Indian revolutionaries/Saint Patrick’s Day Parade

One hundred years ago today … The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, always tinged with politics, included Indian revolutionaries marching in allegiance with the Irish cause.

Connections between the Irish and Indian independence movement had been articulated and fomented by Eamon De Valera, who said in 1920: “[Pa]triots of India your cause is identical with ours.”” According to Darragh Gannon, in 1919, “Irish and Indian revolutionaries [shared] the stage with other New York-based nationalist groups, at the Lexington Avenue Theater, for the opening of the League of Oppressed Peoples.” 

The News referred to the Indian marchers as “Mohatma Ghandi’s followers.”

The parade drew between 25,000 and 50,000 participants. Among the marchers were, as usual, a prominent women delegation.

The parade’s route is reported differently in different sources. It seems to have marched from either 24th or 26th Street to 110th, along Fifth Avenue. Yet somehow, also, the viewing stand was on 18th Street. 

Note, we reported on the politics of the 1920 parade here and the women marchers of the 1921 parade here.

– Jonathan Goldman, Mar. 17, 1922

TAGS: Irish, Indian, Irelan, India, politics, parades, women