., Nehru: A political life, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2003, p. 111 Google Scholar.

75 WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38; BL, APAC, IOR/L/PJ/12/451; BL, APAC, IOR/L/PJ/12/293; BL, APAC, IOR/L/PJ/12/323.

76 WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38.

77 WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38: ‘Copy of letter No. 798-B/1077, 14 February 1939’ and ‘Copy of an I. B. Memo No. 20692, 8 July 1938’; Basu, B. K., Call of Yanan: Story of the Indian medical mission to China, 1938–43, All India Kotnis Memorial Committee, New Delhi, 1986, n. pGoogle Scholar.

78 The Government of India learned of Basu's ‘communist leanings’ only after his return from China in 1943: BL, APAC, IOR/L/PJ/7/6312, ‘Telegram XX No. 5899 from New Delhi to Ambassador Chungking, 21 July 1943’.

79 Low, D. A., Britain and Indian nationalism: The imprint of ambiguity 1929–1942, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1997, Chapters 6 and 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a comprehensive analysis of the INC emerging as a parallel government in the 1930s, see Kuracina, W. F., The state and governance in India: The Congress ideal, Routledge, London 2010, pp. 23–30 Google Scholar.

80 n. a., Bombay Sentinel, 2 September 1938, p. 9; n. a., ‘We fight for liberation of humanity’, Bombay Sentinel, 1 September 1938, p. 5.

81 Abbas, . . . And one did not come back!, pp. 87 and 108; WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38: ‘Intercepted letter by D. Mukherjee to D. Bannerji, 15 August 1939’, ‘Copy of newspaper article, Hindusthan Standard, 24 June 1940’, ‘Extract from Hindusthan Standard, 5 July 1943’.

82 Additional donations became necessary due to the individual decisions of the doctors to continue their work in China but also because of further Chinese appeals for help after the outbreak of the Second World War which made any procurement of medical supplies from Europe difficult. However, it seems that only limited financial funds were available or could be collected. After his return to India, and with the help of the INC, D. Mukherjee collected further medical supplies in late 1939. However, he was not able to bring them to China himself, as his passport was taken from him in Rangoon and he had to return to India. He delivered the medical supplies to the Chinese consul in Rangoon. J. Nehru, ‘Medical mission to China—8 April 1939’, in Nehru (ed.), SWJN, Vol. 9, p. 250; ‘Letter by Madame Sun Yat-sen to Jawaharlal Nehru, 15 September 1939’, in Nehru (ed.), A bunch of old letters, p. 380; WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38: ‘Copy of newspaper article, Hindusthan Standard, 4 November 1939’, ‘Copy of a letter by J. Nehru to D. Mukherjee, 5 December 1939’, ‘Copy of a letter by J. Nehru to D. Mukherjee, 11 December 1939’, ‘Intercepted letter by J. Nehru to Madame Sun Yat-sen, 2 February 1940’.

83 Abbas, . . . And one did not come back!, p. 25.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid., pp. 32–33, 47–54, 62, 65–67, 93 and 105–106.

86 Ibid., pp. 57 and 69.

87 Ibid., p. 88.

88 Clegg, Aid China, p. 56; Smedley, A., Battle hymn of China, Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, 1944, p. 162 Google Scholar; n. a., ‘Spain will never submit to fascism’, Bombay Sentinel, 2 August 1938, p. 4. This arrangement had been made between the Chinese government and the INC before the departure of the mission. Initially, the doctors were supposed to serve in Changsha. The plan was, however, changed after their arrival in China when Yan'an became their destination: WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38: ‘Extract from interception—Letter by C. T. Feng to R. M. Lohia, 26 June 1938’.

89 Abbas, . . . And one did not come back!, pp. 97, 108–110, 112, 116, 118, 121 and 124.

90 Ibid., pp. 85 and 98; China Defence League, In guerrilla China: A report of China Defence League, China Aid Council, New York, 1943, pp. 6, 9–11, 16–26; Clegg, Aid China.

91 V. Lal, ‘Framing a discourse: China and India in the modern world’, Economic and Political Weekly, 10 January 2009, p. 41.

92 Abbas, . . . And one did not come back!, pp. 10 and 128; China Defence League, In guerrilla China; p. 8.

93 P. D. Wadia, ‘Dr. Dwarakanath Kotnis’, Times of India, 9 December 1956, p. 5; Lal, ‘Framing a discourse’, p. 41; S. Biswas, ‘Why is India's Dr Kotnis revered in China’, in BBC News India, 21 May 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-22599356, [accessed 24 October 2017].

94 Nehru, ‘The need for help to China’, p. 734.

95 Ibid., pp. 734–735.

96 J. Nehru, ‘Greetings to Spain and China—17 July 1938’, in SWJN, Vol. 9, p. 77; J. Nehru, ‘Why India supports China—21 August 1938’, in SWJN, Vol. 9, pp. 209–210; Friedman, ‘Indian nationalism’, pp. 23–26.

97 J. Nehru, ‘India and the world perspective—31 May 1938’, in SWJN, Vol. 8, p. 641; J. Nehru, ‘China and India—7 July 1938’, in SWJN, Vol. 9, p. 56.

98 J. Nehru, ‘Letter to J. B. Kripalani—24 August 1938’, in SWJN, Vol. 9, p. 116.

99 J. Nehru, ‘Note to the Working Committee—1 August 1938’, in SWJN, Vol. 9, p. 104. Nehru received messages of solidarity for the Indian medical mission to China from Romain Rolland and the World Student Association (BL, APAC, IOR/L/PJ/12/293, ‘Report on Jawaharlal Nehru, 25 October 1938’).

100 Nehru, ‘Note to the Working Committee’, p. 104.

101 Nehru, ‘Letter to J. B. Kripalani’, p. 116.

102 J. Nehru, ‘Help to China and Spain—3 January 1939’, in SWJN, Vol. 9, p. 225.

103 Owen, The British left and India, pp. 248–251.

104 n. a., ‘Medical mission to China: Mr. Bose on moral value’, Times of India, 15 August 1938, p. 9.

105 WBSA, Intelligence Files, 21/1938, File 221/38: ‘Press statement: Mission of service and love, undated’.

106 For the extended correspondence see, among others: SWJN, Vols 10, 12 and 13, S. Gopal (ed.), Orient Longman, New Delhi, 1977–1980; NMML, JNP, Individual Coll., Vol. 12, Chiang Kai-Shek and Vol. 13, Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

107 See footnote 28.

108 NMML, JNP, Individual Coll., Vol. 45, Letter by Mao Tse-tung, 24 May 1939. For further examples of Chinese appreciation see: NMML, JNP, Individual Coll., Vol. 95, Letter by Soong Ching Ling, 16 December 1939; n. a., ‘Indian Medical Unit to China: Tribute to its work’, Times of India, 14 July 1939, p. 13.

109 B. R. Deepak, ‘India-China relations 1905–1947: An era of anti-imperialist struggle’, PhD thesis, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, 1996, Chapter 6.

110 Quanyu, S., ‘Sino-Indian friendship in the Nehru era: A Chinese perspective’, China Report, vol. 41, 3, 2005, p. 246 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abraham, I.: ‘From Bandung to NAM: Non-alignment and Indian foreign policy, 1947–65’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, vol. 46, 2, 2008, pp. 195–211 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interestingly, most works on early Indian-Chinese political relations after the Second World War hardly engage with their pre-history in the 1930s and during the Second World War and therefore do not elaborate on the importance of Indian political humanitarianism.

111 Quanyu, ‘Sino-Indian friendship’, pp. 237–252; Abraham, ‘From Bandung to NAM’, pp. 195–211; S. Khan, W., ‘Cold War co-operation: New Chinese evidence on Jawaharlal Nehru's 1954 visit to Beijing’, Cold War History, vol. 11, 2, 2011, pp. 197–222 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 Khan, ‘Cold War co-operation’, pp. 197–222; Mazower, No enchanted palace, Chapter 4; Stolte, C., ‘“The Asiatic hour”: New perspectives on the Asian Relations Conference, New Delhi, 1947’, The non-aligned movement and the Cold war: Delhi—Bandung—Belgrade, Mišković, N., Fischer-Tiné, H. and Boškovska, N. (eds), Routledge, London/New York, 2014, pp. 57–61 Google Scholar.

113 For early post-colonial development aid, see: Chaturvedi, S., ‘India's development partnership: Key policy shifts and institution evolution’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 25, 4, 2012, pp. 558–559 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

114 Nehru, J., ‘Note on Foreign Policy, 2 December 1948’, in SWJN, Vol. 8, 2. Ser., Gopal, S. (ed.), J. Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi, 1989, pp. 325–328 Google Scholar.

115 Ghoshal, B., ‘India and the struggle for Indonesian independence’, Akdemika, vol. 54, 1, 1999, pp. 105–130 Google Scholar.

116 Wahn, K. C., ‘The role of India in the Korean War’, International Area Review, vol. 13, 2, 2010, pp. 26–27 Google Scholar.

117 Lüthi, L., ‘Sino-Indian relations, 1954–1962’, Eurasia Border Review, vol. 3, Summer, 2012, pp. 95–119 Google Scholar.

118 n. a. ‘China commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the Indian medical mission to China’, China Report, vol. 25, 1, 1989, pp. 87–93; Y. Sun, ‘Speech on the Book release: My life with Kotnis’, in Website of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the Republic of India, no date, http://in.china-embassy.org/eng/ssygd/zyyhn/zyhde/t269628.htm, [accessed 29 July 2016]; P. Mukherjee ‘India-China relations: 8 steps to a partnership of the people’, in: Press Information Bureau, Government of India, President's Secretariat, 26 May 2016, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=145679 [accessed 24 October 2017].

119 Lal, ‘Framing a discourse’, p. 41.

120 See the subtitle of Clegg's monograph ‘A memoir of a forgotten campaign’: Clegg, Aid China; Pretus, Humanitarian relief, pp. xiii–xiv.

121 See, among others, Abbas, . . . And one did not come back!; Kotnis, M. S., The bridge for ever: A biography of Dr. Kotnis, Somaiya Publications, Bombay, 1982 Google Scholar; Liang, G., Dr. Kotnis: A short biography, Sen Gupta, S. (ed.), New Book Centre, Calcutta, 1983 Google Scholar; Basu, Call of Yanan; Quinglan, G., Baojun, X. and Deepak, B. R., My life with Kotnis, Embassy of the People's Republic of China in association with Manak, New Delhi, 2006 Google Scholar; Dauharia, H. (ed.), The immortal stories of Dr. D. S. Kotnis and Dr. Norman Bethune, Unistar Books, Chandigargh, 2012 Google Scholar.

122 Majumdar, N., ‘Immortal tale or nightmare? Dr. Kotnis between art and exploitation’, South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 6, 2, 2008, p. 146 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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