ABSTRACT
Offering an insight into the ideological and organisational praxis of the Indian Workers Association (IWA), this chapter aims is to draw out and highlight the ways in which continuities are drawn between that organisation and the Ghadar party. This movement began in California in 1914 and lasted as an organisation until 1917, when it was banned in India, not least in providing inspiration to the formation of the IWA in Britain in 1938. The chapter also highlights the way in which poetry was a mode of expression that links North America to Britain and the Ghadar party to the IWA. It offers an appreciation of the poetry of the Ghadarites and the IWA, as this often avoids the more intricate and derivative aspects of their debates which occupy much of the official documentation and prose produced by both movements. The chapter uses poetry and biography as vehicles to journey through diasporic experience and political organising.
