British Counter-intelligence Against The Indian Revolutionary Movement During World War I - Background

Background

Main articles: Indian Political Intelligence Office and Madanlal Dhingra See also: Shyamji Krishna Varma, The Indian Sociologist, William Hutt Curzon Wyllie, Har Dayal, and Hindu-German Conspiracy

During World War I, although Indian political bodies and populace largely came to support the British war effort, Bengal and Punjab remained hotbeds of anti colonial activities. Terrorism in Bengal, increasingly closely linked with the unrests in Punjab, was significant enough to nearly paralyse the regional administration. Also from the beginning of the war, expatriate Indian population, notably from United States, Canada, and Germany, headed by the Berlin Committee and the Ghadar Party, attempted to trigger insurrections in India on the lines of the 1857 uprising with Irish Republican, German and Turkish help in a massive conspiracy that has since come to be called the Hindu German conspiracy This conspiracy also attempted to rally Afghanistan against British India. A number of failed attempts were made at mutiny, of which the February mutiny plan and the Singapore mutiny remains most notable. This movement was suppressed by means of a massive international counter-intelligence operation and draconian political acts (including the Defence of India act 1915) that lasted nearly ten years.