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This paper examines the implications of Indian nationalism during the inter-war period for both Japanese rule in Korea and the anti-colonial struggle against it. It discusses how two Bengalis, famous for their Anglophobia-the poet Rabindranath Tagore and the revolutionary Rash Behari Bose-saw Japanese colonialism in Korea and how their contrasting views differentially influenced thoughts about colonialism in the Japanese empire, among both Japanese and Koreans. The paper shows how the views and influence of these two Indians can usefully be examined in terms of what Ann Laura Stoler has called the "politics of comparison."
Anti-colonialism and the Politics of Comparison
In the period between the First and Second World Wars, the hitherto friendly relationship between Britain and Japan-two colonial empires allied with each other since 1902-gradually deteriorated, not least because their imperial interests in Asia clashed. As the two empires increasingly regarded one another as potential enemies, the struggle of Indian nationalists to overthrow British rule became a question that no longer concerned the British Empire alone. On one side, British imperial intelligence feared that the anti-colonialism of Indian revolutionaries would find resonance with the sort of "anti-British" views that had been expressed by certain Japanese pan-Asianist ideologues.1 On the other side, the Japanese Empire had a growing interest in what was happening in the largest colony of the British Empire, particularly in affairs concerning the independence movement, which had accelerated during this period with the arrival of Gandhian nationalism. In such a context of inter-imperial tensions, some Indian opponents of British rule forged ties with influential people in the Japanese Empire. Indian anti-colonial ideas and activities flowed across borders, and in so doing, inevitably triggered comparisons between Britain and Japan, both in Japan and in its colonial territories overseas. Japan, just like Britain, practiced a colonialism of its own, and had to cope just as urgently with the threat of anti-colonialism.
The British and Japanese empires both faced legitimacy crises in the post-Versailles age of Wilsonian nationalism, and in the year 1919 both British India and Korea under Japanese rule experienced the savage suppression of anti-colonial demonstrations.2 From this time onwards, anti-colonial activities in India and in Korea, as well as colonial counter-insurgent efforts to suppress them (such as colonial censorship)...