This book examines the anticolonial movement forged by Indian migrant workers, intellectuals, and students in North America during the early twentieth century and the collaborative efforts of US, Canadian, and British officials to crush it. Exploring the dialectical relationship between Indian anticolonialism and state antiradicalism, it argues that Indian anticolonial resistance was densely interwoven with anti-Asian exclusionary campaigns and state antiradical practices and that Indian anticolonialists served as catalysts for the implementation of restrictive US immigration and antiradical l ... More

This book examines the anticolonial movement forged by Indian migrant workers, intellectuals, and students in North America during the early twentieth century and the collaborative efforts of US, Canadian, and British officials to crush it. Exploring the dialectical relationship between Indian anticolonialism and state antiradicalism, it argues that Indian anticolonial resistance was densely interwoven with anti-Asian exclusionary campaigns and state antiradical practices and that Indian anticolonialists served as catalysts for the implementation of restrictive US immigration and antiradical laws and the expansion of state power in early twentieth-century India and America. This transnational dialectic of anticolonial activism and state repression reveals how anti-Asian racism and antiradicalism were mutually constituted and simultaneously developed into a discourse of national security. Situated at the intersections of the British and US empires, Indians were constantly watched by US, Canadian, and British officials. The transnational dimensions of Indian anticolonialism and of US and British surveillance and repression engendered a broad inter-imperial collaboration that curbed the threat of the British Raj being overthrown during the Great War and laid the foundation for their joint suppression of radical political movements during the interwar period and beyond. Indian migrants understood their struggles against racial exclusion and political repression in North America as part of a broader movement against white supremacy and colonialism and articulated radical visions of anticolonialism that called not only for the end of British rule in India but for the forging of democracies across the world.