Amid the ongoing Mesopotamian campaign of the First World War, the retired judge of the Bombay High Court, Cursetji Manockji Cursetji, set out on a month-long holiday across the Persian Gulf in early December 1916. Calling at numerous Gulf ports, the Parsi traveler experienced British imperial expansion in the region firsthand and vividly observed local conditions. He already registered the India trade and presence of Indian merchants upstream, but his sojourn in war-transformed Basra left a special mark. On a stroll through the city's port Ashaar, Cursetji found numerous Borah, Khojah, Bania, and Parsi merchants from Bombay thriving on its high street and pointed to further business opportunities. At the nearby headquarters of the commissariat, transport, and shipping departments there was a steady back-and-forth of khaki-clad clerks, sepoys, lascars, and porters. Despite a devastating defeat of British and Indian forces at Kut el-Amara only months earlier, Cursetji's account makes it clear that from Delhi, Iraq was viewed as a major field for the export of Indian labor and for the expansion of commercial networks originating in Bombay. The account furthermore voices the position of India within the British Empire and the demands for a prominent Indian role in Iraq's future in return for contributions made during the war.

Previous work alludes to the sub-imperial role of India in the conquest of Iraq through the provision of administrative structures, personnel, and materiel. It demonstrates that with extensive Indian labor migration between 1915 and 1920, Iraq could be imagined as a colony for India.Footnote ² However, these visions of a future Indian stake in Iraq and of large-scale migration ceased to exist with the establishment of the British mandate over Iraq in August 1920 and the transfer of responsibility from the India Office to the Colonial Office in 1921. This paper expands the perspective and traces some of the patterns that shaped South Asian labor migration to Iraq before, during, and after the First World War, drawing attention to both continuities and ruptures.

These migrants ranged from unskilled laborers to policemen and clerks, who had been picked up from a variety of different labor regimes and would be channeled into Iraq by forms of free and unfree migration. This article pushes the conventional narrative of Indian migration further back in time, stressing that interregional labor migration between South Asia and the Persian Gulf was predominantly a function of longstanding commercial ties and predated the First World War. It also offers a more complex analysis of the further curtailment of South Asian migration during the 1930s, which has been attributed to Iraqi nationalist sentiment and to the impact of the economic depression.Footnote ³ This paper argues that the issue of migration to Iraq has to be seen in the context of a plethora of interventions and demands in the relationship between India and the Persian Gulf region over a much longer time period.

Commercial and Legal Implications of Early Labor Migration

Around the turn of the twentieth century, two interlinked factors shaped labor migration to the Ottoman Empire and to Iraq. First, substantial French, German, and British investment throughout the Ottoman Empire in infrastructural projects such as port facilities and railways gave rise to a demand for foreign workers. These enterprises argued that the construction and maintenance of these projects required a range of skilled laborers that could not be met locally. While French and German investment in the Ottoman Empire grew till the beginning of the First World War, British capital began to retreat after the 1880s, concomitant with declining commercial interests and falling participation in Ottoman public debt.Footnote ⁴ Nonetheless, several British enterprises continued and even expanded their operations in Ottoman territory, for which Iraq was an important area. Lynch Brothers, a British trading and shipping conglomerate, operated the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company as well as a line on the Karun River in adjacent southwest Iran, where they also built and managed roads.Footnote ⁵ The British firm Gray Mackenzie and Company occupied a commanding position in Basra and transported the immense date crop to Bombay via the British India Steam Navigation Company and as far afield as America.Footnote ⁶

Meanwhile, the presence of these companies depended on a structure that has been termed the Empire of the Raj. The expression denotes that the Government of India—despite its subordination to British imperial interests—increasingly pursued its own strategic and commercial agenda in several nearby spheres of interest in the nineteenth century. The Persian Gulf was arguably the most important, and this accounted for a second factor in Indian migration. The Government of Bombay and subsequently the Government of India's Foreign Department administered its Gulf interests via several administrative posts. The Persian Gulf Political Residency at Bushehr was the most important because of its central position in southwest Iran and its responsibility for southern Gulf countries.Footnote ⁷ But Baghdad contained a similar post in the form of the British Resident, who supervised several subordinate posts in Iraq. All of them were staffed with officers of the Indian Political Service. They regularly reported back to India on important political and commercial issues, but they also administered all British, British Indian, and protected subjects within their jurisdiction in accordance with the system of capitulary rights.

Successive executive orders, such as the Ottoman Order in Council of 1899, allowed for adjudication of commercial disputes and criminal cases between subjects and protected persons in British consular courts and according to British or British Indian laws. They further stipulated the obligation of permanent residents to register annually and for newcomers to register within one month after arrival with the diplomatic mission of the district in which they resided.Footnote ⁸ This political administrative apparatus further enhanced the Iraq-India link and facilitated the channeling of labor in various ways.

One channel was religious. Over the course of the nineteenth century, British local mediation had increasingly helped to direct large payments out of a bequest from the former kingdom of Awadh in northern India to Shia holy places in Iraq.Footnote ⁹ These funds benefited the large number of Indians who went to Iraq as pilgrims, pensioners, religious scholars, and even petty traders. In 1882, Karbala, Kadhimain, and Najaf were home to some three thousand Indians alongside a large population of Indian pilgrims, who could number as many as three hundred on any given day in Karbala.Footnote ¹⁰ However, an undefined number of these pilgrims must have worked along the route to finance the journey. The alleged case of Saiyid Muhammad Ali seems to confirm this. He had taken three months’ leave from service in a Calcutta railway company in March 1913 to travel to Baghdad, where he eventually tried to procure a job with the local railway works and to register with the British Residency in October of the same year.Footnote ¹¹ The circulation of labor was a prominent feature in religious circulation, but its numbers remain difficult to estimate.

Commercial relations between South Asia and the Gulf, on the other hand, had a more direct and substantial impact. Arguably, laborers had migrated from Bombay and Karachi to the Gulf for some time. The Collector in Karachi reported in February 1904 that “a number of artisans, chiefly it is believed masons, migrate every year to Bussorah or Muscat in the expectation of obtaining employment in those places.”Footnote ¹² However, these laborers never proceeded under a contract, and it was this issue that led to the first discussion of the shape of emigration policies to the Gulf in the prewar decade. Several Karachi-based enterprises sought to recruit skilled and coolie labor to various Gulf destinations under contracts of indenture and therefore began to petition the Government of India through subordinate governmental bodies to relax the controls established in the Indian Emigration Act of 1883.Footnote ¹³ The law was intended to protect laborers who migrated from India under indenture and stipulated the ports from and countries to which emigration was permitted. Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay were the only legal ports of emigration, and neither Iraq nor any of the other Gulf countries was included in the list of destinations to which labor could be sent under contract.Footnote ¹⁴ From Karachi, emigration at that time was only allowed to East Africa and the Seychelles.Footnote ¹⁵

Several officials in the emigration branch of the Revenue and Agriculture Department strongly objected to the requests for expanded migration, and they feared that declaring Karachi a port of emigration would lead to migration apart from that connected to government contractors and to places for which the legislation was not intended, such as Natal.Footnote ¹⁶ However, Louis William Dane, secretary of the Indian Foreign Department, thought that the capitulary system existing in Iraq and other Persian Gulf countries provided a legal framework that gave sufficient protection to Indian labor.

Dane argued that British imperial rights in the form of jurisdiction and the widespread presence of various Indian governmental officials in the region protected its subjects. This view contradicted existing law, which stipulated that the Governor General had to confirm that laws and provisions of the receiving country safeguarded emigrants during their residence.Footnote ¹⁸

The issue was still under discussion in March 1904, when the Secretary of the Government of Bombay repeatedly pleaded for the above amendment. To dispel any fears, he brought forth strong support from the Commissioner in Sind, who argued “that the present restrictions are extremely hard in their operation as to individuals and mercantile firms, and injurious to the general interests of the port of Karachi.” In addition, the Bombay Secretary argued that the Epidemic Diseases Act would prevent unrestricted coolie emigration from Karachi and that it spared Karachi-based contractors the inconvenience of sending artisans five hundred miles to Bombay for embarkment.Footnote ¹⁹ These arguments convinced officials of the Government of India, and toward the end of March 1904 it declared that emigration was permitted from Karachi.Footnote ²⁰ The reason for the amended legislation was less about the needs of government for labor than the commercial interests of certain regions and the business interests of merchants.

Only a few years later, a similar discussion under different circumstances took place about the importation of Indian coolie labor for irrigation projects in Iraq. These works were supervised by the Anglo-Indian engineer William Willcocks for three years, until 1911. Willcocks had commenced his career in the irrigation department of the United Provinces and later worked in Egypt and South Africa. In 1908 he became public works adviser to the Ottoman government and oversaw the construction of the Hindia barrage in south Baghdad.Footnote ²¹ From the early days of the project, Willcocks professed a vision for the transformation of the Tigris region, which was closely connected to

He envisioned the future migration of “thousands and tens of thousands of industrious labourers from British India, and possibly from Egypt … flocking to the Delta of the Tigris” to boost the construction of railway lines that could in turn transport “men and materials from the Persian Gulf to the irrigation canals, renovated fields, and rising towns of Upper Chaldea.”Footnote ²³ Thus, the Anglo-Indian engineer had been involved with planning irrigation projects in Iraq much before his official appointment. Already in 1904, William Morgan Moylan, a negotiator under Willcocks for some of the irrigation works, obtained information for him from the Indian Foreign Department as to who was responsible for sanctioning the emigration of coolie labor for works outside India.Footnote ²⁴ Willcocks further demonstrated a clear view of designs and estimates of possible irrigation works in Iraq in two subsequent publications, which, however, did not refer to his earlier proposal to use Indian labor.Footnote ²⁵

This did not mean he was no longer considering Indian recruitment. In fact, he acquired further information on a possible supply of Indians in 1909, when he forecasted a need for some 15,000 workers if the proposed project was sanctioned and entrusted to him by the Ottoman government. Willcocks particularly expressed his wish to employ Muslim laborers from the Attock, Rawalpindi, and Jhelum districts in Punjab. This met with doubts from one official in the Commerce and Industry Department. He argued that it was difficult for that province to procure labor for its own canal works; emigration laws also “prevent … labourers being taken from a part of the country which cannot afford to let them go.”Footnote ²⁶

Shortly afterward, Willcocks officially addressed the resident about this idea, which he thought necessary, for it would be “the first occasion on which foreign labour, provided by British subjects, will have been imported into this country.”Footnote ²⁷ Referring to emigration laws, the Deputy Secretary of the Foreign Department said that they were not ordinarily disposed to allow “emigration under indenture to countries not under the British flag.” Permission in the case of Iraq would depend partly on the political situation at the time. In this case, “political situation” referred to “concessions, Railway and other, which the British Government might be backing up at the time.” But it would also require Ottoman authorities themselves to put forward diplomatically any such proposal and to take responsibility for the proper treatment of laborers and the fulfilment of terms on which they were to engage.Footnote ²⁸ This was the last piece of evidence I was able to find about Willcocks's plans to recruit labor from India. After he quit his position in Iraq in 1911, the works on the Hindia barrage were transferred to the London-based Sir John Jackson Ltd. and finalized before war broke out.Footnote ²⁹ This global company had some experiences with employing labor from the Punjab when developing the harbor at Simonstown in Cape Colony between 1900 and 1910. But a 1902 proposal for 400 to 500 Indian contract workers was turned down.Footnote ³⁰

However, no evidence exists about whether Indian labor was actually employed at any point on works in Iraq during this period or if the Ottoman government ever proposed to use Indians. The fact that Willcocks did not mention his plans for importing labor in reports and proposals submitted to the Ottoman government possibly demonstrates that it was a contentious issue. There are additional factors that might have prevented the use of Indian labor. The relatively tense contemporary political situation possibly discouraged the Government of India from allowing such emigration. And concession agreements between local governments and enterprises often strictly stipulated the employment of local labor. But both aforementioned examples show that the Government of India would allow and facilitate under certain conditions emigration under contract to new destinations. Permission, however, possibly depended on the exceptional status of the proposed scheme, the future employer's application for such cases, the nature of the laws and provisions in the country of immigration, and a guarantee by the importer of treating migrant laborers according to the terms of contract. Mobilizing labor in this period was also shaped by the political will to flexibly interpret existing policies, which was more likely if regional issues or imperial interests were at stake. However, the procedures were partly inscribed in legislation and the desire to limit emigration to countries that were under the British flag. This was to change when labor demand considerably increased during the First World War.

The War Economy and South Asian Labor Immigration

What started in November 1914 as an advance of several thousand troops of the Indian Expeditionary Force “D” to secure the Shatt-el-Arab and the oil fields and installations of Southern Persia was soon transformed into a full-fledged war operated in large part from India and sustained by its resources, both human and material. Indian resources would remain critical even after the War Office in London took over responsibility for the campaign after the defeat at Kut. Basra, the hub of the occupying force's advances toward the north, was transformed technologically and culturally by the machinery, supplies, and manpower pouring into its harbor. Within a month after Basra's occupation, the commanding general replaced the military government with a civil administration. This setting up of administrative structures recurred with the further advance of British imperial forces into Iraq. Instructions from London in this regard were clear. The prewar local administration was to be retained in the occupied territory as much as possible, and no attempt was to be made to transform it along the lines of an Indian district.Footnote ³¹ However, despite these instructions, the latter did virtually take place, especially as Percy Cox, Chief Political Officer in the occupied territories, and his deputy, Arnold Wilson, favored such a course.Footnote ³² These two administrators began to extend British Indian legal codes to Iraq, organized administration and revenue systems on an Indian basis, and drew upon a large number of South Asians of different backgrounds to staff this structure.Footnote ³³

There was one overarching factor in all these considerations. Although never officially voiced, there were sentiments that favored the annexation of the newly occupied territories to India. Such plans had been raised already in the early 1900s, but they took on a totally new meaning under the circumstances of the war. Shortly after the occupation of Basra, Wilson privately wrote about a possible repopulation of the occupied territory:

The very nature of the war effort seemed to be giving material expression to this project. The campaign demanded a huge input of labor, and, until December 1918, the reliance on South Asian labor was particularly marked. But Indian clerks and subordinate officials also had to be brought in to staff the bureaucracy within the occupied territory. Several hundred Indian policemen were brought in to patrol streets, guard jails, and enforce order in critical localities, such as the Basra docks.Footnote ³⁵ Coolies and other laborers, whether unskilled or skilled and recruited internally or externally for the ongoing war effort, constituted by far the largest contingent of Indian workers. Unskilled labor was employed in the building of roads, dams, and houses; in loading and unloading steamers and trucks; supplying carpenters, smiths, and masons, improving communications; as well as menial jobs such as sweeping and latrine cleaning. A number of skilled laborers, including carpenters, blacksmiths, riveters, and drivers, were employed in workshops and other sites. While coolie and corvée labor, sometimes contracted from tribal leaders or obtained as forced labor, provided the largest contingent throughout the time of occupation and after,Footnote ³⁶ the bulk of them came from South Asia, with a scattering of Chinese, Egyptian, and Persian workers. All in all, some 293,152 Indian noncombatants, including camp followers and skilled and unskilled laborers, were employed in Iraq.Footnote ³⁷

The Indian workers came from different regions, from different ends of the subcontinent's labor market, and from a variety of professions, so that one can in effect speak of an India-wide engagement in the campaign. Indian government authorities procured labor whenever necessary and from wherever possible. In December 1915 the Indian Railway Board, for example, asked agents of railway companies throughout the country to determine if any of their staff would volunteer for duty, showing a special interest in drivers, guards, and subordinates for workshops. The Railway Board wanted to be prepared to send labor for work on the Baghdad Railway, in case advancing military forces were able to control the line and put it back to work. Arguing that Iraq was “nearer to India and more like their own country than East Africa,” railway officials thought it would “have less difficulty in inducing Indians to go[.]”Footnote ³⁸ Rail companies responded with apprehension, especially because the board had not supplied the terms or conditions of war service, a matter that the companies’ agents said was absolutely necessary to bring to the staff's attention.Footnote ³⁹ While board officials themselves seemed unsure about the conditions of employment, they probably knew that service in Iraq would be of a provisional and short-term character, which they did not want to reveal. After all, inducing civilian labor and staff to volunteer for a war zone proved difficult enough. With the board finally issuing some of the conditions of employment, adding that these would be the maximum concessions allowed and where possible staff may be promised less, one agent understood it as request for heads of departments “to haggle with the men[.]” Officials denied this, explaining instead that the directive's intention was to give railway authorities some discretionary power in arranging the terms, making it thus not a “question of haggling with the staff, but of offering only what the recruiting officer considers to be sufficient.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Authorities seemed to know that some men would not volunteer without incentives being given, over which the recruiter could decide on the spot, while others probably took terms of service at face value.

The Indian railways proved crucial throughout the war period and were largely responsible for supplying adequate staff and resources for the functioning, maintenance, and administration of railways in Iraqi territory.Footnote ⁴¹ Even after the end of the war, Iraqi authorities were sure that their “railway policy in the future will be vitally affected by our arrangements with the Government of India in regard to recruitment of labour.” Although they sought to end their use of Indian unskilled labor, with regard to skilled labor they were “unable to dispense with it for many years.”Footnote ⁴² Well into the 1920s, the Iraqi railways for want of trained staff still employed Indians.

Other Indians provided the infrastructure for advancing military forces, including construction, maintenance, and operating services. These laborers were not part of the Indian Army but recruited as civilians to work under military authorities. The requirements for labor were vast, and the Indian government had to find the ways and means to mobilize this supply of workers. Every now and then the regulations and procedures originally designed to protect emigrants were sidestepped. Being considerably involved in the campaign and having a stake in Iraq's fortunes, the Indian government was willing to make exceptions in regard to emigration procedures during the war. There were several reasons for this. Despite the extensive use of local and other labor, military authorities reverted to Indians when it was urgent, when special skills were needed, or when local labor was insufficient. During the urgent labor requirements of 1916, the Home department suggested that local governments approach emigration agencies to assist in labor recruitment. As the Secretary stated:

The Indian government followed a policy of making labor readily available when needed. Often, labor was recruited for very short periods for works that had to be speedily done, after the execution of which laborers were sent back. The Indian government and local bodies had a number of devices to ensure a constant labor flow. Besides keeping all available military labor ready for shipping out, authorities also altered Indian emigration laws. In 1917 emigration from India was curtailed, except to theaters of war and minimally also to Ceylon and the Malay States. However, this failed to attract sufficient labor. In addition, authorities had decided earlier to put a military cloak over labor recruitment for Iraq and to sidestep the formalities of the Indian Emigration Act. This extended several advantages to authorities. While laborers came under military command and were subject to military discipline, sidestepping the formalities of emigration laws resulted in a quieter execution of labor recruitment, less visible to the Indian public and thus subject to less public criticism. One of the issues confronting authorities in these years was the question of indentured emigration under which labor was bound to contracts for certain periods and liable to penal provisions. The Indian nationalist movement agitated against such forms of emigration during the war years. With these new regulations and methods of labor recruitment, authorities were able to distance themselves from any form of indentured emigration. Labor for certain purposes, whether military or civil, were hence treated as outside the scope of the Indian Emigration Act and labeled a war necessity.Footnote ^44a While Willcocks's prewar requests to obtain Indian coolie labor for irrigation works had received equivocal answers, war engagement and pressing labor demands in Iraq made authorities bypass the laws hitherto followed. However, the above measure was just one of many that authorities applied to obtain labor for employment in the war theater. These requirements were satisfied throughout the war and after by tapping into a variety of sources from different ends of the Indian labor market, whether already existing or to be “discovered.”Footnote ^44b

The use of South Asian labor received a new impetus after the British and Indian defeat at Kut el-Amara in 1916. The war management was then put on a different footing, with decision-making shifted from India to London's War Office and implemented in Iraq without the input of Indian authorities. The Mesopotamia Commission Inquiry was created to investigate the reasons for the defeat and to recommend ways to better organize such campaigns in the future. With the implementation of the commission's findings, India's contribution to the war effort changed, especially after the capture of Baghdad in March 1917. These decisions created mistrust and uneasy feelings among Indian authorities.

The commander-in-chief in India, General Monro, complained to the War Office in October 1917 about steadily increasing requirements for inland water transport personnel, especially seamen, in the war zone. This had reached such high levels that British shipping firms already began to feel the lack of manpower in their Indian local and overseas activities. Vessels with undermanned crews were detained in Bombay or set sail with untrained men. Due to an alleged shortage of British crews, these firms also pressed for using Indian seamen for winter service in the North Atlantic and other routes that were otherwise reserved for sailors on European agreements. Monro particularly accused the Inland Water Transport Department in Iraq of miscalculating its labor requirements, inefficiently utilizing the personnel sent, and not substituting seamen when other labor was equally available. He also found an overall lack of coordination among the various labor-employing directorates, which led to a failure to economize on resources.Footnote ⁴⁵

A commission that had been formed to inquire on the more efficient utilization of railway personnel expanded its purview to river transport. On the issue of river transport personnel, it recommended that seamen be returned to India and steps be undertaken to prevent their future recruitment. An officer was to be appointed in Iraq to coordinate and supervise all transportation directorates to ensure efficient use of labor. The Inland Water Transport Department in Iraq would no longer have grounds to complain about the number of laborers available to it. The quality of some categories of personnel was also to be improved, which was brought to the notice of all employers in India, and more care was to be exercised when evaluating skilled Indian laborers. With regard to railways, the report pointed to the need for highly skilled workers and asked if

The commission also received evidence that “willing men have been refused because they could not be spared” and that “the urgent necessity for greater effort is not fully appreciated.”Footnote ⁴⁶ This indicated the unabated need for Indian labor, which was more in demand than ever before, despite attempts of Indian authorities to pull out their resources. Under the command of the War Office, the demand for Indian labor actually increased. At one point, the number of Indian laborers even overtook local, as labor returns between 1917 and 1919 indicate.Footnote ⁴⁷

Undoing Immigration into Iraq

Toward the end of October 1918, with the war drawing to a close, the Army of Occupation faced two issues. One concerned the further recruitment of Indian labor. The overall demand for labor fell dramatically with the end of operations, and several military establishments started to be dismantled and released their laborers. But other military activities continued to rely on external labor, especially the railway and irrigation departments, which drew heavily upon menial, skilled, and office labor from India. Long delays in the further arrival of subordinates and laborers from India meant that irrigation officers in many districts had little or no personnel to assist them.Footnote ⁴⁸

The end of the war also raised the issue of future migration of Indians to Iraq. The Civil Commissioner, Arnold Wilson, had already reminded the India Office in September 1918 that a policy on this matter was needed, and he foresaw a considerable demand from Indian Army soldiers and personnel for land grants to enable them to remain in the country as cultivators. Many Hindu, Muslim, and Parsi shopkeepers and small traders had come to Basra, and only military restrictions prevented their further advance to Baghdad. Wilson had no doubt that Iraqi opinion was opposed to Indian immigration of any sort.Footnote ⁴⁹ But the India Office did not make any decision because labor requirements were still so large that recruitment could not be dispensed with and any premature decisions on immigration restriction would elicit a public uproar in India.

This stance did not change even when the Civil Administration assumed responsibility for Iraq in February 1919. Wilson knew that various civil and military works in Iraq still demanded imported labor, and he willingly accepted responsibility for supplying it through the Civil Administration. He proposed to the Indian Foreign Secretary a notification system under existing emigration laws that would enable civil authorities in Iraq to obtain Indian laborers, but several Indian officials rejected the proposals on the grounds that it would require a return to the indentured system. With the matter of labor tied to the question of the future administration of Iraq and the policy toward Indians, authorities in India pleaded for some more time to consider the proposal while the system of labor recruitment on a military footing was continued.Footnote ⁵⁰

The Viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford, voiced similar concerns to the India Office in February 1919. With roughly 138,000 Indian laborers in Iraq and some 30,000 laborers needed after the war, he opposed any plan for a civil labor establishment, considering that “Indian opinion would not tolerate any form of indentured labor in Mesopotamia, especially if it were combined with any sort of restriction or even discouragement of free Indian emigration.” He knew that the country “will not be able to get the labour it requires without some form of indenture” and agreed to the army continuing “to recruit labour corps for duty nominally as part of the garrison of the country, though that duty may be of a purely civil character.” He also interpreted Iraq's dependence on India as sufficient reason for claiming higher political stakes in the country, as it seemed to be impossible “for Mesopotamia to claim administrative independence of India when she is dependent on the latter for almost everything she requires—even unskilled labour.” The War Office in London responded positively, agreeing on proposals for the transition period and that additional labor should be enlisted only up to a limit of civil administration's estimated requirements. The India Office assured that the labor supply was “conditional on grant of reasonable facilities for Indians to settle in Mesopotamia.” Soon afterward, recruitment for labor corps to the extent of 32,000 persons started again, with depots receiving about 5,000 workers a month.Footnote ⁵¹

Labor issues were therefore intimately connected to questions on the future of Indian immigration. There was a conflict between the Iraqi demand for restrictions on Indian immigration versus the Iraqi need for Indian labor. With the peace process starting in 1919, it was decided to leave aside, for political reasons, the question of free Indian immigration until the country's future was decided. Local authorities drew up Passport Regulations in 1919 for immigration control, under which no person could enter the country without permission from local authorities. Early on, the Civil Commissioner had informed the Foreign Secretary that Indian and Chinese laborers desired to settle in Basra. With “considerable local prejudice” against them, he professed that the local population would soon demand immigration restrictions. For the time being, however, their movements were restricted by military passport regulations, which could deny entry to all persons, whether connected to the force or to local residents.Footnote ⁵²

In April 1920, the Indian Government, in light of the new environment for migration, adapted its regulations on emigration. Arguing that military needs were still preeminent, Viceroy Chelmsford issued an ordinance approving the continued employment of Indian military labor corps by Iraqi civil authorities. This regulation contained a number of restrictions with which the government tried to preempt criticism of the shift in policy, especially the sentiment of Indian nationalists that “no form of indentured emigration to Mesopotamia can be allowed. …”Footnote ⁵³ This served to exclude such emigration, while the sending of labor overseas was recast as military in purpose. With the ordinance applying “to all subordinate personnel, or labour (skilled and unskilled) recruited in India for the Mesopotamian Administration,”Footnote ⁵⁴ the provision was eventually so broad as to easily satisfy diverse labor requirements under one heading.

However, actual recruitment in substantially high numbers went on only for a short period and within a few months migration to Iraq changed completely. Major developments in the international system had already affected the country's administration and hence issues of immigration in general. Negotiations over the country's future took definite shape after the San Remo Conference in late April 1920, which decided on the terms of the British Mandate over Iraq, which was to commence in August. Concurrently, the Secretary of State for India notified the Civil Commissioner in Baghdad, Arnold Wilson, in July 1920 that recruitment from India was to “be confined within narrowest possible limits if not stopped at all.” The Civil Commissioner responded that Iraqis were replacing Indians in many departments. But several vital works still required Indians and asked that Indian recruitment be allowed to continue, promising that this would not include unnecessary additional numbers.Footnote ⁵⁵

Shortly afterward, Wilson felt impelled to comment on the basis of his own experiences in the Times of June 24, 1920, in an article that reported on a House of Commons debate of the same day in which the Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill, and his predecessor, John Seely, expressed a general feeling “that if Mesopotamia was to be manageable at reasonable cost we must get rid of the Indian mortgage. Arabs and Indians, as was pointed out, cannot get on together.” Wilson tried to clarify this picture. While Arabs were prejudiced against some Indians, especially laborers of “certain backward races and classes” and against Indian shopkeepers in Basra, he emphasized that many Indians had not encountered racial hatred. Some Indian administrators and clerks of the irrigation department were received in a friendly manner by the population of Baqubah, who referred to the inefficiency and corruption of Arab subordinate staff and requested more Indians to be sent so that disputes over water would be prevented. This evidence did not prevent Wilson from further pursuing the policy of replacing Indians by Iraqis wherever possible, but it pointed to the “necessity of training Arabs before they are replaced in such positions and indicates desirability of cautious rather than drastic reduction.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Wilson was not yet willing to dispense with the Indian connection, however.

Dramatic reductions in the recruitment of Indians and setting Indian labor free became the order of the day after the revolt that began in Iraq in the summer of 1920. After the creation of the mandate system, it was difficult to maintain the status quo, and British officials increasingly favored breaking off ties with India. Whether it was the actual awarding of the mandate to Britain or the high-handed nature of Wilson's administration during his office as Civil Commissioner is not clear, but in the ensuing months the situation in the country became increasingly difficult, with various parts of the population staging protests and attacking British and Indian officers in several districts.Footnote ⁵⁷ This necessitated preparing for further labor withdrawals under the assumption that the disorder would become general. Indian personnel of civil departments were returned in large numbers. Authorities in India decided not to send any more personnel for certain directorates and asked if that held true for other directorates as well since they were anxious to avoid sending men who would be immediately returned. But Wilson wanted them to supply further workers unless specifically cancelled.

With escalating troop requirements during the Iraqi uprising and reinforcements from India still on their way, members of the labor corps were enlisted as combatants, which received criticism from the Indian nationalist movement. The journal Young India published a letter on November 10, 1920, that contained a resolution passed in Baghdad in support of Gandhi's noncooperation movement and criticized the sending of labor corps to the front lines as “lawless butchery.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Shortly afterward, several thousand Indian troops arrived in Iraq, and the country entered a state of ongoing—but not open—revolution by late 1920.

Recruitment of labor and continued Indian immigration had virtually come to a halt by this time. According to an official census, the number of Indians living in Iraq by mid-1920 had not changed from the prewar period, amounting to some 3,000, excluding those connected to the military force and civil administration.Footnote ⁵⁹ Nonetheless, the Indian Government said at a meeting in September 1920 that the Mesopotamia Passport Rules should be modified and restrictions on Indian immigration removed. If this was not done, the continuing recruitment in India of military labor corps could not be maintained because of growing Indian opposition. The Indian Government repeated its demand for the removal of the restriction on Indian immigration in December 1920, which the High Commissioner in Baghdad did by issuing an Immigration Proclamation in July 1921. The Indian government then declared Iraq a country to which emigration was lawful.Footnote ⁶⁰

During the course of a lecture to the Central Asian Society in London, Arnold Wilson, recently retired from his position as Civil Commissioner and immediately afterward employed as resident director in the Persian Gulf of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, addressed Iraq immigration issues. Citing “national prejudice in the minds of Arabs in Mesopotamia … against any alien who seeks to settle in his ancestral acres,” he assured the audience that “immigration might have been possible before the war, but not now.”Footnote ⁶¹ Wilson, once a strong supporter of South Asian immigration to Iraq, had changed his mind. With the army of occupation and the establishments and laborers connected to it shrinking, authorities largely stopped importing labor from the subcontinent and effectively curtailed the now undesired immigration into the country.

Indian Responses to Migration Restrictions

The beginning of the British mandate over Iraq in 1920 and the handing over of authority from the Army of Occupation to the Iraqi Government in November 1920 had further repercussions on Indian employment in Iraq. Several directorates of the civil administration began to dramatically reduce the number of Indian staff and labor during the period of the British mandate. The Iraq railways, for example, reduced their subordinate staff of skilled and unskilled labor, many of whom were Indians, from 26,120 to 304 between 1920 and 1931.Footnote ⁶² The total number of Indian officers employed by the Iraqi government declined from 2,035 to thirty-six in the same period. For want of local replacements, these officers lingered on in the Irrigation, Surveys, Veterinary, Health, and Posts and Telegraphs Departments, all of which had once been primarily staffed with Indians.Footnote ⁶³

A series of three newspaper articles in the Bombay Chronicle in March and April 1926 voiced some apprehension with the use of Indian officials and laborers in recounting how the contemporary situation had been reached. It argued that of the large number of migrants who served in different positions during the war, many had come to Iraq with the aim of settling, under the impression that the Indian government's policy was to develop the country and to find an outlet for laborers. Indians were also alleged to have been the cause of disturbances during 1920, according to the British Parliament. From that point Iraqis learned to hate Indians for the first time as a “consequence of a policy to throw the blame for local disturbances on the Indianisation of Iraq during the period of the Civil Administration[.]”Footnote ⁶⁴ The policy of reducing the Indian presence in the country did not enable the British or the Iraq government to send away the “technical” Indians, whose services were still required in several departments, sometimes training Iraqis who were to replace them later. While needed by the state, their situations became increasingly insecure, as assurances of further employment were not addressed in any treaty, such as the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1922.

As the number of Indian immigrants in government services and elsewhere receded, a stronger sense of community emerged in those few remaining. Members of the Indian community, for example, established the Indian Association in Iraq in 1921. The only recognized body of this sort in Iraq, its objectives included the promotion of the spirit of union among Indians in the country, the social and moral advancement of Indians, temperance through a library reading room and recreation facilities, and the monitoring of the welfare of Indians.Footnote ⁶⁵ The Indian government first heard about the association with its fourth annual report of 1925. In April of that year, some five hundred people attended the association's anniversary in its premises on Baghdad's Residency Road. The association had already established branches in several towns such as Mosul and Kirkuk, enlisted thirty life members from India who occasionally came for visits, and widened its activities. It maintained a children's school in Baghdad, assisted in the repatriation of destitute Indian pilgrims, made representations for the provision of regular passports to British Indian subjects, and tried to obtain better conditions of service for Indians employed in government service. By 1927 at the latest, the association had to accept the major reduction and repatriation of Indian personnel in various civil and military departments, which reduced its membership.Footnote ⁶⁶ The association's future did not look particularly bright, with subscriptions dwindling at the same speed as the community's strength. They kept making representations on behalf of the Indian community employed on the Iraqi Railways, and finally, appealed to all Indians in Iraq, to think only in terms of Indian Nationality, as “a man's religion or creed is after all a thing between himself and His Maker and not an excuse for bringing about faction and unending strife and misunderstanding among mankind.”Footnote ⁶⁷

The decreased number of Indians was part and parcel of several larger shifts during this period. From the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, nationality laws and related legislation came into force. The situation of foreigners in the country had become constrained in 1923 after the issuance of the Iraq Residence and Passport Laws, the latter superseding the Mesopotamia Passport Regulations of 1919. These regulated the entry into, residence in, and exit from Iraq. For all these steps a travel permit or a passport was necessary. In addition, any person allowed to enter had to register at the police headquarters of the district of residence within fifteen days of arrival.Footnote ⁶⁸ After a long period of occupation and foreign dominance, which had prompted many migrants to come for work, such laws marked the beginning of a newly emerging territorial state that demanded control over its population and tightened the conditions under which foreigners could stay.

Non-Iraqis were still admitted to government service until 1926. At that point British Indians in official employment were given the choice of either applying for Iraqi nationality or facing immediate termination of service and repatriation to India. Many opted for Iraqi nationality. Between 1926 and 1935, the Indian government received notification of 221 British subjects who had been granted Iraqi Naturalization Certificates. Most had been born in India, but several had lived in Iraq their entire lives. Some proved their identity as British subjects by producing pilgrim passes issued at Bombay, others with the Government of India passport issued in various places of origin all over India or with witnesses’ statements. While most were Muslims, Hindus and Christians also opted for Iraqi nationality. The notification abruptly ends with certificate number 1,396 in November 1935, when opting for Iraqi nationality was either no longer possible or there were no foreigners left in government service.Footnote ⁶⁹ Of the once many thousands in the country, 2,596 Indians remained in Iraq in 1932.Footnote ⁷⁰

Concurrently, nationality legislation was expanded after the end of the British mandate and following the state's independence. Toward the end of 1935, the Iraqi government was about to implement a new law that restricted certain trades to Iraqis. Foreign laborers were exempted only if the government had special treaties with companies or there were special arrangements and contracts, which included service in foreign consulates and private servants in homes.Footnote ⁷¹ The legislation generated debate throughout India and many expressed fears that such a law would harm the interests of Indian residents. Some thought the Iraqi government's actions were contrary to international law. When the British mandate over Iraq was ended and the state was admitted to the League of Nations in October 1932, the Iraqi government had given guarantees to all foreigners in the country that their status would not be affected. This was taken as a promise that all foreigners would be allowed to stay in Iraq on the basis of their positions, even when Iraq became independent.

Under the impression that several Indian shop owners and tradesmen had received notices to leave Iraq, one Indian merchant at Basra, M. N. Dean, reported that the grievances of Indians would escalate with legislation to protect certain labor and trades. On the one hand, he argued that Iraq benefited more from the Indian connection than vice versa, including economic and religious ties and the money and sacrifices of Indians during the war to throw off Ottoman rule, which allowed Iraq to achieve independence. On the other hand, Iraqis were allowed to live freely and without any restrictions and harassment in India. He thus expected the Indian government to secure for its people the same freedom and privileges it granted to Iraqis. He went so far as to suggest reciprocal treatment and that if India were to put similar restrictions on Iraqis, the Iraqi government would think twice before implementing such a discriminatory policy.Footnote ⁷²

The Indian government received queries from individuals and institutions taking up the diaspora cause.Footnote ⁷³ Newspapers were full of articles on the policies in Iraq and often cited or printed in full a letter from M. N. Dean to several important political figures in India.Footnote ⁷⁴ The topic was a very sensitive one, with Indian public opinion loudly demanding retaliatory action and forecasting grave consequences for Iraqi nationals and trade relations if the Indian government did not take any action.Footnote ⁷⁵ Between late 1935 and early 1936, almost a dozen notices of questions on the matter poured into the Legislative Assembly. The government responded to a number of them, stating over and over again that the situation of Indians in Iraq had nothing to do with the new labor legislation but with the Iraqi Residence Law of 1923, to which some Indians had not adhered correctly, and that the new law applied to all foreigners, not only Indians.Footnote ⁷⁶

With sentiments running high, the Government of India had to respond to the demand that if the measure was passed it ought to take retaliatory action against Iraqi nationals in India. As a preliminary step, the Foreign Secretary, Herbert Aubrey Metcalfe, instructed officers of the Foreign and Political Department to collect information on the number and the professions of especially well-to-do Iraqi Arabs in India. Ideally, this information-collection process would percolate through the Iraqi Consul-General in Bombay or through relatives and friends to the Iraqi government, which would be forced to reconsider its stance. But the information was hard to come by. Census data furnished by the Home Department was inappropriate, for it showed the residence of some three hundred Iraq-born individuals in Burma, Bombay, Punjab, Madras, and Bengal but did not reveal if they were Iraqi nationals or Arabs. For similar reasons, local governments were also unable to secure more accurate accounts through police or municipal and income-tax authorities.Footnote ⁷⁷ By the end of January 1936, however, officials began to understand that there was no longer any need for retaliation. Iraqi politicians had admitted that the law did not target Indians but was aimed to force numerous Iranians living in Iraq to become Iraqis or quit the country. The Iraqi government was not willing to abandon the law fully, but they showed efforts to incorporate a new article excluding from the law subjects of those states in whose territory Iraqi subjects were allowed freely to practice their crafts and trades. India was such a state, and Indian officials seemed satisfied with such an amendment, knowing they could not prevent the whole law from passing. The law, including the proposed amendments, was finally passed toward the end of February 1936.Footnote ⁷⁸ Public uproar in India subsided for the time being.

Yet another article in the Statesman in early August 1936 alleged that the situation had actually taken a turn for the worse. It cited a letter from an Indian in Iraq to Rabindranath Tagore, which stated that every possible occupation had been barred for foreigners and especially for Indians. If any Indian left Iraq to attend to private affairs, he was not allowed to re-enter. The letter also pointed out that after the lapse of the British mandate, no terms had been worked out for the protection of Indians and Indian interests in Iraq.Footnote ⁷⁹ In July 1936 the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf noted that Indians were being driven out of Iraq and were hence keen to try their luck in Kuwait. This problem had not arisen before because the exclusion of Indians had become a serious policy only recently.Footnote ⁸⁰ While laws in Iraq were promulgated against all foreigners, they seemed to affect Indian labor migrants in particular.