The Hindu Conspiracy- A Reassessment

The "Hindu Conspiracy": A Reassessment Joan M. Jensen The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 48, No. 1. (Feb., 1979), pp. 65-83. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8684%28197902%2948%3A1%3C65%3AT%22CAR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D The Pacific Historical Review is currently published by University of California Press.

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The "Hindu Conspiracy": A Reassessment Joan M. Jensen The author is a member of the history department in New Mexico State University.

D u n m c WORLDWAR I, United States officials at the diplomatic level took little interest in India. American policy toward India was slow to develop and did so primarily in response to British concern over the activities of Indian nationalists in the United States. Central to that policy was the prosecution of East Indian nationalists for conspiracy to violate the neutrality laws of the United States. In April 1918,a San Francisco federal jury found twenty-nine defendants guilty of conspiring to violate the neutrality law prohibiting military expeditions against countries with which the United States was at peace. These men were convicted for activities that formed the basis of what British and United States officials called the "Hindu conspiracy." This paper demonstrates that United States officials halted the activities of the most militant nationalists by using the conspiracy statute to expand the definition of those activities which could be prosecuted under the neutrality laws. At the trial, the United States attorney presented the first historical interpretation of the "Hindu conspiracy." According to this interpretation, the activities of the militant East Indian nationalists were a reprehensible but relatively ineffectual response to British rule. East Indians had participated in an insidious conspiracy which "permeated and encircled the whole globe" and was directed by the Germans against the United States as well as the British Empire. Documentation in the massive court record, together with numerous newspaper 65 Pac$c Historical Review

@ 1979, by the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association

articles about the trial, East Indian publications, and a number of popular spy accounts, formed the basis for the historiography of the "Hindu conspiracy" for almost half a century.l As new archival sources in India became available in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a second interpretation of the "Hindu still conspiracy" began to undermine the older ~ e r s i o nWhile .~ accepting the activities of East Indians as a conspiracy, scholars began to question whether those activities were reprehensible, ineffectual, or inherently anti-American. These scholars looked at the activities in the United States in a positive light and considered them preliminary steps in India's struggle for freedom. Arun Coomer Bose, for example, saw the early East Indian actions as a prelude to national self-determinati~n.~ This new evaluation of the significance of American-based efforts to achieve Indian independence led eventually to a third interpretation. The next step focused on government activities and on those of the East Indians and asked how British and American officials responded to the Indian movement. In a 1971 article based on British documents, Don Dignan attempted to answer this question from the British side. Using diplomatic correspondence between British Ambassador Sir Cecil Spring-Rice and the British Foreign Office, Dignan demonstrated the great concern of British officials about the Indian revolutionary movement in the United States. More 'Giles T. Brown, "The Hindu Conspiracy, 1914- 1917," Pacijc HktoricalReview, XVII (1948), 299-310; Giles T. Brown, "The Hindu Conspiracy" (M.A. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1941); Mark Naidis, "Propaganda of the Gadar Party," Pacijc Historical R&, XX (1951), 251-260. Popular spy accounts were Earl E. Sperry, Gennun Plots and I n h i p s in the United States during the Period of Our Neutrality (Washington, D.C.: Committee on Public Information, Red, White, and Blue Series, No. 10,July 1918); J. P. Jones and P. M. H. Hollister, The G m n Semet Snvice in America (Toronto, 1918); and T. J. Tunney (as told to P. M. H. Hollister), Throttled (Boston, 1919). 'John W. Spellman, "The International Extensions of Political Conspiracy as Illustrated by the Ghadr Party," Journal oflndian History, XXXVII (1959), 23-45; R. C. Majumdar, Histoy of the Freedom Movement in Indie (3 vols., Calcutta, 1963); and Kalyan Kumar Banerjee, "The Indo-German Conspiracy: Beginning of the E n d and "The Gadar Movement and the Hand of Germany," Modern Review, CXVIII (1965), 112119, 381-386; and other articles in ibid., CXVI (1964), 27-30, 335-361, CXVII (1965), 97-101, CXIX (1966), 26-30, CXXI (1967), 99-107. 'Arun Coomer Bose, "Indian Nationalist Agitators in the U.S.A. and Canada till the Arrival of Har Dayal in 1911," Joumal of Indian Histmy, XLIII (1965), 227-239; and Bose, Indian RevolutionariesAbroad, 1905-1922 (Patna, 1971 ) ; and L. P. Mathur, Indian Revolutionary Movement in the United States of America (Delhi, 1970).

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recently, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones has used American State Department records to argue that the purpose of the San Francisco trial was to discredit the revolutionaries and was "the occasion of an attempt to justify retrospectively the administration's harassment of a nationalist group at a time when the United States was going to war to further the cause of self-determinati~n."~ T h e following account analyzes still further the reaction of British and American officials to East Indian political activities. Canadian and American Justice Department documents show how British officials translated their concern into pressure on the American government to arrest political activists. Justice Department officials responded by using the conceptual framework of conspiracy as an ideological and legal weapon against the East Indians. The term "Hindu conspiracy" became part of the government attempt to discredit Indian revolutionaries. Hindu was a common term of opprobrium in early twentiethcentury America and used to identify all East Indians regardless of their religion. Conspiracy, likewise, was a negative term which confused ideological and legal issues. By designating East Indian revolutionary activities as a conspiracy and then by applying the conspiracy statute to them, government officials were able to arrest legally the men and justify the interruption of their political activities as an enforcement of the neutrality laws. T h e conspiracy statute, then Section 37 of the penal code, prohibited conspiracy to violate a federal law. Only two neutrality laws applied to the activities of persons within the United States. One law, Section 10, prohibited the enlistment of men to fight in a foreign army at war against a nation with which the United States was at peace. The second, Section 13, prohibited the organization of a military expedition against such a nation. For simplicity, this paper refers to these statutes as the recruiting law and the military expedition law. T h e Justice Department used only the military expedition 'Don K. Dignan, "The Hindu Conspiracy in Anglo-American Relations During World War I," Pacy'ic Historical Reviev, XL (1971), 57-77; Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, A e a n Espionage (New York, 1977), 112.

law against the East Indian activists. This tactic may at first appear strange since one of the important points made in the trial was that German money was given to the Indian Ghadar Party to help Indians return to India. Evidence showing that large numbers of men did return was offered as documentation of conspiracy. There were apparently two reasons why the recruiting law could not be used effectively by the Justice Department. First, Indian leaders did not actually recruit and organize in a strict military sense. They simply urged the men to return to India and loaned money to those who needed it. Second, the Justice Department probably did not use this statute because the British had earlier insisted on a very narrow definition of recruiting. The choice, therefore, was Section 13, the law against military expeditions. By 1917 the United States had a long history of prosecutions under the 1794 military expedition law. During the nineteenth century the government had prosecuted Irish Fenian revolutionaries and Cuban insurrectos, and after 1910, Mexican insurrectos as well. Such trials were generally not popular in the United States and the government had great difficulty in obtaining convictions, particularly against the Cuban insurrectos who had gained much public support for Cuban independence. During the Mexican revolution, the Attorney General originally interpreted this neutrality law strictly, and United States attorneys along the Mexican border occasionally clashed with military officers, who wanted to use the military expedition law to put down the revolution. Before 1912 groups freely met to discuss and plan their activities. Only when revolutionaries engaged in overt action did the government attempt to prosecute. The courts did not define a small group of men as a "military force." The Justice Department did not even argue that the conspiracy statute could be applied in neutrality cases until 1912, when it filed indictments against two groups of Mexican revolutionists for conspiring to violate the military expedition law. Apparently neither case was brought to trial. In mid-1915, the Justice Department also charged two prominent revolutionaries, Generals Victoriano Huerta and Pascual Orozco, with conspiracy to violate this neutrality stat-

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Ute. Orozco escaped and Huerta died before the trial could begin.5 Thus, at the time East Indians engaged in most of the activities later labeled the "Hindu conspiracy," the courts had not accepted conspiracy as merely a connecting link between the activities of individual revolutionaries, but still defined overt action very narrowly in military expedition cases. The Germans did attempt to ship arms to India and five East Indians planned to sail with the arms. In addition, East Indians participated in several attempts to further the cause of the Indian revolution. None of these activities, however, constituted a clear-cut violation of neutrality unless the conspiracy statute was applied. It required only that two people "conspire" to commit some illegal act and then that one person make an overt act toward executing that plan. The actions of individuals which separately did not violate neutrality statutes could jointly lead to prosecutions of Indian nationalists. While the conspiracy statute was of great assistance in obtaining convictions, it confused the issues involved. As one legal researcher said of the conspiracy statute after reviewing the government's widespread use of it in the 1960's: "It distracts the courts from the policy questions or balancing of interest that ought to govern the decision of specific legal issues and leads them instead to decide those issues by reference to the conceptual framework of conspiracy. . . it gives the courts a means of deciding difficult questions without thinking about them."6 Conspiracy was not a new legal concept in 1917. It had a "Charles G. Fenwick, The Neutrality Laws ofthe United States (Washington, D.C., 1913), 57; New York Times, Aug. 31, 1895,5:4; Sept. 24, 1895,5: 1; Nov. 19, 1895,5: 1;June 12, 1895, 4:7; June 23, 1896, 5:l; July 31, 1896, 1:5; United St& v. Wibwg, 73 Fed. 159 (1896); Ray Emerson Curtis, "The Law of Hostile Military Expeditions as Applied by the United States," American Journul of International Law, VIII (1914), 249; Lowell L. Blaisdell, The Desert Revolution: Baja California, 191 I (Madison, 1962), 170- 171, 189191; and Blaisdell, "Harry Chandler and the Mexican Border Intrigue, 1914- 1917," Pacific Histmica1 Review, XXXV (1966), 385-393. For correspondence on neutrality law enforcement along the Mexican border, see Records of the Adjutant General Office, National Archives, Record Group 94 (hereafter cited as NA, RG), file 1716354; United States v. Molina et al., Case No. 1564, and United States v. Emilw Vasqwz Comet et al., Case No. 2080, Federal Records Center, Fort Worth, Texas; and Michael Meyer, Huerta: A Political Portrait (Lincoln, 1972), 22 1-222, 225. "Phillip E. Johnson, "The Unnecessary Crime of Conspiracy, California Law Review, LXI (1973), 1139-1 140.

history in England from the thirteenth century. American workers had fought a long and ultimately successful battle during the nineteenth century against the application of conspiracy to their organized attempts to raise wages and improve working conditions. In 1921, the Supreme Court ruled that the conspiracy statute could not be applied to labor unions. By then the federal government had given the statute new life by applying it to internal security cases involving political activists. Later convictions for conspiracy to violate the Selective Service and Espionage Acts of 1917, the Smith Act of 1940, and the Selective Service Act of 1967 are better known than the East Indian neutrality convictions, but all were part of the tradition which expanded the conspiracy statute to hinder the activities of political groups. In the East Indian trial, the Justice Department achieved its first important successful application of the conspiracy statute to the military expedition law. Success in the trial depended upon the creation of the "Hindu c~nspiracy."~ There were three stages to the creation of the "Hindu conspiracy." During the first stage, from 1908 to 1914, the British began surveillance of East Indian nationalists in Canada and the United States. During the second stage, from 1914 to mid- 1916, the British exerted diplomatic pressure in an effort to suppress the movement for independence in India and continued covert surveillance activities in the United States. During the third stage, from mid-1916 to 1918, United States officials began to investigate East Indian activities and, with British assistance, eventually prosecuted the nationalists. Concern by the British government about the revolutionary activities of the East Indians in North America existed long before the outbreak of World War I in Europe. When immigration from India to Canada began to increase in 1907, the British were worried about the effect that Canadian anti-Asian sentiment, violence, and discrimination might have in India. 'Francis B. Sayre, "Criminal Conspiracy,"Harvard Law R&, X X X V (1922). 383427; Goldman et al. v. United States, 245 U.S. 474 (1918); Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919); Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951); United States v. Spock, 416 F . 2d 165 (1st Cir. 1969); and United States v. Dellinger, 474 F. 2d 340 (7th Cir. 1972). The Emma Goldman case was decided on Jan. 14, 1918, before the San Francisco case but after newspaper publicity had linked her and Alexander Berkman to the "Hindu conspiracy."

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One of the blessings British rule had supposedly bestowed on Indians was to make them subjects of the British monarch, with the same right to protection as extended to other commonwealth nations. Such promises broke down when Canada, like other commonwealth nations, passed laws drastically limiting Asian immigration. Early in 1908, Canada enacted a law effectively excluding East Indians. East Indians immediately organized to oppose the law, linking Canadian discrimination to British domination in India. By March 1908, the Governor General was planning strategy to "spike the guns of the Indian agitators" in Canada.' During the controversy over Canadian exclusion, the first issue of the Free Hindustan was published in Canada. It proclaimed "~esistanceto Tyranny is Obedience to God" and exhorted leaders in India to attempt to arouse the feelings of the masses to stop the exclusion of laborers from Canada. The editor was Taraknath Das, a twenty-three-year-old Bengali nationalist student who was employed as a translator by the United States immigration authorities in Vancouver. The Canadian government subsequently protested to Washington about the attacks by Das on "British prestige," and he was dismissed from his job in April 1908.' The Canadian government also hired a Calcutta policeman on leave of absence in British Columbia to conduct investigations of immigrants. This policeman, William C. Hopkinson, warned the government that East Indians were raising money to print bomb manuals and send them to India. On Hopkinson's advice, Canadian officials refused to transmit the Free Hindustan through the mail and seized one consignment of the paper. Das subsequently opened a school in Millside, British Columbia, to lecture on unrest in India and the unfair treatment of East Indians in Vancouver, and he sent translations of the Free Hindwitan to India. Hopkinson gave the information to the Vancouver press. T h e unfavorable publicity forced Das to close his school. BForthe Canadian stage, see Governor General Albert Grey to Lord Elgin, March 25, 1908, Albert Grey Papers, Vol. 14, Public Archives of Canada (hereafter cited as PAC). OE. J. E. Swayne, "Confidential Memorandum on Matters Affecting the East Indian Community in British Columbia," Governor General Correspondence (hereafter cited as GGC), Vol. 200, PAC.

By December 1908, Canadian military intelligence officer Rowland Brittain was investigating the "alleged Hindu conspiracy" in British Columbia.lo In January 1909, the Canadian government employed Hopkinson full time to conduct political investigations of Indian nationalists in Canada and the United States. He reported regularly to the Canadian government and to Governor General Albert Grey, hired East Indians to work undercover in the East Indian communities in the United States and Canada, and he made at least two visits to Seattle and Berkeley to conduct extensive investigations into the political activities of East Indian students. He also worked with immigration officials and exclusionist politicians in support of legislation in the United States excluding East Indians. Hopkinson was later subsidized by the British and Canadian governments and became so notorious for his tactics within the immigrant community that an Indian shot him during an immigration trial in 1914." The death of Hopkinson ended the first phase of the "Hindu conspiracy" in North America. T h e second stage in the creation of the "Hindu conspiracy" began after the British entered World War I. During this period, from 1914 to mid-1 916, the British not only continued to conduct covert activities in the United States but also engaged in anti-Indian propaganda and exerted diplomatic pressure in an effort to suppress the movement for independence in India by East Indians. T h e cause of the heightened concern of the British government in 1914 was the large number of East Indians, who, after war broke out between Britain and Germany, returned to India from North America to work for revolution. Of an estimated 10,000 East Indians in North American in 1914, as many as "Rowland Brittain to Assistant Director of Intelligence, Dec. 5, 1908, GGC Vol. 200, PAC. "Reports from W. C. Hopkinson are scattered through Vols. 200-205 in GGC, PAC. See especially W. W. Cory to John Hanbury Williams, Jan. 19, 1909, Hopkinson to Cory, March 7, 1910, Vol. 200; Hopkinson to Cory, Sept. 26 and Oct. 13 and 23, 191 1, Vol. 201; Hopkinson to Cory, May 3, 1914, and May 12 and Sept. 2, 1918, and Hopkinson to J. A. Wallinger, April 30, 1914, Vol. 205; Hopkinson to Zurbrick, June 29, 1914, Zurbrick to Commissioner of Immigration, July 1, 1914, A. Caminetti to Acting Commissioner of Immigration, May 8, 1914, file 52903, NA, RG 85.

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2,000 may have left for India during the first three months of war. There were no laws against the Indians leaving the United States, whatever their intent, as long as they did not organize a military expedition and as long as they had not been recruited for a foreign army. The main internal defenses of the British Empire in India against these men were a widespread network of surveillance and informers and the Ingress of Indian Ordinance, passed by the Indian government at the beginning of the war, which allowed subversives to be summarily arrested and held without trial. Even after large numbers of men had been arrested, however, revolutionaries continued to smuggle in the San Francisco Ghadar newspaper, which openly advocated the overthrow of the British government in India." During 1915 British Ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice asked that a shipment of arms the Germans had purchased in New York for shipment to Mexico on the Annie Larsen be investigated. British undercover agents knew the Germans planned to transfer the arms to the Maverick in Mexico and to ship them to Batvia for distribution to Indian revolutionaries. There was no discussion by Spring-Rice or Justice Department officials of conspiracy regarding this arms shipment. The only question was about a violation of neutrality laws. There was no evidence at the time of shipment that neutrality laws had been violated nor was there ever any evidence to this effect.13 At this time, there was also no attempt by the British to link the arms shipment to the activities of Indian revolutionaries in the United States. Early in 1915, the British government began to forward informal complaints about the Ghadar to the American State Department, but Spring-Rice refused to lodge an official complaint about the Indian nationalists for another year. At first, he told the Foreign Office that he feared "Governor General to Lewis Harcourt, August 12, 1914, Vol. 205; and Hopkinson to Cory, Sept. 24, 1914, Vol. 206, GGC, PAC. 13Spring-Riceto Robert Lansing, Dec. 21, 1916; T. W. Gregory to Robert Lansing, Feb. 26, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60. See also Spring-Rice to Bryan May 12, 1915; Spring-Rice to Lansing June 14, 1915; Johann von Berstorff to Lansing, July 2, 1915; Gregory to Lansing, Feb. 26, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; and Franz von Papen to Berlin, May 31, 1915, R149, Reel 398 German Foreign Ministry Archives (hereafter cited as GFMA).

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unfavorable newspaper publicity. Later, he said Americans would resent British interference. Finally, in February 1916, the anxiety exhibited by the Wilson administration about the activities of German officials in the United States, who had been exposed and publicized primarily by the British, in combination with the extreme concern in London about unrest in India brought Spring-Rice to a new position. He agreed to make an official protest about the nationalists.14 With his protest of February 1916, Spring-Rice sent a transcript of the judgments in the 1915 Lahore conspiracy trial and a military intelligence memorandum showing that German officials had been cooperating with East Indians. During the Lahore conspiracy trial, the British Indian government argued that California had been the location for planning a revolution in India. According to the prosecution, five or six thousand Indians had met in Sacramento in August 1914 to launch the conspiracy, and their success had encouraged similar action in India. "The conspiracy had the object of waging war on his Majesty the King Emperor and overthrowing by force the government established by law in India, expelling Europeans and establishing a Swadeshi, or self government," said the Governor Advocate in summing up his case. As a result of the trial, 24 Indians were executed for conspiracy and another 27 were sentenced to long imprisonment.15 Later in February, Spring-Rice forwarded to Secretary of State Robert Lansing a protest from the Viceroy of India about the Ghadar propaganda and an article by a British newsman purporting to prove that Indian revolutionaries were attempting to overthrow British rule. The reporter claimed that the Ghadar party was advocating wholesale massacre of all Europeans in India and that Indians were being urged to come to California to learn the manufacture of bombs. He quoted the Secretary of State at Indian House in London who stated that infinite harm was done to British rule in India by the shelter ''Jose de Olivares to State Dept., May 6, 1916, file 150.456, NA, RG 59, reviews the trial; see also New York Tim.es, June 14, 1915, 4:3; "American-Made Hindu Revolts." Literaty Digest, LI (July 10, 1915), 56; Dignan, "Hindu Conspiracy,"64-67 "Spring-Rice transmitted his complaint to the State Department on Feb. 15, 1916, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; see also Naeem Gul Rathore, "The Indian Nationalist Agitation in the United States: A Study of Lala Lajpat Rai and the Indian Home Rule League of America, 1914- 1920" (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1965), 88.

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given the revolutionary Ghadar society and its newspaper in California. Spring-Rice promised to send the State Department a memorandum from the British government on revolutionary activities in the United States.'' Frank Polk, in charge of neutrality matters in the State Department, forwarded the journalist's article to the Justice Department and urged "radical action" if the article was correct because the agitation was "causing a great deal of irritation in England." Assistant Attorney General Charles Warren, Polk's counterpart in the Justice Department, replied that his staff had already given considerable attention to the activities of the Ghadar movement, but that he had no evidence of a violation of the law.17 At the end of February 1916, the Colonial Office dispatched Robert Nathan, one of its top intelligence agents in the Indian police, to Canada. Nathan was to coordinate and supplement investigations already underway by detectives hired through the British consul in San Francisco and by East Indian informants working undercover among the East Indians. About the same time, British military intelligence ordered to New York a second agent, Colonel Norman Thwaites, who was to work on East Indian investigations with William Wiseman, an agent of the British Foreign Office. Reports were funneled from Nathan and Thwaites to London, and selected information was then forwarded to the embassy in Washington. Bundles of papers on the revolutionary activities of the East Indians began to arrive regularly in the State Department, and they were accompanied by ever more excited memoranda from SpringRice linking the activities in Berlin and San Francisco to the Annie Larsen guns shipment, which he called an international conspiracy. The Justice Department soon had two of its own investigators working on the British complaints, but it still found no evidence of illegal activities.18 Among the papers forwarded by the State Department to the "Spring-Rice to Lansing, Feb. 25, 1916, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60. "Frank Polk to Charles Warren, Feb. 25, 1916; Warren to Polk, Feb. 26, 1916, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60. ''A. B. Law to Governor General, Feb. 29, 1916, GGC, Vol. 207, PAC; Norman Thwaites, Velvet and Vinegar (London, 1932), 145; Spring-Rice to Polk, March 27, 1916; Polk to Attorney General, April 3, 1916; file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60.

Justice Department was a batch of British atrocity pictures published by the Ghadar press. These "horrible pictures," as Assistant Attorney General Warren called them, provoked him to instruct legal researchers to "devise some method of prosecuting criminally the Editor of this paper, which has been producing a great deal of trouble on the Pacific Coast." Warren asked John W. Preston, the United States attorney in San Francisco, to conduct a special investigation into the activities of Ram Chandra, editor of the Ghadar, on the grounds that the newspaper appeared to be inciting arson, murder, and assassination. After dutifully sifting the pictures and articles, Warren's assistant reported back that while the pictures were brutal and offensive to esthetic taste, they did not violate the law prohibiting the use of the mails for matter tending to incite murder, arson, or assassination. Everything in the material mailed by the Ghadar editor was legitimate criticism of governmental activities of the British empire in India.ls Warren's attempt to interfere with the publication program of the Ghadar in mid- 1916, nevertheless, marked the beginning of the third stage of the conspiracy during which American officials began to share the British concept of the "Hindu conspiracy." Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory was under increasing pressure from other members of the administration to halt German activities in the United States even though Congress had refused to expand the internal security laws. In two minor cases involving Germans, the Justice Department had finally resorted to use of the conspiracy statute to obtain indictments against them. As soon as these convictions had been obtained for conspiracy, the Justice Department tried to link the Annie Larsen shipments to the Ghadar party, in order to show, as the British had argued, the existence of a GermanEast Indian revolutionary plot. Warren's assistant made up long lists of persons connected with what he called the "Hindu insurrection." Any men involved with the shipment of arms, with the San Francisco Ghadar party, or with the Indian Independence Committee in Berlin were on the list. Late in June "Warren to John W. Preston, May 13, 1916; Preston to Attorney General May 25, 1916; Warren to M. A. Thomas, June 3, 1916; Thomas to Attorney General, June 9, 1916; Gregory to State Department, June 3, 1916, all in file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60.

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1916, the Justice Department considered prosecuting the men involved in the Annie Larsen arms shipment. Indictments were to be sought for conspiracy to defraud the United States by filing false manifests and for organizing a military expedition against a friendly nation. The difficulty with this plan, as Assistant Attorney General S. J. Graham confessed to the State Department, was that he had no direct evidence stating the purpose of the expedition and thus could not connect it with the plots to foment revolution in British India. It seemed "reasonably clear" to him that the true destination of the arms was India, but he still needed proof.20 During the fall of 1916, a British court at Lahore sentenced seventeen more men for conspiracy and announced that it was satisfied the United States was the chief center of the movement to overthrow the British Empire. Spring-Rice subsequently complained to the State Department that the British government considered the "continuance of German intrigues against British possessions in the East a grave menace and negligence of the United States incompatible with the duties of a neutral power." His accusation that the United States was tolerating "Indian and German intrigues" brought an angry retort from Attorney General Gregory that the British had not furnished any evidence which would warrant indictment. Any witnesses who might provide evidence, Gregory wrote to Lansing, were either "in the hands of British authorities as prisoners, or else have been executed," and, he continued, "neither a British prisoner nor a corpse is available as a witness in the courts of this country." There were no United States laws against "intrigues," said Gregory, unless they violated a neutrality law or constituted a conspiracy to violate federal law.*l In January 1917, Spring-Rice made one more effort to link American intrigues to the Indian conspiracy. He reviewed for Lansing the activities of the East Indians in the United States and the statements of the Lahore conspirators. There could be no doubt about the aims of the men who left the United States, zoMemorandum for Warren, May 25, 1916; S. J. Graham to Secretary of State, June 28, 1916, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60. "Memorandum for Warren, Aug. 14, 1916; Polk to Attorney General, Oct. 10, 1916; Warren to Secretary of State, Oct. 27, 1916, all in file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60.

he argued. Their purpose was "deadly war against the King, and the overthrow of the government by law established in India." He cited as evidence the papers and pamphlets published by the Ghadar plus statements that 83 of the 686 men who had returned to India from the United States in 1915 had passed through sedition centers in the United States and that 10 of the 26 convicted in supplementary trials had been influenced by seditious preachings in the United States. He also reviewed the Annie Larsen case and included confessions of arrested Indians and a statement by J. B. Hunt, a purser on the Maverick, that five revolutionaries had sailed with him. He entitled the whole batch of documents the "German-Indian Conspiracy in America." Late in January, Spring-Rice sent more documents to the State Department and additional testimony linking Chandra to the East Indians who had sailed on the Mave~ick.~~ As soon as the State Department forwarded these documents to the Justice Department, Warren rushed them to the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, telling him that the activities of the Ghadar Indians were giving the British "grave concern" and that they were "anxious that the revolutionary movement in this country looking to the liberation of India should cease." He instructed Preston: "I desire that as many as possible be brought to book." January 1917 also brought a big breakthrough for the Justice Department when it obtained its first conviction for conspiracy to violate the neutrality law in a case involving Franz Bopp, the German consul general at San Francisco. With the conviction of Bopp, the way seemed clear for Warren to push for indictments of the East Indian~.'~ While Warren was anxious to push for prosecution, Gregory was still concerned about the accusations of Spring-Rice. He wrote to Lansing in February explaining that there was nothing illegal about the Annie Larsen shipment unless it was part of a military expedition. Starr-Hunt's testimony concerning Indian passengers on the Maverick was hearsay and of no value in proving violation of law; moreover, the British had not offered "Gregory to Lansing, Dec. 20, 1916; Spring-Rice to Lansing, Dec. 21, 1916, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; New York Times,Jan. 9, 1917, 1:5. "Memorandum for Warren, Jan. 15, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; United States v. B e , 230 Fed. 723 (1916).

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to bring him to the United States to testify. The Justice Department, insisted Gregory, had been "particularly scrupulous" in maintaining its obligation to enforce the neutrality laws. With Gregory's arguments in hand, Lansing composed a memorandum defending the United States from the ambassador's "intemperate" language and insisting that neither the Annie Larsen nor the Maverick had violated the neutrality laws of the United States. On February 28, 1917, President Wilson approved the Lansing m e r n ~ r a n d u m . ~ ~ Britain and the United States obviously did not yet share the same goals or strategy in the East Indian neutrality case. During the first week of April, however, British undercover agents engineered the arrest of East Indian nationalists in New York, one of whom immediately confessed he had received money from the German military attach6 to purchase arms and ammunition. Warren, who knew nothing of the role of the British agents in the arrests, was infuriated because he felt that the San Francisco prosecution would be endangered. The British agents, on the other hand, felt popular opinion would now keep the case alive, and they offered to exchange information directly with Warren on East Indian suspects. By the time the United States joined Britain as an ally against Germany, the two governments were already collaborating on the case below the diplomatic O n the morning of April 6, before President Wilson had signed the House resolution declaring war, Warren ordered Preston to arrest Ram Chandra and other East Indians involved in the "German-Hindu conspiracy." Preston immediately arrested Chandra and sixteen other East Indians in San Francisco. Thus the first suspects arrested by the federal "Assistant Attorney General to Preston, Feb. 1 , 1917; Preston to Attorney General, Feb. 13, 1917; Warren to Preston, Feb. 21, 1917; Gregory to Lansing, Feb. 26, 1917; Lansing to Wilson, Feb. 27, 1917; Lansing to Gregory, Feb. 28, 1917; all in file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; Dignan, "Hindu Conspiracy," 72; memorandum of reply to Spring-Rice from Lansing, Feb. 23, 1917, file 763.7211, NA, RG 59. "Warren to Polk, March 8, 13, and 16, 1917; Polk to Warren, March 14 and 15, 1917; Warren to Thomas D. McCarthy, March 13, 1917; U.S. Attorney, New York, to Attorney General March 14, 1917; all in file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; Wiseman report of March 16, 1917, quoted in Dignan, "Hindu Conspiracy," 73-74; Henry Stockton telegram for Robert Nathan, March 23, 1917, for Nathan, March 1 1 , 1917, April 3, 1917, GGC, Vol. 208, PAC; Warren to U.S. Marshal, New York, March 26, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60.

government after the United States went to war with Germany were East Indians. Not until that afternoon did Warren order the arrest of seventy Germans whom he considered the most prominent and dangerous agents in the United state^.'^ Even after these arrests, Preston was not optimistic about obtaining indictments. The Annie Larsen case looked good, Preston wrote to Warren, but not the case against the Ghadarites. He must not continue to think of the Ghadar and the Annie Larsen as two separate cases, Warren replied to Preston. They were not two cases but one. The only difficulty, Warren admitted, was in proving the connection between Ram Chandra and the German agents in the United States and Ram Chandra and the five men on the Maverick. "There has for some time been no doubt in my mind on these two points," Warren concluded. "The only difficulty has been in the proof." The British rushed Preston more documents and brought Starr-Hunt down from Canada where he had been secreted to testify before the San Francisco grand jury. On May 1, 1917, the grand jury brought indictments against Chandra and seven other East I n d i a n ~ . ' ~ In May, the British agent Nathan met with Preston in San ~rancisco,a nd they decaed that because of a lack of evidence the cases started in Chicago and New York should be combined with the one in San Francisco. Preston supported this consolidation plan at a strategy conference later that month in Washington with Warren and the United States attorneys from New York and Chicago. The New York case was undeniably weak: two individuals had been sent out separately-hardly a military expedition. Matters in Chicago seemed only slightly better. They could only show that at least four men had gone out "more or less in a body to commit hostilities against India."'' The officials decided to drop the charges against the East z6Warren, "War Notes," Box 5, Warren Papers, Library of Congress; Preston to Warren, April 6, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60. "Warren to Preston, April 1 1 , 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; A. Marr telegram for Nathan, May 10 and 15, 1917; Nathan telegram for Wiseman, May 21, 1917, GGC, Vol. 208, PAC. "Warren to Charles F. Clyne, April 1 1 , 1917; Preston to Warren, April 11, 1917; memorandum of conference, June 16, 1917, all in file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60. The New York indictments were upheld in United States v. Chakrabdy, et al. 244 Fed. 287 (1917).

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Indians in New York but to indict Chandra and the other San Francisco men in a Chicago court in order "to give fuller color to the conspiracy in the introduction of evidence." Once indictments had been obtained in Chicago, the San Francisco men would not be tried there. Chicago would be a test case for applying the conspiracy theory to the East ~ndi'ans.If the case was successful, the Justice Department would make San Francisco the showcase of a "Hindu conspiracy" trial in which convictions would be sought for all the Germans and East Indians mentioned in the British documents. On July 7, 1917, the San Francisco grand jury returned secret indictments for conspiracy against 105 men, and on July 12, indicted 19 more. The conspiracy, according to the indictments, had begun on August 1, 1914, at a meeting of East Indian and German conspirators to prepare a military expedition. In Chicago, one East Indian and three Germans were convicted of violating the neutrality law against military expeditions and of conspiracy to violate this law. Warren commented later that the courts had made a "broad ruling" and the words "military expedition or enterprise" were given their "broadest definition" in this "Hindu plot" case." Preston was optimistic by the time the trial began on November 12, 1917. "The evidence is in very good shape," he wrote to Attorney General Gregory. "The British agents have worked very hard in putting the evidence in accessible form, and I have every reason . . . to believe that the case will result favorably as to all important defendants." The trial, which dragged on for over five months, revolved around the British version of a world-wide "Hindu conspiracy" dictated by the Germans, who allegedly sought to stir u p a revolution in India as part of a master war plan against England.30 The advantages the government has in a conspiracy trial were exploited fully in San Francisco. The charge of conspiracy branded the East Indians with the image of secrecy and evil plotting, which heightened apprehensions already present in 'qJacobsen v. United States, 272 Fed. 399 (1920); an unidentified newspaper clipping describing the charge from the judge is in box 7, Warren Papers; New York Times, Oct. 19, 1917, 1 3 3 ; Preston to Attorney General, Oct. 6, 1917, and J . S. H . to Preston, Oct. 17, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60. "Preston to Gregory, Nov. 17, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60.

San Francisco during that first winter of war. Hearsay evidence rules were relaxed to allow the words of alleged conspirators to be used against each other. The defendants were confronted with the recitation of a hodgepodge of alleged acts and the statements of others, which the government hoped might pursuade the jury of the existence of the conspiracy. All the government had to prove was that two defendants conspired to bring about some illegal act and that one person then made an overt act to further that conspiracy. The government did not have to prove actual criminal acts. Assistant U.S. Attorney Annette Adams summed up the government's case against the "Hindu conspirators" by labeling them tools of German agents and appealing to the jury to "hold the line for democracy." The jury found all the defendants, with the exception of an American millionaire shipbuilder from Long Beach, guilty of conspiring to launch a military expedition in violation of the criminal code.31 The political cost of the trial was high for the East Indians. Undercover agents, informers, and government witnesses demoralized and divided the revolutionaries and made it difficult for them to know whom to trust. The trial so heightened tensions within the East Indian community that one of the accused went mad in his cell. A second man shot and killed Ram Chandra during the trial itself and was, in turn, shot by a marshal. Publicity emphasizing East Indian nationalist collaboration with German officials made the Indian revolutionary movement appear to be a conflict essentially different from that waged by the American colonies against Great Britain 160 years earlier.32 Convictions meant more to Britain than to the United States, as Preston admitted to Attorney General Gregory. Success in the case was due, he explained, to the "able and exhaustive" investigations by the British which supplemented his own. The J'For conspiracy trials, see David B. Filvaroff, "Conspiracy and The First Amendment," UniversiQ of Pen7uylvania Law Review, CXXI (1972), 189; and Johnson, "Unnecessary Crime of Conspiracy," 1137. 3%an Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 19 18, 1 :1 ; San Francisco Examiw, Nov. 23, 1917, 1:l; Preston to Attorney General, Nov. 23, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; undated history, "The Hindu Conspiracy, the Ghadr Society, and Indian Revolutionary Propaganda," Military Intelligence Division, file 10560-152, NA, RG 165.

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British had assigned their best agents to the case. They furnished complete and accurate reports, provided at least three key witnesses and several confessions, and coached Preston and Adams in presenting the case. Preston told newsmen that he thought the verdict showed "that this country is now realizing that we must teach the non-assimilable, parasitic organizations in our midst that while this is a land of liberty, it is not a country of mere license."33 What the trial had done was to make the United States less a land of liberty. It openly arrayed the United States government against the movement for political liberation in India and put a seal of disapproval on participation by Americans in that movement. Government disapproval did not stop all Americans from continued participation in the Indian liberation movement, but it did signify that the government would deal with the issue of Indian independence from a position essentially the same as that of Great Britain.34That position included acceptance of the "Hindu conspiracy" as documented by the British government. This is not to say that there was a British "conspiracy" or that the British manufactured their evidence, only that historians need to look more carefully at the activities bf officials who responded to the East Indians' movement. In the words of German Chancellor Tehobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, this was to be a "war to the knife."35Colonialism and imperialism plus self-determination and anti-imperialism were crucial concerns from the outset of the war in August 1914, and they became increasingly important as the war in Europe moved to a stalemate. "Preston to Gregory, Aug. 6, 1918, NA, RG 118; Sun Francisco Chronuk, April 24, 1918, 1:5-8. ''Alan Raucher, "American Anti-Imperialists and the Pro-India Movement, 19001932," Pacific Historical Review, XLIII (1974). 83-1 10. a 5 ~ h e o b a l vdon Bethmann-Hollweg telegram, September 4, 1914, T149, Reel 397, GFMA.

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You have printed the following article: The "Hindu Conspiracy": A Reassessment Joan M. Jensen The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 48, No. 1. (Feb., 1979), pp. 65-83. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8684%28197902%2948%3A1%3C65%3AT%22CAR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D

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[Footnotes] 1

Propaganda of the Gadar Party Mark Naidis The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 3. (Aug., 1951), pp. 251-260. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8684%28195108%2920%3A3%3C251%3APOTGP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2 2

"Diminished Responsibility" in Theory and Practice Richard F. Sparks The Modern Law Review, Vol. 27, No. 1. (Jan., 1964), pp. 9-34. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-7961%28196401%2927%3A1%3C9%3A%22RITAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P 4

The Hindu Conspiracy in Anglo-American Relations during World War I Don K. Dignan The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 40, No. 1. (Feb., 1971), pp. 57-76. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8684%28197102%2940%3A1%3C57%3ATHCIAR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 5

The Law of Hostile Military Expeditions as Applied by the United States Roy Emerson Curtis The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 8, No. 2. (Apr., 1914), pp. 224-255. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9300%28191404%298%3A2%3C224%3ATLOHME%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V

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Harry Chandler and Mexican Border Intrigue, 1914-1917 Lowell L. Blaisdell The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Nov., 1966), pp. 385-393. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8684%28196611%2935%3A4%3C385%3AHCAMBI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1 6

The Unnecessary Crime of Conspiracy Phillip E. Johnson California Law Review, Vol. 61, No. 5. (Sep., 1973), pp. 1137-1188. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0008-1221%28197309%2961%3A5%3C1137%3ATUCOC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P 7

Criminal Conspiracy Francis B. Sayre Harvard Law Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Feb., 1922), pp. 393-427. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0017-811X%28192202%2935%3A4%3C393%3ACC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R 31

Conspiracy and the First Amendment David B. Filvaroff University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 121, No. 2. (Dec., 1972), pp. 189-253. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0041-9907%28197212%29121%3A2%3C189%3ACATFA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S 34

American Anti-Imperialists and the Pro-India Movement, 1900-1932 Alan Raucher The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 43, No. 1. (Feb., 1974), pp. 83-110. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8684%28197402%2943%3A1%3C83%3AAAATPM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W

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