This is a detailed, well-organized, and clearly argued study that focuses on the shifting positions of the British left and Indian nationalists—and the collapse of the coalitions that arose between them—in the period between the establishment of the Indian National Congress (1885) and the granting of independence to India (1947). Nicholas Owen has cast his net widely, drawing in a wealth of material from British and Indian sources, including some that have not previously been available to historians. The result will be important to everyone interested in debates about British imperialism, the political development of India, and the nature of the British left in the years when the Labour Party came into existence and evolved into a party of government.

Building on the research of Stephen Howe, Partha Gupta, Lance Davis and Robert Huttenback, P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, Patrick O’Brien, Sidney Pollard, and others, Owen discusses anticolonial ideology and the costs and benefits of empire and evaluates the various suggestions that have been offered by scholars such as R. J. Moore and Edward Said with respect to the apparent weakness of metropolitan anti-imperialism. What emerges is a complex mix of ideas and relationships. Racist assumptions among British progressives, for example, did not necessarily rule out anti-imperial concepts.

Nevertheless, it proved impossible to sustain close cooperation between congress and its supporters in Britain. The formation of the British Committee of Congress at the end of the 1880s did not bridge the gap, for the committee was hampered by internal rivalries and financial problems. Factionalism in congress did not help. Bombay moderates were challenged by activists from Bengal, and disputes in India merged with disputes in Britain. The abolition of the British Committee in 1920 was connected with the rise of Mohandas K. Gandhi. After repeated attempts to persuade the British government to make concessions, Gandhi cast off the role of a subject asking for favors on the grounds that “mendicancy was inherently demeaning and could not be made the basis of the national struggle” (76). He adopted a more robust position that led him to condemn the British Committee. To him, it represented deference to British public figures and experts whose agenda was shaped not by the needs of India but by the politics of the British left.

Keir Hardie, the Webbs, Ramsay MacDonald, Clem Attlee, and other Labour leaders were genuinely interested in India. Some visited the country; some sat on committees dealing with Indian issues. Their opinions differed in certain respects, but they generally agreed that the rise of the Labour Party was the model that Indian nationalists should follow. The way to advance was through parliamentary methods and demonstrations of political maturity and responsibility. Gandhi's alternative agenda—noncooperation and indigenous forms of protest—disappointed many on the British left. They were reluctant to admit that there were different paths to political maturity and slow to recognize the contrasts between social and political conditions in India and those in Britain. At the same time, Indian nationalists were themselves divided on these matters and on tactics. The perceived need to tell different constituencies what they wanted to hear meant that appeals to British sympathizers and educated Indians were made in the language of Victorian liberalism, while appeals to less westernized Indians were rooted in tradition and locality.

As the Gandhian approach gained ground, winning over British audiences became less important. Instead, it was argued that Indians should govern themselves because they and the British were equals, not because Indians were sufficiently mature imperial subjects. Gandhi shocked supporters of congress in Britain by insisting that the British and their institutions were not superior. These supporters were willing to help India but expected to do so in their own way and according to their own worldview. This had an impact on congress, which had continually to grapple with the question of how to balance self-reliance with the desire for British assistance. Congress became seriously divided, in fact, just as British left-wingers were divided. Relations between Indian leaders and different elements on the British left were never easy, and British support was often an indirect result of other commitments—pacifism, communism, socialism, theosophy, antifascism. When the Indian cause could be associated with something else that British left-wingers were concerned about, congress attracted more backing, but in most cases the links remained weak and temporary. By the mid-1930s there were several competing leftist groups in London, all claiming to be the true mouthpiece for congress. As Owen notes, “These formations were brittle: it took only minor crises, often unrelated to India, to disrupt them” (234).

Owen usefully traces the development of Indian opinion and shows how and why the idea of home rule within the empire was discarded in favor of independence. Labour's uncomfortable moves toward the settlement of 1947 are also explored, and fresh insight is provided into debates surrounding the India Act of 1919 and dyarchy, the Simon Commission of 1927–30, the Round Table Conferences of 1930–32, and the India Act of 1935. Owen shows that the Attlee government's need for a quick political solution after the Second World War, and its readiness to give way on key points, did not make for an embarrassing outcome. Indeed, “Labour was able to decolonise without needing fully to abandon its traditionally-held criteria of fitness for self-government” (296). In a sense, therefore, both the British left and the Indian nationalists emerged with some basic principles intact.

Owen tells his story with style, clarity, and expertise. His book is a pleasure to read. It is a convincing account of the differences that separated Indian nationalists and the British left between the 1880s and the 1940s. Indian nationalism was not homogeneous, and neither was the British left uniform or united. The two sides never really understood each other.