Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c14.s3.t6: Indian Youth League
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c14.s3.t6
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Indian Youth League
v2.c14.s3.t6.1
Indian Youth League was one of the associations of Indians resident in China in the 1920s and 1930s. It had a strong anti-imperialist bent and was associated in some ways with the Eastern Oppressed People’s Association. It was based in Shanghai, which at that time had the highest concentration of Indians besides Hong Kong. Its office was in the Zhabei district. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, they faced fierce persecution from the British authorities in Shanghai. Several of their leaders and activists such as Zapuran Singh, Chanan Singh, Kartar Singh and Surjan Singh were arrested and deported to India. However, the Indian Youth League seems to have survived with some support from Chinese political leaders. According to a United States OSS report of that time, the League ‘had some kind of agreement with the Kuomintang and the Bureau of Public Safety, which enabled it to hold meetings and carry on political activity’. The same report further described the leadership of the organisation as ‘young working men who were literate and intelligent’.
v2.c14.s3.t6.2
With the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and other parts of China in the 1930s, the Indian Youth League openly denounced Japanese aggression as well as Japanese Pan-Asianism. A resolution passed in one of the meetings held by the League in this period reads, “We Indians living on Chinese soil have full sympathy with the Chinese toiling masses and fully support their heroic resistance to the Japanese imperialist exploitation and aggression in China. We are confident that the brave efforts of the Chinese masses to liberate their country from the yoke of all foreign exploiters who have reduced China to the state of a semi-colonial country would ere long be crowned with success.” There is not much known about the activities of the League after this point. However, it is unlikely that they would have been able to continue with their public activity after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and after the establishment of the Indian Independence League, which collaborated with the Japanese, in Shanghai and other Chinese cities.
v2.c14.s3.t6.3
(*Madhavi Thampi*)