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“The Sinn Féin of India”: Irish Nationalism and the Policing of Revolutionary Terrorism in Bengal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Michael Silvestri
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A recent article in the Calcutta magazine Desh outlined the exploits of a revolutionary fighting for “national freedom” against the British Empire. The article related how, during wartime, this revolutionary traveled secretly to secure the aid of Britain's enemies in starting a rebellion in his country. His mission failed, but this “selfless patriot” gained immortality as a nationalist hero. For an Indian—and particularly a Bengali—audience, the logical protagonist of this story would be the Bengali nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose, the former president of the Indian National Congress, assumed the leadership of the Indian National Army with the support of the Japanese imperial government during the Second World War in the hopes of freeing India from British rule. The subject of the story, however, was not Bose, but the United Irishmen leader Theobald Wolfe Tone and his efforts in 1796 to secure assistance for an Irish rebellion from the government of Revolutionary France. The article went on to narrate how Ireland had been held in the “grip of imperialism” for an even longer period of time than India and concluded that the Irish and Indian nationalist movements were linked by a history of rebellion against British rule.

As the Desh article illustrates, the popular image of the relationship between Ireland and India within the British Empire has been that of two subject peoples striving for national freedom. This linkage of Irish and Indian history has had particular resonance in Bengal.

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Research Article
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , October 2000 , pp. 454 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2000

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References

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22 Cited in ibid., pp. 183–84. Zetland had served as Governor of Bengal from 1917 to 1922. According to McMahon, Bengali nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose's visit to Ireland in 1936, where he met with de Valera and other Irish leaders, may have been the source of Zetland's concern.

23 According to Scott Benjamin Cook, after the establishment of the Irish Free State, “the relevance of the Irish to the Indian situation became increasingly remote.” Cook, Scott Benjamin, “The Example of Ireland: Political and Administrative Aspects of the Imperial Relationship with British India, 1855–1922” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1987), p. 361Google Scholar.

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33 The conversion of many former Bengal terrorists to Marxism is the subject of Laushey, Bengal Terrorism and the Marxist Left.

34 Rajat Kanta Ray writes, “In the grim battle between the police and the revolutionaries, the sympathy of large sections of Bengali society lay with the latter.” Ray, , Social Conflict and Political Unrest, p. 182Google Scholar.

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36 Gordon, Leonard A., Brothers against the Raj: A Biography of the Indian Nationalists Subhas and Sarat Chandra Bose (New York, 1989), p. 229Google Scholar.

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38 Although Subhas Bose certainly did have connections to Bengali revolutionaries, many of the tales of his involvement with revolutionary organizations in Bengal were wildly exaggerated. Gordon, , Brothers against the Raj, p. 194Google Scholar.

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40 Notes by H. LeMesurier, Inspector General of Police, Eastern Bengal and Assam, 5 July 1908 and 15 June 1908, Calcutta, West Bengal State Archives (WBSA), Government of Bengal Home (Political) Confidential file (GOB Home [Pol.] Conf.) no. 390/C of 1909.

41 Although Peter Heehs argues that revolutionary terrorism in Bengal was purely a “natural and indigenous response to British imperial domination,” his article provides numerous examples of the influence of European revolutionaries. Heehs, Peter, “Foreign Influences on Bengali Revolutionary Terrorism, 1902–1908,” Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 3 (July 1994): 533–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Chaudhuri, Nirad C., The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (London, 1951), p. 224Google Scholar.

43 SirPhilips, Percival, “The Firm Hand in Bengal,” Daily Mail (12 February 1926)Google Scholar, Tegart Papers, Centre of South Asian Studies Archive (CSAS), University of Cambridge.

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45 Bose later wrote, “In my part of India—Bengal—there is hardly an educated family where books about the Irish heroes are not read and if I may say so, devoured.” Subhas Bose to Mrs. Woods, Subhas Chandra Bose Papers, 7 December 1933 and 21 December 1935, Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta.

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48 Sarkar, Tanika, “Bengali Middle-Class Nationalism and Literature: A Study of Saratchandra's ‘Pather Dabi’ and Rabindranath's ‘Char Adhyay,’” in Economy, Society and Politics in Modern India, ed. Panigrahi, D. N. (New Delhi, 1985), p. 451Google Scholar.

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51 Serialized accounts of de Valera's life appeared in Sankha (September-October 1923); Barisal (September 1923); Ananda Bazar Patrika (March 1925); and Swadeshi Bazaar (September-December 1928). Citations may be found in BRNP (1923), pp. 836, 876, 935, 958, and 985Google Scholar; BRNP (1925), pp. 213 and 265Google Scholar; BRNP (1928), pp. 526, 559, 567, 609, and 622Google Scholar; and BRNP (1929), pp. 28 and 44Google Scholar, respectively. The annual BRNP contain only the dates of publication and sometimes the title and author of these articles, however, and I have been unable to locate the complete texts. For Bengali interest in the 1932 Irish elections, see the Fortnightly Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal, first half of March and first half of April, 1932, British Library, London, Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), L/P&J/12/36.

52 The Calcutta nationalist newspaper Forward carried a weekly column on Irish affairs during the 1920s. See Gordon, Leonard A., Bengal: The Nationalist Movement, 1876–1940 (New York, 1974), p. 338Google Scholar.

53 John Mitchel O Biplabi Ireland (Mitchel, John and revolutionary Ireland), p. 3Google Scholar, Proscribed Literature Collection, OIOC, IOR MIC 11599/9. This interpretation of Irish history was consistent with that of the contemporary Irish Free State, where a stress on “the supposed message of Irish history” was used to assert a separate Irish identity after 1921. As R. F. Foster writes, this involved “a necessary degree of deliberate amnesia,” in which “the record of parliamentary nationalism [was] more or less dismissed.” Foster, R. F., Modern Ireland: 1600 to 1972 (New York, 1988), p. 535Google Scholar.

54 I owe this point to Partha Chatterjee.

55 Surendra Mohan Ghose, Oral History Transcript, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi. One revolutionary deported to the Andaman Islands before the First World War, Hrishikesh Kunji Lai, was known among the prison staff as “All for Ireland” for his attempts to enlist an Irish jailor's sympathy “as another oppressed subject of the British Crown, saying ‘We fought for the Irish also, we are all for Ireland.’” Tegart, C. A., “Notes on the Andaman Enquiries (August 1913),” pp. 27–28Google Scholar, WBSA, GOB Home (Pol.) Conf. no. 293 of 1913.

56 Irish Press (12 February 1936), cited in Gordon, , Brothers against the Raj, p. 693Google Scholar.

57 “The Youths of Bengal” (1929), cited in Hale, , Terrorism in India, p. 214Google Scholar.

58 Chaudhuri, , Thy Hand Great Anarch! p. 314Google Scholar; An Phoblacht (29 September 1929), National Archives of India (NAI), New Delhi, Government of India, Home Department (Political) file, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 28/6 of 1929; and Gordon, , Brothers against the Raj, pp. 417–18Google Scholar.

59 My Fight for Irish Freedom was originally published in Dublin by the Talbot Press in 1924. Breen, a native of County Tipperary and a member of the Tipperary Volunteers, was involved in the murder of two Royal Irish Constabulary men at Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary, in January 1919. To many Republicans, he epitomized the Irish “gunman” who took arms against the British, and his actions are often depicted as the beginning of the Irish “war for independence.”

60 Sir John Anderson, governor of Bengal, to H. D. Craik, 28 October 1935, NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 41/6 of 1935.

61 Breen, Dan, My Fight for Irish Freedom, rev. ed. (Dublin, 1964), pp. 75 and 83Google Scholar.

62 There were at least two translations of Dan Breen's My Fight for Irish Freedom into Hindi and one each into Punjabi and Tamil, all of which were proscribed. For details see Shaw, Graham and Lloyd, Mary, eds., Publications Proscribed by the Government of India (London, 1985)Google Scholar. A copy of one Hindi edition of Breen, , Ireland Ka Svatantraya Yudh (Kanpur, 1928)Google Scholar, is in the collection of Indian Proscribed Tracts, 1907–47 (microfilm), NMML. I am grateful to my colleague Mridu Rai for identifying this edition for me.

63 Cited in Gordon, , Brothers against the Raj, p. 103Google Scholar.

64 Ray, R. E. A., “Report on the Activities of Terrorists in Bengal during the Period April to December 1930,” in Samanta, , ed., Terrorism in Bengal, 1:603Google Scholar.

65 Gordon, , Brothers against the Raj, p. 103Google Scholar; and Dutt, Kalpana, Chittagong Armoury Raiders: Reminiscences, rev. ed. (Delhi, 1979), p. 13Google Scholar.

66 Reid, Robert, Years of Change in Bengal and Assam (London, 1966), p. 53Google Scholar. For Breen's influence among the Chittagong revolutionaries, see Sharma, I. Mallikarjuna, Easter Rebellion in India: The Chittagong Uprising (Hyderabad, 1993), pp. 82, 111, 128, and 132Google Scholar.

67 Ray, , “Report on the Activities of Terrorists in Bengal,” p. 607Google Scholar.

68 Surya Sen was executed in Chittagong Jail on 15 January 1934.

69 Ray, , “Report on the Activities of Terrorists in Bengal,” p. 608Google Scholar.

70 Dutt, , Chittagong Armoury Raiders, p. 13Google Scholar.

71 Bhupati Mazumdar, Oral History Transcript, NMML; and Majumdar, R. C., History of Modern Bengal, Part 2 (1905–1947): Freedom Movement (Calcutta, 1981), p. 263Google Scholar.

72 J. R. Johnson, Superintendent of Police, Chittagong, to F. J. Lowman, Inspector General, Bengal Police, 24 April 1930, NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 335 of 1930.

73 H. R. Wilkinson, District Magistrate, Chittagong, to H. Tufnell-Barrett, Pol. Dept., GOB, 10 October 1930, WBSA, GOB Home (Pol.) Conf. no. 749 of 1930.

74 Ray, , “Report on the Activities of Terrorists in Bengal,” pp. 608–9Google Scholar.

75 Cited in Sharma, , Easter Rebellion in India, p. 159Google Scholar.

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79 Ray, R. E. A., Terrorist Conspiracy in Bengal from 1st January to 30th June 1926 (1926)Google Scholar, Indian Police Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. F 161/36.

80 I. G. H. Holman memoirs, pp. 272–73, Holman Papers, OIOC, MSS Eur. D 884.

81 J. A. Goldie to Chief Sec. to GOB, September 1921; and G. W. Dixon to Chief Sec. to GOB, 6 January 1922, NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 409 of 1922.

82 Hale, , Terrorism in India, p. 23Google Scholar; and J. C. Farmer, Bengal Police Intelligence Branch, to T. J. A. Craig, Inspector General, Bengal Police, 5 May 1931, WBSA, GOB Home (Pol.) Conf. no. 296 of 1931.

83 The vast majority of works banned by the Government of India were those seen as seditious or revolutionary, although some were banned on the grounds of inflaming communal sentiments. For lists and details of proscribed works and the machinery of proscription see Shaw and Lloyd, Publications Proscribed by the Government of India; and Barrier, N. G., Banned: Controversial Literature and Political Control in British India (Columbus, Mo., 1971)Google Scholar. A recent compilation—in Bengali with a summary in English—of books banned in Bengal is Bhattacharya, Hiranmay, Nirbasita Sahitya (Proscribed Bengali books), vols. 1 and 2 (Calcutta, 1981 and 1987)Google Scholar.

84 Forty copies of the Gaelic American were seized in the French enclave of Chandernagore, near Calcutta, in December 1907, addressed to one S. N. Sen. After the proscription of the paper, Sen “apparently at the instigation” of Bengali revolutionaries based in Chandernagore, sought to obtain copies for over seventy other subscribers, mostly newspaper editors in Calcutta and the mofussil, through the French postal service. Tegart, C. A., “Note on the Chandernagore Gang,” 20 July 1913Google Scholar, WBSA, GOB Home (Pol.) Conf. no. 342 of 1913.

85 Note by C. J. Stevenson-Moore, 11 July 1907, NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) A, August 1907, 243–50. In July 1907 orders were given for postal officials to surreptitiously seize copies of the paper; 335 copies of the Gaelic American had been seized before it was formally proscribed under the Sea Customs Act in September 1907; NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) A, January 1908, 38–42.

86 Davis, , “The Influence of the Irish Revolution on Indian Nationalism,” p. 55Google Scholar; and note by H. W. Vincent, 1 May 1918, NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) Deposit, May 1918, no. 39.

87 “Publications, etc., Proscribed under Section 12 (I) of the Indian Press Act, 1910 and since Its Repeal, under Section 99-A, of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1920 to 1924 (October),” in Samanta, , ed., Terrorism in Bengal, 4:57–58Google Scholar; and “Prohibition under the Sea Customs Act of the Importation in British India of Copies of Publications Issued by Revolutionary Societies in Foreign Countries,” WBSA, GOB Home (Pol.) Conf. no. 317 of 1920.

88 The district magistrate of Chittagong, who was unaware of the proscription order, wrote to the Government of Bengal in October 1930 requesting that My Fight for Irish Freedom be banned for reasons of its “injurious influence” on “impressionable minds” as well the application of its ideas by revolutionaries in the Chittagong Armoury Raid. H. R. Wilkinson, District Magistrate, Chittagong, to H. Tufnell-Barrett, Second Additional Sec. to GOB, 10 October 1930, WBSA, GOB Home (Pol.) Conf. no. 749 of 1930.

89 These included biographies of John Mitchel as well as books containing shorter sketches about the Fénian Luke Dillon and the Sinn Féin leader Countess Markievicz. A Hindi-language biography of de Valera published in Calcutta was also proscribed by the Government of India. See Shaw and Lloyd, Publications Proscribed by the Government of India. For details of Narayan Chakrabarti's Vidrohi Ireland (Revolutionary Ireland), proscribed by the Government of Bengal in 1929, see NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) 27/1 of 1929.

90 Emphasis added. Johnston, Calcutta Special Branch, to Director, Intelligence Bureau, GOI, 10 September 1935, NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 41/6 of 1935.

91 Note by H. Williamson, 17 September 1935, NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 41/6 of 1935.

92 Note by H. D. Craik, 25 October 1935; and Anderson to Craik, 28 October 1935, NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 41/6 of 1935. The Government of India also considered but ultimately rejected the proscription of Macardle's, DorothyThe Irish Republic (1937)Google Scholar after copies were seized in Calcutta. For details, see NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 41/7 of 1937.

93 Cook, S. B., Imperial Affinities: Nineteenth-Century Analogies and Exchanges between India and Ireland (New Delhi, London, and Newbury Park, Calif., 1993)Google Scholar; Dewey, Clive, “Celtic Agrarian Legislation and the Celtic Revival: Historicist Implications of Gladstone's Irish and Scottish Land Acts, 1870–1886,” Past and Present, no. 64 (August 1974): 30–70Google Scholar, and “Images of the Village Community: A Study in Anglo-Indian Ideology,” Modern Asian Studies 6, no. 3 (July 1972): 291–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 Two examples were the Vernacular Press Act of 1878 and the Indian Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1908. Cook, , Imperial Affinities, pp. 32–36Google Scholar.

95 Fedorowich, Kent, “The Problems of Disbandment: The Royal Irish Constabulary and Imperial Migration, 1919–1929,” Irish Historical Studies 30, no. 117 (May 1996): 88–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 Seton to W. H. Vincent, Home Dept., GOI, 13 April 1922, NAI, GOI Home (Police) no. 627 of 1922.

97 Lionel Curtis, Colonial Office, to Sir William Duke, India Office, 25 August 1922, OIOC, P&J no. 2092 of 1922, L/P&J/6/1800.

98 Malcolm Seton wrote of the “desirability that this special recruitment should not be criticised in India as a drafting of ‘Black and Tans’ to inaugurate new methods of repression.” Sir Malcolm Seton to Sir W. Duke, 19 May 1922, OIOC, P&J no. 2092 of 1922, L/P&J/6/1800.

99 According to Thomas Mockaitis, the Anglo-Irish War was “part of a long series of internal-security operations that collectively gave rise to a traditional wisdom on how to combat irregulars.” Mockaitis, Thomas, British Counter-insurgency, 1919–1960 (London, 1990), p. 12Google Scholar.

100 These began with the Public Safety (Emergency Powers) Act of 1 August 1923 and extended to the Offenses against the State Act of 1939.

101 See NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 4/66 of 1932. The 1927 Public Safety Act, passed after the assassination of Minister for Justice and External Affairs Kevin O'Higgins by an IRA gunman, provided for the establishment of “Special Courts” consisting of three or more members. The courts were established to try a range of offenses including murder, attempted murder, or conspiracy to murder the governor-general of Ireland or any member of the Irish legislature or judges. There was no appeal from the tribunals' decisions.

102 Suspects had to be brought before tribunals within one month and three days of arrest. The India Office noted that “the powers of detention are not so great” as those in India, although “the reasons justifying detention without trial in India do not however exist in Ireland in virtue of the power of the Tribunal to order its procedure.” Note by W. Johnston, 26 October 1931, OIOC, L/P&J/7/235.

103 British legislation to combat terrorism in India was based largely on the Defence of India Act of 1915, which allowed for detention without trial and the trial of terrorist suspects by tribunal rather than by jury.

104 Note by Malcolm Seton, 27 October 1931, OIOC, L/P&J/7/235.

105 At the same time the Government of Bengal also examined the Irish Free State Fire Arms Act of 1925 and the Treasonable Offenses Act of 1925. See WBSA, GOB Home (Pol.) Conf. no. 825 of 1931. The Government of the Punjab also requested to see copies of the 1931 act; NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 295 of 1931.

106 Note by H. Twynham, 14 December 1931; and note by R. E. A. Ray, 29 October 1931, WBSA, GOB Home (Pol.) Conf. no. of 825 of 1931.

107 As Charles Townshend observes, that result was not achieved. Townshend, Charles, The British Campaign in Ireland, 1919–1921 (Oxford, 1975), p. 73Google Scholar.

108 Wheeler-Bennett, , John Anderson, pp. 67–68Google Scholar. For a more critical assessment of Anderson's role, see Townshend, , British Campaign, p. 80Google Scholar.

109 Anderson to Samuel Hoare, Secretary of State for India, 13 January 1933, Anderson Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. E 240/9.

110 Lionel Curtis to Anderson, 27 February 1932, Anderson Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. F 207/5.

111 Lothian to Anderson, 12 March 1932; and Macready to Anderson, 24 November 1931, Anderson Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. F 207.

112 R. N. Reid recalled that Anderson “could expound with equal facility the methods used to repress terrorism in Ireland or the niceties of Parliamentary procedure.” Reid, , Years of Change, p. 70Google Scholar.

113 The act established two separate parliaments to administer Home Rule in northern and southern Ireland. Each was in turn subordinate to the imperial parliament in London. Anderson to Findlater Stewart, 17 November 1932; and Anderson to Samuel Hoare, 29 July 1933, Anderson Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. F 207/5.

114 In response to King George V's query, “What is wrong with Bengal?” Anderson replied in June 1932 that “the most conspicuous and the most urgent of our problems is without question the suppression of terrorism.” Wheeler-Bennett, , John Anderson, p. 126Google Scholar; and Anderson, John, “The Situation in Bengal,” June 1932Google Scholar, Anderson Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. F 207/14.

115 In 1932 the Government of Bengal requested copies of “Orders for Internment Camps in Ireland,” although the exact content is not clear, since the relevant file has not been transferred to the archives. NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 59 of 1932.

116 Note by R. N. Reid, 29 June 1932, WBSA, GOB Home (Pol.) Conf. no. 685 of 1932.

117 Note by H. G. Haig, 25 October 1932, NAI, GOI Home (Pol.) no. 4/66 of 1932.

118 H. G. Haig to Anderson, 19 November 1932; and Anderson to Haig, 22 November 1932, Anderson Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. F 207/3.

119 A conference of officials from the Government of Bengal and the Government of India in November 1931 noted a “very real danger of the European population taking the law into their own hands, if outrages continue.” H. W. Emerson, “Note on Discussion with the Bengal Government,” 5 November 1931, OIOC, L/P&J/7/242.

120 Note by R. E. A. Ray, 29 October 1931, WBSA, GOB Home (Pol.) Conf. of 825 of 1931; and note by R. N. Reid, 24 March 1932, Anderson Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. F 207/12. For the origins of reprisals during the Anglo-Irish War, see Townshend, , British Campaign, pp. 95–97Google Scholar.

121 Reid, , Years of Change, p. 70Google Scholar. In his memoirs Reid does not, however, mention his own advocacy of reprisals against terrorists.

122 For a brief discussion of the Indian Army's involvement in the campaign against terrorism in Bengal, see Omissi, David, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–1940 (London, 1994), pp. 223–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

123 R. N. Reid, “Bomb and Pistol in a Bengal District,” Reid Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. E 278/2.

124 Hunt, John, Life Is Meeting (London, 1978), pp. 21–22Google Scholar.

125 Hoare to Anderson, 14 October 1932, Templewood Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. E 240/9; and Ananda Bazar Patrika, 23 November 1937, and Advance, 22 November 1937, Anderson Collection, OIOC, MSS Eur. F 207/22.

126 Leonard A. Gordon concludes his biography of Subhas and Sarat Chandra Bose by observing that “of all the foreign nationalists, both the Boses had a special feeling for the Irish. Both visited Ireland, both talked of the lessons that India had to learn from the bravery of Irish patriots and the determination with which the Irish worked for complete independence from the British Empire.” Gordon, , Brothers against the Raj, p. 618Google Scholar.

127 Breen, , My Fight for Irish Freedom, p. 179Google Scholar; Briscoe, Robert with Hatch, Alden, For the Life of Me (Boston and Toronto, 1958), p. 141Google Scholar; and Gilmore, George, The Irish Republican Congress, rev. ed. (Cork, 1978), p. 30Google Scholar.

128 Townshend, Charles, “The IRA and the Development of Guerilla Warfare, 1916–21,” English Historical Review 94, no. 371 (April 1979): 344Google Scholar.

129 It is not true, as Richard J. Popplewell maintains, that “comparisons between India and Ireland by British statesmen are extremely few and far between.” Popplewell, , Intelligence and Imperial Defense, p. 32Google Scholar.

130 After his retirement from the Indian Police in 1931, Tegart became the first former policeman appointed to the Council of India. In 1932, he delivered a lecture to the Royal Empire Society on “Terrorism in India.” For Tegart's career, see Curry, J. C., Tegart of the Indian Police (Tunbridge Wells, 1960)Google Scholar; and Silvestri, Michael, “‘An Irishman Is Specially Suited to Be a Policeman’: Sir Charles Tegart and the Revolutionary Terrorist Movement in Bengal,” History Ireland (in press)Google Scholar.

131 O'Ceallaigh, Sean T., India and Ireland (New York, 1925), p. 9Google Scholar.

132 Devi, , “India and Ireland,” 299Google Scholar; Kapur, , The Irish Raj, p. 45Google Scholar; and Mitra, S.M., Anglo-Indian Studies (New York, Bombay, and Calcutta, 1913), p. 464Google Scholar.

133 Of 106 Irish civil servants in India in 1919, only three retired prematurely as a result of either the Anglo-Irish War or the civil war that followed. Cook, , “The Example of Ireland,” p. 182Google Scholar.

134 Cook, , Imperial Affinities, p. 136Google Scholar.