On May 28, 1964, Dr. Rammanohar Lohia, a prominent socialist member of the Indian parliament, was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi. His “crime” was attempting to enter a “whites only” restaurant. After the U.S. State Department sent an apology to the Indian Ambassador, Lohia informed reporters that both the State Department and the Indian Embassy “may go to hell.” American leaders should apologize “to the Statue of Liberty and to three billion citizens of the world.” Lohia's math is revealing. Those “three billion citizens,” far more than the population of India, represented all “dark” or “colored” people—terms of racial solidarity pioneered by the African American intellectual and antiracist activist, W.E.B. Du Bois. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Du Bois had articulated a transnational and transracial conception of “colored solidarity.” Lohia embraced such an expansive antiracist politics. When he explained that he courted arrest in Mississippi in order to show his support for the “revolution against color inequality,” Lohia meant not just the American civil rights movement, but related struggles against racism and imperialism throughout the world.

Lohia's transnational understanding of American racism mirrored the global lens with which he viewed Indian politics. Born in Fazibad District in the United Provinces in 1910, Lohia studied in Bombay, Benares, and Calcutta before traveling to Europe to advance his education. After completing his Ph.D. in Berlin, he returned to India in 1933, eager to contribute to the anticolonial struggle. He was soon arrested.