The Madness of Jodh Singh: Patriotism and Paranoia in the Ghadar Archives

Rohit Chopra

doi:10.18740/ss27204

Abstract

My paper focuses on Jodh Singh, a marginal figure in the archives of the Ghadar Party, who was arrested for High Treason against the United States for his role in the “Hindu Conspiracy” plots aimed at the British government of India. Incarcerated in a California prison, Singh was moved to a sanatarium on displaying symptoms of insanity. Through a close reading of a web of archival documents and scholarly reflections—at the center of which lies the report of a commission appointed to inquire into his mental condition—I examine the account of the madness of Jodh Singh as a statement about patriotism and paranoia. In engagement with the work of Foucault, Guha, and scholars of the Ghadar movement, I describe how the record of Singh’s experiences indicts the juridical-legal-medical framework of American society as operating on a distinction between legtimate and illegitimate madness. I also examine how Jodh Singh points to the glimmers of a critique of the self-image of the Ghadar Party as a revolutionary movement committed to egalitarian principles. I conclude with a reflection on what Jodh Singh might tell us about the relationship between madness, political aspiration, and the yearning for solidarity.

Highlights

Jodh Singh, prisoner of the US government, was insane
I wish to examine how the figure of Jodh Singh points to the glimmers of a critique of the self-image of the Ghadar Party as a revolutionary movement committed to egalitarian principles
Was the Ghadar movement itself, too, a kind of madness? From the vantage point of the present, in which the surveillance capacities of the modern state have been amplified manifold, it seems remarkable that a movement like Ghadar could have even happened

Summary

Introduction

Jodh Singh, prisoner of the US government, was insane. This was the unequivocal conclusion of the psychiatrists tasked with diagnosing him. I wish to examine how the figure of Jodh Singh points to the glimmers of a critique of the self-image of the Ghadar Party as a revolutionary movement committed to egalitarian principles In undertaking such a reading, I am not aiming to demonstrate the ‘truth’ about Jodh Singh’s madness, but rather to show how the story of Jodh Singh troubles assumptions about patriotism and belonging that are central to a reason of state. The mad, that is those that are marked by this objective condition, are, deemed as legitimate objects of control, treatment, and confinement by a medical reason that is yoked to or subsumed within a reason of state It is to this modern phase that the experience of Jodh Singh belongs. In seeking to understand what that threat might represent and what it may illuminate about the juridical-legal-medical discourse on Singh, I draw on the work of Lowe and Shah who have critically examined the role of sexual and racial difference across various theaters and sites of colonial modernity (Lowe 2015; Shah 2011)

Patriotism and Paranoia in the Ghadar Archives

Conclusion