LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 1

      Irish and Imperial Contexts

      Despite the vast geographic distance between Ireland and India, the two countries share much in common experience. Imperialism, the demand for Home Rule, independence, partition and the incremental achievement of sovereignty are all common tropes in the stories of these former colonies of the British Empire. Decolonisation and the formation of so-called nation-states was, arguably, the most dominant historical force in the politics of the twentieth century. The movements that agitated for independence from kingdoms, empires and commonwealths in the period were led by men and women with a detailed knowledge of the regimes against which they were fighting. University education played a major role, not only in creating educated and socially conscious young agitators who contributed to the new politics of their day, but also in establishing networks where those interested in different but invariably related causes could meet and associate.

      Home Rule had been the dominant force in Irish political life between 1885 and 1918. Loosely analogous with the Indian term Swaraj, ‘self-rule’, the linkages between the two movements are not merely linguistic. The Irish Home Rule MP Frank Hugh O’Donnell had founded the Indian Constitutional Association in 1882 and had established contact with the mainly student-led London Indian Society which had been founded a decade previously.1 O’Donnell’s interest in India was by no means half-hearted. Although it ultimately came to nothing, the most ambitious plan for an Irish–Indian alliance proposed that four Indians be selected to represent Irish constituencies in parliament at Westminster in a mutual pact that would see Irish MPs support all Indian legislation while the Indians would be obliged to provide representation to their constituents and to lend support to the Irish campaign for Home Rule.2

      In 1913, a tumultuous year in Irish political life, a group of Indian students arrived in Dublin city. They enrolled at the Honourable Society of the King’s Inns to study for the Bar. Additionally, they enrolled at University College Dublin, a constituent college of the National University of Ireland. This group of Indian students appears to have been the first bulk influx of international students to the new university arriving from a single country to study a single subject. In the history of international education in Ireland, this constituted an important chapter.

      The subject chosen by these Indian students was not arbitrary. For many years prior to their arrival, law had been the subject of choice for Indians travelling abroad for study and those who were interested in the Indian national cause. Although the historian Alex Tickell points to the politicising impact of study of the law due to its ability to expose the student to the disparity between British and Indian legal systems, Shompa Lahiri offers a more pragmatic reason for the popularity of legal study among Indian students.3 Lahiri states that ‘the popularity of law among Indian students [in Britain] was due to the privileged position English-trained barristers exercised over Indian-qualified pleaders’.4 Furthermore, Lahiri claims that ‘Bar examinations were even said to be easier than legal examinations in India.’5

      In London, the National Indian Association estimated that there were more than 160 Indian students in British Universities by 1885, a number that had risen to 700 by 1910.6 Elsewhere, Lahiri has written that, owing to the fact that no formal census of Indian students in Britain was ever taken, figures can vary widely and accuracy in numbers remains elusive. Lahiri does, however, produce a table, working from the best available sources – the Journal of the National Indian Association and the Indian Student Department report which will be considered in greater depth later. From a base figure of 40–50 students in 1873 – more than a decade before Burton’s count on students begins – Lahiri sees the number of students growing slowly from 100 in 1880 to no more than 400 by the turn of the century. However, 700–800 in 1907 more than doubled to 1,700–1,800 by 1913 which represents a high water mark. In 1922 there were an estimated 1,500 students with numbers not returning to 1,800 until 1927.7

      Underlining the importance of legal study to the Indian student community, Antoinette Burton observes that Indian students in London gravitated towards Bloomsbury. This neighbourhood was close to the British Library, the Inns of Court and Temple Bar.8 A Parliamentary Report from the India Students’ Department for 1913–14 estimates a total of 1,600 to 1,700 Indian students studying in British institutions in this period. In 1914, 609 of these were registered at the Inns of Court in London, meaning that law students accounted for almost two-fifths of all Indian students in Britain at that time.9

      In his autobiography, V. V. Giri recalls how ‘Indian students preferred to study in Ireland in preference to England because there was neither a colour bar nor racial prejudice of any kind among the Irish, probably due to the adverse circumstances of their history.’10 Lending support to Giri’s impression that Ireland was a more welcoming destination for Indian students, the Indian Students’ Department’s report notes that, while

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