Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

106 I Ramnath
himself strictly as a "Nationalist and a Revolutionary;' he
nevertheless held Har Dayal in the highest regard as "the
greatest intellectual exponent of the anarchist philosophy
in San Francisco;' after giving what Chenchiah considered
the best speech at an annual conference of anarchists, socialists,
syndical ists, communists, and national revolutionaries
held there in 1913.)1
Tr ue to fo rm, Har Dayal was released from his interrogation
in time to make it back to the IWW hall fo r one
of his regularly scheduled Radical Lecture Course talks
that very day, on "The Problem ofUnemployment."(,(I But
though the government had insisted that Har Dayal was
not going to be deported, his lawyer was skeptical, and the
client ducked quietly out of the country on his own accord
shortly afterward, notwithstanding the five hundred dollar
bail paid by the Ghadar office and the eight hundred dollars
that the Indian community had raised for his defense.
After assuring himself that the San Francisco operations
were in capable hands, Har Dayal resurfaced in Switzerland
to take up a brief yet prominent role among the Indian
revolutionaries in Berlin and Istanbul. His local and int('rnational
supporters did not remain quiet; trom London,
Aldred penned, "Stop this Infamy!" in Herald o.fRevolt, in
Har Dayal's defense.
Even on the run, Har Dayal's intellectual energy did
not Rag. Indeed it long outlived his activism. In a letter to
Brooks in April 1914, he expanded on an idea fo r a book he
hoped to write "on 'The Time-Spirit;" in which he would
"trace the different tendencies of XIX century civilization
making fo r progress, finishing with the synthesis that I