Dissensus, education and Lala Lajpat Rai’s encounter with W.E.B. DuBois

Abstract

This article seeks to clarify the paradox of a Hindu nationalist advocating cross-cultural partnerships with those outside his faith and culture and to consider the pressures of nationalism on the cosmopolitanism evident in Lala Lajpat Rai’s American writings. Rai resided in the United States from 1914 to 1920, establishing the India Home Rule League and the journal Young India in New York and publishing his books The United States of India and Unhappy India. He was keenly interested in the ‘Negro Problem’, knew W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington and Kelly Miller, wrote extensively about African-American educational institutions and read DuBois’s manuscript for Dark Princess. Indeed, it was education that became the nexus of the relationship between DuBois and Rai, and their interaction lent international relevance to their respective educational initiatives. Both Lala Lajpat Rai and W.E.B. Du Bois took a transnational approach to education as they sought to reappropriate educational institutions to serve those who had been denied it. They believed education necessary for decolonizing the mind and polity and for fostering democratic institutions. Rai’s interest in African-American educational institutions was also indicative of his difference from many other Indian nationalists living in the United States. Rai actively expressed solidarity with African Americans, but this solidarity based on an opposition to oppression was constantly limited by his Hindu nationalist views.