Washington.
In future all Indian affairs are to be exclusively handled by the Committee to be formed by Dr. Chakravarty. Dhriendra Sarkar and Heramba Lal Gupta, which latter person has meantime been expelled from Japan, thus cease to be independent representatives of the Indian Independence Committee existing here.
Zimmermann.
In other words, before February, 1916, the German Government had been plotting with Hindus in the United States for the national independence of India. Indeed, they had begun the work before 1914, and they had become active in it in July of that year—before they started the World War, but after they had decided to start it. By December, they were directing Indian plots from Berlin with ramifications in nearly every neutral country in the world. Two of these plots were hatched in the United States—one in San Francisco and one in Chicago. They were conspiracies to organize military expeditions to India. Our Government spoiled both of them, and the day after we went into the war, or on April 7, 1917, the United States’ authorities arrested thirty-four German-Hindu plotters in half a dozen cities and subsequently convicted them all but one of conspiracy.
The story begins in San Francisco. In 1911, a fanatical Indian agitator named Har Dayal came to this country. He worked among the large colonies of turbaned Hindu labourers on the Pacific Coast who had succeeded the Chinese and Japanese coolies in the orchards and gardens and on the railroad tracks in that region of abundant climate and scarce labour. Dayal organized the Hindu Pacific Coast Association and established its headquarters in San Francisco, to which these men came looking for a job or a night’s lodging, and where they were fed on rice and revolution. Dayal next established a printing plant and began to publish a paper called Ghadr, which means The Revolution. The Ghadr was out for blood. It preached Hindu uprising in terms of assassination and dynamite.
The first number of the Ghadr was published in November, 1913. At once it disclosed a German influence. In the issue of November 15, 1913, it printed these sentences: “The Germans have great sympathy with our movement, because they and ourselves have a common enemy (the English). In the future Germany can draw assistance from us, and they can render us great assistance also.”
As the World War approached, this German influence became more manifest. On July 21, 1914, two days before Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia, the Ghadr said:
“All intelligent people know that Germany is an enemy of England. We also are mortal enemies of England. So the enemy of our enemy is our friend.”
A week later, the Ghadr welcomed the approach of war:
“If this war does not start to-day, it will to-morrow. So welcome! India has got her chance.... Hasten preparations for meeting with the speed of wind and storm, and no sooner the war starts in Europe, you start a mutiny in India.”