Book Review: Let My Country Awake Puts the Pacific Northwest at the Center of an Anti-Colonial Struggle

"The Ghadar group shared common causes with the agents of anti-British foreign powers, so they conspired and worked with German and Irish groups during WWI, and that alliance drives much of the most compelling conflict in the book. In the midst of WWI, the Ghadar were actually working with Imperial Germany-which America was at war with. This made them, technically, an underground subversive element, even as they also drew inspiration from the US's own history of democratic revolt against Britain."

"If you were to ask most Americans why the British Empire no longer rules India, many would probably say it's due to some mix of Gandhi and World War II. However, Gandhi's nonviolent resistance was far from the only protest to British colonialism. Widespread dissatisfaction with colonialist rule led to radical, underground political organizing. And some of it happened right here in the Pacific Northwest."

Indian immigrants in the United States organized the Ghadar movement during World War I to overthrow the British Raj. Members faced racial discrimination and legal hostility as nonwhite immigrants in the early 1900s. The movement connected with left-wing groups including the International Workers of the World and anarchist, communist, and socialist circles. Ghadar organizers conspired with German and Irish anti-British elements, making them subversive in a country at war with Germany. The activists drew on American revolutionary symbolism even as they engaged in clandestine alliances. Much of the organizing and conflict occurred in the Pacific Northwest, especially Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Read at Portland Mercury