Sikhs, Swamis, Students and Spies: The India Lobby in the United States, 1900-1946

by Harold Gould

This book is a fascinating history of the India lobby in America in the pre-independence era - a little known chapter in the history of modern India. It documents the travails of early Indian migrants to North America and Canada from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of World War II. It captures their prolonged struggle for obtaining civil rights, and promoting the cause of India′s freedom beyond the borders of the subcontinent.

460 pages, Hardcover

First published October 6, 2006

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting but not particularly well-written or gripping account of Indian-American relations, starting with first contacts between Yankee traders bringing ice from New England to Calcutta and Bengalis, through intellectual cross-pollination between Bengal Renaissance intellectuals and New England Unitarians and Trancendentalists, through (mostly) Sikh immigration to the West Coast of the US and Canada, into racist anti-Asian-immigration legislation and on to the influence of a determined group of Indians on American policy toward the Indian movement for Independence from the UK. I had trouble getting through, but learned a lot.