With hearings that began in June 1929, a verdict delivered in 1933, and another six months of appeal hearings, the Meerut Conspiracy Case in colonial India turned out to be one of the most expensive legal cases in the history of the British Empire. 31 trade unionists and activists were arrested for organising strikes and charged with conspiring to "deprive the King of the sovereignty of British India". The accused were picked up from Bombay, Calcutta, and Punjab and taken to the city of Meerut for the trial – far from the support bases of the defendants and from the trade union centres of Bombay and Calcutta. The detainees were refused bail and subjected to trial without a jury – though jury trial was the practice at the time. One defendant died during the protracted trial and most others received harsh sentences – a decade or more of imprisonment and transportation.
The case gained international attention, not least because among the accused were two British activists working on organisation of labour in India. The colonial prosecution argued that the 'head' of the conspiracy to overthrow the King was no less than the Communist International (Comintern), the Moscow-based organisation coordinating communist parties worldwide. The protests against the trials were also international, best illustrated by the Meerut Sketch – an adaptation of the story of the defendants performed by the London-based Hammer and Sickle group. The sketch was an appeal to anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, and anti-racist groups worldwide to show solidarity with the Meerut prisoners. It connected British imperialist oppression in the Meerut Conspiracy Case to the dire circumstances in the French penal colony, the American chain gangs, and the tyranny of Czarist Russia. It concluded with a collective call to action: "Force the release of the Meerut Prisoners! Comrades, hands across the sea! Comrades, solidarity!" The defence of the Meerut prisoners became a preeminent cause for transnational alliances between anti-imperialists worldwide.
The Meerut conspiracy case is just one of nearly a dozen case studies that Priyamvada Gopal uncovers in her recently published book, Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent. She revisits, revises and revives this episode as a critical 'flashpoint' in the history of Indian anticolonialism. In her retelling, the Meerut trials are transformed from a narrative of colonial oppression into one of insurgent resistance and rebellion. It is not only an anti-Empire story, but a strongly anti-capitalist one told from the point of view of colonised, working class subjects. In this one episode, Gopal brings together the diverse threads that undergird this book into one cohesive narrative of rebel agency; of "reverse tutelage" or the colonised educating the coloniser on the absurdity and violence of colonial rule; and of transnational and class solidarities forged in the course of anticolonial resistance. At the forefront of the trial are the articulate and defiant testimonies of the Meerut case accused – many of whom remained relatively anonymous – but who question the charges against them in a way that puts on trial the very system of the British government that had passed judgement on them. The unfairness of their situation sparks solidarity among British dissenters, parliamentarians and intellectuals. But this solidarity is also framed around and informed by the agency of the colonised, as are the transnational support networks formed in the process.
Insurgent Empire is a brilliant and authoritative – if somewhat daunting – archive of dissent, criticism and opposition to the British Empire, and the people involved in it. Gopal's account spans almost a century of anti-colonial dissent, beginning with the 1857 'Mutiny' in India and making its way to the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya between 1952-1960. Key to her narrative is the way in which these insurgent rebellions help uncover a history of fierce opposition to the Empire, not just in the colonies but within Britain itself. Gopal demonstrates how the 1857 Indian 'Mutiny', the Urabi rebellion in Egypt between 1879 and 1882, the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865 and the Meerut trials sparked oppositional tendencies and active dissent not just among white working-class and labour movements, but also eminent jurists, government officials, parliamentarians and sections of the British media – thus shattering many imperial myths and legacies.