Abstract
This paper examines India’s experiences as a member of the League of Nations. Though a non self-governing part of the British Empire, India’s war effort earned a seat at the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919. This automatically qualified it as a founding member of the League, although the League Covenant dictated that no other non self-governing nation could apply for independent membership. Destined to be the only such anomaly, India found itself to be an international as well as an oriental curiosity on the global stage. This paper examines how this diplomatic status was received in India, where the League quickly fell out of favour. It then explores the specifically Indian negotiation of the broader question: where was the international? While “India” was externally a member of the League, internally the subcontinent was divided between British India and the Princely States. The latter had “quasi-sovereignty” under the paramount supremacy of the British, but the League posed taxing questions about the Government of India’s decision to exclude international law from the spaces between British and Princely India. After exploring the various attempts to resolve India’s anomalous Princely geographies in legal theory, the example of trafficking in women and children will be used to show how these anomalies were reconciled in practice. To conclude, the 1930 Indian Statutory Commission’s survey of the 1920s working of the “Dyarchy” governmental experiment will be used to see how London and New Delhi themselves reflected back on India’s anomalous international experiment with the League of Nations.