Jan Smuts and the Indian Question

As the only surviving statesman of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Jan Smuts arrived for the first session of the United Nations in New York in 1946 to celebratory chants. His departure, a month and a half later, was terrifyingly dissimilar. The ‘counsellor of nations’ left a dejected man, with his honour, power and glory severely dented. The tragedy that befell Smuts’ international swansong was an Indian delegation, which, as Smuts bemoaned, used his own words against himself and showed him to be a hypocrite. This was eerily similar to a diplomatic onslaught Smuts had faced between 1917 and 1923 at the hands of another set of little-known Indian diplomats. Through these episodic histories, this book chronicles the ambivalent cosmopolitanism of Jan Smuts.