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This chapter investigates the imaginative space produced by the New York–based Indian nationalist periodical Young India, published by Lala Lajpat Rai between 1918 and 1920. Like other periodicals, Young India fosters an “imagined community”; unlike the reactionary and intolerant nationalisms that Benedict Anderson and others have studied, Young India’s community is transnational and transcultural, insisting on diversity of race, religion, and opinion as one of its defining characteristics. Far from being limited to the subcontinent of South Asia, Young India projects a constituency of colonized and other working people in Ireland, Egypt, Turkey, Persia, Japan, China, and the United States.

This chapter focuses on the political storm unleashed by the arrest of Lajpat Rai, the most prominent Congress leader of the Punjab, on 9 May 1907, and his deportation, without a trial, to Burma. The weeks which followed this drastic step were among the most tense and the most strenuous of Gokhale’s life. He had to batter against the wall of official prejudice; his own aims and motives were impugned by the authorities in Simla and London, who were led to believe that the Punjab was riddled with sedition and a second mutiny was imminent.

This chapter presents an excerpt from Lajpat Rai's 1904 essay, “Reform or Revival?,” in which he asks whether India's emergence into modernity requires a reform of Indian culture or a revival of its classical form. Rai was a major figure in the struggle for independence. Born in the Punjab, he was a leader of the Arya Samaj, a founder of the Young India movement and active in the Indian National Congress. His book Young India (1917) was (and still is) banned in the UK as seditious. Most of his writing is explicitly political, but nonetheless philosophical, providing astute analyses in Young India of the varieties of nationalism. Rai died as a result of injuries sustained protesting the appointment of the Simon Commission on Indian governance. In his essay, Rai likens the quarrel over “reform or revival” between the reformers to the wordy polemics between the Pandits. He analyzes the respective programs of reformers and the revivalists, arguing that the social reform program begins with the question of early marriage. He also considers the great evil of the present divisions and sub-divisions of caste.

Chapter one firstly discusses the spatial development of colonial Lahore with the creation of the Civil Lines, the Cantonment and the Mall. These areas contained such imposing new buildings as the GPO, the High Court and the Museum. Later the prestigious suburb of Model Town with its well-ordered streets, parks and bungalows was created. Secondly, the chapter looks at the migration to the city which led to its rapid growth in the colonial era. Lahore’s administrative importance, its commercial development and its emergence as the leading educational centre for North India provided the context for migration. The chapter reveals the role of migrants such as Lala Harkishen Lal in Lahore’s commercial activities and Lala Lajpat Rai in its institutional and cultural development. The role of migrants from Delhi such as Muhammad Hussain Azad and Altaf Hussain Hali is also discussed with respect to establishing the city as a major centre of Urdu culture.culture.

By the summer of 1904, Indian nationalists had despaired of a favourable response to their demands from Lord Curzon or the Conservative Government in Whitehall. Things looked rather bleak, but, fortunately, as the year wore on, British politics took a hopeful turn with the possibility of a general election and a Liberal victory. In response, the Bombay Congress unanimously decided to depute Congress representatives to bring the claims of India ‘before the electors, before the Parliamentary candidates, and before the political leaders’ in England. These delegates included Surendranath Banerjea, M.A. Jinnah, Lajpat Rai, and Gokhale. This chapter chronicles Gokhale’s trip to England and his speeches delivered there.

The issue of constitutional reforms seemed to have receded to the background in the wake of the controversy generated by the deportation of Lajpat Rai and the Moderate–Extremist conflict. But it was soon to dominate the political scene again. This chapter describes the Madras Congress in December 1908. The inner tensions which had brought the confrontation between the Moderates and Extremists to a head a year earlier were absent. There seemed to be a conscious effort not to do anything that would antagonize the government, embarrass Morley, or cast doubts on the loyalty of the educated classes, while the reforms were on the anvil of the British Parliament. A resolution on swadeshi was passed, but ‘boycott’ was not even mentioned.

The fourth chapter examines the way that Gandhi began to emphasize the centrality of ‘nonviolence’ to satyagraha after his return to India from South Africa in 1915. He adapted the religious principle of ahimsa (nonviolence), giving it a new political content. In this, he came into conflict with Hindu nationalists, such as Lala Lajpat Rai, who held that a supposed Indian civilizational emphasis on ‘ahimsa’ (nonviolence) had weakened the country, leaving it open to conquest by outsiders. Gandhi argued, by contrast, that the nonviolent way required great courage and that it also conferred a moral advantage when resisting injustice. Also, people of all religions could practice such nonviolence – making it a secular and non-sectarian principle that could be asserted by the oppressed anywhere in the world.

This chapter concentrates on the boundary-crossing movement of ideas and the development of pan-Asianism during and after the war. Many Asians, probably most, saw the Great War as simply a war of white people, a European war, and a war between Western countries. But they got involved, and the war and its aftermath forced them to think about who they were and what kind of positions they held in the world. Indians, Chinese, and Japanese were all consumed with rethinking the relationship between Asia and the West, between Eastern civilizations and Western civilizations, and what direction they should move in after the war. The war and its destruction had discredited the moral values of Western civilization, and what happened at the Paris Peace Conference fundamentally diminished Asians’ expectations and respect for the Western Powers. This chapter addresses the cultural effects and civilizational significance of the Great War for Asians.