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IRISH DAYS,
INDIAN MEMORIES
This book is dedicated to Kalyan Chakravarthi Golla who lived out Giri’s wish to travel from Dublin to Philadelphia in search of further learning.
Irish Days,
Indian Memories
V. V. Giri and Indian Law Students at University College Dublin, 1913–16
Conor Mulvagh
First published in 2016
Irish Academic Press
8 Chapel Lane
Sallins
Co. Kildare
Ireland
© 2016 Conor Mulvagh
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
978-1-911024-18-7 (cloth)
978-1-911024-19-4 (PDF)
978-1-911024-20-0 (epub)
978-1-911024-21-7 (kindle)
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data. An entry can be found on request. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Although my student life at the University was spent, ostensibly, for the study of law and the pursuit of Jurisprudence, I was drawn irresistibly into the cross currents of the Irish struggle
– Varahagiri Venkata Giri1
CONTENTS
Chapter 1Irish and Imperial Contexts
Chapter 2Changing Attitudes to Indians in Britain, 1907–13
Chapter 3Indian Law Students Arrive in Ireland
Chapter 4Studying in a City in Turmoil: Lockout, War and Revolution
Chapter 5Subversion and Student Societies
Chapter 6Teachers and Lectures
Chapter 7Student Politics: Indian Activism and Radical Irish Connections
Chapter 81916: Suspicion and Sedition
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
BLBritish Library
BMHBureau of Military History
CSORPChief Secretary’s Office Registered Papers
DFADepartment of Foreign Affairs
DMPDublin Metropolitan Police
IOR/L/P&JIndia Office Records and Private Papers, India Office: Public and Judicial Department Records, 1795–1950
IRBIrish Republican Brotherhood
NAINational Archives of Ireland
TCDTrinity College Dublin
UCDUniversity College Dublin
UCDAUniversity College Dublin Archives
UKNANational Archives (United Kingdom), Kew, London
WSWitness Statement
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book began life in the spring of 2014 when, freshly started in a lectureship at UCD, I was asked to verify whether or not V. V. Giri, the fourth president of India, had studied at the University prior to the 1916 Rising. Little did I imagine that what started out as such a small task would open into a fascinating journey of discovery into an almost forgotten episode in the deeply connected histories of India and Ireland. Firstly, I would like to thank John McCafferty, John O’Dowd, Una Watkins and Lorraine Woods for starting me on that path and for their patience and encouragement as this project grew and developed. I was lucky and deeply grateful to have received the advice and assistance of Kate O’Malley and Gajendra Singh in the course of my research.They gave generously of their time and expertise in helping me track down new literature and sources of which I knew so little at the outset. Likewise Matt Perry, Padraig Yeates, Declan Downey and Maurice J. Bric have provided very useful insights throughout this project. I am especially grateful to Professor Bric who was kind enough to present me with his own autographed photo portrait of Giri which he had received many years before. Special thanks to Eve Morrison and Eunan O’Halpin for offering their comments on the text. I am deeply grateful to Spurti Subramanyam for her assistance in researching the lives of some of Dublin’s Indian students following their return to India and to Colm O’Flaherty for his diligent work in sourcing and reproducing the images presented here.
I further wish to thank all the
