Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Joan M. Jensen
The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 48, No. 1. (Feb., 1979), pp. 65-83.
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The "Hindu Conspiracy":
A Reassessment
Joan M. Jensen
'Giles T. Brown, "The Hindu Conspiracy, 1914- 1917," Pacijc HktoricalReview, XVII
(1948), 299-310; Giles T. Brown, "The Hindu Conspiracy" (M.A. thesis, University of
California, Berkeley, 1941); Mark Naidis, "Propaganda of the Gadar Party," Pacijc
Historical R&, XX (1951), 251-260. Popular spy accounts were Earl E. Sperry,
Gennun Plots and I n h i p s in the United States during the Period of Our Neutrality (Washing-
ton, D.C.: Committee on Public Information, Red, White, and Blue Series, No. 10,July
1918); J. P. Jones and P. M. H. Hollister, The G m n Semet Snvice in America (Toronto,
1918); and T. J. Tunney (as told to P. M. H. Hollister), Throttled (Boston, 1919).
'John W. Spellman, "The International Extensions of Political Conspiracy as
Illustrated by the Ghadr Party," Journal oflndian History, XXXVII (1959), 23-45; R. C.
Majumdar, Histoy of the Freedom Movement in Indie (3 vols., Calcutta, 1963); and Kalyan
Kumar Banerjee, "The Indo-German Conspiracy: Beginning of the E n d and "The
Gadar Movement and the Hand of Germany," Modern Review, CXVIII (1965), 112-
119, 381-386; and other articles in ibid., CXVI (1964), 27-30, 335-361, CXVII
(1965), 97-101, CXIX (1966), 26-30, CXXI (1967), 99-107.
'Arun Coomer Bose, "Indian Nationalist Agitators in the U.S.A. and Canada till the
Arrival of Har Dayal in 1911," Joumal of Indian Histmy, XLIII (1965), 227-239; and
Bose, Indian RevolutionariesAbroad, 1905-1922 (Patna, 1971 ) ; and L. P. Mathur, Indian
Revolutionary Movement in the United States of America (Delhi, 1970).
Hindu Conspiracy 67
Ute. Orozco escaped and Huerta died before the trial could
begin.5
Thus, at the time East Indians engaged in most of the
activities later labeled the "Hindu conspiracy," the courts had
not accepted conspiracy as merely a connecting link between
the activities of individual revolutionaries, but still defined
overt action very narrowly in military expedition cases. The
Germans did attempt to ship arms to India and five East
Indians planned to sail with the arms. In addition, East Indians
participated in several attempts to further the cause of the
Indian revolution. None of these activities, however, consti-
tuted a clear-cut violation of neutrality unless the conspiracy
statute was applied. It required only that two people "conspire"
to commit some illegal act and then that one person make an
overt act toward executing that plan. The actions of individuals
which separately did not violate neutrality statutes could jointly
lead to prosecutions of Indian nationalists. While the con-
spiracy statute was of great assistance in obtaining convictions,
it confused the issues involved. As one legal researcher said of
the conspiracy statute after reviewing the government's wide-
spread use of it in the 1960's: "It distracts the courts from the
policy questions or balancing of interest that ought to govern
the decision of specific legal issues and leads them instead to
decide those issues by reference to the conceptual framework
of conspiracy. . . it gives the courts a means of deciding
difficult questions without thinking about them."6
Conspiracy was not a new legal concept in 1917. It had a
"Charles G. Fenwick, The Neutrality Laws ofthe United States (Washington, D.C., 1913),
57; New York Times, Aug. 31, 1895,5:4; Sept. 24, 1895,5: 1; Nov. 19, 1895,5: 1;June 12,
1895, 4:7; June 23, 1896, 5:l; July 31, 1896, 1:5; United St& v. Wibwg, 73 Fed. 159
(1896); Ray Emerson Curtis, "The Law of Hostile Military Expeditions as Applied by
the United States," American Journul of International Law, VIII (1914), 249; Lowell L.
Blaisdell, The Desert Revolution: Baja California, 191 I (Madison, 1962), 170- 171, 189-
191; and Blaisdell, "Harry Chandler and the Mexican Border Intrigue, 1914- 1917,"
Pacific Histmica1 Review, XXXV (1966), 385-393. For correspondence on neutrality law
enforcement along the Mexican border, see Records of the Adjutant General Office,
National Archives, Record Group 94 (hereafter cited as NA, RG), file 1716354; United
States v. Molina et al., Case No. 1564, and United States v. Emilw Vasqwz Comet et al., Case
No. 2080, Federal Records Center, Fort Worth, Texas; and Michael Meyer, Huerta: A
Political Portrait (Lincoln, 1972), 22 1-222, 225.
"Phillip E. Johnson, "The Unnecessary Crime of Conspiracy, California Law Review,
LXI (1973), 1139-1 140.
history in England from the thirteenth century. American
workers had fought a long and ultimately successful battle
during the nineteenth century against the application of con-
spiracy to their organized attempts to raise wages and improve
working conditions. In 1921, the Supreme Court ruled that the
conspiracy statute could not be applied to labor unions. By then
the federal government had given the statute new life by ap-
plying it to internal security cases involving political activists.
Later convictions for conspiracy to violate the Selective Service
and Espionage Acts of 1917, the Smith Act of 1940, and the
Selective Service Act of 1967 are better known than the East
Indian neutrality convictions, but all were part of the tradition
which expanded the conspiracy statute to hinder the activities
of political groups. In the East Indian trial, the Justice Depart-
ment achieved its first important successful application of the
conspiracy statute to the military expedition law. Success in the
trial depended upon the creation of the "Hindu c~nspiracy."~
There were three stages to the creation of the "Hindu
conspiracy." During the first stage, from 1908 to 1914, the
British began surveillance of East Indian nationalists in Canada
and the United States. During the second stage, from 1914 to
mid- 1916, the British exerted diplomatic pressure in an effort
to suppress the movement for independence in India and
continued covert surveillance activities in the United States.
During the third stage, from mid-1916 to 1918, United States
officials began to investigate East Indian activities and, with
British assistance, eventually prosecuted the nationalists.
Concern by the British government about the revolutionary
activities of the East Indians in North America existed long
before the outbreak of World War I in Europe. When immigra-
tion from India to Canada began to increase in 1907, the
British were worried about the effect that Canadian anti-Asian
sentiment, violence, and discrimination might have in India.
BForthe Canadian stage, see Governor General Albert Grey to Lord Elgin, March 25,
1908, Albert Grey Papers, Vol. 14, Public Archives of Canada (hereafter cited as PAC).
OE. J. E. Swayne, "Confidential Memorandum on Matters Affecting the East Indian
Community in British Columbia," Governor General Correspondence (hereafter cited
as GGC), Vol. 200, PAC.
By December 1908, Canadian military intelligence officer
Rowland Brittain was investigating the "alleged Hindu con-
spiracy" in British Columbia.lo
In January 1909, the Canadian government employed Hop-
kinson full time to conduct political investigations of Indian
nationalists in Canada and the United States. He reported
regularly to the Canadian government and to Governor Gen-
eral Albert Grey, hired East Indians to work undercover in the
East Indian communities in the United States and Canada, and
he made at least two visits to Seattle and Berkeley to conduct
extensive investigations into the political activities of East
Indian students. He also worked with immigration officials and
exclusionist politicians in support of legislation in the United
States excluding East Indians. Hopkinson was later subsidized
by the British and Canadian governments and became so
notorious for his tactics within the immigrant community that
an Indian shot him during an immigration trial in 1914." The
death of Hopkinson ended the first phase of the "Hindu
conspiracy" in North America.
T h e second stage in the creation of the "Hindu conspiracy"
began after the British entered World War I. During this
period, from 1914 to mid-1 916, the British not only continued
to conduct covert activities in the United States but also
engaged in anti-Indian propaganda and exerted diplomatic
pressure in an effort to suppress the movement for indepen-
dence in India by East Indians.
T h e cause of the heightened concern of the British govern-
ment in 1914 was the large number of East Indians, who, after
war broke out between Britain and Germany, returned to India
from North America to work for revolution. Of an estimated
10,000 East Indians in North American in 1914, as many as
"Rowland Brittain to Assistant Director of Intelligence, Dec. 5, 1908, GGC Vol. 200,
PAC.
"Reports from W. C. Hopkinson are scattered through Vols. 200-205 in GGC,
PAC. See especially W. W. Cory to John Hanbury Williams, Jan. 19, 1909, Hopkinson
to Cory, March 7, 1910, Vol. 200; Hopkinson to Cory, Sept. 26 and Oct. 13 and 23,
191 1, Vol. 201; Hopkinson to Cory, May 3, 1914, and May 12 and Sept. 2, 1918, and
Hopkinson to J. A. Wallinger, April 30, 1914, Vol. 205; Hopkinson to Zurbrick,
June 29, 1914, Zurbrick to Commissioner of Immigration, July 1, 1914, A. Caminetti to
Acting Commissioner of Immigration, May 8, 1914, file 52903, NA, RG 85.
Hindu Conspiracy 73
2,000 may have left for India during the first three months of
war. There were no laws against the Indians leaving the United
States, whatever their intent, as long as they did not organize a
military expedition and as long as they had not been recruited
for a foreign army. The main internal defenses of the British
Empire in India against these men were a widespread network
of surveillance and informers and the Ingress of Indian Ordi-
nance, passed by the Indian government at the beginning of
the war, which allowed subversives to be summarily arrested
and held without trial. Even after large numbers of men had
been arrested, however, revolutionaries continued to smuggle
in the San Francisco Ghadar newspaper, which openly advo-
cated the overthrow of the British government in India."
During 1915 British Ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice asked
that a shipment of arms the Germans had purchased in New
York for shipment to Mexico on the Annie Larsen be investi-
gated. British undercover agents knew the Germans planned to
transfer the arms to the Maverick in Mexico and to ship them to
Batvia for distribution to Indian revolutionaries. There was no
discussion by Spring-Rice or Justice Department officials of
conspiracy regarding this arms shipment. The only question
was about a violation of neutrality laws. There was no evidence
at the time of shipment that neutrality laws had been violated
nor was there ever any evidence to this effect.13
At this time, there was also no attempt by the British to link
the arms shipment to the activities of Indian revolutionaries in
the United States. Early in 1915, the British government began
to forward informal complaints about the Ghadar to the
American State Department, but Spring-Rice refused to lodge
an official complaint about the Indian nationalists for another
year. At first, he told the Foreign Office that he feared
"Governor General to Lewis Harcourt, August 12, 1914, Vol. 205; and Hopkinson
to Cory, Sept. 24, 1914, Vol. 206, GGC, PAC.
13Spring-Riceto Robert Lansing, Dec. 21, 1916; T. W. Gregory to Robert Lansing,
Feb. 26, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60. See also Spring-Rice to Bryan May 12, 1915;
Spring-Rice to Lansing June 14, 1915; Johann von Berstorff to Lansing, July 2, 1915;
Gregory to Lansing, Feb. 26, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; and Franz von Papen to
Berlin, May 31, 1915, R149, Reel 398 German Foreign Ministry Archives (hereafter
cited as GFMA).
74 PACIFIC HISTORICAL REVIEW
"Gregory to Lansing, Dec. 20, 1916; Spring-Rice to Lansing, Dec. 21, 1916, file
9-10-3, NA, RG 60; New York Times,Jan. 9, 1917, 1:5.
"Memorandum for Warren, Jan. 15, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; United States v.
B e , 230 Fed. 723 (1916).
Hindu Conspiracy 79
Indians in New York but to indict Chandra and the other San
Francisco men in a Chicago court in order "to give fuller color
to the conspiracy in the introduction of evidence." Once indict-
ments had been obtained in Chicago, the San Francisco men
would not be tried there. Chicago would be a test case for
applying the conspiracy theory to the East ~ndi'ans.If the case
was successful, the Justice Department would make San Fran-
cisco the showcase of a "Hindu conspiracy" trial in which con-
victions would be sought for all the Germans and East Indians
mentioned in the British documents. On July 7, 1917, the San
Francisco grand jury returned secret indictments for con-
spiracy against 105 men, and on July 12, indicted 19 more. The
conspiracy, according to the indictments, had begun on Au-
gust 1, 1914, at a meeting of East Indian and German conspira-
tors to prepare a military expedition.
In Chicago, one East Indian and three Germans were con-
victed of violating the neutrality law against military expedi-
tions and of conspiracy to violate this law. Warren commented
later that the courts had made a "broad ruling" and the words
"military expedition or enterprise" were given their "broadest
definition" in this "Hindu plot" case." Preston was optimistic
by the time the trial began on November 12, 1917. "The
evidence is in very good shape," he wrote to Attorney General
Gregory. "The British agents have worked very hard in putting
the evidence in accessible form, and I have every reason . . . to
believe that the case will result favorably as to all important
defendants." The trial, which dragged on for over five months,
revolved around the British version of a world-wide "Hindu
conspiracy" dictated by the Germans, who allegedly sought to
stir u p a revolution in India as part of a master war plan against
England.30
The advantages the government has in a conspiracy trial
were exploited fully in San Francisco. The charge of conspir-
acy branded the East Indians with the image of secrecy and evil
plotting, which heightened apprehensions already present in
'qJacobsen v. United States, 272 Fed. 399 (1920); an unidentified newspaper clipping
describing the charge from the judge is in box 7, Warren Papers; New York Times,
Oct. 19, 1917, 1 3 3 ; Preston to Attorney General, Oct. 6, 1917, and J . S. H . to Preston,
Oct. 17, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60.
"Preston to Gregory, Nov. 17, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60.
San Francisco during that first winter of war. Hearsay evidence
rules were relaxed to allow the words of alleged conspirators to
be used against each other. The defendants were confronted
with the recitation of a hodgepodge of alleged acts and the
statements of others, which the government hoped might
pursuade the jury of the existence of the conspiracy. All the
government had to prove was that two defendants conspired to
bring about some illegal act and that one person then made an
overt act to further that conspiracy. The government did not
have to prove actual criminal acts. Assistant U.S. Attorney
Annette Adams summed up the government's case against the
"Hindu conspirators" by labeling them tools of German agents
and appealing to the jury to "hold the line for democracy." The
jury found all the defendants, with the exception of an
American millionaire shipbuilder from Long Beach, guilty of
conspiring to launch a military expedition in violation of the
criminal code.31
The political cost of the trial was high for the East Indians.
Undercover agents, informers, and government witnesses de-
moralized and divided the revolutionaries and made it difficult
for them to know whom to trust. The trial so heightened
tensions within the East Indian community that one of the
accused went mad in his cell. A second man shot and killed
Ram Chandra during the trial itself and was, in turn, shot by a
marshal. Publicity emphasizing East Indian nationalist col-
laboration with German officials made the Indian revolutionary
movement appear to be a conflict essentially different from
that waged by the American colonies against Great Britain 160
years earlier.32
Convictions meant more to Britain than to the United States,
as Preston admitted to Attorney General Gregory. Success in
the case was due, he explained, to the "able and exhaustive"
investigations by the British which supplemented his own. The
J'For conspiracy trials, see David B. Filvaroff, "Conspiracy and The First Amend-
ment," UniversiQ of Pen7uylvania Law Review, CXXI (1972), 189; and Johnson, "Un-
necessary Crime of Conspiracy," 1137.
3%an Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 19 18, 1 :1 ; San Francisco Examiw, Nov. 23, 1917,
1:l; Preston to Attorney General, Nov. 23, 1917, file 9-10-3, NA, RG 60; undated
history, "The Hindu Conspiracy, the Ghadr Society, and Indian Revolutionary
Propaganda," Military Intelligence Division, file 10560-152, NA, RG 165.
Hindu Conspiracy 83
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[Footnotes]
1
Propaganda of the Gadar Party
Mark Naidis
The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 3. (Aug., 1951), pp. 251-260.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8684%28195108%2920%3A3%3C251%3APOTGP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2
2
"Diminished Responsibility" in Theory and Practice
Richard F. Sparks
The Modern Law Review, Vol. 27, No. 1. (Jan., 1964), pp. 9-34.
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4
The Hindu Conspiracy in Anglo-American Relations during World War I
Don K. Dignan
The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 40, No. 1. (Feb., 1971), pp. 57-76.
Stable URL:
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5
The Law of Hostile Military Expeditions as Applied by the United States
Roy Emerson Curtis
The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 8, No. 2. (Apr., 1914), pp. 224-255.
Stable URL:
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LINKED CITATIONS
- Page 2 of 2 -
5
Harry Chandler and Mexican Border Intrigue, 1914-1917
Lowell L. Blaisdell
The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Nov., 1966), pp. 385-393.
Stable URL:
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6
The Unnecessary Crime of Conspiracy
Phillip E. Johnson
California Law Review, Vol. 61, No. 5. (Sep., 1973), pp. 1137-1188.
Stable URL:
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7
Criminal Conspiracy
Francis B. Sayre
Harvard Law Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Feb., 1922), pp. 393-427.
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31
Conspiracy and the First Amendment
David B. Filvaroff
University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 121, No. 2. (Dec., 1972), pp. 189-253.
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34
American Anti-Imperialists and the Pro-India Movement, 1900-1932
Alan Raucher
The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 43, No. 1. (Feb., 1974), pp. 83-110.
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