[6] Alarmed at the agile organization, which repeatedly reformed in different parts of the country despite being subdued in others, the chief of Indian Intelligence Sir Charles Cleveland was forced to warn that the idea and attempts at pan-Indian revolutions were spreading through India "like some hidden fire".
Attempts were made in 1914 to prevent the naturalisation of Tarak Nath Das as an American citizen, while successful pressure was applied to have Har Dayal interned.
World War I began with an unprecedented outpouring of loyalty and goodwill towards the United Kingdom from within the mainstream political leadership, contrary to initial British fears of an Indian revolt.
[17][18] It is now judged to have been the principal factor guiding British political concessions as well as Whitehall's India policy during and after World War I, including the passage of Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms.
[5] It has also been suggested by a number of historians that the events, especially in Punjab, in 1919 owed to a large extent to the Ghadar movement or what was left of it, the presence of Pratap's Kabul mission in Afghanistan its overtures towards Bolshevik Russia, and the Raj's perception of its potential was a key factor, in spurring political progression in India.
At the same time, a Sedition Committee chaired by Sydney Rowlatt, an English judge, was instituted in 1918 which evaluated the Indo-German-Ghadar link and the militant movement in India.
[21] 1919 was also the time that Indian troops were returning from the battlefields of Europe and Mesopotamia to find India far removed from the ideals they fought for, and in the midst of an economic and political stagnation.
Ominously, in 1919, the Third Anglo-Afghan War began in the wake of Amir Habibullah's assassination and institution of Amānullāh in a system blatantly influenced by the Kabul Mission.
The movement was at its peak before the end of the first week of April, with some recording that "Practically the whole of Lahore was on the streets, the immense crowd that passed through Anarkali was estimated to be around 20,000.
Michael O'Dwyer is said to have been of firm belief that these were the early and ill-concealed signs of a conspiracy of a coordinated uprising around May, on the lines of the 1857 revolt, at a time when the British troops would have withdrawn to the hills for the summer.
[25] James Houssemayne Du Boulay is said to have ascribed a direct relationship between the fear of a Ghadarite uprising in the midst of an increasingly tensed situation in Punjab, and the British response that ended in the massacre.
Following the conclusion of the Lahore Conspiracy Case trial, and as more evidence of German complicity came afore, Foreign Secretary Edward Grey was forced to override Spring-Rice's concerns.
The issue precipitated a more general Anglo-American neutrality dispute, aggravated by belligerent preventive measures taken by the British Far-Eastern fleet on the high seas that threatened the sovereignty of American vessels.
This along with Japanese support for Sun Yat Sen and rebels in Southern China laid the foundations of deterioration of Anglo-Japanese relations as early as 1916.
The concept of a revolutionary movement for independence also found a revival amongst later generation Indian leaders, most notably Subhas Chandra Bose who, towards the mid-1930s began calling for a more radical approach towards colonial domination.
[40][41] Bose himself, from the very beginning of World War II actively evaluated the concept of revolutionary movement against the Raj, interacting with Japan and subsequently escaping to Germany to raise an Indian armed force, the Indische Legion, to fight in India against Britain.