W.E.B Du Bois and India: The Historical Connections

by Archishman Raju

W.E.B. Du Bois

The novel Dark Princess, written by W.E.B. Du Bois and published in 1928, is a historical romance between an Indian Princess and an African American man set in the context of the world anti-colonial movement, including the Black struggle in America, as well as the Russian Revolution. The novel philosophically explores the themes of race, class and civilization. It advances the possibility of a unity between Pan Africa and Pan Asia, and hence of the masses of the world. 

The novel has almost been intolerable for contemporary academic scholarship in the U.S. For example, Gayatri Spivak says “The Dark Princess, exoticizes a “noble” India” [1]. Homi Bhabha calls it a “Bollywood-style bildungsroman” [2]. For Michael Burawoy, Dark Princess is a “romantic account of the ‘darker races’” which embraces a “fictive India” [3].  For Bill Mullen and Cathryn Watson, “Dark Princess, is…mildly, or wildly, depending upon one’s reading, Orientalist affair” [4]. These commentaries on Dark Princess bear comparison with how the white press in the United States reviewed the novel right after its arrival. For example, The New York Post review accused it of “sentimental melodrama” and The New York Times review said “the plot is flamboyant and unconvincing”. In contrast, as Herbert Aptheker notes in his introduction, “Writers in the Black press responded enthusiastically to Dark Princess” on its publication. Alice Dunbar-Nelson found it “completely and eminently soul-satisfying”. For Allison Davis, “Courage is the real theme of Dark Princess” [5]. 

These contrasting responses reveal how the colour line operates in American society, and it is interesting, though not surprising, to note which side contemporary academic scholarship finds itself on. Those who accuse Du Bois of not being sensitive to the social dynamics within India or orientalizing it seem to have missed the point of the novel, that the experience of Kautilya with the Russian Revolution and her romance with Matthew is allegorical for the possible resolution of those dynamics in a new Indian democracy. The novel argues that the experience of the African American people has a message for the darker people of the world particularly as they come into modernity.

Du Bois’ choice to make the princess Indian was not arbitrary but reflected his deep engagement with and theoretical understanding of the anti-colonial struggle. Several times during his life, Du Bois pointed to the anti-colonial struggle in India and the freedom of India as one of the most important processes of the twentieth century. India was therefore central to Du Bois’ overall theoretical understanding of the nature of the world movement, and its revolutionary task. This understanding was not abstract, but concretely rooted in his vast experience and interaction with the Indian Freedom Struggle. 

This article is written to document Du Bois’ life-long engagement with India and its freedom struggle in detail. Some of these details are known, but the full scope of Du Bois’ closeness to the Indian freedom struggle is rarely appreciated. These connections demonstrate that India was not an abstract entity for Du Bois but a concrete reality that he was intensely engaged with intellectually and politically.

Du Bois and India: Early Connections

W.E.B Du Bois started following the Indian freedom struggle from very early on. In a journal he edited, The Horizon, as early as 1907, Du Bois had quoted extensively Dadabhai Naoroji, the “Grand Old Man of India” who came up with the drain of wealth theory on how Britain had underdeveloped India and caused its poverty [6]. Naoroji had been elected president of the Indian National Congress in 1906. Du Bois must have known of Naoroji from earlier as he contributed to the Pan African Conference of 1900. At this stage, Du Bois recognized the ongoing struggle in India between the so-called “Moderates” and “Extremists” in the Indian National Congress i.e. between those arguing for continued constitutionalism and those wanting to pursue a more radical political struggle. He also found parallels to this struggle in Afro-America. Similarly, there was already interest in the African American question in India. K. Paramu Pillai, an important figure in the Nair Service Society wrote to Du Bois asking for a copy of Souls of Black Folk [7].

In 1911, Du Bois attended the Universal Races Congress in London where he met Brajendranath Seal, possibly India’s first modern social theorist and philosopher who was extremely influential in the founding of Indian sociology. He also met Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a prominent leader and mentor to Mahatma Gandhi. In the volume of the Crisis dedicated to the Congress, Du Bois wrote that, among others, he was particularly impressed by Dr. Seal, “the Indian scholar, tall and brown, with a flowing white beard, full of simple but wholesome enthusiasm” [8]. 

During the first world war, Du Bois became close friends with Lala Lajpat Rai. Du Bois wrote later on Rai after his death, “He was at my home and in my office and we were members of the same club. I especially admired his restraint and sweet temper. When a man of his sort can be called a Revolutionist and beaten to death by a great civilized government, then indeed revolution becomes a duty to all right thinking men.”[9] Lajpat Rai extensively quoted Du Bois in his book on the U.S.A and the first page of the book is entirely a portrait of W.E.B Du Bois [10]. Du Bois had asked Lala Lajpat Rai for comments on the draft manuscript of Dark Princess and made edits based on his comments. Lala Lajpat Rai asked Du Bois for assistance when replying to Katherine Mayo’s Mother India with his Unhappy India. It should be remarked here that we are yet to fully understand the impact these two individuals had on each other. For example, his relationship with Du Bois may have impacted Lala Lajpat Rai’s decision to become part of the Trade Union movement as one of the founding presidents of the All India Trade Union Congress. 

Gandhi was aware of W.E.B Du Bois from his time in South Africa. In 1911, the Universal Races Congress was covered in the Indian Opinion, the newspaper he edited. The role of Du Bois in the congress was heavily featured and the newspaper said “The Souls of Black Folk” should be read by all [11]. Later that year, the newspaper reported again on “Dr. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, the author of that great classic ‘The Souls of Black Folk.’”[12]

Du Bois and the Indian Freedom Struggle

As the Indian Freedom Struggle reached its mass stage with the coming of Gandhi, Du Bois started featuring articles on the struggle in India in The Crisis. In his own later testimony, Du Bois said that it was the first world war that introduced him to Gandhi [13]. In the Crisis in 1922, Du Bois wrote an extensive piece on Gandhi and India, writing “No man who is in the least interested in the throbbing mass of peoples of the earth can fail to take notice of this exceptional soul” [14]. Through the 1920s, he was in touch with several Indians in India and in the United States and India was regularly covered in The Crisis. 

Therefore, by 1927, when he was writing the Dark Princess, Du Bois was closely following the Indian struggle. On the manuscript itself, he asked Lala Lajpat Rai for comments. Similarly, he asked Dhan Gopal Mukerji, possibly the first Indian writer to be successful in America, for comments on the Dark Princess. He explained to Mukerji that Bwodpur was modeled after Jodhpur and he meant the Princess to be Nepali [15]. He likely showed it also to Syed Hossain, later India’s first ambassador to Egypt and sent a copy to Ananda Coomaraswamy, the famous art critic, for comments [16]. In reading his description of the meeting of the darker people for dinner on the invitation of Princess Kautilya, it is clear that Du Bois was inspired by the Universal Races Congress. His description of the Congress in the Crisis has clear similarities with the dinner scene in Dark Princess.

In 1928, Sarojini Naidu visited the U.S. on a tour and met Du Bois. She had already served as the Congress President a few years earlier. Soon after, he also met C. F. Andrews who facilitated his contact with Gandhi and Tagore. 

Gandhi and Tagore were both very important figures for Du Bois. He saw both of them to have world-historical importance. In 1929, Du Bois asked Gandhi for a message to the Crisis. In a reply, Chhaganlal Joshi told him that “all the inmates of the Ashram were keenly interested in the Negro problems” [17]. Gandhi sent a “Love Message” in May, writing that the “future is with those who would be truthful, pure and loving”. In the Crisis issue, he was introduced as “perhaps the greatest man in the world” [18]. That same year he also got a message from Rabindranath Tagore for the Crisis. Du Bois contrasted Tagore’s universalism with the provincialism of America [19]. 

In the July 1930 issue of the Crisis, by which time the Dandi march had taken place, Du Bois wrote on the civil disobedience campaign in India that “This mighty experiment, together with the effort of Russia to organize work and distribute income according to some rule of reason, are the greatest events of the modern world” [20] . 

Du Bois met Tagore likely on his visit to America later that year in 1930 and wrote of his meeting, “my talk with Tagore increased my awareness of India and of its meaning to the world” [21]. He sent a letter to Tagore’s secretary Amiya Chakravarty asking for a contribution to The Crisis. Chakravarty replied that he and Tagore had read the issues of the Crisis which Du Bois sent to them and were “deeply…in sympathy” with its “broad human outlook” [22]. Tagore could not furnish this contribution because of constant engagements while in the U.S. but Chakravarty still expressed their support for Du Bois’ “noble propaganda against racial discrimination” [23].

Hence, by January of 1931, Du Bois wrote in the Crisis of “Magnificent India”. India was magnificent because of Gandhi who was truly an apostle of peace unlike the “professional pacificist”. It was magnificent because of Tagore “who lives on high in the midst of a sordid and discriminating world”. Du Bois quoted a speech by Ambedkar and said India exposes the “inner rottenness of European imperialism” [24]. 

It should be noted that Du Bois was well aware of the complexity of Indian history and society as well as the difficulties the Indian freedom struggle faced. The All India Congress Committee sent its newsletter to Du Bois and he used their information in his publications [25]. He had compiled a chronology of India from 1500 BCE to 1935 [26]. In a lecture he gave in Morehouse College in 1940, he asked for a detailed map and statistics of India to be displayed [27].

Ram Manohar Lohia, as part of the All India Congress Committee, wrote to Du Bois, “We here attach the highest significance to the Negro Front of anti-Imperialism” [28]. This was the same year that Howard Thurman had his famous meeting with Gandhi. Thurman had brought up Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction and explained to Gandhi how it gave a new theoretical understanding of the African American experience [29]. Du Bois donated Black Reconstruction to the All India Congress Committee library in 1938 [30].

Hence, Du Bois was in close touch with the leadership of the Indian Freedom Struggle. Not only was he following the Indian situation closely, his work was well known in India. 

The wideness of his contact

It should be noted that Du Bois was in touch not just with the leadership, but with a wide variety of people in India. For example, Banarsidas Chaturvedi, a journalist close to Gandhi and instrumental in establishing the Hindi Bhawan at Vishwabharati, wrote to Du Bois from the Sabarmati Ashram in 1924, suggesting that Du Bois’ name “is already known to a very large number of educated Indians”. Chaturvedi said “I entirely agree with you when you say that the different colored peoples and more especially the Indians and the American Negroes must get in touch and cooperation with each other” [31]. Chaturvedi later solicited a message from Du Bois for the magazine he edited, Chand, which Du Bois promptly sent. He was a great admirer of Du Bois and later another magazine he edited, Vishal Bharat, carried excerpts from the Crisis. 

He received an invitation from Prabuddha Bharat, the magazine of Ramakrishna Mission to write on the education of African Americans. He submitted this article which was published in the magazine in 1933 [32].

In 1936, Du Bois submitted an article to the Aryan Path a Theosophical Journal entitled “The Clash of Colour” [33]. He argued that “The great difficulty of bringing about understanding, sympathy and co-operation between the Negroes of America and the peoples of India lies in the almost utter lack of knowledge which these two groups of people have of each other”. Whereas African Americans were unlikely to be educated on India in American schools, educated Indians were likely to believe stories on African Americans spread by white Americans. 

He told his readers, “Indian visitors must, of course, remember that they will have to make some special effort to see the Negro world. It is a world largely apart and organized; in its churches, industry and amusement, largely separate from the white world.”. However, “for visitors who wish to know Negroes and try to carry out their wish, no great difficulties are encountered. The Negro churches always welcome visitors, and Negro organizations are glad to give them opportunity to speak and to ask questions, and even Negro homes are open to sympathetic strangers.” Du Bois clearly understood the contradictions in India saying “India has also had temptation to stand apart from the darker peoples and seek her affinities among whites…And yet, the history of the modern world shows the futility of this thought. European exploitation desires the black slave, the Chinese coolie and the Indian labourer for the same ends and the same purposes, and calls them all “niggers”. Commenting on the caste system, Du Bois wrote “If India has her castes, American Negroes have in their own internal colour lines the plain shadow of a caste system”. 

N. S. Subba Rao, the director of public instruction in Mysore State, replied to the article challenging Du Bois’ appeal that African Americans and Indians must unite to challenge European domination. He warned that this path would lead to war and violence and instead, he advocated a “union of colour” essentially arguing for cooperation with Europe to reconstruct society [34]. Du Bois strongly challenged Subba Rao’s assertion that the only two paths available were to accept humiliation or violence. Further, he felt that accepting humiliation would lead to even greater violence and tragedy. This article in The Aryan Path attracted considerable attention in India, and Lohia wrote to Du Bois after reading it. 

The Freeing of India and the New Indian State

In April 1945, Du Bois organized a Colonial Conference at the 135th St. Branch of the New York Public Library. Several Indians were present at this conference and India was featured heavily in the list of speakers. One of them was Kumar Goshal, who became a close friend and associate of Du Bois, and was part of the Council on African Affairs founded by Paul Robeson. Another person present at the Conference was Lawrence Reddick who was to later accompany King on his trip to India. Kwame Nkrumah was also present. The conference demanded the creation of a Colonial Commission at the UN conference to be held in San Francisco [35]. Du Bois himself attended the UN conference and was disappointed that it took “no action concerning colonies” since these were deemed a domestic matter. He dined with Vijay Lakshmi Pandit at San Francisco and again wrote about the political situation in India in the Chicago Defender. Du Bois refused to be photographed with the British appointed Indian delegates who did not represent India and declared his solidarity with the real leadership of India [36]. 

By 1946 when Ambedkar wrote to Du Bois, as he said, Du Bois was known by everyone “who is working in the cause of securing liberty to the oppressed people” [37]. At this time, Du Bois was probably one of the best known figures from the darker peoples, along with Gandhi. He was well known in Africa, China and India. Nehru gifted him a book on Gandhi’s life and work which he said he would treasure among his most valued possessions [38]. Du Bois had read and reviewed Gandhi and Nehru’s autobiographies. 

Hence a little after India became Independent, Du Bois wrote in Soviet Russia Today, “I believe that the greatest events of the twentieth century have been the Russian Revolution and the Freeing of India” [39]. 

However, by 1950, Du Bois expressed unhappiness at the way the Indian state was treating the Indian communists. He published an open letter against Nehru and did not try to meet him when he visited the U.S. in 1949 [40]. It should be remembered that this was the time when the Communist Party of India was following a path of armed resistance against the newly independent Indian state, an approach it quickly abandoned. 

Later, Du Bois changed his views. In a letter to Nehru in 1956, he thanked him for his visit to the United States. He wrote “At first I was deeply disturbed at the jailing of Communists; but as progress toward Socialism developed I understood better the vast task which confronted you and the courage and persistence with which you were accomplishing the great end of making India a great and leading nation.” [41]

Even at the very end of his life, when he was working on the Encyclopedia Africana project, Du Bois wrote to Nehru asking for help in uncovering connections of India and Africa in the past [42] and subsequently contacted faculty at the University of Delhi. 

Despite the cold-war attack on Du Bois and the attempt to erase his legacy, he continued his contact with India and his popularity in India only rose. This was demonstrated by the constant invitations he received from the cultural and peace movements in India post-independence.

Du Bois and the radical Cultural and Peace Movements

One person who was a very ardent admirer of Du Bois and did much to spread his name in India was Cedric Dover. Dover had met Du Bois in 1938 and had written then a letter to Nehru describing him, “W.E.B Du Bois is one of the great pioneers, as you already know, of the movement for closer contact between coloured peoples” [43]. He described Du Bois as “the elder brother of the whole coloured family” [44]. He planned a celebration for the eightieth birthday of Du Bois in 1948 at Fisk University where he was then teaching. He also obtained birthday wishes from Nehru and the socialist Yusuf Meherally who called Du Bois the “prophet of a new civilization”[45].  

Dover wrote to Nehru after Indian independence asking him to invite Du Bois as a scholar to visit India. Nehru agreed but the visit never materialized. This was one of many invitations that Du Bois would receive to visit India. If his passport had not been confiscated, he would very likely have visited India in the 1950s and received a hero’s welcome. He wrote to Dover that it would be the realization of his life’s ambition to know and see India [46]. 

Cedric Dover was close to the founding members of the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) in London including Mulk Raj Anand and played a role in drafting the PWA manifesto [47]. When Du Bois was being persecuted in 1951, he, Anand and others would voice their support for Du Bois writing “your name belongs to us too…We pledge ourselves to be worthy of it” [48]. Anand would later meet Du Bois at the Afro-Asian writers conference in Tashkent in 1958. 

Du Bois was close to the peace movement in India as well as the cultural movement. The All India Peace Council invited him to attend a conference in 1951 [49]. He was invited by the Indian People’s Theatre Association to the first State Conference of the West Bengal Chapter. He replied back explaining that he did not have his passport but that he believed that “folk drama development among the masses of people is one of the best and most inspiring ways of spreading civilization and improving human culture” [50]. Romesh Chandra, president of the All India Peace Council and later to become president of the World Peace Council spoke of him in his speeches. Du Bois became a member of the Tagore Peace festival that the World Peace Council helped organize on the occasion of Tagore’s centenary.

One last connection to be emphasized again is the friendship between Du Bois and Kumar Goshal, mentioned previously. Du Bois introduced Goshal to Nkrumah and Azikiwe as a close friend and co-worker. Goshal was the one who introduced E.S. Reddy to the Council on African Affairs. Reddy was subsequently to play a historic role in service of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. 

Conclusion

Many times during his life, W.E.B Du Bois referred to Gandhi and Tagore as the two figures whose philosophy was fundamentally important to appreciate in the twentieth century. To appreciate the message of Dark Princess requires that we appreciate Du Bois’ theoretical understanding of the anti-colonial and world-revolutionary movement, and the place he saw for their philosophy in this understanding.

Dark Princess must therefore be read as an artistic manifestation of Du Bois’ scientific project. The thesis in the book is further developed in his later works Black Reconstruction, The World and Africa, Color and Democracy as well as his unpublished manuscript, Russia and America. The study of India’s colonization and its struggle for freedom were both an essential part of his project.

References:

Most of the references are from Du Bois’ personal papers available at the Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries and made digitally available. They are simply referenced with the name of the article and the link. 

[1] Du Bois in a Comparative Context, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 2018.

[2] The Black Savant and the Dark Princess, Homi K. Bhabha, ESQ: A Journal of The American Rennaissance, 2004.

[3] W.E.B Du Bois’ Indian Romance, Michael Burawoy, 2023.

[4] W.E.B Du Bois on Asia, Introduction, ed. Bill Mullen & Cathryn Watson, 2005. 

[5] All citations taken from Herbert Aptheker’s Introduction, in Dark Princess, Kraus Thomson ORganization Ltd., 1974.

[6] Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United. States and India. By Nico Slate, 2012.

[7] Letter from K. Paramu Pillai to W. E. B. Du Bois, June 10, 1908. 

[8] The Crisis Vol. 2 No. 5 September 1911

[9] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to the editor of The People, January 10, 1929. 

[10] The United States of America; a Hindu's impressions and a study, Lala Lajpat Rai, 1916

[11] Aug 26, 1911 Indian Opinion

[12] Sep 9th, 1911 Indian Opinion

[13] Gandhi and the American Negroes, W.E.B. Du Bois

[14] March, 1922 The Crisis

[15] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Dhan Gopel Mukerji, November 7, 1927. 

[16] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to A. Coomaraswamy, November 14, 1927. 

[17] Letter from Chhaganlal Joshi to W. E. B. Du Bois, April 13, 1929. 

[18] July, 1929, The Crisis Vol. 36 Iss. 7

[19] October, 1929, The Crisis Vol. 36 Iss. 10

[20] July, 1930. The Crisis, Vol. 37, Iss. 7

[21] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Tagore Centenary Peace Festival, October 14, 1960

[22] Letter from A. C. Chakravarty to W. E. B. Du Bois, November 17, 1930

[23] Letter from A. C. Chakravarty to W. E. B. Du Bois, December 27, 1930

[24] January, 1931, The Crisis Vol. 38 Iss 1

[25] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to All India Congress Committee, November 7, 1940

[26] Chronology of India, ca. 1935

[27] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Morehouse College, January 8, 1940 

[28] Letter from All India Congress Committee to W. E. B. Du Bois, July 20, 1936

[29] “With Our Negro Guests,” 14 March 1936

[30] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to All India Congress Committee, November 25, 1938

[31] Letter from Benarsidas Chaturvedi to W. E. B. Du Bois, November 9, 1924 

[32] Memorandum an Article for Prabuddha Bharata on Negro Education in the United States, ca. 1931

[33] March, 1936, Aryan Path Vol. 7, No. 3

[34] May, 1936, Aryan Path Vol. 7, No. 5

[35] Colonial Conference resolution, April 6, 1945

[36] A statement by W. E. B. Du Bois, author of color and democracy; colonies and peace: supplementary to that book, ca. 1945. 

[37] Letter from B. R. Ambedkar to W. E. B. Du Bois, ca. July 1946

[38] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Jawaharlal Nehru, November 7, 1946

[39] The most helpful state in the world today, ca. November 1947

[40] Circular letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to unidentified correspondent, October 10, 1949

[41] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Jawaharlal Nehru, December 26, 1956

[42] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Prime Minister of India, April 17, 1961

[43] Letter from Cedric Dover to Jawaharlal Nehru, February 1938

[44] Letter from Cedric Dover to W. E. B. Du Bois, November 29, 1947

[45] Telegram from Yusuf Meherally to W. E. B. Du Bois, February 18, 1948

[46] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Cedric Dover, June 23, 1948

[47] Mulk Raj Anand Remembers, Indian Literature, 1993

[48] Transcript of message to Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, October 2, 1951

[49] Letter from All India Peace Council to W. E. B. Du Bois, August 28, 1951

[50] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Indian Peoples' Theatre Association, March 29, 1955

Archishman Raju is an editor of Vishwabandhu Journal.