Maia A. Ramnath

The Ghadar party was a militant anticolonial movement of Indian emigrants in California prior to World War I, inspiring Indian students, soldiers, and laborers worldwide. In their efforts to undermine British rule in India, both during and after the war, the group sought strategic alliances with partners ranging from the German Foreign Office to the border tribes of Afghanistan to the Communist International. Tracking Ghadar’s actions and ideas shows the ways in which radical leftist, nationalist, and pan-Islamist networks interacted transnationally during this period, and supports the argument that these three political idioms, far from being antithetical, were in actuality capacious languages in which a variety of statements could be made, including some compatible with one another.