Indian Political Intelligence (IPI) and the Recolonization of the Indian Diaspora: From Ethnographic Surveillance to Racial Deportation, 1938–1953

Abstract This article examines the activities of Indian Political Intelligence (IPI) in Britain between 1909 and 1947, arguing that the agency exemplified the ‘imperial boomerang’ as, through it, the authoritarian and racialized practices of colonial governance returned to shape the British state. Although headquartered in Britain, IPI was financed by the Government of India and operated as a key component of the Raj’s security apparatus, working closely with Special Branch, MI5, and other state bodies. This article shows how the agency deployed colonial ethnographic categories and intelligence practices to monitor and disrupt Indian anticolonial activism, particularly among the organized working-class diaspora in the Midlands. IPI’s campaign against the Indian Workers Association during the Second World War culminated in the creation of Defence Regulation 47AAD, which enabled the arrest, detention, and deportation of Indian seamen and workers on racialized grounds. By tracing the origins and implementation of this regulation and the associated deportation programme, the article reveals how colonial modalities of surveillance, policing, and racial governance were repatriated to the metropole. In doing so, it demonstrates how colonial security practices undermined the universality of British liberalism and contributed to the construction of racialized forms of state power within Britain itself.