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Title: “Spain! Why?” Author: Ole Birk Laursen Date: May 7, 2017 Language: en Topics: Spanish Civil War, India, anti-imperialism, Anti-fascism Source: Retrieved on 31st March 2021 from https://olebirklaursen.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/spain-why-indian-anti-imperialism-anti-fascism-and-the-spanish-civil-war/
80 years on from the Spanish Civil War, and with popular fascism on the
rise again across Europe, the United States, and India, we have to bear
in mind the ways in which socialists and anarchists came together to
fight European fascism. As the British, French and American governments
stood aside to allow Franco, with the aid of Hitler and Mussolini, to
defeat the republic, the history of such non-governmental resistances
are even more pertinent and provide a deeper understanding of the power
of extra-parliamentary political organisations.
In the face of British non-intervention, it became clear that fascism
easily colluded with colonialism. Moreover, despite attempts to compare
and combine anti-fascism and anti-imperialism by Indian nationalists
such as Jawaharlal Nehru and V. Krishna Menon, those struggles were
largely seen as separate issues by European socialists. Paradoxically,
such intersectional struggles have often been overlooked, and the
Spanish Civil War remains principally a Euro-American affair in existing
historiography, denying the true international character of the
International Brigades.
Two months after the Spanish Civil War broke out on 17 July 1936, the
Communist International set up the International Brigades to assist the
Spanish Republican cause against Franco’s fascist regime. At the same
time, the September 1936 Non-Interventionist Agreement signed by 27
countries, including Britain, France and Germany, effectively banned
entry of British nationals into Spain. However, in January 1937 British
socialists established the British Battalion of the International
Brigades, officially named the Saklatvala Battalion, after the Indian
Communist MP for Battersea, Shapurji Saklatvala, who died in January
1936.
While this moniker never caught on among the volunteers, Saklatvala’s
daughter, Sehri, continued to be involved in the fight against fascism
and with the Spain-India Committee organised a ‘For Spain, Indian
Evening’ on 12 March 1937. As an example of what Maria Framke calls
‘political humanitarianism’, the Spain-India Committee also donated an
ambulance to the war effort and agitated widely among the British left.
The India League, led by V. K. Krishna Menon, realised that Indian
freedom was inextricably linked to other international conflicts such as
the Spanish Civil War. At a meeting in late January 1938, Menon noted
that “the freedom of the Indian people was synonymous with the freedom
of the peoples of the world, and that imperialism and exploitation must
come to an end”. To celebrate Indian Independence Day on 26 January –
declared by the Indian National Congress in January 1930 – the India
League organised a National Independence Demonstration at Trafalgar
Square on 30 January 1938 in “solidarity with the Indian, Chinese and
Spanish people”. As around 1,200 people marched from Mornington
Crescent, “four bands accompanied the processionists. Flags of the
Spanish Republic, Irish Republic, Indian National Congress and Sama
Samaja Party, and banners with portraits of Subhas Chandra Bose,
Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, the Emperor of Abyssinia,
Chiang Kai-Shek, and ‘La Passionaria’ (the Spanish woman communist
leader), were carried”. At Trafalgar Square, the following resolution
was read aloud:
“We recognise that the fight against imperialism in India, Burma,
Ceylon, in Africa and the rest of the Colonial Empire, is part of our
own common struggle for democracy and against fascism and war, and we,
therefore, call upon all democratic and peace-loving men and women in
this country to consciously ally themselves with and to actively support
these struggles against the common foe”.
Alongside the India League, Menon’s friend Jawaharlal Nehru was among
the most vocal agitators in the Indian campaign against fascism in
Spain. At first he failed to attract any substantial attention in India,
but after his tour of Europe in 1938, which included a trip to Spain
with Menon, he managed to rally more support. In his pamphlet ‘Spain!
Why?’ (1938), he remarked that, “by giving our food-stuffs to the
Spanish people, we compel the world’s attention to our view-point”.
Despite the relatively few Indians in the International Brigades,
Nehru’s campaign against fascism was not lost on all. Gopal Mukund
Huddar, one of the few Indians fighting in Spain, joined the
International Brigades under the name ‘John Smith’ in October 1937. In
early February 1938 he went to Tarazona but, in early April 1938, he was
captured by Franco’s army in the battle of Gandesa. Relating his
experiences upon return to India, Huddar wrote that, “for another few
days we held the hills behind Gandesa. Here we had our artillery,
Anti-Tank, Anti-air guns. We held that place in face of artillery
shelling for seven hours every day. However in the end we were
encircled”.
Signalling the international compositition of the International
Brigades, his fellow prisoner Carl Geiser later wrote about Huddar that
he “reported on the struggle for independence from Britain of the people
of India under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru”.
Released from prison in late November 1938, a few receptions were held
in London in honour of Huddar, before he returned to Bombay in
mid-December 1938. A committed nationalist, the experiences in Spain
made Huddar an internationalist. “Spain gave me an opportunity to know
Germans, Austrians, Americans, French, English, Czechs, Canadians etc”,
he wrote upon return to India. “It is possible now to think
internationally and to create international centres for Indian
propaganda”.
For an Indian volunteer in Spain to think internationally is to
acknowledge the deep links between anti-imperialism and anti-fascism. As
we mark 80 years since the Spanish Civil War, it is clear that to learn
from history demands a greater understanding of international
solidarities in the face of fascism. And, while it took another decade
for India to gain independence from Britain, the Spanish Civil War
nevertheless marked a significant entry onto world politics and
important steps towards freedom for Menon and Nehru.