Abhimanyu Arni

Research Topic

The India League 1928-1947: Anti-colonial Politics and the Ends of Empire 

Drawing on Leela Gandhi's seminal application of Henri Lefebvre's idea of the 'politics of friendship' I research Indian transnational anticolonialism in Britain through a study of the India League and the ways in which it generated solidarities among the British Left, especially the Independent Labour Party, Socialist League, Trades Unions and the Labour Party. Based on this I measure the contribution made by this species of anticolonialism by tracing its campaign for a Constituent Assembly for India through the political worlds of anti-fascism, trades unionism, and state papers after Labour's inclusion in the wartime coalition. I also investigate how anticolonialism, just as colonialism, could be a form of knowledge (about the particularity of imperial practices, especially the use of performative violence) and how the India League operated as a genuinely 'diasporic' organisation, especially in Birmingham where, in alliance with the Indian Workers Association, it attempted insurgent imaginaries of anticolonial political space in that city that was paradoxically both imperial and radical. This research is informed by an urgent need to move our understanding of anticolonial thought from established, canonical thinkers, onto a broader world of 'anticolonial common-sense' expressed by seamen, workers, activists and allies.  

My archival research has uncovered a few surprises: that the India League originated the anticolonial idea of a Constituent Assembly in 1932, brokered a secret meeting in 1938 between Nehru and Labour leaders, including Attlee and Cripps, which aimed to achieve Indian independence through a Constituent Assembly-and-treaty formula which in turn became the basis of Labour policy and sustained lobbying during the wartime coalition, culminating in the 1942 Cripps and 1946 Cabinet Mission, while the India League's parliamentary committee swelled to nearly one hundred members after the 1945 election. By exploring the India League's affiliations with the Fire Brigades Union, National Union of Railwaymen and others I shed new light on the internationalism and anticolonialism of Britain's Trades Union Movement. Lastly, I explore how the ends of empire did not arise from the cool calculations of an 'official mind' but from the tempestuous emotional clash between anticolonial passions and Churchillian, Conservative tantrums.  

I am also interested in Indian Political Intelligence, a spy network not substantially smaller than MI5, which was paid for by the colonial government in India but headquartered in Britain to spy on organisations such as the India League and the ways in which it's surveillance and criminalisation of dissent represented a 'rebound' of colonial governmentalities into 'liberal' metropolitan space. 

I also have an interest in the theoretical capacity of politics of identity in the global south, and am currently revising a manuscript for publication at a high-impact journal on Periyar's idea of the Dravidian, which explores how that identity could be a post-caste universality.  

My research has been supported by St. Edmund Hall, the Colin Matthew Fund, the History Faculty and the Oxford-India Initiative 

Supervisor: Professor Faisal Devji

Papers Taught:

History Papers:

Approaches to History 

Special Subject: From Gandhi to the Green Revolution: India, Independence and Modernity 1947-75

Imperial and Global History 1750-1930

Politics Papers:

Politics in South Asia

British Politics and Government