Examine the Indian National Congress's response to the use of Indian troops in imperial ventures abroad, with reference to China (1927).

In 1926, Britain's Minister-designate to China, Miles Lampson, promised "strict impartiality towards the contending factors" in China [4]. Weeks later, Britain sent Indian soldiers to guard its interests there. The Congress saw that India's army was being used to defend empire, not India, and its response turned anti-imperialism into a foreign-policy position.

Context: Why the issue arose

• The Nationalist (Kuomintang) advance threatened British concessions and Shanghai, so Britain assembled a defence force that included Indian contingents.
• India had no say in this. In January 1927, the Viceroy disallowed an adjournment motion in the Central Legislative Assembly on India's contribution of troops to operations in China [1].

Nature of the Congress response

• Legislative protest: Nationalist members used the Assembly to challenge the deployment. Its suppression [1] showed that Indians had no control over the army.
• International solidarity: At the Brussels Congress of Oppressed Nationalities (February 1927), Nehru represented the INC. He noted that China had the strongest delegation there [2], and Indian and Chinese nationalists were brought onto a common anti-imperialist platform.
• Formal resolution: The Madras session (December 1927, presided over by M.A. Ansari) objected to the use of Indian troops in China, Mesopotamia and Persia. It also expressed sympathy with the Chinese people's struggle [3].
• Linked to the larger goal: The same session adopted complete independence as its goal [3]. Control over the army was now seen as part of swaraj.

Significance

• It treated the colonial army as a tool for Britain's overseas expansion, a theme the Congress repeated later.
• It laid the base of an independent nationalist foreign policy built on Asian solidarity and anti-colonialism.
• It shaped Nehru's internationalism, which later fed into non-alignment.

Limitations

• The resolutions were declarations. The Congress had no power to stop deployments, which stayed under the Viceroy's control [1].
• The protest relied mostly on moral pressure and did not draw a mass following on this issue.

In sum, the Congress used the Assembly, international forums and its own sessions to make the China deployment of 1927 a question of Indian sovereignty. Its practical effect was limited, but it set out a lasting principle: Indian power should not serve imperial domination. That idea fed into free India's foreign policy and, today, into civilian control of the armed forces.