“Where National Revolutionary Ends and Communist Begins”: The League against Imperialism and the Meerut Conspiracy Case

The colonial state specifically targeted the League against Imperialism (LAI) as an institution on trial in Meerut; however, authorities did not arrest and charge Jawaharlal Nehru, the official representative of the LAI in India. Louro’s article argues that this oversight on the part of the colonial state was not coincidence, but rather a maneuver designed to construct the LAI, an international anti-imperialist institution based in Berlin, as anathema to the anticolonial nationalist movement led by Nehru and other leaders of the Indian National Congress (INC). Rather than create an opportunity for anticolonial nationalists and anti-imperialists abroad to challenge this colonial maneuver, the Meerut trial deepened the fragmentation of solidarities Nehru forged among the LAI, international anti-imperialists, and the anticolonial nationalists of the INC.