The Johnstone Affair and Cold War Beginnings in India

In 1928, British colonial authorities in India detained and held J. W. Johnstone, an American citizen, for nearly a month before deporting him first to Europe and then back to the United States.  Johnstone came from Chicago where he played an instrumental role in the early American communist movement. He arrived in Bombay via Moscow and Berlin where he received orders to attend various political meetings in India as the representative of the  League against Imperialism (LAI), a Berlin-based institution created in 1927 by communists in order to coordinate anti-colonial and working class movements worldwide. Colonial intelligence closely monitored the LAI in India, but Johnstone evaded the watchful eye of the authorities for several days. He made one public speech at the annual session of the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and appealed to workers and nationalists to “internationalize” the anti-colonial struggle by affiliating with the LAI. That evening, Johnstone met with a rising star of India’s independence struggle, Jawaharlal Nehru, who also served as India’s LAI representative and  President-Elect of AITUC. That evening, colonial authorities arrested and deported Johnstone. 

The aims of this paper are twofold. First, it reconstructs the story of Johnstone’s journey to demonstrate the significance of international and transnational networks of anti-imperialism and communism during the interwar years. Johnstone’s networks transcended national and imperial boundaries, and his story necessitates a transnational framework of analysis. Second, the paper highlights British and American anxieties and preoccupations with the spread of international communism in interwar India. The story serves as an important precursor to the later histories of the Cold War struggle for the third world. It ultimately points to the necessity of locating the roots of Cold War history in the interwar period.