Rare Protest Broadside in Support of Jailed Indian Congress Members, 1944

127 Prominent Americans Appeal to Lord Halifax or Release of Nehru and Other India Leaders. Published by the India League of America, NYC, (1944). Broadsheet/poster, 22” x 8.5”. The top of the document is a bit tattered and torn and missing in some sections, though not affecting the text. Provenance: Library of Congress Pamphlet Collections. Good copy. Scarce. Only one copy located in WorldCat. $450

I'm pretty sure that the broadside came folded in quarters in the August 1944 issue of India Today (4pp). Currently the broadside is folded in half but there are very dim remnants of the two other quarter folds.

“On August 9^th, the second anniversary of the arrest of India's popular leaders, 127 prominent Americans from all over the country addressed an appeal for the release of these leaders to Lord Halifax, the British Ambassador in Washington.”

 

The anniversary referenced here is the 9 August 1942 arrest of Gandhi by British officials in their hope to suppress a civil disobedience program aimed at the Raj and UK leadership to gain the independence of India. This followed the August 7-8^th All India Congress voting to pass the Quit India Resolution. Gandhi's arrest was followed by those of nearly the entire leadership of the Indian National Congress..and another 60,000 or so other people over the following few months.

The petition is signed by many luminaries, including Albert Einstein, Louis Adamic, Louis Bromfield, Van Wyck Brooks, Pearl Buck, Max Lerner (editor of the great PM), , Horace Mann, Reinhold Niebuhr, Claire Booth Luce, William Shirer, Upton Sinclair, IF Stone, and many others.