Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE May 2019 Lalkar: Migrant Internationalism Among Punjabis in Twentieth Century Britain Silas Liddell Webb Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Webb, Silas Liddell, "Lalkar: Migrant Internationalism Among Punjabis in Twentieth Century Britain" (2019). Dissertations - ALL. 1027. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/1027 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract Situated between early instances of economic migration from Punjab in the 1920s and the disintegration of the Labour Movement in the 1980s, this dissertation examines the political and social formation of Punjabis in twentieth century Britain. This project offers a discursive corrective to analyses of the British working-class that exclude or ignore the presence of thousands of nonwhite workers that came to the United Kingdom during that period and offers an assessment of the multiracial constitution of the British working-class and labour movement. As a contribution to South Asian history, this dissertation pursues a deterritorialized study of South Asian and Punjabi history -- as a history of people rather than a place. By bridging the historiographical divide of partition and independence, this project explores the significant interplay between the histories and struggles of host and home societies. These struggles were often mutually reinforcing for migrants, who, because they exist at the interstices of both societies, were mobilized by events near and far. Rather than insisting on the primary and definitive importance that one or the other place, native or host society, has on the development of ideologies, alliances, or cultures, this dissertation posits that they are historically produced, for mobile people, out of movement, interaction, and experience. Thus, this project centers on transnational connections and intergroup alliances, what I call migrant internationalism, as an essential medium through which to understand the history of South Asian migrant workers in Britain. LALKAR: MIGRANT INTERNATIONALISM AMONG PUNJABIS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITAIN by Silas Liddell Webb B.A., Lenoir-Rhyne University, 2006 M.A., University of Manchester, 2009 M.Phil., Syracuse University, 2014 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History. Syracuse University May 2019 Copyright © Silas Liddell Webb 2019 All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements In the years that I have spent trying to get to this point, I have amassed many debts. I begin with thanks to my committee, Alan Allport, Subho Basu, Paul Hagenloh, Prema Kurien, and Prasannan Parthasarathi, for their thoughtful feedback and helpful suggestions. I owe particular gratitude to Subho Basu for taking me as a student and allowing me to pursue this research. I also thank Prema Kurien for her willingness to work with a historian on topics of mutual interest and for her gracious encouragement and support throughout the process. Alan Allport has taken every opportunity to help in the completion of this project, often without much advance notice, and I thank him for his flexibility and steadfastness. The wider Syracuse community has also influenced this project. The Syracuse History Department has given me substantial support, financial and intellectual. Patti Bohrer, Erin Borchik, and Christina Cleason provided essential guidance in navigating the Graduate School and History Department requirements. The staff of Bird Library at Syracuse University, especially in the Inter-Library Loan Office, was tremendous in its ability to track down copies of primary and secondary resources. Sravani Biswas, Michael Britton, Robert Corban, Phil Erenrich, Yoshina Hurgobin, Jesse Hysell, Molly Jessup, Owais Khan, Davor Mondom, and Jason Newton all improved my thinking about this topic in direct and indirect ways and its intersection with larger questions of identity, power, and work. My teachers, Craige Champion, Anand Dwivedi, Carol Faulkner, Paul Hagenloh, Samantha Khan Herrick, and Lars Rodseth refined my arguments, use of sources, and introduced me to new theories and methodologies that informed my approach. My research in Britain was made easier and my stay more comfortable through the kindness, warmth, and comradery of Amarjit Chandan, Izzy Muhammad, Raj Pal, Harjinder Sandhu, and the staff of the Udham Singh Welfare Centre on Soho Road in Birmingham. Chris iv Moores and the Centre for Modern British Studies at the University of Birmingham gave me an institutional home and engaging discussion during my time in the Midlands. Moreover, I thank the staffs of the archives I visited, including the National Archives, the British Library, the Glasgow City Archive at the Mitchell Library, the Coventry History Centre, the Wolfson Centre at the Library of Birmingham, the Labour History Archive at the People’s History Museum, and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick. This work could not have been conducted without the generous financial support of several organizations and institutions. First among them is Syracuse University for providing me with ample research funding. I thank the American Historical Association for awarding me with a Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant for Research in European, African, or Asian History as well as the Critical Language Scholarship for funding my study of Punjabi in Chandigarh. The Social Science Research Council, through their Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, was foundational to this project. I thank the convenors of the Postcolonial Identities and Decolonial Struggles: Creolization and Colored Cosmopolitanism field, Gurminder K Bhambra and Nico Slate, as well as Robin Cohen and Robbie Shilliam who contributed to its tenor and trajectory. I also thank the members of my cohort, Martin Arboleda, Lucia Carminati, Linda Chhath, Simon Haisell, Jordache A. Ellapen, Simon Fisher, Mingwei Huang, Malarvizhi Jayanth, Madhuri Karak, Kaneesha Parsard, and Lauren Tooker for being brilliant, challenging, and inspirational. I had several opportunities to present preliminary findings at conferences and in print. I thank the organizers and panelists of the Punjab Research Group annual conference at the SOAS South Asia Institute, the South Asia Graduate Student Conference at the University of Chicago, the New York Conference on Asian Studies, the Annual Conference on South Asia, and the Early Career South Asian Studies Workshop at Princeton. Radha D’Souza and Kasim Ali Tirmizey v gave me the opportunity to publish a section of this project in their special edition on the Ghadar Movement for the journal Socialist Studies/Ètudes Socialistes. This research began in earnest once I joined the graduate program at Syracuse; however, the questions that I pursue here had been part of my thinking about history for years. I thank my teachers at the University of Manchester, Peter Gatrell, Anindita Ghosh, Steven Pierce, Bidisha Ray, and Paul Zavos, and my colleagues there, especially Gul Aftab, David Burke, Chad Chapman, Mark Dwyer, Kim Fowler, Hassan Jundi, Dominic Ip, Seth Libby, Dhruv Singhla, and Dan Stephens. Furthermore, without my teachers and mentors at Lenoir-Rhyne University, I may not have pursued historical research at all and certainly not in the same way. I am deeply thankful for Dale Bailey, Paul Beidler, Rand Brandes, Paul Custer, Carolyn Huff, and Werner Schultz. My family has shaped who I am and what I care about. This dissertation is in many ways a reflection of that. I thank my parents for their endless support, encouragement, and compassion. I thank my brothers and sister for their uniqueness and curiosity. Finally, I thank Luda for struggling with me through the ups and downs of research, travel, and rejection. She has given me strength when I needed it and insisted that I celebrate any achievement. And she has given me two sons, who have put the difficulties of writing, revising, and applying into perspective. Thank you. vi Table of Contents List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................... viii List of Images ................................................................................................................................ xi List of Foreign Terms ................................................................................................................... xii Introduction: Migrant Internationalism from World War One to Deindustrialization ................... 1 A History of Punjabi Anticolonial Radicalism ............................................................................. 25 Restriction, Resistance, and Intimacy: Indian Lascars in Britain ................................................. 53 The Punjabi Peddler Fraternity, 1925-1942 .................................................................................. 91 Udham Singh, Diaspora Radicalism, and the Cult of Assassination .......................................... 131 Indian Ideology in Mid-Twentieth Century Britain .................................................................... 165 Peaceful Cooperation and The Spirit of Bandung in the Era of Mass Migration ....................... 209 Migrant Militancy