
(Photo from the collection of the British Imperial War Museum, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Giving as an Act of Voluntariness? Humanitarian Aid in Late Colonial India
In 1917, during the First World War, a small group of women met regularly in Birbhum, Bengal, to work for the Red Cross. Following the initiative of Saroj Nalini Dutt (1887–1925), a Bengali social reformer and early activist for rural development, the members of the Birbhum Mahilā Samiti (a women’s group from Birbhum) sewed clothes and made toothbrushes for Indian soldiers fighting in the First World War. Dutt, who was honored for her efforts by the British Red Cross Society after the war, also sent sweets, spices and newspapers on a monthly basis to soldiers serving in Mesopotamia. The women’s group, which usually focused its work on issues of social progress and the education of Bengali women, mounted just one of many initiatives of Indian humanitarian aid during the world wars. The example raises the question of motives for voluntary humanitarian engagement. It also asks how relationships between humanitarian actors and the state, in this case the colonial state, encouraged voluntary action in some instances while complicating or even preventing it in others.
Hereafter, I will use the example of colonial India in the first half of the 20th century to show why voluntary support was provided and in which contexts aid was restricted, prohibited, or enforced. While the humanitarian and academic discourse points to morality and compassion as the driving forces, more recent work has shown that the provision of humanitarian aid worldwide was and is also closely linked to political, economic and/or social motives.
Motives for Humanitarian Aid: Loyalty, Emancipation, Compassion, and Nationalism
This observation of varied motives beyond morality and compassion can also be made about Indian humanitarian aid in the late colonial period. The Crown Colony of British India fought on the side of Great Britain in the First and Second World War. India’s contributions to the wars in terms of men, materials and money were of vital importance to Great Britain and increasingly led to Indian demands for political concessions. While Indian soldiers fought in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia, and Indian money helped finance the Allied victories, extensive humanitarian campaigns were initiated in India to help military and civilian victims of the two World Wars. Indians repeatedly donated substantial amounts of money, essential goods (medical supplies, transport vehicles, etc.), time and labor, e.g. through transport, nursing, information and visiting services. During the First World War, the recipients of aid were mainly wounded and sick soldiers – both Indian and British. However, civilians in need and prisoners of war (POWs) were also cared for by Indian humanitarian organizations. Indian relief work for the POWs and affected civilians increased rapidly with the Asia-Pacific War and the Bengal Famine during the Second World War.
Moral considerations and compassion played a role in Indian relief efforts, along with other motives. Ambulance units of Indian volunteers during the First World War, for example, were motivated by a combination of imperial loyalty and nationalist aspirations. Service across national borders was a way for members of the volunteer ambulance units to actively participate in the war and gain new experiences. Participation was of particular interest to groups that were excluded from active recruitment at the time. The experiences they sought were considered extremely important for the demands of possible mobilization of a future independent nation, such as the capabilities of discipline or defense.
The humanitarian activities of Indian women during the First World War were also motivated by patriotism, loyalty, civic duty, morality, and compassion. However, their voluntary work in the war was also linked to issues of emancipation and the negotiation and renegotiation of existing gender norms. While the prospect of being able to play a greater political and social role in the future impelled Indian women to become involved in the wars, their specific humanitarian activities were often linked to traditional notions of female responsibility for caring and nurturing.
The Voluntariness of Giving in the Colonial State?
The extensive humanitarian donations of money, goods and labor by the Indian people came with expectations of more political participation, at first implicitly, but then more and more explicitly, to which Great Britain hardly acceded. Accordingly, even during the Second World War Indians participated in humanitarian initiatives that were closely linked to the colonial state, such as the work of the Indian Red Cross and the Indian St John Ambulance Association. At the same time, though, many nationalist aid organizations and campaigns, such as the Congress Medical Mission Burma or the All Bengal Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti, were also gaining popularity and financial support. This shifting focus of humanitarian aid may have been the reason why British colonial administrators and British company owners increasingly turned to coercion in the course of fundraising. As early as the First World War, Indian newspaper articles had questioned whether all donations were made voluntarily. Those questions were less about the motives of the Indian people for donating or their expectations of reciprocity than about forced participation. At the beginning of the war, various press reports initially expressed fear that the owners of factories could force their workers to make donations. Later in the war, some Indian newspapers criticized British as well as Indian colonial officials for using their power to collect mandatory donations from everyone. This recurring deviation from the narrative of ‘voluntary giving’ is documented in at least several sources. The official pressure to collect donations for various humanitarian war funds, for example, increased significantly during the Second World War and in some instances led to local resistance from the Indian population. The colonial government’s approach not only undermined imperial loyalty among Indians, but also jeopardized India’s position in the joint allied war effort.
It was by no means only in the colonial context that offers of aid from non-state actors often required negotiations with state authorities. Particularly in military conflicts, aid could not be organized without the consent of the state and usually not without cooperation of state actors. This also applied to various Indian humanitarian initiatives, such as the Indian Field Ambulance Training Corps during the First World War or the Congress Medical Mission to Malaysia in 1946. But in the colonial context, state intervention was more extensive and far-reaching than in the metropolis or in other parts of the British Empire and could lead to complete bans on support, primarily for political reasons.
The Exclusion of Voluntary Aid as an Instrument of the Colonial State
This was evident in 1927, for example, when the outbreak of the Chinese civil war between the Nationalists (Kuomintang) and the Communists challenged the British presence in Shanghai. Britain responded by sending the Shanghai Defense Force, which included Indian soldiers. The Indian National Congress (INC), the organization that led the Indian struggle for independence, demanded the withdrawal of Indian troops from China because it perceived the British actions as imperialist. The INC also decided to send an Indian ambulance unit to China. To allay British concerns that the aid would primarily serve political purposes to undermine British interests in China, the INC repeatedly emphasized that the missions were exclusively humanitarian in nature. They also stressed that the unit would work strictly in accordance with the principles established by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Those pleas were of no avail. Although preparations for the unit were already in full swing, the colonial government in Delhi, in consultation with London, refused to issue the necessary passports. The state intervention thus prevented voluntary humanitarian aid organized by Indian nationalists. Later nationalist humanitarian initiatives, such as the dispatches of medical teams to China in 1938, to the Indo-Burmese border in 1942 and to Malaya in 1946, were not blocked by the colonial government, but it reserved the right to bar individual volunteers it disapproved of for political reasons.
In current discourse, humanitarian aid is often associated with voluntariness. The assumption is that the donation of money, material resources, time and labor during humanitarian crises was and is voluntary. On that basis, the ICRC made voluntary service one of its seven humanitarian principles in 1965. In 1986, the seven principles – which in addition to voluntary service also include humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, unity and universality – were declared to be binding statutes for all members of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Voluntary service, as understood by the ICRC, means the motivation and provision of aid without self-interest or the pursuit of profit.
This article isn’t intended to address the extent to which humanitarian actors have been able to uphold the ICRC principles. Rather, it examines how voluntary humanitarian action took place under the conditions of British colonial rule in India decades earlier. It shows that humanitarian aid was based on complex motives that went beyond altruistic voluntariness. Humanitarian engagement was also decisively characterized by the interventionist power of the colonial state. In certain cases, it was anything but voluntary: The colonial state demanded non-governmental aid and enforced its provision. Where humanitarian action by Indians was voluntary, the British colonial power permitted, restricted or prohibited it in accordance with the needs of the state.
Suggested Citation: Framke, Maria: “Giving as an Act of Voluntariness? Humanitarian Aid in Late Colonial India”, Voluntariness: History | Society | Theory, December 2024, https://www.voluntariness.org/giving-as-an-act-of-voluntariness/