J. J. Singh and the India League of America, 1945-1959

Pressing at the Margins of the Cold War Consensus

Bibliographic Data

ID11699166
AuthorsRobert Shaffer (0000-0002-2081-2407, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume31
Issue2
Pages68-103
Publication date2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American Ethnic History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0278-5927 • E-ISSN: 1936-4695
PublisherUniversity of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5406/jamerethnhist.31.2.0068
OpenAlexW2313415610
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited5

WHEN JAGJIT (J.J.) SINGH, who had lived in the United States since 1926 and ran a successful import business in Manhattan specializing in Indian textiles, decided to return to his native India in 1959, he received accolades more appropriate for a retiring long-term diplomat than for a successful immigrant entrepreneur. “U.S. Loses ‘Envoy’ to Call of India,” read the news story in the New York Times on January 18, and an editorial in that newspaper a month later declared that “J.J.—as he is affectionately known to thousands of Americans—. . . has been singularly successful in presenting the cause of his people to this country.” The mayor of New York City invited J.J., who had been the president of the India League of America (ILA) for almost two decades, since 1941, to a farewell luncheon; tributes to his work and to the work of the ILA arrived from important political figures, including liberals and radicals such as Brooklyn Democratic U.S. representative Emanuel Celler, Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, and Socialist Party standard-bearer Norman Thomas, and conservatives such as Vice President Richard Nixon, Republican U.S. Senator Karl Mundt, and publisher Henry Luce. The ambassador of India to the U.S., M. C. Chagla, at the last public meeting of the ILA—the organization disbanded with J.J.’s departure from the country—called its longtime president “a great unofficial Ambassador of India to this country.” Chagla added that future ambassadors from India would miss J.J.’s advice about American politics and culture and would miss the ability to use the ILA as a platform to reach the American public and policy makers. J.J., whom the Times called “the life and soul of the India League,” had been flatteringly portrayed in a New Yorker profile in 1951 as a “One Man Lobby,” and a later profile of this “long-familiar figure on Manhattan’s upper East Side” declared that he had “charmed the American political and social world” in the 1940s and 1950s. But J.J. and the ILA, even as they worked to build friendship between the U.S. and India, retained a critical edge toward U.S. policy. In J.J.’s last public speech before returning to India

Democracy · Economic history · Economic Justice · Immigration · League · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Supreme court · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · History · Indian History and Philosophy · Law · Social and Economic Development in India

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