‘Sastri, Celebrated Indian leader is here from Antipodes’, Victoria Daily Times, 12 August 1922, pp 1, 24; ‘A distinguished visitor’, Victoria Daily Times, 12 August 1922, p 4

‘Sastri, Celebrated Indian leader’; ‘A distinguished visitor’.

By then into its third year, the Greco-Turkish war had seen both sides resorting to indiscriminate killing of civilians. At this point in the war, the Turkish troops under Mustapha Kemal had gained significant advantage and were in the process of pushing out Greeks from Anatolia. Britain stood gingerly at Greece’s side, provoking the Greeks to fight through promises of support without actually helping directly. In the process, the Treaty of Sevres had become redundant, as Turkey also concluded separate treaties with France (and Russia).

A kirpan is a dagger that Sikhs carry as an article of faith.

Both the cartoons are also reproductions from American newspapers. The first appeared in Evening Philadelphia Ledger on 5 June 1922 (p 10) and the second in the Los Angeles Times on 30 March 1922 (p 26).

‘The Turkish question’, Manitoba Free Press, 12 August 1922, p 11.

Leo Pasvolsky, ‘The scorching flames of open rebellion spring up in India’, New York Tribune, 19 March 1922, p 23. British intelligence authorities kept a constant check on the Afghan amir for his efforts to undermine British India militarily, see Weekly Report of the Director, Central Intelligence, Shimla, 12 May 1919, Home Political, B, 1919 JUN 494–497, Repository II, National Archives of India, Delhi (henceforth NAI).

See Viceroy to the Secretary of State, Telegram P No 95, 26 January 1921, Home Political, Deposit/1921/Feb/61, NAI.

S.D. Waley, Edwin Montagu: A Memoir and an Account of his Visits to India, Delhi: Asia Publishing House, 1964, p 272.

Waley, Edwin Montagu, p 274.

SS Komagata Maru, a Japanese ship, was chartered by a Sikh, Gurdit Singh, in Hong Kong. It brought around 380 Indians to Vancouver on 23 May 1922. To subvert the principle that Indians had equal access to all parts of the British Empire as whites, Canada had passed legislation blocking the entry of anyone who came through a discontinuous journey. Since there were no ships running directly between Indian and Canadian ports, this effectively banned the entry of Indians. After almost two months of confrontation in Vancouver, which also turned violent, Komagata Maru was sent back to India. On reaching Bengal on 27 September 1922, 20 boarders were killed in an encounter with the police as the British government attempted to transport them forcefully to Punjab. The incident has remained a deep painful memory for the Sikh community, particularly in Canada.

Seema Sohi, Echoes of Mutiny: Race, Surveillance, and Indian Anticolonialism in North America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

On this point, also see Arnold Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: A Study in the Contact of Civilizations, London: Constable and Company, 1922.

H. Wilson Harris, ‘Outward bound’, Daily News, September 1921.

See R. Sadashiv Aiyar, ‘Rt. Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastri: a study in personality’, Hindustan Review, 45 (268), 1922, pp 537–546.

L.S. Subramania, ‘The Rt. Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastri’, India Review, 30 (2), 1929, pp 106–108.

The library is in state of neglect and disrepair, although Srinivasa Sastri Hall is better maintained. Sastri was a Vice Chancellor of Annamalai University from 1935 to 1940.

Iver Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats: Inside a European Foreign Ministry, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012.

Whether diplomatic professionalism constitutes serving the country or the government is another debate. See Peter Vale, The Changing World and Professional Diplomacy, A Workshop Report, Organized by Centre for Southern African Studies and the International Studies Unit, Cape Town, 12–14 January 1993.

In performing this function, Sastri is a typical example of how the sociologist M.S.S. Pandian characterizes Tamil Brahmins. Pandian argues that colonialism forced Tamil Brahmins to play the dual albeit contradictory roles of appearing both authentic and modern. See M.S.S. Pandian, Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Geneologies of Tamil Political Present, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007.

The word ‘coolie’, a derogatory term for those taken as indenture labour, was also used to refer to Indian migrants in general. However, much like negritude, ‘coolitude’ seeks to reclaim the histories and identities of Indian labour in their adoptive homelands. See Marina Carter and Khal Torabully, Coolitude: An Anthology of the Indian Labour Diaspora, London: Anthem Press, 2002.

In the hierarchical and hereditary caste order, shudras are at lowest ranked of the four varnas, who perform artisanal and labour functions in society.

Kalathmika Natarajan, ‘Entangled Citizens, Undesirable Migrants: The Imprint of Empire and Afterlives of Indenture in Indian Diplomacy (1947–1962)’, PhD thesis, University of Copenhagen. Also see Latha Varadarajan, The Domestics Abroad: Diasporas in International Relations, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Srinivas used the term ‘sanskritization’ to explain the process of upward social mobility of the so-called lower castes by emulation of upper caste rituals, manners and practices. For the role of Indian agents in South Africa as ‘civilizers’, see Uma Mesthrie, ‘From Sastri to Deshmukh: A Study of the Role of the Government of India’s Representatives in South Africa’, PhD thesis, University of Natal, Durban, 1987.

H.S.L. Polak, ‘Mr. Sastri and his mission’, Hindustan Review, 44 (274), 1922, p 8.

Radhika Singha, ‘The Great War and a “proper” passport for the colony: border-crossing in British India, c. 1882–1922’, Indian Economic and Social History, 50 (3), 2013, pp 289–315.

Subramania, ‘The Rt. Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastri’.

Aiyar, ‘RT Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastri’.

Frank Nickovich, The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy since 1900, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999; G. John Ikenberry, ‘Liberal internationalism 3.0: America and the dilemmas of liberal world order’, Perspectives on Politics, 7 (1), 2009, pp 71–87.

For a sample of this thinking see Inderjit Parmar, ‘The US led liberal order: Imperialism by other name?’, International Affairs, 94 (1), 2018, pp 151–172, at 155; and Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-determination, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. For an excellent overview and critique of liberal internationalism, see Beate Jahn, Liberal Internationalism: Theory, History and Practice, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

See Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007; Trygve Throntveit, ‘The fable of fourteen points: Woodrow Wilson and national self-determination’, Diplomatic History, 35 (1), 2011, pp 445–481; Thomas Bender, A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History, New York: Hill and Wang, 2006, pp 242–243; Rayford W. Logan, ‘The operation of the mandate system in Africa’, Journal of Negro History, 13 (4), 1928, pp 423–477; Brett Reilly, ‘The myth of the Wilsonian moment’, Wilson Centre Blog, 17 June 2019, www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/the-myth-the-wilsonian-moment, accessed 10 October 2019; Arno Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin: Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918, New York: Meridian Books, 1967; Carolien Stolte, ‘Uniting the oppressed peoples of the East: revolutionary internationalism in an Asian inflection’, in Mohammad Ali Raza, Franziska Roy and Benjamin Zachariah (eds) The Internationalist Moment: South Asia, Worlds, and World View 1917–1938, Los Angeles: Sage, 2015, pp 47–58.

Daniel Gorman, The Emergence of International Society in the 1920s, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012; Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organisations in the Making of the Contemporary World, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002; Helen McCarthy, ‘The lifeblood of the League: voluntary associations and League of Nations activism in Britain’, in Daniel Laqua (ed) International Reconfigured: Transnational Ideas and Movements between the World Wars, London: I.B. Tauris, 2011.

Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire, London: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, The Internationalists: And Their Plan to Outlaw War, Great Britain: Penguin, 2017.

W.E.B. Du Bois, ‘Worlds of colour’, Foreign Affairs, 3 (3), 1925, pp 423–444.

See Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, New York: Charles Schribner, 1916; Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, London: Bodley Head, 2016, p viii. Also see Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Colour against White World Supremacy, New York: Charles Scribner, 1920.

In 1919, the South African government passed the Asiatic (Land and Trading Amendments) (Transvaal) Act, imposing further restrictions on Indians from owning companies. In 1919, New Zealand also passed its Immigration Restrictions Amendment Act. In British Columbia, a measure introduced in the legislative assembly to confer votes on those Asians who had served with the Canadian forces during the First World War was defeated. Under Jan Smuts, South Africa passed a slew of segregationist measures. His party lost the elections in 1924 to J.B.M. Hertzog’s National Party, which took to segregation with religious – metaphorical as well as, in some cases, literal – zeal.

Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Colour, p 281.

One must here question the canonization of the ‘Wilsonian Moment’, when as Erez Manela himself shows, it is a moment in which Wilson acts only as an absentee presence, and ask and if the phrase and its centring of Wilson does more analytical harm than good. In fact, Manela even musters a quote from Sastri where the latter had speculated that if Wilson had gone to Asia after the war, he would have been received with ‘wild delirium of joy’ as though ‘Christ or Buddha had come back to his home’. But Manela misses that Sastri was equally clear in the same text that Wilson’s message was hardly intended for the people of Asia. Sastri credited Japan, rather than America, for raising the voice of Asia at the League of Nations. See V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Foreword’, in Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson’s Message to Eastern Nations, Calcutta: Association Press, 1925.

The limited work on this period includes: T.T. Poulose, ‘India as an anomalous international person (1919–1947)’, British Yearbook of International Law 44, 1970, p 201, Itty Abraham, How India Became Territorial: Foreign Policy, Diaspora, Geopolitics, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014; Pradeep Barua, ‘Strategies and doctrines of imperial defence: Britain and India, 1919–45,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25 (2), 1997, pp 240–266; Sneh Mahajan, Foreign Policy of Colonial India, 1900–1947, New Delhi: Routledge, 2018; Vineet Thakur, Jan Smuts and the Indian Question, Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2017; Stephen Legg, ‘An international anomaly? Sovereignty, the League of Nations, and India’s princely geographies’, Journal of Historical Geography, 43, 2014, pp 96–110; Hugh Tinker, Separate and Unequal: India and the Indians in the British Commonwealth, 1920–1950, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1976.

This comment on V.S. Srinivasa Sastri was made by the Eastern African Indian National Congress. See ‘RT Hon. Mr. Sastri: England’s advertising agent’, Democrat, 2 March 1929, FD 8, AICC Papers: I Instalment, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (henceforth NMML).

Maganlal A. Buch, Rise and Growth of Indian Liberalism: From Ram Mohan Roy to Gokhale, Baroda: no publisher, 1938, p 302. For an extended discussion of how liberals have been treated, see C.A. Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

‘Benarasidas Chaturvedi to Srinivasa Sastri’, 23 December 1922, V.S. Srinivasa Sastri Papers, Ist Instalment (henceforth VSS Papers (1)), Correspondence: Benarasidas Chaturvedi, NMML.

See Suraj Yengde, ‘Race, caste and what it will take to make Dalit lives matter’, The Caravan, 3 July 2020.

‘Mr. Sastri’s appeal to Natal’, Natal Witness, 3 August 1927, p 5.

See, for instance, Peter Gourevitch, ‘The second-image reversed: the international sources of domestic politics’, International Organisation, 32 (4), 1978, pp 881–912.

He also did not want any memorial to be raised in his honour, which may partly explain the absence of public memorials to him. See ‘Written statement of Srinivasa Sastri’, VSS Papers (I), Writings and Speeches, S No 47, NMML.

These were published as ‘En Vazhkayin Amsangal’ in Tamil and translated to ‘Aspects of my life’. The English version is in Sastri’s papers at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. See V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, VSS Papers (I), S No 82, NMML.

P. Kondana Rao, The Right Honourable V.S. Srinivasa Sastri: A Political Biography, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1963, p xviii.

T.N. Jagadisan, V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1969.

See R. Sadasivan to T.N. Jagadisan, V.S. Srinivas Sastri Papers, IInd Installment (henceforth VSS Papers (II)), S No 2, f 18, NMML.

S.R. Bakshi, Struggle for Independence: V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1992; Mohan Ramann, V.S. Srinivasa Sastri: A Study, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2007.

Jagadisan, Sastri, pp 2–4; V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘A confession of faith’, in The Other Harmony: A Selection from the Writings and Speeches of the Right Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastrii, ed T.N. Jagadisan, 2nd edn, Madras: S. Viswanathan, 1949, pp 2–3.

R. Shantha Ramaswami and K.S. Srinivasan, V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Remembering our Leaders, Vol 5, New Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 2015, p 27; M.S. Raghavan, ‘The Rt. Honourable Srinivasa Sastri’, VSS Papers (I), Writings by Others, S No 30, f 1787.

Jagadisan, Sastri, p 5; Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, pp 3–4.

In the Hindu ashrama system, an individual goes through four stages of life: Brahmacharya (celibate, dedicated to education); Grihastha (married life dedicated to fostering a family); Vanaprastha (retirement); and Sanyas (complete renunciation, focused entirely on the attainment of liberation from the cycle of life and death).

Anon, ‘Sastri – a vignette’, VSS Papers (I), Writings by Others, S No 27.

Anon, ‘Sastri – a vignette’.

Jagadisan, Sastri, p 9.

Jagadisan, Sastri, p 9.

He would even correct his own principal’s diction, an Englishman by the name of A.A. Hall who brandished his friendships with Oxford dons to assert his authority on the language.

Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, pp 11–12; Jagadisan, Sastri, pp 9–10, Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 5.

See www.hinduhighschool.net/lifesketches/life_sketches8.htm, accessed 12 January 2020. Also see S. Muthiah, ‘Presidency’s feeder’, The Hindu, 2 February 2004.

Jagadisan, Sastri, pp 10–11; K. Balasubramania Iyer, ‘My early reminiscences of Sastri’, in A. Ranganathan (ed) The Right Honourable V.S. Srinivasa Sastri Centenary Souvenir, Madras: Servants of India Society, 1969, pp 8–11; ‘Sanctity of teaching: Srinivasa Sastri on co-education’, Bombay Chronicle, 8 June 1927, p 8.

S. Muthiah, ‘Presidency’s feeder’; Anon, ‘Sastri – a vignette’; G.A. Natesan, ‘The Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri’, Bharat Dharma, 24 (5), May 1946, p 5, in VSS Papers (II), Speeches and Writings by, S No 2, f 39.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘The schoolmaster’s test’, Sastriana, No 7, ed S.R. Venkataraman, Madras: Servants of India Society, 1968 (originally published in Educational Review, Feb–March 1896).

I am grateful to Ole Birk Laursen for bringing this detail to my attention.

Natesan, ‘The Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri’.

V. Sriram, ‘Hundred years of a statue’, The Hindu, 3 April 2012, www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/hundred-years-of-a-statue/article3274235.ece, accessed 12 January 2020.

Jagadisan, Sastri, p 12; Natesan, ‘The Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri’, f 39.

See Tridip Suhrud, An Autobiography or the Story of my Experiments with Truth: A Table of Concordance, New York: Routledge, 2017; see V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Letters to Mahadev Desai’, in T.N Jagadisan (ed) Letters of The Rt. Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Madras: Rochhouse, 1944, pp 129–140.

Diary 1915, 30 April 1915, VSS Papers (I), NMML. Neither did he spare Winston Churchill when the latter described Louis Mountbatten as ‘tribian’, rather than ‘triphibian’. Se, Anon, ‘Review of letters of Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri’, Roy’s Weekly, 6 August 1944, p 8.

For a discussion on the monopoly of Brahmans among the professional elite in Madras presidency, see R. Suntharalingam, Politics and Nationalist Awakening in South India, 1852–1891, Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 1958; Pandian, Brahmin and Non-Brahmin, pp 50–53.

Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, f 14.

‘The Triplicane Urban Co-operative Society Limited. Silver Jubilee 1930’, http://dspace.gipe.ac.in/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10973/24290/GIPE-048762.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y, accessed 26 October 2020, Dhananjayarao Gadgil Library, GIPE-PUNE, p 27.

R. Balaji, ‘Triplicane Urban Co-op Society turns 100’, Hindu Business Line, 9 April 2004, www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-others/tp-states/article28856814.ece, accessed 13 January 2020; ‘The Triplicane Urban Co-operative Society Limited’, pp 27–28.

‘Sastri to K.S. Venkataramani, 3 May 1915’, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, p 191.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘My Master Gokhale’, ed T.N. Jagadisan, Madras: Model Publications, 1946, p 76.

A founding member of Fergusson College, Gokhale rose to become its principal but resigned in 1902 to concentrate on his political work.

B.R. Nanda, Gokhale, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1977.

He had first expressed this to his student and close confidante R.P. Paranjpe on a trip to London. See R.P. Paranjpe, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Poona: Aryabhushan Press, 1916, p 65.

‘Puntoojism run mad with “cooperation”’, Bengalee, 22 September 1917, in Servants of India Society Papers (henceforth SOIS Papers), Subject File 12, NMML, f 194–195.

Nanda, Gokhale, pp 169–170; Paranjpe, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, p 65.

The Servants of India Society, Poona: Aryabhushan Press, 1915, pp 3–4.

Young apprentices received 30 rupees per month, and full members 50 rupees.

These were: country will always be first in thoughts and service; seeking no personal advantage while serving the country; seeking advancement of all Indians without distinction of caste or creed; no part of work to be devoted to earning money; leading a pure personal life; never engaging in personal quarrel with any one; and, finally, never to do anything that was inconsistent with the objects of the society. See The Servants of India Society, p 6.

Paranjpe, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, p 66.

Selby quoted in V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Life of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Bangalore: Bangalore Printing and Publishing, 1937, p 53.

Gokhale to Krishnaswami Iyer, 31 July 1905, SOIS Papers, Subject File 23 (part 2), f 235.

Sastri to Gokhale, 27 December 1905, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, pp 1–2.

David Hardiman, The Non-Violent Struggle for Indian Freedom, 1905–19, Gurgaon: Penguin Viking, 2019, pp 23–24.

Sastri, ‘My Master Gokhale’, p 77.

An account of his visit to Poona is in ‘My first meeting with Gokhale’ (pp 69–75) in Sastri, ‘My Master Gokhale’.

A false rumour was spread that Krishnaswami Iyer had given Sastri 10,000 rupees to stabilize his finances while he joined the society.

Diary 1907, 6 January and 15 January, VSS Papers (I).

See his letters to Gokhale in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, pp 5–15.

Sastri, ‘My Master Gokhale’, pp 109–110.

Sastri to V.K. Krishnaswami Iyer, 9 August 1908, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, pp 45–50.

See ‘The first member’s inaugural address’, SOIS Papers, Subject File 4 (part 2), f 490–497.

Nanda, Gokhale, p 464; Also see Sastri’s letters to Gokhale in VSS Papers (II), Correspondence: Gokhale, Gopal Krishna.

Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, f 98.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Life and Times of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, Madras: Madras Law Journal Press, 1945, pp 104–105.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Thumbnail Sketches, ed T.N. Jagadisan, Madras: S. Visvanathan, 1946, p 191.

Quoted in Nanda, Gokhale, p 290.

Jagadisan, Sastri, p 17.

Sastri, ‘My Master Gokhale’, p 269 (footnote 2).

Sastri to Krishnaswami Iyer, 25 July 1908, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, pp 51–52.

Quoted in Jagadisan, Sastri, p 18.

Sastri to Natesan, 31 May 1907, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, p 188.

Diary 1915, 22 February, VSS Papers (I).

Letter to Sarojini Naidu, 23 February 1915, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (henceforth CWMG), Vol 14, New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government Of India, p 371.

Sastri to Krishnaswami Iyer, 22 June 1909, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, p 53; Nanda, Gokhale, p 462; see Sastri to Members and Permanent Assistants, May 1912, SOIS Papers, Subject File 13, f 231.

Nanda, Gokhale, p 462; ‘A brief account of the work of the Servants of India Society, Poona (from June 1905 to December 1916)’, Poona: Aryabhushan Press, January 1917.

Nanda, Gokhale, pp 174–175.

Sastri to Krishnaswami Iyer, 22 June 1909, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, p 53.

Sastri to Gokhale, 25 December 1911, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, p 30.

Sastri, Thumbnail Sketches, p 199.

Sastri, Thumbnail Sketches, p 199.

Sastri, Thumbnail Sketches, p 199.

Nanda, Gokhale, p 421.

Nanda, Gokhale, p 415.

Quoted in Ramchandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World, 1915–1948, London: Penguin, 2019, p 15.

Sastri, Life of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, p 171.

Sastri to BS Ramaswami Sastri, 10 January 1915, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, p 190.

Sastri, Life of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, p 172.

Sastri, Life of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, p 172; Diary 1915, 27 February 1915, VSS Papers (I).

Other sympathizers of the Society, Madanmohan Malviya, Tej Bahadur Sapru, and Aga Khan agreed with the decision to keep Gandhi out. See H.N. Kunzru to V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, 6 March 1915, SOIS Papers, Subject File No 12, f 87–97.

In 1908, the Madras Session had 626 delegates (434 from Madras alone) while in 1911, only 300 delegates attended. In the next two years, the numbers declined further to about 250 members. See S.R. Mehrotra, A History of the Indian National Congress, Vol 1, 1885–1918, New Delhi: Vikas, 1995, p 251; ‘Report of the Proceedings of the First All India Session of the Moderate Party held at Bombay in the Empire Theatre, 1–2 November 1918’, Bombay: Times Press, 1919, p 136.

The 1914 Government of Ireland Act had promised an Irish parliament. See Mark R. Frost, ‘Imperial citizenship or else: liberal ideals and the India unmaking of the empire, 1890–1919’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 46 (5), 2018, pp 845–873.

Mehrotra, A History of the Indian National Congress, pp 274–281.

See Nanda, Gokhale, pp 451–460.

See Natesan, ‘Introduction’, in G.A. Natesan (ed) The Indian Demands, Madras: G.A. Natesan, 1917, p 12.

Diary, 30 April 1919, VSS Papers (I); V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘If I live again’, VSS Papers (I), S No 82, f 157–158.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 19 June 1919, f 39, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 1 May 1919, f 25–26, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 7 May 1919, f 27–28, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5.

For Indian revolutionaries, see Arun C. Bose, Indian Revolutionaries Abroad, 1905–1922: In the Background of International Developments, Patna: Bharati Bhawan, 1971; Nirode K. Barooh, Chatto: The Life and Times of an Indian Anti-Imperialist in Europe, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004; Kama Maclean, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text, London: Hurst, 2015; Kris Manjapra, M.N. Roy: Marxism and Colonial Cosmopolitanism, New Delhi: Routledge, 2010; Maia Ramnath, Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement charted Global Radicalism and attempted to overthrow the British Empire, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011; Michele Luoro, Comrades against Imperialism: Nehru, India and Interwar Internationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Ole Birk Laursen, M.P.T. Acharya, We Are Anarchists: Essays on Anarchism, Pacifism, and the Indian Independence Movement, 1923–1953, Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019.

Servant of India, 1 (13), 16 May 1918, p 146.

Quoted in Joanne Stafford Mortimer, ‘Annie Besant and India 1913–1917’, Journal of Contemporary History, 18, 1983, pp 61–78 at 76.

Lord Ampthill quoted in Lionel Curtis, Dyarchy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920, p xxvii.

Arnold Toynbee, Acquaintances, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967, p 139.

Lionel Curtis, The Commonwealth of Nations: An Inquiry into the Nature of Citizenship in the British Empire, and into the Mutual Relations of the Several Communities Thereof, Part I, London: Macmillan, 1916, p 696.

Curtis, Dyarchy, p 53.

Curtis, Dyarchy, p xxi.

Curtis, Dyarchy, p xxxii.

Curtis, Dyarchy, p xxvii.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Self-Government for India: Under the British Flag, Allahabad: Servants of India Society, 1916, p 7.

Sastri, Self-Government, p 7.

For Gokhale’s ‘Political will and testament’, see V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘My Master Gokhale’, pp 280–285.

Natesan, ‘Introduction’, p 37.

Sastri, Self-Government, pp 11–25.

Sastri, Self-Government, p 13.

Sastri, Self-Government, p 32.

Sastri, Self-Government, p 35.

‘Power without responsibility’, Servant of India, 1 (3), 7 March 1918, p 28.

‘Power without responsibility’, p 28; V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Congress–League Scheme: An Exposition, Poona: Aryabhushan Press, 1917, pp 40–44.

‘The Reform Proposals’, Servant of India, 1 (21), 11 July 1918, p 243.

‘Power without responsibility’, p 28; Sastri, Congress–League Scheme, pp 40–44.

Sastri, Self-Government, p 40.

Sastri, Self-Government, p 46.

Sastri, Self-Government, p 47.

See Hansard, The House of Common Debates, Court of Enquiry, 12 July 1917, Vol 95, https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1917-07-12/debates/c8fdbdc8-6895-42ce-99c2-240e5a769904/CourtOfInquiry, accessed 21 February 2020.

Philip Woods, ‘The Montagu–Chelmsford reforms (1919): a re-assessment’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 17 (1), 1994, pp 25–42; Shane Ryland, ‘Edwin Montagu in India, 1917–1918: politics of the Montagu–Chelmsford report’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Series 1, 3 (1), 1973, pp 79–92.

See Richard Danzig, ‘The announcement of August 20th, 1917’, Journal of Asian Studies, 28 (1), 1968, pp 19–37; Valentine Chirol, Indian Unrest, London: Macmillan, 1910.

Sastri, Congress–League Scheme, pp 35–39.

Lord Sydenham, My Working Life, London: John Murray, 1927, pp 339–340.

See Indo-British Association, The Crumbling of an Empire: September 1916–March 1922: A Chronological Statement of the Decline of British Authority in India, London: Indo-British Association, 1923.

So instead of each person only voting for their caste, it was better if two or three districts were combined to form a constituency with multiple representations. Brahmin and non-Brahmin seats would, in this case, be restricted to the proportion of their population. Hence, a large constituency with five seats and 80 per cent non-Brahmins would elect four non-Brahmins and one Brahmin.

Sastri, Congress–League Scheme, p 4.

The Servant of India, 1 (13), 16 May 1918, p 150.

Edwin S. Montagu, An Indian Diary, ed Venetia Montagu, London: William Heineman, 1930, pp 9–10.

Montagu, An Indian Diary, p 8.

Montagu, An Indian Diary, p 122.

Montagu, An Indian Diary, p 236.

Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1918.

‘The reform scheme’, New India, 10 July 1919, p 3.

Annie Besant, ‘The Montagu–Chelmsford proposals’, New India (Mail edition), 8 July 1918, p 1.

Published in ‘The reform proposals – a manifesto’, New India, 9 July 1918, p 3.

‘Surendranath Banerjea to Srinivasa Sastri, 18 July 1918’, SOIS Papers, Subject File 14.

The Servant of India, 1 (23), 25 July 1918, p 265.

For an analysis of opinions, see ‘Opinions on the reforms: an analysis’, New India, 16 July 1918, p 3.

Letter from the Government of India, dated 5 March 1919, and Enclosures, on the Questions Raised in the Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms, London: His Majesty’s Stationery Service, 1919, pp 2–3.

‘A fresh start’, Servant of India, 1 (5), 21 March 1918, p 2.

‘A fresh start’, p 2.

Tilak had originally advised this course of action in his 1907 speech to the Indian National Congress. He had stated: “I say I want the whole bread and that immediately. But if I cannot get the whole, don’t think that I have no patience. I will take the half they give me and then try for the remainder. This is the line of thought and action in which you must train yourself.” See Bal Gangadhar Tilak, ‘Address to the Indian National Congress, 1907’, in William T. de Bary, Stephen Hay, Royal Weiler and Andrew Yarrow, Sources of Indian Tradition, New York: Columbia University Press, 1958, p 722.

V.S. Srinvasa Sastri, ‘The coming proposals: our attitude towards them’, Servant of India, 1 (20), 4 July 1918, pp 232–235.

Servant of India, 1 (19), 27 June 1918, pp 217–218.

Madhan Mohan Malaviya was closer to Sastri’s personal view that moderates must attend the Congress session and prevent a wholesale rejection of the scheme. See M.A. Parmanand, Mahamana Madan Mohan Malaviya: A Historical Biography, Allahabad: Malaviya Adhyayan Sansthan, Banaras Hindu University, p 364.

See Sastri, ‘My Master Gokhale’, p 92.

Sastri and Paranjpe, 23 July 1918, R.P. Paranjpe Papers, Correspondence: V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, f 5, NMML.

‘A letter from London’, Servant of India, 1 (31), 19 September 1918, p 369.

Servant of India, 1 (29), 5 September 1918, p 338.

‘The wing and the whirlwind’, Servant of India, 1 (26), 15 August 1918, pp 303–305.

‘Choice of the S.I.S.’, Servant of India, 1 (27), 22 August 1918, pp 315; ‘The Congress of moderates’, Servant of India, 1 (27), 22 August 1918, pp 314–315.

See Paramanand, Malaviya, p 367.

‘Report of the 1918 Special Session’, All India Congress Committee Papers (Ist Instalment), File 8–9/1918, NMML.

Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill, Vol I – Report and Proceedings of the Committee, London: His Majesty’s Stationery Service, 1919, p 189.

Servant of India, 1 (12), 9 May 1918, p 134.

Servant of India, 1 (44), 19 December 1918, p 519.

Report of the Proceedings of the First Session of the All-India Conference of the Moderate Party, 1–2 November, Bombay: Times Press, 1919.

Paramanand, Malaviya, p 367.

Servant of India, 1 (44), 19 December 1918, p 509.

Servant of India, 2 (1), 6 February 1918, p 1; Servant of India, 1 (47), 9 January 1918; ‘The Delhi Congress’, Servant of India, 1 (46), 2 January 1919, pp 548–551.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Speeches and Writings of the Right Honourable V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Vol 1, Madras: G. Natesan, 1924, pp 161–162.

Sastri, Speeches and Writings, pp 135–140.

Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, reprint, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1948, p 560.

Letter from the Government of India, Dated 5 March 1919, and Enclosures.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 28 May 1919, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 32.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 28 May 1919, f 32; Diary 1919, 25 May 1919, VSS Papers (I).

‘Indians gather in force. Great assembling in London. Reformers and their outlook’, Pall Mall Gazette, 18 August 1919, p 4.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 4 June 1919, VSS Papers, Subject File 5, f 35.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 28 May 1919, f 32.

In Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 77. Also see ‘Another Ireland: penalty of refusing India self-government’, Leeds Mercury, 2 July 1919, p 19.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 3 September 1919, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 4; f 98.

Sastri to Vaze, 29 May 1919, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 41; Sastri to Ramaswami, 27 August 1919, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 51.

See Secretary of State, ‘Government of India Bill’, House of Commons, 5 June 1919, Hansard, Vol 116, https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1919-06-05/debates/7d9f8350-7aeb-4f39-99af-b64d90a621a1/GovernmentOfIndiaBill, accessed 3 March 2020.

Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill.

Sastri to Vaze, 28 May 1919, Sub File 5, f 33.

Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill, pp 292–314.

Towards the end he got into a testy exchange with Sydenham and Selborne. See Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill, pp 326–327.

See ‘From an unspecified friend in Kondana Rao’, Sastri, p 77; Sastri to Ramaswami, 14 August 1919, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 46; Montagu, An Indian Diary, p 122.

Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill, p 250.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 17 August 1919, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 4; f 86.

Pandian, Brahmin and Non-Brahmin, p 68.

See Reddi’s testimony from pp 258–276 and Rayaningar’s testimony from pp 276–285 in Joint Select Committee report.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 14 August 1919, f 46.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 31 January 1918, Sub File 5, f 12, VSS Papers; Sastri to D.V. Gundappa, 28 August 1927, f 99; Correspondence, VSS Papers, Ist Inst.

Sastri to Venkatasubbiah, 27 August 1919, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 53.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 17 August 1919, f 86.

Reproduced in Servant of India, 2 (48), 1 January 1920, p 575.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 17 August 1919, f 86.

G.A. Natesan, ‘The Rt. Hon. VS Srinivasa Sastri’, VSS Papers (II), Speeches and writings about him by others, S No 2, f 47.

‘Thirty Fourth Session of the Indian National Congress, Amritsar, December 27–30, 1919’, in A.M. Zaidi (ed) The Encyclopedia of Indian National Congress, Volume Seven: 1916–1920, New Delhi: S. Chand, 1979, pp 454–455.

‘The Reform Bill: Mr. Sastri’s views’, Servant of India, 2 (48), 1 January 1920, p 574.

‘Thirty Fourth Session of the Indian National Congress’, p 454.

‘Presidential address by Pt. Motilal Nehru’, pp 470–525 and ‘Resolutions adopted by the Congress’, in Zaidi (ed) Encyclopedia of the Indian National Congress, pp 526–539.

See Report of the Proceedings of the First Session of the All India Conference of the Moderate Party’, Calcutta, 1 and 2 November 1918, Bombay: Times Press, 1919, p 29; and Report of the Proceedings of the Second Session of the All India Conference of the Moderate Party, Calcutta, 30 and 31 December 1919, Calcutta: Sanskrit Press, 1920, pp 22, 115.

In the 1911 census, Indians constituted 28 per cent of the total population of the town.

Extracts reproduced in C.F. Andrews, Documents Relating to the New Asiatic Bill and the Alleged Breach of Faith, Cape Town: Cape Times, 1926, p 21.

Quoted in Ronald Hyam, ‘Smuts in context: Britain and South Africa’, in Understanding the British Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp 342–360, at 346.

Isaria N. Kimbambo, Gregory H. Madox and Salvatory S. Nyanto, A New History of Tanzania, Dar-es-Salam: Mkuki Na Nyota, 2017, p 18.

W. Keith Hancock, Smuts: The Sanguine Years, 1870–1919, Vol 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962, pp 556–557.

As a retaliatory measure the government declared that no South African company would be given mining concessions in Burma. See Hugh Tinker, Separate and Unequal: India and the Indians in the British Commonwealth, 1920–1950, London: Oxford University Press, 1971, p 32.

‘Indians in South Africa: deputation to the Secretary of State’, in The Indian Annual Register 1920, Vol 2, ed H.N. Mitra, New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 2000, pp 333–334.

‘Indians in South Africa’, p 335.

‘A Hirtzel to Undersecretary of State, Colonial Office, Confidential and Immediate, 26 July 1919’, National Archives Repository/Sentrale Argiefbewaarplek (SAB), Governor General (1905–1974) (GG), Vol 707, National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria (henceforth NASA).

Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, p 120; for South Africa’s views on this, see SAB, GG, Vol 907.

Quoted in, Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, p 20.

See Vineet Thakur, Postscripts on Independence, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp 169–170; ‘Indian Information Index, January–June 1941’, Vol 8, New Delhi: Bureau of Public Information, Government of India, 1941, p 300. For an extended discussion on Bajpai’s pre-independence role, see Amit Das Gupta, ‘Indian civil service and Indian foreign policy’, in Madhavan K. Palat (ed) India and the World in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, London: Routledge, 2017, pp 134–159.

Bajpai to Sapru, 19 April 1921, IOR Neg 4986 – The Sapru correspondence: letters to and from Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru (1872–1949), 1st series, Reel 1 (A–G), IOR&PP, British Library, B 6, f 14–16.

Bajpai to Sapru, 28 April 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B 7, f 17–19.

Vajapeyeam Venkatasubbaiyah was a Servant of Society member from Madras, and also headed the Madras chapter of the society.

Sastri to Suryanarayana Rao, 9 June 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 76–77.

‘Srinivasa Sastri: Statesman, Scholar, Ascetic’, The Week (Brisbane), 30 June 1922, p 25.

Sastri to Venkatasubbaiyah, 26 May 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 73.

Bajpai to Sapru, 9 June 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B 12, f 31–32.

Bajpai to Sapru, 11 May 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B.9, f 26–27.

Sastri to Suryanarayana Rao, 9 June 1921, f 76–77; Sastri, Diary 1921: 7 June, VSS Papers (1).

Chamberlain to Hilda, 18 June 1921, in Robert Self (ed) The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters: Volume 2, The Reform Years, 1921–27, London: Routledge, 2000, p 65.

Bajpai to Sapru, 15 June 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B 13, f 33–34.

‘The Punjab Reports’, in The Indian Annual Register 1921, Part I, ed H.N. Mitra, 2nd edn, Calcutta: Annual Register Office, 1921, p 106.

‘The Non-Cooperation Agitation’, The Indian Annual Register 1921, p 193.

Sastri to Paranjpe, 24 July 1921, RP Paranjpe Papers, Correspondence: VS Srinivasa Sastri, NMML, f 8–11.

D.V. Gundappa on Sastri, VSS Papers (I), Writings by others: D.V. Gundappa.

Annie Besant, ‘The special congress’, Servant of India, 3 (33), 16 September 1920, pp 389–390.

W. Keith Hancock, Smuts: The Fields of Force, 1919–1950, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp 89, 100.

O. Geyser, ‘Irish independence: Jan Smuts and Eamon de Valera’, Round Table, 87 (348), 1998, pp 473–484.

Jean Van der Poel (ed), Selections from Smuts Papers, Vol V, September 1919–November 1934, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp 83–107.

Van der Poel, Selections from Smuts Papers, p 99.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 16 June 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 81,

Bajpai to Montagu, MSS Eur 238/3, 1921, IOR&PP, BL, p. 189; Sastri to Ramaswami, 16 June 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 81.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 16 June 1921, f 81.

Sastri to Sankaran, 7 July 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 80.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 30 June 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 82.

Secretary of State to Viceroy, 20 June 1921, IOR/L/E7/1242, F No 2547, IOR&PP.

Quoted in Bajpai to Montagu, MSS Eur 238/3, p 189.

E – Second Meeting, Imperial Conference 1921, SAB, A1, A1/35, NASA, 1921, p 9.

E – Second Meeting, pp 9–10.

E – Second Meeting, p 17.

‘Government of India memorandum on India in the dominions’, in The Indian Annual Register 1922, Vol 2, ed H.N. Mitra, Calcutta: Annual Register Office, 1923, pp 212–216.

E – Nineteenth Meeting, The Imperial Conference 1921, SAB, A1, A1/35, NASA, p 6.

Sastri, Diary 1921: 21 June.

Bajpai to Montagu, MSS Eur 238/3, p 189.

Bajpai to Montagu, MSS Eur 238/3, p 192.

Sastri to Sankaran, 7 July 1919, f 80–81.

Sastri to Sankaran, 7 July 1921, f 80–81.

This had in particular been a consistent theme of Charles Andrews’ writings in 1920–21, which influenced young radicals like Jawaharlal Nehru. See Charles Andrews, How India Can Be Free, Madras: Cambridge University Press, 1921; Charles Andrews, Indian Independence: The Immediate Need, Madras: S. Ganesan, 1921; Charles Andrews, The Indian Problem, Madras: G. Natesan, 1921, Charles Andrews, The Claim for Independence: Within or without the British Empire, Madras: S. Ganesan, 1921; also see S.R. Mehrotra, ‘Gandhi and the British Commonwealth’, India Quarterly, 17 (1), 1961, pp 44–57.

E – Nineteenth Meeting, p 6.

E – Nineteenth Meeting, p 7.

Sastri to Sankaran, 10 July 1921, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, pp 216–217.

Bajpai to Sapru, 14 July 1921, IOR Neg 4986, f 9–10; ‘Srinivasa Sastri: statesman, scholar, ascetic. India’s distinguished delegate’, Argus (Melbourne), 10 June 1922, p 6.

Bajpai to Montagu, MSS Eur 238/3, p 192.

E (SC) – Fourth Meeting, The Imperial Conference 1921, SAB, A1, A1/35, NASA, p 3.

E (SC) – Fourth Meeting, p 3.

E (SC) – Fourth Meeting, p 8.

E (SC) – Fourth Meeting, p 8.

E (SC) – Fourth Meeting, p 9.

Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p 302.

E (SC) – Fourth Meeting, p 10.

Van der Poel, Selections from Smuts Papers, V, p 152.

E (SC) – Fourth Meeting, p 11.

E (SC) – Fourth Meeting, p 13.

Bajpai to Montagu, MSS Eur 238/3, p 193.

Sastri, Diary 1921: 15 July.

Bajpai to Montagu, Mss Eur 238/3, p 193. For Montagu–Churchill discussions see Winston Churchill Papers, CHAR/17/7, f 61; 76–81, 95–102, 104–105, 112–115, Churchill College Library, Cambridge University.

Sastri to Vaman Rao, 28 July 1921, f 87; Sastri to Sankaran, 21 July 1921, f 86, both in VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5.

Sastri to Vaze, 21 July 1921, f 84; Sastri to Sankaran, 21 July 1921, f 86, both in VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5.

Quoted in Bajpai to Montagu, MSS Eur 238/3, p 195.

Bajpai to Montagu, MSS Eur 238/3, p 197.

Sastri, Diary 1921: 2 August 1921.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 4 August 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 89.

‘Indian rights of citizenship: a step forward’, The Times, 9 August 1921, p 7.

‘Racial equality or arrogance?’, Bombay Chronicle, 13 August 1921.

Montagu to Churchill, 21 July 1921, CHAR/17/7, f 102.

‘Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri. Visit to New Zealand. Orator and statesman’, The Press, 20 April 1922, p 11.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 30 June 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 79.

‘Empire parliaments. Dominion premiers at the House of Lords’, Otago Daily Times, 5 September 1921.

Sastri, ‘The Guildhall speech’, in Natesan (ed) Speeches and Writings, p 189.

‘Our London letter’, The Tribune, 23 June 1921, p 2.

For criticism of the speech, see Taher S. Mahomed, ‘The Indian situation’, Bombay Chronicle, 9 August 1921, p 9.

Sastri, Diary 1921: 25 May; Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, pp 53–54; Bajpai to Sapru, 26 May 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B 10, f 28–29.

Bajpai to Sapru, 26 May 1921, f 28–29.

Sastri, Diary 1921: 5 June; Sastri to Venkatasubbaiyah, 26 May 1921, f 73; Sastri to Ramaswami, 26 May 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 74; Sastri’s address in Shakespeare Hut, 25 May, Weekly Report of the Director, Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, Government of India, Simla, 29 June 1921, Home Department, Political B, Proceedings June 1921, No 287, National Archives, New Delhi, p 2.

Sastri, Diary 1921: 27 July.

H. Wilson Harris, Geneva 1921: An Account of the Second Assembly of the League of Nations, London: Daily News and League of Nations Union, 1921, p 3.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 7 September 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 96.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 7 September 1921, f 96.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 7 September 1921, f 96.

‘What the League is doing. Notable speeches’, The Times, 20 September 1921, p 9; Bajpai to Sapru, 16 September 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B 21, f 51–52.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 7 September 1921, f 96.

Bajpai to Sapru, 16 September 1921, IOR Neg 4986, f 51–53.

H. Wilson Harris quoted in Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 109.

Sastri, ‘Speech at the League of Nations’, in Natesan (ed) Speeches and Writings, p 195.

Sastri, ‘Speech at the League of Nations’, p 196.

Sastri, ‘Speech at the League of Nations’, p 198.

Sastri, ‘Speech at the League of Nations’, p 204.

Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, pp 43–44.

Bajpai to Sapru, 16 September 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B 21, f 51–52.

Wilson Harris, ‘Outward bound’.

See Aiyar, ‘Rt. Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastri’, pp 537–546.

‘What the League is doing. Notable speeches’, p 9.

Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium 1921, Report of Dr. Wellington Koo, C 191 (a) M 133, 1921, XI, League of Nations; Report of the Delegates of India to the Second Session of the Assembly of the League of Nations, Delhi: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922, p 125.

Bajpai to Sapru, 16 September 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B 21, f 51–53.

Report of the Delegates of India, p 38.

Sastri to Sankaran, 16 September 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 99.

Report of the Delegates of India, pp 36–37.

Sastri to Vaman Rao, 22 September 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 96.

Report of the Delegates of India, p 38.

In a final compromise, Sastri agreed to an appended statement of China (and Siam) to the sub-committee’s report. Report of the Delegates of India, pp 125–127.

Bajpai to Sapru, 22 September 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B 22, f 53–54.

Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, p 46.

Bajpai to Sapru, 6 October 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B 27, f 57–58.

See ‘The delegation to Washington’, Manchester Guardian, 23 September 1921, L/E/7/1230, IOR&PP.

See Michael Graham, ‘The Pacific dominions and the Washington Conference, 1921–1922’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 4 (3), 1993, pp 60–101 at 69.

South Africa had no interest in the Pacific, hence asked Balfour to represent the country.

Some Montagu letters, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, pp 55–56.

Sastri to Rukmini, 27 October 1921, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, pp 17–172.

Judith Woods, ‘Edward, Prince of Wales’s tour of India, October 1921–March 1922’, Court Historian, 5 (3), 2000, pp 217–221.

Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, pp 28–29; Sastri to Ramaswami, 17 November 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 114.

See Report on the political situation in India during the month of November 1921, Home Department, Political Branch, File no 18, NAI.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 5 October 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 99.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 20 October 1921, f 109 and Sastri to Ramaswami, 12 October 1921, f 107, both in VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5.

Sastri to Rukmini, 27 October 1921, p 171.

Bajpai to Walton, 2 November 1921, MSS EUR D 545/1, IOR&PP.

Sastri to Sankar, 3 November 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 111.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 2 November 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5.

Bajpai to Walton, 2 November 1921.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 11 November 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 113.

‘Wells and Edison fear greed and bias will menace parley’, Washington Times, 6 November 1921, p 1.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 11 November 1921, f 113.

‘Harding’s tribute to unknown hero’, Standard Union, 11 November 1921, p 1; ‘Unknown soldier sleeps at Arlington’, Baltimore Sun, 11 November 1921, p 1.

H.G. Wells, ‘German and Russian war dead will be mourned by all’, Baltimore Sun, 11 November 1921, p 1.

Diary 1921: 11 November.

Mark Sullivan, The Great Adventure at Washington: The Story of the Conference, New York: Doubleday Page and Company, 1922, pp 1–2.

This included the president, the four members of the American delegation and four naval experts.

Charles Repington, After the War; London–Paris–Rome–Athens–Prague–Vienna–Budapest–Bucharest–Berlin–Sofia–Coblenz–New York–Washington; a Diary, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922, p 432; Thomas Bailey, A Diplomatic History of American People, 10th edn, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1980, p 640.

Repington, After the War, p 433.

Ring Lardner quoted in Sullivan, The Great Adventure at Washington, p 67.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 17 November 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 114,

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Impressions of America’, Servant of India, 5 (13), 27 April 1922, pp 150–151.

See British Empire Delegation Conference: Minutes 48–73, CAB – 30/1A, Cabinet Papers, The National Archives, London.

Enclosure 1: The Right Hon. V.S.S. Sastri to Secretary of State for India, I&O 2641/1921, L/E/7/1245, IOR&PP.

Wickham Steed, ‘Sees momentous events at next plenary session: British editor here raps Prophets of Failure for Parley’, Washington Herald, 1 December 1921, p 3.

Quoted in Sullivan, The Great Adventure at Washington, p 58.

Quoted in Sullivan, The Great Adventure at Washington, p 52.

Sullivan, The Great Adventure at Washington, p 53.

Sullivan, The Great Adventure at Washington, pp 63–64.

Minutes of Meetings, AC 1–10, p 31, CAB 30/9.

Sullivan, The Great Adventure at Washington, pp 83–84.

Air power was also discussed, but it was still considered a technology of the future, hence any consensus was unlikely.

In addition, Japan replaced one specific ship, the Mutsu, with another, the Settsu. America agreed to Japan’s demands on the condition that Hawaii was exempted, and that all other powers which had signed the Quadruple Treaty would also accept the status quo. Report by G.S. Bajpai, 22 December 1921, I&O 23/1922, L/E/7/1245, IOR&PP; and Sadao Asada, ‘From Washington to London: the Imperial Japanese Navy and the politics of naval limitation, 1921–1930’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 4 (3), 1993, pp 147–191 at 154.

Sullvan, The Great Adventure at Washington, p 157.

Minutes of Meetings, AC 1–10, pp 78–86, CAB 30/9.

Report by G.S. Bajpai, 22 December 1921.

Minutes of Meetings, AC 1–10, pp 78–86, CAB 30/9.

As the New York Herald called the submarine. See Sullivan, The Great Adventure at Washington, p 168.

Memorandum by the Standing Sub-Committee: The Washington Conference on Limitations of Armaments, Secret 280-B, October 1921, p 5, CAB 30/1A.

Fourteenth Conference of British Empire Delegation, Held at the British Embassy, Washington, on Monday, 19 December 1921, CAB 30-1A.

Report by G.S. Bajpai,12 January 1922, I&O 23/1922, L/E/7/1245.

Enclosure 1: The Right Hon. V.S.S. Sastri to Secretary of State for India, I&O 2641/1921, L/E/7/1245, pp 5–6.

These were the words of Japan’s Navy Minister, Kato Tomosaburo. See Asada, ‘From Washington to London’, p 149.

Frederick McCormick, The Menace of Japan, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1917; Walter Pitkin, Must We Fight Japan? New York: The Century Company, 1921; Sidney Osborns, The New Japanese Peril, New York: Macmillan, 1921; Jesse F. Steiner, Japanese Invasion: A Study in the Psychology of Interracial Contacts, Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1917.

Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of American People, p 638; Sadao Asada, Culture Shock and Japanese–American Relations, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007, p 36.

T. Fraser, ‘India in Anglo-Japanese relations during the First World War’, History, 63 (209), 1978, pp 366–382.

Enclosure 1: The Right Hon. V.S.S. Sastri to Secretary of State for India; Report by G.S. Bajpai, 7 December 1921, I&O 23/1922, L/E/7/1245.

‘India’s part in conference to be that of an onlooker’, Evening Star (Washington), 8 November 1921, p 4.

‘Behind the scenes at the nation’s capital’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 November 1921, p 10.

Edwin C. Hill, ‘Emancipation of races once ignored is strikingly shown in world gathering in the US capital – delegates expect to complete work before Christmas’, New York Herald, 1 December 1921, p 3.

Hill, ‘Emancipation of races’, p 3.

Hill, ‘Emancipation of races’, p 3.

Arthur S. Draper, ‘Britain sends a family party?’, New York Tribune, 6 November 1921, p 27.

H.G. Wells, ‘Urge consideration for India’s problem’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 December 1921, p 4.

‘Sastri to Rukmini, 27 October 1921’, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, p 171.

‘India strong for peace, says Sastri’, Washington Herald, 9 November 1921, p 4; ‘Britain would limit armament to point of nation’s safety’, Philadelphia Enquirer, 2 November 1921, p 3.

‘Japan. Confidential: racial discrimination and immigration, 10 October’, I&O 2334/1921, L/E/7/1239, IOR&PP, pp 1, 22.

Louis Kershaw, Note on 15 October 1921, I&P 2267/1921, L/E/7/1234, IOR&PP; also F.W. Duke, Note on 14 November 1921, I&P 2267/1921, L/E/7/1234, IOR&PP.

‘Prince Sastri to talk on Oriental affairs’, Washington Times, 22 January 1922, p 3; ‘Foreign envoys will meet Red Cross leaders: arms delegates accept invitations to gathering at Shubert–Garrick theater’, Washington Times, 12 November 1921, p 12.

David L. Blumenfeld, ‘Washington now “wetter” than European capitals; and envoys shoot craps!’, Brooklyn Daily Times, 1 January 1922, p 18.

‘Dark propaganda clouds hover over arms parley’, Washington Herald, 9 December 1921, p 2.

William K. Hutchison, envoy of India likens Gandhi to Roosevelt’, Washington Times, 27 November 1921, p 5.

‘Says India will speak as co-equal partner in 10 years’, Baltimore Sun, 14 December 1921, p 9; also ‘Predicts India will win autonomy’, New York Times, 14 December 1921, p 12; ‘India really in the conference’, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 15 December 1921, p 6; ‘Speaks to club on India: can be saved only by dominion government, Sastri says’, Washington Post, 31 January 1922, p 12.

‘Conditions in India described’, Caledion-Record (Vermont), 14 September 1922, pp 1, 4; ‘Likens Gandhi to Christ’, Los Angeles Times, 29 July 1922, p 29; P.W. Wilson, ‘“The things that are Caesar’s”’, New York Times, 9 April 1922, p 62.

‘Predicts India will win autonomy’, p 12.

‘Gandhi urges back to nature, lives along the lines he teaches’, Evening Star (Washington), 20 March 1922, p 17.

‘Predicts India will win autonomy’, p 12.

See in particular the coverage of Bombay Chronicle, in Report on Native Papers for the Week Ending 5 November 1921, jstor.org/stable/10.2307/saoa.crl.25637246, 21 March 2020, p 1289; Report on Native Papers for the Week Ending 19 November 1921, jstor.org/stable/10.2307/saoa.crl.25637248, 21 March 2020, pp 1359–1360.

‘British rule in India has a harsh critic’, Altooba Tribune (Pennsylvania), 22 December, p 1; ‘British rule criticized by a speaker from India’, New York Tribune, 22 December 1921, p 2.

See Bose, Indian Revolutionaries Abroad; Ramnath, Haj to Utopia.

Taraknath Das, ‘India and the conference’, San Francisco Examiner, 2 November 1921, p 26.

Taraknath Das, Is Japan a Menace to Asia?, Shanghai: Author, 1917.

Das, Is Japan a Menace to Asia?, p 55.

Das, Is Japan a Menace to Asia?, p 79.

‘“Republicans” of India plan boycott on Japanese goods as well British imports’, Democrat and Chronicle, 1 November 1921, p 1; ‘India boycotts Japanese goods to fight Britain’, Washington Times, 6 November 1921, p 7.

Das, ‘India and the conference’.

Taraknath Das, Sailendranath Ghose, Sarat Mukherji, Nani Gopal Bose and Haridas Gayadeen, ‘A protest against the torture of war prisoners in India, 7 December 1921’, South Asian American Digital Archive, www.saada.org/item/20130131-1285, accessed 16 November 2019.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 24 November 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 115–116.

‘Indian delegate is heckled here’, New York Times, 29 January 1922, p 25.

For a good discussion on the constant maneuvers of strategy that both sides engaged in see, D.A. Low, ‘The government of India and the first non-cooperation movement’, Journal of Asian Studies, 25 (2), 1966, pp 241–259.

D.G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Vol 2 (1920–29), New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, p 104.

G.L. Corbett to J.C. Walton, 25 November 1921, I&O 2620/1921, L/E/7/1239, IOR&PP.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 30 December 1921, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 118.

Quoted in ‘A distinguished visitor’, Evening Post, 11 July 1922, p 6.

Bajpai to Sapru, 17 November 1921, IOR Neg 4986, B 21, f 61–62.

Bajpai to Sapru, 17 November 1921, B 21, f 61–62.

M. Jeffrey Brenner, Structure of Decision: Indian Foreign Policy Bureaucracy, New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1983, p 79.

‘Mr. Sastri’s view: effects of N.C.O., the British attitude’, Times of India, 18 February 1922, p 9.

Waley, Edwin Montagu, p 269.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 23 February 1922, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 119–120.

Sastri, Diary 1921: 11 August; Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, p 30.

For his views on Montagu, see V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Montagu memorial lecture’, Bombay: Committee of the Montagu Memorial Fund, 1925, p 28.

‘Further constitutional advance: Mr. Sastri’s speech’, Servant of India, 5 (15), 11 May 1922, pp 178–179.

Reading to Peel, 22 June 1922, MS EUR 238/5, f 70, IOR&PP.

‘West’s clash with the East’, Daily Mail, 15 May 1922, p 10.

‘India’s place in the empire: Mr. Sastri’s speech’, Servant of India, 5 (16), 18 May 1922, pp 189–191 at 191. Later in his memoirs, Sastri argued that even though he stood by what he said, his conduct was inappropriate for the occasion. See Sastri, ‘If I live again’, VSS Papers (I), Speeches/Writings by Him, S No 82, f 162–163.

A. Aravauda Aiyagar, ‘Our Indian visitor: the Rt. Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, a character sketch’, Daily News (Perth), 1 June 1922, p 3 (this article was reproduced from New India, 5 April 1922).

Aiyagar, ‘Our Indian visitor’, p. 3.

The Indian Sociologist: An Organ of Freedom, and of Political, Social and Religious Reform, 13 (1), August 1922, p 2, in Syud Hossain Papers, Periodicals, S No 3, NMML.

Whip, ‘From the desk’, Hindustan Review, 44 (264), September 1921, p 7.

‘Notes of the day’, Bombay Chronicle, 13 October 1921.

Sastri to G.A. Natesan, 8 March 1922, VSS Papers (II), Correspondence: G.A. Natesan.

‘The servant in a temper’, Indian Social Reformer, 33 (34), 23 April 1922, pp 579–580.

Bajpai to Sapru, 31 May 1922, IOR Neg 4986, Reel 1 (A–G), IOR&PP.

G.S. Bajpai, ‘Report to the Secretary of State’, MSS EUR 238/3, p 197.

Secretary of State to Viceroy, 20 June 1921, F No 2547, IOR/L/E7/1242.

Bajpai, ‘Report to the Secretary of State’, p 197.

Sastri was also expected to go to Fiji alongside the dominion tour which he later cancelled, preferring to return on a short break to India instead.

Sastri to Montagu, 29 August 1921 and 19 September 1921, F No 2547, IOR/L/E7/1242.

Sastri to Montagu, 29 August 1921, F No 2547, IOR/L/E7/1242.

‘Question of Mr. Sastri’s deputation in Canada, New Zealand and Australia to consult with governments of these countries as to the translation into practice of the imperial conference resolution on Indians in the empire’, 3 February 1922, IOR/L/E/7/1242, F No 2547.

On the SS Ormonde: www.ssmaritime.com/RMS-Ormonde.htm, accessed 22 June 2018.

‘Brief of instructions for the Right Honourable Srinivasa Sastri’, F No 2547, IOR/L/E/7/1242.

Sastri to Rukmini, 13 March 1922, VSS Papers (II), Correspondence: Rukmini.

Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Colour Line, p 2.

Further, the brief of instructions to Sastri asked him to obtain more information on: the attitude of Australia towards Anglo-Indian immigrants and the possibility of permitting some Asiatic immigrants into the tropical regions of Australia.

A.D. Ellis, ‘Srinivasa Sastri: a racial ambassador; visit to Australia’, Argus (Melbourne), 27 May 1922, p 6.

Ellis, ‘Srinivasa Sastri’, p 6.

Ellis, ‘Srinivasa Sastri’, p 6.

‘The Right Hon. V.S. Sastri: a distinguished indian. Visit to Adelaide’, Chronicle (Adelaide), 10 June 1922, p 42.

‘Mr. Sastri arrives. A striking personality’, Advertiser (Adelaide), 7 June 1922, p 9.

V.S. Srininasa Sastri, ‘Report by the Right Hon’ble V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, P.C., regarding his deputation to the dominions of Australia, New Zealand and Canada’, Simla: Government Central Press, 1923, p 7.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Speech at Perth’, in Natesan (ed) Speeches and Writings, p 257.

Sastri, ‘Speech at Perth’, p 258.

Sastri, ‘Speech at Perth’, pp 258–259.

Sastri, ‘Speech at Perth’, pp 254–265.

Sastri, ‘Speech at Perth’, p 267; ‘Indians in Australia. Mr. Sastri pleads their case’, in ‘Dr. Sastri visit to Australia’, WA 22/348, A1, 1923/7187, National Archives of Australia (henceforth NAA).

‘Grievances: points to visitor’, in A1, 1923/7187, WA 22/348, A1, 1923/7187, NAA; Bajpai to J. Hullah, 3 June 1922, in Sapru Correspondence, 2nd Series, Reel 1, B6.

‘India’s delegate. Mr. Sastri’s visit. Stirring speeches’, West Australian (Perth), 3 June 1922, p 8.

‘Mr. Sastri’s visit. To the editor’, West Australian (Perth), 13 June 1922, p 10.

‘Mr. Sastri’, Advertiser (Adelaide), 8 June 1922, p 12.

‘Mr. Sastri’s visit’, Queenslander (Brisbane), 1 July 1922, p 9.

‘Full Status’, Evening Star, 12 July 1922, p 3.

‘Full status’, p 3.

A.G. Stephens, ‘Indians in Australia. The Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri’, Northern Champion (NSW), 29 July 1922, p 2.

Stephens, ‘Indians in Australia’, p 2; also see ‘A distinguished visitor’, Manawatu Daily Times, 13 July 1922, p 4.

‘Servant of India’, New Zealand Herald, 16 May 1922, p 5.

‘Notes of the day. Mr. Srinivasa Sastri’s visit’, Daily Mail (Brisbane), 5 June 1922, p 6.

For debates on this in Australian newspapers, see Matthew Cranston, ‘Tropical Australia’, Register (Adelaide), 7 January 1922; ‘Coloured labour: for the Northern Territory’, The Journal (Adelaide), 10 January 1922, p 3 (comments from: F.W. Birrell, John. H. Packard and Matthew Cranston); Matthew Cranston, ‘White Australia and coloured labour’, Register (Adelaide), 10 February 1922, p 3; ‘White Australia and coloured labour’, Register (Adelaide), 27 March 1922, p 5; Matthew Cranston, ‘White Australia and coloured labour’, Register (Adelaide), 7 June 1922, p 9; Matthew Cranston, ‘White Australia and coloured labour’, Register (Adelaide), 7 June 1922; Matthew Cranston, ‘White Australia and coloured labour’, Register (Adelaide), 16 June 1922, p 4; Arch McDonald, ‘Mr. Sastri and White Australia’, 26 June 1922, p 9.

Matthew Cranston, ‘White Australia and coloured labour’, Register (Adelaide), 16 June 1922, p 4.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Confidential report by the Rt. Hon’ble V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, P.C. regarding his deputation to the dominions’, Simla: Government Central Press, 1923, p 5.

‘Srinivasa Sastri welcomed to Melbourne; interesting interview, patience and resignation India’s national character’, Ballarat Star (Victoria), 12 June 1922, p 3.

‘Indians’ status. Appeal for equality. Mr. Sastri in Melbourne’, Brisbane Courier, 13 June 1922, p 10; ‘Equality for Indians. Mr. Sastri’s appeal’, Daily News (Perth), 13 June 1922, p 5.

‘Labour and Mr. Sastri’, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 22 June 1922, p 8; also Sastri, ‘Confidential report’, p 4.

‘Srinivasa Sastri. In Sydney today. Claims of Indians’, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 14 June 1922, p 6.; ‘India’s aims. Mr. Sastri at Trades Hall. Officials ask questions’, Argus (Melbourne), 14 June 1922, p 11.

‘What is the Sastri move?’, Daily Standard (Brisbane), 21 June 1922, p 4.

‘What is the Sastri move?’, p 4.

‘Indians and the empire’, New Zealand Herald, 19 July 1922, p 8; ‘Mr. Sastri’s mission’, Evening Star, 11 July 1922, p 4.

‘Mr. Sastri’, Advertiser (Adelaide), 8 June 1922, p 12.

A.G. Stephens, ‘Indians in Australia’, p 2.

‘What’s Sastri’s game? Indian tiger on the prowl, in Australia with sheathed claws. An enemy invited by W.M. Hughes’, Smith’s Weekly (Sydney), 17 June 1922, in A1, 1923/7187, 22/10271, NAA.

‘G.S. Bajpai to J.C. Walton, 7 June 1922’, MSS Eur D. 545/1, IORPP, BL.

Sastri, ‘Report’, pp 12–13.

‘Sastri’s mission. Australia’s position. Letter from Mr. Hughes’, Brisbane Courier (Queensland), 16 September 1922, p 7.

Sastri, ‘Report’, p. 4.

Dorothy Evelyn Walker, ‘Srinivasa Sastri and his dominion tour of 1922, MA Thesis, University of London, 1976’, MSS EUR Photo EUR 299, IOR&PP, p 26. Also see Margaret Allen, ‘“I am a British subject”: Indians in Australia claiming their rights, 1880–1940’, History Australia, 15 (3), 2018, pp 499–518.

Walker, ‘Srinivasa Sastri’, p 26.

Sastri, ‘Report’, p. 8.

B.N. Sarma, ‘Appendix, 3 May 1922, pp 8–9’, in ‘Brief of Instructions for the Right Honourable Srinivasa Sastri’, IOR/L/E/7/1242, F No 2547.

Sastri, ‘Confidential report’, pp 5–6.

‘Mr. Sastry’s report on his deputation’, Indian Social Reformer, XXXII (28), 10 March 1922, p 443.

Brij Lal, ‘East Indians in British Columbia, 1904–1914: An Historical Study in Growth and Integration’, Master’s thesis, University of British Columbia, 1979.

Bruce Hutchinson, The Incredible Canadian: A Candid Portrait of Mackenzie King; His Works, His Times, and His Nation, New York: Longmans, Green and Co, 1953.

‘White Australia. Mr. Sastri’s visit to Canada’, The Australian (Perth), 17 November 1922, p 3.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 15 August 1922, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 5, f 124.

Sastri, ‘Confidential report’, p 6; Joseph Pope to MacKenzie King, 14 August 1922, f 67591–67598, MG26-J1. Volume/box number: 80, C-2248, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (Henceforth, LAC). Pope also thought that Sastri was playing a little bluff, for Sastri was too wise to engage in such a childish act. See Pope to Mackenzie King, 19 August 1922, f 67607–67610, C-2248.

Pope to Mackenzie King, 19 August 1922, f 67607–67610, C-2248, LAC.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 19 August 1922, VSS Papers (I), f 125, Subject File 5; Sastri, ‘Confidential report’, p 6.

‘Status of Indians. Mr. Sastri in British Columbia’, The Press, 23 August 1922, p 7.

Sastri, ‘Confidential report’, pp 6–7; Sastri to Ramaswami, 15 August 1922, f 124.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 15 August 1922, f 124.

Sastri, ‘Confidential report’, p 7.

Sastri, ‘Confidential report’, p 7.

‘Race and creed no barrier, says Sastri’, Vancouver Sun, 17 August 1922, p 1.

Walker, ‘Srinivasa Sastri’, p 27.

Sastri, ‘Speech at the Reform Club, Montreal, 1922’, in Natesan (ed) Writings and Speeches, p 300; ‘Sastri in Canada’, Brisbane Courier, 12 September 1922, p 7.

‘The higher imperialism’, Vancouver Sun, 25 August 1922, p 4.

Sastri, ‘Speech at the Reform Club, Montreal, 1922’, pp 300–304.

Ladner to Meighen, 19 September 1922, MG26-I. Volume/box number: 98, C-3455, f 056205-056206, LAC.

Bajpai to J.S. Walton, 17 September 1922; Sastri, ‘Confidential report’, p 8.

For these discussions, see Meighen Correspondence, C-3455, f 056187-056217, LAC.

Sastri, ‘Confidential report’, p 7.

Sastri, ‘Confidential report’, p 7.

Sastri, ‘Speech at the Canadian Club, 1922’, in Sastri, Writings and Speeches, pp 315–318, p at 317.

Sastri, ‘Report’, p 12.

Bajpai to J.S. Walton, 17 September 1922, F No 2547, IOR/L/E7/1242.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 126.

Peel to Reading, 3 October 1923, MSS 238/6, IOR&PP.

H.S.L. Polak, ‘Mr. Sastri and his mission’, pp 194–196.

‘Notes and news’, Indian Opinion, 34 (20), 25 August 1922, p 197.

‘Notes and news’, p 197.

Banarasi Das Chaturvedi to Srinivasa Sastri, 6 October 1922, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: Banarasi Das Chaturvedi; Polak, ‘Mr. Sastri and his mission’.

M.K. Gandhi, ‘The Simla visit’, The Tribune, 1 June 1921, p 5.

Reproduced as Benarasi Das Chaturvedi, ‘Mr. Sastri’s tour’, Servant of India, 5 (17), 25 May 1922, p 203.

H.S.L. Polak, ‘Equal status: the next step’, Servant of India, 5 (16), 18 May 1922, pp 184–185.

‘The world’s public opinion’, Servant of India, 5 (11), 13 April 1922, p 122.

‘Mr. Sastry’s report on his deputation’, Indian Social Reformer, 32 (28), 10 March 1922, pp 443–445.

‘The Indians. Claim for equal status. Mr. Srinivasa Sastri speaks of his tour of the dominions’, Tweed Daily (Murwillumbah), 16 December 1922, p 5; ‘India and empire. Mr. Sastri’s mission’, Telegraph (Brisbane), 27 December 1922, p 2.

‘A remarkable statement. Sastri’s anti-British attitude’, Brisbane Courier, 14 September 1922, p 5.

Austen Chamberlain to Winston Churchill, 11 October 1922, Churchill Papers, CHAR 2/125/17.

Reading to Peel, 20 September 1921, MSS EUR 238/5, IOR&PP.

Kondana Rao, The Right Honourable, p 143.

‘A new massacre of S. Bartholomew in Kenya? Threats of white savages’, New India, 3 April 1923, in IOR/L/PO/6 (ii), f 150.

William M. Ross, Kenya from Within: A Short Political History, London: George Allen, 1922, p 362; Christopher P. Youe, ‘The threat of settler rebellion and the imperial predicament: the denial of Indian rights in Kenya, 1923’, Canadian Journal of History, 12 (3), 1968, pp 347–360 at 349.

C.J.D. Duder, ‘The settler response to the Indian crisis of 1923 in Kenya: brigadier general Philip Wheatley and “direct action”’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 17 (3), 1989, pp 349–373 at 360.

Ross, Kenya from Within, p 367; ‘Kenya’, in S.A. Waiz (ed) Indians Abroad, 2nd edn, Bombay: Imperial Indian Citizenship Association, 1927, p 12.

Ross, Kenya from Within, p 373; ‘The racial trouble in Kenya’, The Times, 23 January 1923, in IOR, L/PO/I/6 (iii).

See Youe, ‘The threat of settler rebellion’, p 350.

See in ‘Indians in Kenya: Memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies’, 14 February 1923, CAB/24/158, National Archives, London.

Ross, Kenya from Within, pp 375–376.

See Duder, ‘The settler response’, pp 362–363.

Duder, ‘The settler response’, pp 360–361, and Ross, Kenya from Within, pp 375–376.

Duder suggests that this was not considered to be practical. Instead, it was expected that strict rationing would push the Indians out of the Highlands.

For a brilliant discussion on the role of British Indian army veterans like Wheatley in the 1923 settler rebellion, see Duder, ‘The settler response’, pp 355–356.

Ross, Kenya from Within, pp 365–366.

Ross, Kenya from Within, p 370, Waiz, Indians Abroad, p 12.

Waiz, Indians Abroad, p 17.

Letter reproduced in Waiz, Indians Abroad, pp 19–20.

Sana Aiyar, Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015, p 25.

Ernst L. Bentley and Frederick Lugard, British East Africa and Uganda: A Historical Record compiled from Captain Lugard’s and Other Reports, London: Chapman and Hall, 1892, p 25.

See Aiyar, Indians in Kenya, pp 26–27.

Aiyar, Indians in Kenya, p 27.

Bentley and Lugard, British East Africa and Uganda, p 25.

Elspeth Huxley, White Man’s Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya, Volume I – 1870–1914, London: Macmillan, 1935, p 33.

Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Rhodesia, 1890–1939, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987, pp 2–8.

Levi I. Izuakor, ‘Kenya: demographic constraints on the growth of European settlement, 1900–1956’, Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 42 (3), 1987, pp 400–416 at 404.

A.J.P. Taylor, English History, 1914–45, Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1976, p 151.

Huxley, White Man’s Country, pp 107–109.

M.P.K. Sorrenson, Origins of European Settlement in Kenya, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968, p 230. Also see Brian M. Du Toit, The Boers in East Africa: Ethnicity and Identity, Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1998.

W. McGregor Ross, Director of Public Works (1905–1923), quoted in Izuakor, ‘Kenya’, p 406.

See C.J.D. Duder, “‘Men of the officer class”: the participants in the 1919 Soldier Settler Settlement Scheme in Kenya’, African Affairs, 92 (366), 1993, pp 69–87 at 70.

Kennedy, Islands of White, pp 2–8.

Quoted in Aiyar, Indians in Kenya, p 36.

Further, there were 2,431 Goans and 10,102 Arabs. See ‘Annual Report of the Social and Economic Progress of the People of the Kenya Colony and Protectorate, 1931’, Colonial Reports – Annual, No 1606, London: His Majesty’s Stationery Service, 1923, p 6, http://libsysdigi.library.illinois.edu/ilharvest/Africana/Books2011-05/5530244/5530244_1931/5530244_1931_opt.pdf, accessed 25 July 2019.

Robert G. Gregory, India and East Africa: A History of Race Relations within the British Empire, 1890–1939, New York: Oxford University Press, 1971, pp 182–183.

Waiz, Indians Abroad, p 4.

Waiz, Indians Abroad, p 5.

William K. Hancock, Survey of the British Commonwealth, 1918–39, Vol 1, London: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp 212–213.

Robert J. Blyth, The Empire of the Raj: Eastern Africa and the Middle East, 1858–1947, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp 95–96.

Theodore Morison, ‘A colony for India’, circulated by Edwin Montagu to the War Cabinet, CAB/24/58/32, National Archives, London.

Aga Khan, The Memories of Aga Khan: World Enough and Time, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954, p 35.

Morison, ‘A colony for India’.

Aga Khan, Memories, p 132.

Aga Khan, Memories, p 127.

Morison, ‘A colony for India’.

Aga Khan, Memories, p 127.

Aga Khan, Memories, p 127.

Aga Khan, Memories, pp 128–129.

Aga Khan, Memories, p 130.

See, D.M. Desai, ‘Indians in Kenya (British East Africa)’, Indian Review, 24 (5), May 1923, pp 354–358.

Blyth, The Empire of the Raj, p 120.

Whip, ‘From the desk’, p 5.

Gregory, India and East Africa, p 178.

Gregory, India and East Africa, pp 191–192, 195.

Montagu, ‘Grievance of Indians in Kenya: memo’, CAB 24/114/39.

Winston Churchill, My African Journey, Toronto: William Briggs, 1909, pp 49–50.

Lionel Curtis quoted in Deborah Lavin, From Empire to International Commonwealth: A Biography of Lionel Curtis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, p 121.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 23 August 1921, VSS Papers (I), Sub File 5, f 95.

See, ‘Lord Delamere’s Memorandum on the case against the claims of Indians in Kenya’, in Waiz, Indians Abroad, pp 21–31.

Mr. Churchill’s Speech at the Kenya and Uganda Dinner, 28 January 1922. This is Appendix IV in CAB 24/158, National Archives, London.

Gregory, India and East Africa, 214–215.

‘Some Montagu letters’, in Jagadian (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, p 57; Sastri to Natesan, 1 September 1921, VSS Papers (II), Correspondence: G.A. Natesan.

‘From Washington to Montagu, 1 Feb. 1922’, CAB/24/132/87.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 23 February 1922, VSS Papers (I), Sub File 5, f 119–120.

Gregory, India and East Africa, p 215.

Gregory, India and East Africa, pp 219–220.

Devonshire, ‘Memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies’, 14 February 1923, CAB/24/158, f 3.

Duder, ‘The settler response’, p 363.

Sastri, ‘Resolution in the Council of State’, in The Kenya Problem, p 10.

Sastri, ‘Resolution in the Council of State’, p 5.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 146; ‘Monday’s proceedings: Indians’ rights in Kenya’, Times of India, 7 March 1923, p 12.

Sastri to Rukmini, 22 April 1923, in Jagadian (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, p 181.

Gorman, The Emergence of International Society, p 123.

‘A letter from London’, Servant of India, 6 (12), 19 April 1923, p 140.

Elspeth Huxley, White Man’s Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya, Volume 2 – 1914–1931, London: Macmillan, 1935, p 144.

‘Revision of Kenya Constitution: Mr. Andrews returns, need for fresh consultations in India’, Times of India, 30 June 1926, p 11; Huxley, White Man’s Country, Vol 2, pp 144–145.

The Kenya Woman’s Committee, ‘The Indian question in Kenya: the woman’s point of view’, IOR/L/PO/6 (ii), IOR&PP, f 104.

The Kenya Woman’s Committee, ‘The Indian question in Kenya’, f 105.

‘An African 1776?’, The Outlook, in IOR, L/PO/I/6 (iii) – East Africa: Kenya, IOR&PP, BL. Also ‘Montaguism after Montagu’, Northern Whig (Belfast), 23 January 1923, in IOR, L/PO/I/6 (iii) – East Africa: Kenya, IOR&PP, BL.

Sastri, ‘Kenya deputation’s statement’, in The Kenya Problem, p 54. Also see Charles F. Andrews, ‘The abolition of colour bar’, Indian Review, 24 (12), December 1923, pp 725–729; Memorandum from Tej Bahadur Sapru to Lord Reading, November 1928, IOR Neg 4986, Reel 4, IOR&PP, BL.

See Servant of India, 9 (12), 19 April 1923, p 134.

Sastri, ‘Kenya Deputation’s statement’, in The Kenya Problem, p 54.

Sastri to Natesan, 22 May 1923, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, p 234.

Sastri to Natesan, 22 May 1923, p 234.

See Sastri’s letter to The Times reproduced in V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Indians in Kenya’, Servant of India, 6 (24), 12 July 1923, p 287.

Anonymous, ‘How we treat natives in Kenya: champions or oppressors’, Manchester Guardian, 28 April 1923, p 12.

Norman Leys, ‘Letter to the editor: the Kenya problem’, Manchester Guardian, 26 April 1923, p 6.

‘The administration of Kenya’, Servant of India, 6 (23), 5 July 1923, p 274.

Alexander C. May, ‘The Round Table, 1910–1966’, PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 1995, p 289.

Although published anonymously as was the practice of this journal, one of the two authors was its the editor, John Dove. Anon [John Dove and Rice], ‘Kenya’, Round Table, 13 (51), 1923, pp 507–529 at 526.

Dove and Rice, ‘Kenya’, p 527.

Sastri to Natesan, 22 May 1923, pp 234–235.

Sastri to Natesan, 22 May 1923, pp 234–235.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 10 May 1923, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, p 230–231.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 10 May 1923, p 232.

Sastrt, ‘Kenya Deputation’s statement’, in The Kenya Problem, p 59.

Sastri, ‘Some interviews’, in The Kenya Problem, pp 18–19.

Sastri, ‘Some interviews’, p 19.

Sastri, ‘Some interviews’, pp 20–21.

See ‘Surprise move in Kenya’, Manchester Guardian, 31 May 1923, p 8. On the role of missionaries, see Brian G. MacIntosh, ‘Kenya 1923: the political crisis and the missionary dilemma’, TransAfrican Journal of History, 1 (1), 1971, pp 103–129.

‘A letter from London’, Servant of India, 6 (18), 31 May 1923, pp 213–214.

On this, see MacIntosh, ‘Kenya 1923’; John Harris ‘The Kenya question: four deputations, the positions defined’, Manchester Guardian, 26 April 1923, p 16.

‘Annual meeting of the society’, Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aboriginies’ Friend, 13 (2), July 1923, p 57.

‘Annual meeting of the society’, p 58.

‘Annual meeting of the society’, p 58.

‘Annual meeting of the society’, p 61.

‘Annual meeting of the society’, p 61.

‘Annual meeting of the society’, p 59.

‘Annual meeting of the society’, p 59.

‘Annual meeting of the society’, p 60.

H.S.L. Polak, ‘Mr. Sastri’s health’, Servant of India, 6 (26), 19 July 1923, p 299. See Sastri’s medical report in VSS Papers (II), Subject File 9, NMML.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 10 May 1923, p 230.

‘The biggest meeting in England’, Servant of India, 6 (25), 19 July 1923, p 299.

‘Dominion status for India: Mr. Sastri and the Indian question’, Manchester Guardian, 27 June 1923, p 8.

‘Dominion status for India: Mr. Sastri and the Kenya question’, p 8.

Sastri, ‘Queen’s Hall meeting’, in The Kenya Problem, pp 28–29.

Sastri, ‘Queen’s Hall meeting’, p 26.

Sastri, ‘Queen’s Hall meeting’, p 28.

Servant of India, 6 (17), 24 May 1923, pp 193–194.

‘Kenya colony: appeal by European community with regard to the Indian East African policy’, SAB, GG/164, 3/3165, National Archives, Pretoria.

Marjorie Ruth Dilley, British Policy in Kenya Colony, London: Frank Cass, 1966, p 155.

See E.F. Lane to H.W. Smyth, 26 February 1923, SAB, PM-1/2/242, PM64/20, National Archives, Pretoria; also see NTS-2003, 6/280; GG-912, 15/1165; PM-1/2/241, PM64/19; GG-913, 15/1220; GG-2287, 11/49; GG-164, 3/3165; GG-910, 15/1086, all in National Archives, Pretoria.

Telegram from Viceroy, 8 May 1923, IOR/L/PO/6 (ii), f 160–161.

Telegram from Viceroy, 8 May 1923, f 160–161, ‘Indians in Kenya: General Smuts’s position’, Morning Post, 7 May 1923.

Telegram to Viceroy, 15 May 1923, IOR/L/PO/6 (ii), f 159.

Telegram from the Governor General of South Africa to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 10 July 1923, IOR/L/PO/6 (ii), f 112.

Telegram from the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Governor General of the Union of South Africa, 14 July 1923, CAB/24/161/25.

Sastri to Natesan, 12 July 1923, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: Natesan, NMML.

Huxley, White Man’s Country, Vol 2, p 156.

Sastri, ‘Kenya deputation’s statement’, in The Kenya Problem, p 62.

Sastri, ‘Kenya deputation’s statement’, p 64.

Sastri, ‘Kenya deputation’s statement’, p 64.

See ‘Indians in South Africa: Gen. Smuts on the racial problem’, The Register (Adelaide), 26 July 1923, p 9.

Hancock, Survey of the British Commonwealth, p 224.

Sastri, ‘At the Hotel Cecil’, in The Kenya Problem, p 41.

Huxley, White Man’s Country, Vol 2, p 163.

‘A letter from London’, Servant of India, 6 (30), 23 August 1923, p 358.

Telegram from Viceroy, 16 July 1923, f 127–130 and Telegram from Viceroy, 17 July 1923, f 131, IOR/L/PO/6 (ii).

Sastri, ‘Interview with Reuter’, in The Kenya Problem, p 30.

Charles Andrews, ‘The Kenya Lowlands’, Indian Review, 26 (4), April 1925, pp 268–272 at 269.

Sastri, ‘At the Hotel Cecil’, p 38.

‘Mr. Sastri’s denunciation: a deep affront to India’, Manchester Guardian, 27 July 1923, p 10.

Sastri, ‘Kenya deputation’s statement’, p 61.

Sastri, ‘An appeal to the public’, in The Kenya Problem, pp 70, 72. Also see ‘Kenya decision: Sir Imam’s speech, sacrifice of justice to fear’, Times of India, 21 August 1923, p 7.

Sastri, ‘An appeal to the public’, p 68.

On Sastri’s opposition to the exhibition, see Deborah L. Hughes, ‘Kenya, India and the British Empire Exhibition of 1924’, Race & Class, 47 (4), 2006, pp 66–85.

Sastri, ‘A statement’, in The Kenya Problem, p 33.

Sastri, ‘Interview with Manchester Guardian’, in The Kenya Problem, pp 48–49.

Sastri, ‘A statement’, p 34.

Sastri, ‘An appeal to the public’, pp 66–67.

Hughes, ‘Kenya, India and the British Empire Exhibition of 1924’, p 77.

See Sastri to Peel, 6 August 1923, IOR, L/PO/I/6 (i).

See Sastri, ‘Indians and Kenya: imperial equality, Mr. Sastri’s views’, Times of India, 27 August 1923, p 11.

Sastri to Hope Simpson, 10 April 1923, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, p 245, footnote 1.

Memorandum from Tej Bahadur Sapru to Lord Reading, November 1928, in Sapru Correspondence: II Series Reel 4 (P–R), IOR Neg 4986, IOR&PP, BL.

‘The proposed Kenya settlement’, Manchester Guardian, 25 July 1923, p 6.

‘A letter from London: English opinion on Kenya’, Servant of India, 6 (30), 23 August 1923, p 357.

‘Duke of Devonshire on Kenya settlement’, Manchester Guardian, 27 July 1923, p 12.

‘Labour hostile to Kenya decisions: sharp passages Col. Wedgwood challenges an opponent’, Manchester Guardian, 26 July 1923, p 10.

Memorandum from Tej Bahadur Sapru to Lord Reading, November 1928, IOR Neg 4986.

Sivaswamy Iyer to Sastri, 21 August 1923, VSS Papers (II), Correspondence, P.S. Sivaswamy Aiyar, NMML.

Hughes, ‘Kenya, India and the British Empire Exhibition of 1924’, p 78.

Bajpai to Sastri, 2 September 1923, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: G.S. Bajpai, NMML.

Bajpai to Sastri, 2 September 1923.

Benarasi Das Chaturvedi, ‘The Red Letter day in the History of Greater India’, Indian Overseas, 5th letter, 29 August 1923, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: Benarasi Das Chaturvedi.

‘Reprisal bill passes Simla Assembly’, Manchester Guardian, 28 July 1923, p 10.

An organized cessation of work as a protest measure.

‘Kenya protest hartal: partial success in native quarters’, Manchester Guardian, 28 August 1923, p 8.

‘Indian nationalists and Kenya’, Manchester Guardian, 20 September 1923, p 8.

See Vineet Thakur, Jan Smuts and the Indian Question, Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press, 2017, pp 42–46.

See, ‘Statement by Tej Bahadur Sapru’, The Imperial Conference: Appendices to the Summary of Proceedings, London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1923.

‘Statement by Tej Bahadur Sapru’, p 85.

Sastri to Vaze, 4 November 1923 and Sastri to Vaze, 6 November 1923, in VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: S.G. Vaze.

Sastri to Vaze, 5 November 1923, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: S.G. Vaze.

Sastri, ‘Africa or India?’, in The Kenya Problem, p 96.

Sastri, ‘Africa or India?’, pp 96–97.

Sastri, ‘Africa or India?’, p 110.

H.N. Kunzru speaking in the United Provinces Legislative Council on 27 October made a similar assessment. See ‘Boycott of the “white” Empire Exhibition’. Servant of India, 6 (43), 22 November 1923, pp 514–515.

Andrews’ statement in: ‘The Kenya betrayal’, Indian Review, 24 (9), September 1923, p 567. In the Bhagat Singh Thind case, the American Supreme Court had ruled that Indians were not ‘free white persons’ and hence not eligible for naturalized citizenship. Earlier judgements in lower courts had held Indians under the white category, and thus eligible for naturalization.

Andrews, ‘The abolition of colour bar’, p 729.

‘A letter from Mrs. Polak’, Servant of India, 6 (45), 6 December 1923, p 539.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, pp 178–190; Sitaramayya, History of the Indian National Congress, pp 313–520.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Our plan for Swaraj’, Servant of India, 6 (3), 15 February 1923, pp 27–29.

See Sastri’s letters to A.V. Pathwardhan and D.V. Gundappa, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, pp 257–264.

Sastri to Sarojini Naidu, 30 April 1924, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Sastri, pp 254–257.

See Jagadisan, Sastri, pp 83–84.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, pp 192–193.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, pp 192–193.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, The Rights and Duties of the Indian Citizen, Calcutta: Calcutta University Press, 1927. Madras lectures were reproduced in V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Kamala lectures’, Speeches and Writings of The Right Honourable V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Vol 1, Madras: South Indian National Association, 1969, pp 78–143.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 192.

Sastri, ‘Kamala lectures’, p 134.

For details, see Position of Indians in South Africa – statement submitted to His Excellency the Viceroy of the South African Deputation, Pro No 80, in I Proceedings Overseas – A, March 1926 (Nos 1–88), IOR/L/E/7/1411, IOR&PP.

For more on specific bills, see Position of Indians in South Africa.

‘Indians overseas: Gen. Smuts on colour bar’, Indian Review, 26 (4), April 1925, pp 311–312.

Natal Advertiser, ‘The men who sit on the safety valve’, Natal Advertiser, 27 July 1925, Pro No 12, in I Proceedings Overseas – A, March 1926 (Nos 1–88), IOR/L/E/7/1411.

See J.E. Corbett, ‘A study of the Cape Town Agreement’, MA Thesis, University of Cape Town, Cape Town,1947, pp 49–52.

Telegram, Viceroy, Department of Education, Health and Lands, to Secretary of State, 11 September 1925, Tel No 4239, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 204–206, IOR&PP, BL.

Extract from Official Report of the Council of State Debates, 10 September 1925, E&O 5512/75, IOR/L/E/7/1411.

See letters from Reading to Birkenhead on 3 September 1925, 11 September 1925, 28 October 1925, 24 December 1925, 8 January 1926, in IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii).

Note from Sir L. Kershaw, 25 September 1925, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 171–174; Telegram from Viceroy, 19 December 1925, Tel 5920, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 175–177.

See Note by the Secretary of State to Sir Arthur Hitzel, 20 February 1926, E&O 620/1926, IOR/L/E/7/1411.

Scope of the Asiatic Bill. Annexure C: Constitutional position, E&O 597/1926, IOR/L/E/7/1411.

A round table conference between India and South Africa had been first proposed by Sarojini Naidu on a tour of South Africa in mid-1924. Six months later when the Secretary of State for Colonies in the short-lived Labour government, James Thomas, visited South Africa in December 1924, he made a similar suggestion for a conference between India, South Africa and Britain. By the time the India government approached the Colonial Office via the India Office, Leo Amery had taken over. Amery, a Milner acolyte and long-time friend of South Africa, refused to intervene. See ‘Indians overseas’, Indian Review, 26 (5), May 1925, pp 379–381; and Telegram from the Governor General, South Africa, Pretoria, 24 September 1925, Pro No 17, Proceedings Overseas – A, March 1926 (Nos 1–88), IOR/L/E/7/1411; Irwin to Birkenhead, 3 September 1925, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 197–201.

Telegram from the Governor General, South Africa, to Viceroy, Delhi, 10 November 1925, in Proceedings Overseas – A, March 1926 (Nos 1–88), IOR/L/E/7/1411.

The scheme for voluntary repatriation with free passage to India was first introduced after the Gandhi–Smuts Agreement of 1914. In 1920, the Smuts government introduced a bonus of £5 pound per person and £25 maximum for a family to repatriate. But after an initial increase, the numbers declined. In 1924, the bonus was further raised to £10 for an individual and a maximum of £50 for a family, but the numbers had shockingly fallen to 1,063. The respective numbers for 1921, 1922 and 1923 were 2,927, 2,324 and 2,716. See Note by J.C. Watson: Indians in South Africa: The Asiatic Bill, E&O, 1388/26, IOR/L/E/7/1411.

For this, see Bhawani Dayal Sanyasi and Benarasidas Chaturvedi, A Report on the Emigrants Repatriated to India under the Assisted Emigration Scheme from South Africa and on the Problem of Returned Emigrants from all Colonies, Bihar: Pravasi Bhavan, 15 May 1931. Also see Uma Mesthrie, ‘Reducing the Indian population to a “manageable compass”: a study of the South African Assisted Emigration Scheme of 1927’, Natalia 15, 1985, pp 36–56.

Confidential memorandum submitted by the Government of India deputation to South Africa, IOR/L/E/7/1411, IOR&PP, BL.

However, Malan insisted that if the bill were ever to become a law, it would be applied retrospectively, that is from 1 August 1925, when it was first introduced. See Viceroy, Department of Education, Health and Lands, to Secretary of State for India, 9 April 1926, Tel No 1799, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (i), f 15–19; Viceroy, Department of Education, Health and Lands, to Secretary of State for India, 10 April 1926, Tel No 1816, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (i), f 20; Viceroy, Department of Education, Health and Lands, to Secretary of State for India, 10 April 1926, Tel No 1808, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (i), f 21–22.

For an extended analysis of the work of the Paddison deputation, see Vineet Thakur and Sasikumar S. Sundaram, ‘India, South Africa and the Cape Town Agreement: a diplomatic history’, Indian Politics and Policy, 2 (2), 2019, pp 3–26.

Governor General, Cape Town, to Viceroy, Shimla, 15 May 1926, E&O 5614/926, IOR/L/E/7/1411; Telegram from Viceroy, 30 June 1926, f 459–460.

Telegram from Viceroy, 2 August 1926, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 452–454.

Telegram from Secretary of State to the Viceroy, 30 August 1926.

Hugh Tinker, The Ordeal of Love, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979, pp 219–220.

Sastri, ‘If I were to live again’, f 167.

Note by Sir A. Hirtzel, 20 August 1926, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 435.

Irwin to Birkenhead, 26 August 1926, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 430.

Irwin to Birkenhead, 26 August 1926, f 430.

Birkenhead to Irwin, 14 September 1926, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 427.

Anon, ‘Random thoughts: Sastri – the man’, Indian Opinion, 49 (23), 4 December 1925, p 314.

Sastri to Gundappa, 5 April 1926, VSS Papers (II), Correspondence: D.V. Gundappa, f 75.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Official resignations’, Servant of India, 7 (10), 10 April 1924, pp 112–113.

‘Australia and South Africa: Mr. Sastri’s speech’, Servant of India, 8 (51), 21 January 1926, pp 608–609.

Telegram from Viceroy, 21 September 1926, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 425–426.

Telegram from Viceroy, 15 September 1926, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 429.

C.F. Andrews to the Viceroy, 17 October 1926, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 296–302.

H. Duncan Hall, ‘The genesis of the Balfour Declaration of 1926’, Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 1 (3), 1962, pp 169–193.

The notes of Bajpai’s two meetings on 3 and 18 November 1926 are in E&O 7551/26, IOR/L/E/7/1411.

Note for first meeting with General Hertzog by G.S. Bajpai, 3 November 1927, E&O 7551/26.

Sastri to Rukmini, 29 November 1926, VSS Papers (II), Correspondence: Rukmini, f 10–13.

Brief of Instructions Issued to the Delegates of the Government of India to the Conference with the Representatives of the Government of the Union of South Africa on the Indian Problem in the Union, Simla: Government of India Press, 1926.

Total expenditure on repatriates was £39,534; and bonuses and grants from 1922 to June 1926 amounted to £104,252. See ‘Indians in South Africa. Census deductions’, The Times, 22 March 1927, in E&O 2063/1927.

The origins of ‘assisted emigration’ go back to the early nineteenth century when, through the Ripon Regulations, the British government allocated funds to send emigrants to the Australian colonies. See Philip Harling, ‘Assisted emigration and the moral dilemmas of the mid-Victorian imperial state’, Historical Journal, 59 (4), 2016, pp 1027–1049.

For these points see Brief of Instructions Issued to the Delegates of the Government of India; Confidential memorandum submitted by the Government of India deputation.

‘Indian delegation’s arrival. Great welcome to the city’, Cape Times, 23 December 1927.

Lindie Kroots, D.F. Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism, Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2014, p 229.

‘Memorandum by the Government of India, Delegation to South Africa’, E&O 1601/27, IOR/ L/E/7/1411, f 5.

Memorandum, f 9.

Hertzog preferred to spend the Christmas holidays on his farm in Transvaal than attend the whole conference.

Memorandum, f 9. Also see G.L. Corbett to Lord Athlone, 24 December 1926, Asiatics: Conference on Indian question – Confidential reports furnished to His Excellency Mr. G.I. Corbett, SAB GG 916, 15/1377, NASA.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 222.

Corbett to Athlone, 24 December 1926.

Gerrit Gong, The Standard of Civilization in International Society, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.

Statement of Union Delegation on Item B, Asiatics: Conference on Indian Question, SAB GG 916, 15/1377.

Memorandum, f 45.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 223; also see C.F. Andrews, ‘The conference and after’, Indian Opinion, 4 (25), 28 January 1927, p 29.

‘Light on the Indian conference. Statement by member of delegation’, Cape Times, 12 January 1927, p 9.

As Sastri’s later secretary, John Tyson, called them. See Tyson to Duncan, 16 June 1927, MSS EUR/E/341/16, IOR&PP, BL.

Corbett to Athlone, 24 January 1927, SAB GG 916, 15/1377.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘A new era’, in Sastri Speaks, ed S.R. Naidoo and Dhanee Bramdaw, Pietermaritzburg: Natal Press, 1931, pp 5–6.

Sastri, ‘A new era’, p 4.

Corbett to Athlone, 24 January 1927; Also see, ‘Our distinguished visitors’, Indian Opinion, 3 (25), 28 January 1927.

Gandhi, ‘An honourable compromise’, Young India, 24 February 1927, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (henceforth CWMG), Vol 38, pp 160–162. Also see ‘Round table conference conclusions’, Indian Opinion, 25 (8), 25 February 1927, pp 55–58; ‘An honourable compromise’, Indian Opinion, 25 (9), 4 March 1927, p 64; ‘Indo-Union Agreement: well received by all parties in India’, Indian Opinion, 25 (13), 1 April 1927, pp 91–92.

Memorandum, f 45.

Tinker, The Ordeal of Love, pp 223–224.

‘Motion re. appreciation of the results achieved by the Government of India delegation to South Africa’, Council of State Debates, 23 February 1927, p 268, E&O 2384/1927, IOR/L/E/7/1411.

‘Motion re. appreciation’, p 275.

‘Solving South Africa’s Indian problem’, E&O 2063/1927, IOR/L/E/7/1411.

‘“A marvelous performance” Mrs. Sarojini Naidu on the Indian agreement’, Indian Opinion, 25 (15), 8 April 1927, pp 105–106.

Note by Arthur Hirtzel, 20 January 1927, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii).

Andrews to the Viceroy, 12 October 1926, IOR/L/PO/I/22 (ii), f 304–308.

Andrews to the Viceroy, 12 October 1926, f 304–308.

‘A new era in Africa? The Union–Indian agreement’, Manchester Guardian, 2 March 1927.

Tinker, The Ordeal of Love, p 224.

John Tyson to Folk, 31 May 1927, in MSS EUR/E/341/16, Papers of Sir John Tyson, IOR&PP, BL.

G.S. Bajpai to Undersecretary of State for India, 5 July 1928, E&O 4885/1928, IOR/L/PS/8/290, IOR&PP, BL, f 334–336.

‘Mr. Sastri sails for South Africa’, Times of India, 9 June 1927, p 11; ‘Bristling with dangers and difficulties’, Times of India, 7 June 1927, p 10; ‘Au revoir Sastri’, The Bombay Chronicle, 8 June 1927, p 7.

‘Mr. Sastri sails for S. Africa: messages from leaders’, Times of India, 9 June 1927, p 11.

C.P. Ramaswami Aiyer quoted in ‘Mr. Sastri sails for S. Africa: messages from leaders’.

‘Mr. Sastri on his mission to South Africa: smooth working on agreement’, Times of India, 31 May 1927, p 10.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 2 July 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part 1), f 56–62.

India had appointed a High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in 1919.

Technically, the High Commissioners and the Privy Councillors were placed at the same level in the order of precedence. When Sastri’s successor, Kumra Reddi, joined, the same privileges were extended to him.

See ‘Position of the Right Hon’ble V.S. Srinivasa Sastri P.C., Agent of the Government of India in South Africa for the purpose of diplomatic etiquette’, Education, Health and Lands Department, Overseas A, Proceedings, November 1927, Nos 117–125, NAI; ‘India: question with regard to status of Mr. Sastri raised by consular body in Pretoria’, SAB, GG-917, 15/1408, NSA.

Tyson to Duncan Best, 16 June 1927, MSS EUR/E/341/16.

Tyson to his Mother, 13 June 1927, MSS EUR/E341/16.

‘Instructions for the guidance of the Right Hon’ble V.S. Srinivasa Sastri P.C. in South Africa during his tenure of office as Agent’, Education Departments, Overseas Branch, F No 38, June 1927, National Archives, New Delhi.

Viceroy, Shimla, to Governor General, Pretoria, Telegram P No 1009-S, 18 May 1927, E&O 4772/24, IOR/L/PS/8/290, IOR&PP, f 349–350.

‘Instructions for the guidance’.

Gandhi ‘An honorable compromise’, pp 160–162.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 231.

Gandhi to Srinivasa Sastri, 6 April 1927, in CWMG-e, Vol 38, p 261.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 231.

Mahatma Gandhi, ‘Sastri as first ambassador’, Young India, 24 April 1927, in CWMG-e, Vol 38, pp 320–322.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 233.

Tyson to Folk, 13 June 1927, MSS EUR E341/16.

Taylor to Duncan Best, 16 June 1927, MSS EUR/E341/16.

The Servants of India Society: The Report of Work, 1927–1928, Poona: Aryabhushan Press, 1928, p 1.

Sastri’s hesitation in making his reasons clear also makes one suspect that he did not want to admit publicly that the purity of the Brahman family household could not be maintained in a job that would require frequently hosting people outside of his caste. We know from Kondana Rao’s account that, for the most part, he was strict in his observance of purity within the house.

Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, pp 89–90.

Tyson to Folk, 13 June 1927.

J.D. Tyson, ‘Abstract diary of Mr. Sastri’s term of office in South Africa’, 17–25 June 1927, in ‘Material for a study of Srinivasa Sastri’s term as agent of the government of India in South Africa, comprising a review of his speeches and extracts from Tyson’s diaries 1927–29’, Papers of Sir John Tyson, MSS EUR/E/341/48, IOR&PP, BL. Also Tyson to Folk, 21 June 1927, MSS EUR/E/341/16.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 27 June 1927.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 2 July 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part 1), f 56–62.

John Tyson, ‘Mr. Sastri’s reception and treatment in the Union’, MSS EUR/E/341/48.

Quoted in ‘Dr. Pirow and the Indians’, Indian Views, 8 July 1927, p 3.

‘Mr. Sastri at Pretoria: appeal to the Indian community’, Times of India, 27 July 1927, p 14.

Tyson to Folk, 4 July 1927, MSS EUR/E/41/16.

John Tyson, ‘Srinivasa Sastri in South Africa: some contemporary material for review of his work as the first agent of the government of India in South Africa, 1927–29’, MSS EUR/E/341/48.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 2 July 1927.

For a history of the South African Indian question, see Mesthrie, ‘From Sastri to Deshmukh’; Bridglal Pachai, The International Aspects of the South African Indian Question 1860–1971, Cape Town: Struik, 1971; Essop Pahad, ‘The Development of Indian Political Movements in South Africa, 1924–46’, DPhil thesis, University of Sussex, 1972; P. Aiyar, The Tyranny of Colour, Durban: E.P. and Commercial Printing Company, 1942.

Tyson, ‘Srinivasa Sastri in South Africa’.

Kondana Rao to Vaze, 16 July 1927, in P. Kondana Rao, Subject File No 1, f 110–113.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1927’, in Sastri Speaks, ed Naidoo and Bramdaw, pp 252–253.

Kondana Rao to Vaze, 16 July 1927, f 110–113; Sastri to Habibullah, 17 July 1927, f 114–116, in P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File No 1.

Notes on the conversation between Mr. Hollander and Mr. Sastri, Durban, 19 July 1927, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 12, f 4–6; Tyson to Folk, 23 July 1927, MSS EUR/E/41/16.

At local gatherings for visiting imperial statesmen, such as for Lord Amery in September 1927, only the host could rank higher than Sastri at the main table.

See Tyson to Folk, 4 September 1927, MSS EUR/E/41/16.

Notes on the conversation between Sir Charles Smith and Mr. Sastri on 15 July 1927, Durban, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Sub File 1, f 104a–105.

Many of Sastri’s speeches in South Africa are reproduced in Sastri Speaks. However, Tyson prepared summaries of almost all of Sastri’s speeches (in which Tyson was present). They are in MSS EUR/E/41/48.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, ‘Within the four corners of the agreement’, in Sastri Speaks, pp 45–50.

Sastri, ‘Supremacy of the white race’, in Sastri Speaks, p 90.

Sastri, ‘Indian education’, in Sastri Speaks, p 220.

The Servants of India Society, Poona: Aryabhusahan Press, 1915, p 3.

Sastri, ‘The wider point of view’, in Sastri Speaks, p 59.

Sastri, ‘South Africa, India and the British Empire’, in Sastri Speaks, p 77.

‘Mr. Sastri’s appeal to Natal,’ Natal Witness, 3 August 1927, p 5.

Tyson, ‘Srinivasa Sastri in South Africa’, MSS EUR/E/341/48.

Tyson, ‘Srinivasa Sastri in South Africa’.

See ‘Mr. Sastri’s appeal to Natal’, Natal Witness, 3 August 1927, p 5; ‘Mr. Sastri’s views on Christianity’, Cape Times, 12 November 1928, p 10.

‘Mr. Sastri’s views on Christianity’, p 10.

Pandian, Brahmin and Non-Brahmin.

See ‘N.I. Congress on education: statement submitted to the commission’, Indian Opinion, 26 (15), 20 April 1928, pp 106–109; and ‘Education Inquiry Commission’, Indian Opinion, 26 (14), 13 April 1928, pp 97–98.

Quoted in ‘N.I. Congress on education’.

Taylor to Folk, 11 September 1927, MSS EUR/E/41/16.

On Sastri’s notes on his various meetings with Athlone, Hollander, and Plowman, P. Kondana Papers, Subject File 1; Tyson to Folk,15 August 1927, MSS EUR/E/41/16.

‘Notes and news’, Indian Opinion, 26 (37), 21 September 1928: 278; Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 31 July 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part I), f 15–17.

‘Indian training college, proposed site on Centenary Road’, Natal Mercury, 9 November 1927.

Sastri, ‘Memorandum and evidence Indian education’, in Sastri Speaks, pp 218–219.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 26 August 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part I), f 46–49.

Tyson to Folk, 20 September 1927, MSS EUR/E/41/16.

Sastri to Habibullah, 23 September 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 79–80.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 19 September 1927.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 13 August 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part I), f 39–45.

Tyson, ‘Srinivasa Sastri in South Africa’; Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 9 September 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part I), f 18–19.

Sastri to Habibullah, 23 September 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 79–80. For Habibullah’s response, see Habibullah to Sastri, 10 October 1927, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: M. Habibullah.

‘Education Inquiry Commission’, Indian Opinion, 26 (14), 13 April 1928, pp 97–98.

Sastri to Habibullah, 20 April 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 29–33.

‘Natal witness on Indian education’, Indian Opinion, 26 (14), 13 April 1928, pp 99–100.

‘Truth about Indian education’, Indian Opinion, 26 (17), 4 May 1928, pp 154. Also see Frene Ginwala, ‘Education feature from Frene Ginwala’s thesis’, www.sahistory.org.za/archive/education-feature-frene-ginwalas-thesis, accessed 27 February 2019.

Sastri, ‘Memorandum’, in Sastri Speaks, pp 217–230. Also see ‘Education Inquiry Commission: further evidences’, Indian Opinion, 26 (15), 20 April 1928, pp 111–114.

Sastri, ‘Memorandum’, pp 227–229.

Sastri, ‘Memorandum’, p 228.

Sastri to Habibullah, 9 March 1928, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 12, f 43–44.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 11 March 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part 1), f. 53; Sastri to Habibullah, 20 April 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 29–33.

Sastri to Habibullah, 20 April 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 29-33.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 3 April 1928.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 17 April 1928.

Sastri to Habibullah, 6 April 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 43–46.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1928’, in Sastri Speaks, pp 285–289.

Irwin to Sastri, 2 June 1928, VSS Sastri, Ist Installment, Correspondence: Irwin, f 10–12.

‘“A pretty poor bit of work” – “Natal witness” on Education Committee’s report’, Indian Opinion, 26 (21), 1928, pp 159–160.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 22 April 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part 1), f 82–83.

Sastri to Habibullah, 7 May 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers Subject File 1, f 25–27.

The previous occupant of this post, Hugh Bryan, had been supportive of Sastri’s views, but left to take up the vice chancellorship of the University of South Africa.

R. Hunt Davis, Jr, ‘Charles T. Loram and an American model for African education in South Africa’, African Studies Review, 19 (2), 1976, pp 87–99.

Sastri to Habibullah, 30 June 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 11–12.

CT Loram to Srinivasa Sastri, 6 January 1936, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: CT Loram.

Sastri to Habibullah, 30 June 1928.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 25 June 1928.

Sastri to Habibullah, 15 November 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 72–74; Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 5 November 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part 1), f 24–25; ‘Indian training college. Proposed site in Centenary Road’, Natal Mercury, 9 November 1927.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1927’, in Sastri Speaks, pp 240–241.

Tyson, ‘Srinivasa Sastri in South Africa’.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1928’, in Sastri Speaks, p 278.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 24 August 1928.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 18 July 1928; Sastri, ‘Instance of self-help’, in Sastri Speaks, p 119.

Memorandum presented to the Hon. S.J. Marais Steyn, Minister of Indian Affairs, Re: Sastri College, in Sastri College Papers, Gandhi–Luthuli Documentation Centre, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban.

See Ginwala, ‘Education feature from Frene Ginwala’s thesis’.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1927’, in Sastri Speaks, p 248.

The Union government realized this, and looked to explore other avenues with Sastri, such as extending emigration to Kenya. Notes of Mr. Sastri’s interview with Dr. Malan, on the 11 July, 1927 at, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 12, f 13–15.

See Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1928’, in Sastri Speaks, pp 264–265.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1927’, pp 248–249.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1928’, p 248.

Prem Narain Agarwal, Bhawani Dayal Sanyasi: A Public Worker of South Africa, Etawah, India: Indian Colonial Association, 1939.

Sanyasi and Chaturvedi, A Report on the Emigrants Repatriated to India; Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie, ‘South Africa to India: narratives of a century of repatriation (1871–1975)’, Paper presented at Centre for African Studies, Leiden University, 12 September 2019.

See Sanyasi and Chaturvedi, ‘A report’, p 58. The Indian government also appointed a committee to enquire into the working of the special office in Madras dealing with the assisted emigrants. See ‘Report submitted to the Government of India by Hon’ble Mr. G.A. Natesan and Mr. J. Gray on the working of the special organization in Madras or dealing with emigrants returning from South Africa under the scheme of assisted emigration’. The report is appended in the Sanyasi and Chaturvedi report.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1927’, pp 243–244; Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1928’, in Sastri Speaks, pp 267–268.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1927’, pp 244–245.

Sastri, ‘The task of the peacemaker’, in Sastri Speaks, pp 34–35.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 9 October 1927.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 14 January 1928, P. Konadana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 60.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 30 November 1927, P. Konadana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part 1), f 25–27; Sastri to Habibullah, 20 August 1927, P. Konadana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 89–91.

Sastri to Habibullah, 28 August 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 89–91.

Habibullah to Sastri, 29 August 1927, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: M. Habibullah.

See, Habibullah to Sastri, 27 September 1927, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: M. Habibullah.

Gandhi to Sastri, 22 September 1922, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, p 167.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1927’, pp 244–245.

‘South African Indian Congress – eighth session at Kimberley, a successful conference’, Indian Opinion, 26 (2), 13 January 1928, pp 1–2.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1927’, p 245.

‘Transvaal British Indian Association. Emphatic protest against S.A.I Congress misrepresentations’, Indian Views, 16 March 1929, p 5.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 13 August 1927, P. Konadana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part 1), f 39–45.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 31 July 1927, P. Konadana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part 1), f 15–17; Sastri to Habibullah, 28 August 1927; Sastri to Habibullah, 16 December 1927, P. Konadana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 64–66.

Others, like John L. Roberts, took a maximalist position and insisted that Indians as citizens of the British Commonwealth had the same rights as the English, so could not be called illegal. See ‘Sunday’s mass meeting: Mr. Sastri’s stirring speech to take condonation’, Indian Opinion, 26 (32), 17 August 1928, pp 237–238.

Sastri to Habibullah, 20 May 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 21–23; Letter from D.F. Malan to V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, 16 May 1928, CWMG-e, Vol 42, p 473.

‘Condonation of illegal entrants’, Subject File 1, f 34–39. Also see Memorandum: Condonation of the illegal entry of Asiatics, Subject File 1, pp 40–41; Sastri to Habibullah, 6 April 1928, Subject File 1, f 43–46, all in P. Kondana Rao Papers.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 30 April 1928.

Cable to South African Indian Congress, 29 May 1928, in CWMG-e, Vol 42, p 58.

Sastri to Habibullah, 1 June 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 17–19.

See Letter from V.S. Srinivasa Sastri to D.F. Malan, 14 May 1928, in CWMG-e, Vol 42, pp 472–473.

Malan to Sastri, 16 May 1928, p 473.

Sastri, ‘Agent’s report 1928’, p 270.

Sastri to Habibullah, 1 June 1928, f 17–19.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 1 July 1928.

See ‘Sunday’s mass meeting: Mr. Sastri’s stirring speech to take condonation’; ‘Condonation scheme explained in Maritzburg: Mr Sastri’s exhortation’, Indian Opinion, 26 (33), 24 August 1928, pp 245–246; ‘Mr. Sastri’s eloquent appeal to Transvaal Indians’, Indian Opinion, 26 (36), 14 September 1928, p 270.

See ‘Cape Conference’, Indian Opinion, 26 (36), 14 September 1928, p 267–268; ‘Cape Indian Provincial Conference’, Indian Opinion, 26 (36), 14 September 1928, p 272; ‘TBIA meeting at Pretoria – terminated in disorder’, Indian Opinion, 26 (31), 10 August 1928, pp 233–234.

Sastri to Habibullah, 24 February 1928, VSS Papers (1), Subject File no 12, f 38–41.

Article reproduced in Indian Opinion, 26 (3), 20 January 1928, p 1.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 6 February 1928. Also Tyson to Folk, 7 February 1928, MSS EUR/E/341/17.

‘Cables to India’, Indian Opinion, 26 (5), 3 February 1928, p 36.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 6 February 1928.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 6 February 1928.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 7 February 1928.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 7 February 1928.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 14 May 1928.

Sastri to Habibullah, 23 September 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 79–80.

Sastri to Ramaswami, 24 February 1928, in Jagadisan (ed) Letter of Srinivasa Sastri, p 172; Diary 1928: 13 February.

Roos pulled out at the last moment (and so did the Labour minister, Colonel Creswell), but otherwise the top leadership of both the government and the opposition (except Smuts) was present.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 21 February 1928.

Sastri, ‘Anniversary of the Indo-Union Agreement’, in Sastri Speaks, p 212.

Sastri, ‘Anniversary of the Indo-Union Agreement’, pp 213–214.

Sastri, ‘Anniversary of the Indo-Union Agreement’, pp 213–216.

Quoted in Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 249.

Quoted in Kondana Rao, Sastri, p 250.

Hertzog to Sastri, 25 October 1928, VSS Papers (II), Correspondence: JBM Hertzog.

See Sastri to Duncan, 19 October 1928, BC 294, D1/32/2; Duncan to Sastri, 23 October 1928, BC 294, D1/32/3; Sastri to Duncan, 25 October 1928, BC 294, D1/32/4; Sastri to Duncan, 6 November 1928, BC 294, D1/32/5; Sastri to Duncan, 9 May 1929, BC 294, D1/32/6, in Patrick Duncan Papers, University of Cape Town.

Sastri to Habibullah, 6 April 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 43–46.

‘Violent disorder at Sastri meeting. Klerksdorp hooligans throw “gas bomb”’, Rand Daily Mail, 17 September 1928, p 7; Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, 15 September 1928.

Tyson to Folk, 23 September 1928, MSS EUR E/341/17.

‘The Klerksdorp incident’, Indian Opinion, 26 (38), 28 September 1928, p 289.

‘Press Comment on Klerksdorp outrage’, Indian Opinion, 26 (37), 21 September 1928, p 282.

Gandhi to Sastri, 20 October 1927, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, p 80.

For a more scathing and personal criticism of Sastri, see ‘Rt. Hon. Mr. Sastri: England’s Advertising Agent’, Democrat, 2 March 1929, FD 8, AICC Papers: Ist Instalment.

‘Beauties of the British Empire: India takes Mr. Sastri to task’, Indian Views, 9 December 1927, p 4.

Gandhi to Sastri, 20 October 1927, p 80.

Gandhi to Maninal and Sushila, 12 August 1928, CWMG-e, Vol 42, p 356.

Sastri to Habibullah, 9 March 1928, VSS Papers (I), Subject File 12, f 48–49; Konadana Rao to Patwardhan, 11 March 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 53; also, Habibullah to Sastri, 12 March 1928, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: M. Habibullah.

‘If Sastri were a free man’, Indian Opinion, 26 (9), 1928, pp 71–72.

See Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 30 November 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part 1), f 25–27; Copy of Mr. Habib Motan’s letter to Mr. Sastri, 19 November 1927, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 1, f 108–110.

See ‘Dr. Tagore on Indians in South Africa’, Indian Opinion, 26 (14), 13 April 1928, p 102.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 28 January 1928, P. Kondana Rao Papers, Subject File 2 (Part 1), f 53.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’ 17 July 1928.

Sastri to Irwin, 15 July 1928, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: Lord Irwin. In India, several names were being considered, including that of Bajpai and Maharaj Singh. See Tyson to Folk, 22 August 1928; and Tyson to Birch Reynardson, 14 October 1928: MSS EUR/E/341/17.

Sastri to Irwin, 15 July 1928, VSS Papers (I), Correspondence: Lord Irwin.

Kondana Rao to Patwardhan, 2 July 1927.

‘Mr. Sastri’, Cape Times, 3 January 1929, p 10.

Mesthrie, ‘From Sastri to Deshmukh’.

See Mesthrie, ‘From Sastri to Deshmukh’, pp 143–145.

Mesthrie, ‘From Sastri to Deshmukh’, p 170; Indian Opinion, 24 November, 1 December 1933, 2 February, 17 August 1934 editorials.

Quoted in ‘Mr. Sastri’s successor’, Indian Opinion, 27 (1), 4 January 1929, pp 5–6.

See ‘Mr. Sastri’s successor’, pp 5–6.

Tyson, ‘Abstract diary’, entries from 25 September to 3 October 1928.

‘The dean moves vote of thanks’, Indian Opinion, 26 (37), 21 September 1928, p 277.

‘Johannesburg’s banquet to Mr. Sastri: Mr. Howard Pim’, Indian Opinion, 27 (3), 18 January 1929, p 24.

‘Sastri the man: tribute by Miss Gordon’, VSS Papers (II), Speeches and Writings on Sastri by others, S No 2, f 10.

Vere Stent, ‘A farewell apostrophe to Mr. Sastri’ article reproduced in Indian Opinion, 27 (4), 25 January 1929, p 38.

Indeed, the election campaigning for these elections was dominated by the rhetoric of ‘swart gevaar’ or ‘black peril’.

‘Can repatriation be permanent?’, Natal Witness, 29 January 1929, p 7.

Sastri, ‘Aspects of my life’, p 90.

Sastri to Gokhale, 9 July 1914, in Jagadisan (ed) Letters of Srinivasa Sastri, p 35.

Tyson to Folk, 28 January 1928, MSS Eur 341/17. This was in contrast to Tyson’s impression of his new boss, Reddi, whom he felt was ‘conceited’ and ‘jealous of [Sastri’s] great success’.

C.L.R. James, ‘Preface to the first edition’, The Black Jacobins, 2nd edn rev, New York: Vintage Books, 1989, p x.

Gregory, India and East Africa, pp 305–306.

On discussions about Sastri’s mission, see IOR/L/PO/1/39, IOR&PP.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, pp 273–274; Gregory, India and East Africa, pp 323–330.

Sastri quoted in Gregory, India and East Africa, p 329.

Gregory, India and East Africa, p 338.

For Sastri’s original report, see, E&O 6841/1929, and for published report, E&O 1898/1930, both in IOR/L/PO/1/39, IOR&PP.

Gregory, India and East Africa, pp 338–339.

For an excellent resource on these conferences, see Stephen Legg’s project ‘Conferencing the international’, www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/interwarconf/home.aspx, accessed 25 March 2021.

Uma Mesthrie, ‘From Sastri to Deshmukh’, p 134.

See, Mesthrie, ‘From Sastri to Deshmukh’, p 180; Mesthrie, ‘Reducing the Indian population to a “manageable compass”’; Dhanee Bramdaw, Out of the Stable, Pietermaritzburg: Natal Witness, 1935, pp 16–18.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, pp 338–339.

Sastri, ‘If I live again’, f 176.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Life of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Bangalore: Bangalore Printing and Publishing, 1937.

Sastri, Pherozeshah Mehta; Sastri, Thumbnail Sketches.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, The Other Harmony, ed T.N. Jagadisan, Madras: S. Viswanathan, 1945.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Lectures on the Ramayana, Madras: S. Viswanathan, 1949.

Kondana Rao, Sastri, pp 388–394.

Copy of Joint Statement by V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, P.A. Wadia, K. Natarajan and Jehangir Petit on the implications of the two-nation theory, VSS Papers (I), Speeches and Writings by Sastri, S No 59.

Indian Struggle: A Periodical Survey of Indian Developments, Number 1, 1936, 10 November 1936, AICC Papers (Ist Instalment), FD 39/1936.

Sastri to P. Sivaswamy Iyer, 30 June 1942, in Sastriana, No 26, ed S.R. Venkataraman, Madras: Servants of India Society, 1983, p 22.

‘The Servant of India’, Servant of India, 1 (1), 19 February 1928, p 5.

Sastri, ‘Values in life’, in The Other Harmony, p 121.

Sastri, ‘A confession of faith’, in The Other Harmony, p 5.

For a defence of the Brahman leadership as the preservers of order and peace in anti-colonial politics and a lament on its passing after the First World War, see: G. Annaji Rao, ‘Passing of the Brahmana’, New India, 25 July 1919.

On Sastri’s style of politics see, Ray T. Smith, ‘V.S. Srinivasa Sastri and the moderate style in Indian politics’, Journal of South Asian Studies, 2 (1), pp 81–100; Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, ‘Moderating revolution: V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, Toussaint Louverture, and the civility of reform’, The Comparatist, 41, 2017, pp 133–152.

Gandhi to Natesan, 12 January 1946, in CWMG, Vol 82, p 407.

Smith, ‘V.S. Srinivasa Sastri’, p 83.

G.A. Natesan, ‘The Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri’, f 39; also see, Kondana Rao, Sastri, pp 386–387. Sastri was a vocal supporter of women’s suffrage, although as part of the Southborough Committee he agreed with others in not recommending a women’s vote because there was not enough demand for it.

Subramania, ‘The Rt. Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastri’, pp 106–108.

The conferences during the war in 1917 and 1918 were ‘Imperial War Conferences’.

See Hugh Tinker, ‘Colour and colonization’, Round Table, 60 (240), pp 405–406.

His approach in Australia and New Zealand was exactly the opposite. There he focused more on political rights, since they were more achievable.

Gandhi to Sastri, 4 January 1946, CWMG, Vol 82, p 341.

Gandhi to C. Rajagopalachari, 16 January 1946, CWMG, Vol 82, p 431.

Foreword to ‘My Master Gokhale’, 20 January 1946, CWMG, Vol 83, p 1.

See Sastri’s letters to Gandhi on 2 June 1944, 17 June 1944 and 25 June 1944, in VSS Papers (I), Correspondence with M.K. Gandhi, f 57–64.

Talk with V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, 22 January 1946, CWMG, 83, pp 15–16.

He was accompanied by C. Rajagopalachari, Thakkar Bappa, Amrit Kaur, Agatha Harrison and Jagadisan, in addition to Pyarelal and Sushila.

Talk with V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, 30 January 1946, CWMG, Vol 83, p 62.

Talk with V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, 30 January 1946, p 64.

Talk with V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, 4 February 1946, CWMG, 83, pp 87–88.

‘Srinivasa Sastri indicts anti-Indian drive: naked and unashamed use of power by Smuts’, Bombay Chronicle, 24 March 1946, p 16.

Jagadisan, Sastri, p 183.