For Spain Indian Evening

This poster advertises a “For Spain Indian Evening” that took place in London on 12 March 1937.  Among the speakers was Indira Nehru, who was then a student at Oxford. The entertainment included folk dances performed by Shanta Gandhi, classical Indian dances by Rabindranath Tagore’s daughter Mira Devi, an Indian orchestra playing “centuries-old instruments”, a Spanish dance troupe, and a play about Malaga, which had been captured by the Francoists only weeks before.

The “Indian Evening” is an example of the pro-Republican activities undertaken by Indians resident in the United Kingdom. It was organized by the Spain-India Committee which had been created by by Jawaharlal Nehru’s close collaborator V.K. Krishna Menon. The committee organized talks, cultural events, and demonstrations and advertised for donations in British newspapers like The Manchester Guardian. It also received the money that the INC raised in India until Nehru also had a local Spain-India committee created in India in early 1937, although this was never very active. While the total amount of money raised is not known, it was sufficient to purchase and send an ambulance emblazoned with the words “To the Courageous Spanish Democrats, in the name of the People of India and Ceylon”.

The India League, established by Menon in 1929 to mobilize British support for Indian independence, also organized pro-Republican activities. The League connected the cause of India with other contemporary conflicts: its independence-day demonstration on 30 January 1938 featured the slogan “Unite with the Indian People. Remember Abyssinia, Spain, China”. The parade that marched on Trafalgar Square featured flags of the INC and the Irish and Spanish republics and banners with portraits of La Pasionaria, Chiang Kai-Shek and Emperor Haile Selassie as well as of Gandhi, Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, and Subhas Chandra Bose.

The India League also created the Indian Committee for Food for Spain, which published Nehru’s pamphlet Spain! Why?.  Here Nehru defended Indian support for the Spanish Republic as an assertion of India’s autonomy on the world stage: “our giving practical shape to our sympathies has a vital significance in giving India a position and prestige which usually only free countries possess. …. The free aid that we give medically or otherwise to China and Spain stamps us as people who have a view and will of their own”.