Why a Gandhian social worker was deported by the French from Indochina

On the afternoon of May 10, 1937, Pandurangi Kodanda Rao, an Indian social activist and follower of Mahatma Gandhi, was crossing a river at Kampong Luong in present-day Cambodia when he was stopped by a French policeman.

“I was accosted at the landing stage by a Police Inspector, who informed me that the Police had orders to forbid my proceeding to Saigon and that I was to go direct to the Police Office in Phnom Penh,” 48-year-old Rao wrote in a memorandum that was sent to a few British diplomats in South East Asia. “I was then transferred to the Police car and taken to the Police office in Phnom Penh, which was reached at about 4:15 pm.”

The inspector who detained Rao spoke good English and acted as an interpreter when he was questioned by senior French officials in Phnom Penh. It turned out the authorities wanted to know more about the organisation Rao worked for: the Servants Society of India.

For Rao, the experience must have been surely unusual. Until his run-in with the French, he had travelled unhindered to several countries, including the United States and Australia, while on a mission to interact with the Indian diaspora and understand its problems.

Even the British authorities...

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