Of Martyrs and “Social Dynamites”: The Ghadar and IWW in California

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Pacific West Coast of the USA gradually turned into a hotbed of Indian anti-colonial activity. California, in particular, became a point of convergence for Bengali radicals/intellectuals and Punjabi migrant workers. The Ghadar would gradually emerge in 1913 out of the interactions between these two elements. My paper is animated by the understanding that zooming in on Indian anti-colonial activity can be a very productive way of situating California in a transnational historical framework. In my paper, I focus on the interface between the Ghadar movement and the IWW in California. Existing studies have focused on superficial similarities between the two radical movements as a way of explaining their mutual compatibility. Departing from such approaches, I will try to show that similar understandings of time, force, and rupture rendered the Ghadar and IWW compatible at a very fundamental level.