1

The Idea of Freedom in Bengali Nationalist Discourse

Swarupa Gupta
Ph.D. (SOAS, London)
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Presidency University, Calcutta

Abstract
While the concept of freedom in India has mainly been seen through the lens of the freedom struggle /
movement, this paper conjoins the idea (concept) and practice (movement) of freedom as reflected in the
Bengali nationalist discourse during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It argues that freedom
was a multidimensional concept, and contained many connotative strands. Indigenous lineages were linked
to the political idea of freedom, expressed as swaraj. But this political term was not seen in terms of
politics alone. Rather, it was an evocation and extension of the older idea of freedom in India (as a category
of the spiritual, emphasising identity with the universal). This strand symbolised the indigeneity of freedom
by highlighting aspects of personal and social freedom. To understand the nature of freedom as woven into
the texture of the freedom movement in India – pioneered by the Indian National Congress, I explore how
indigenous origins were refracted through a critical internalisation and rearticulation of western concepts
of freedom in India’s own terms. This developed through a discourse on freedom on the site of samaj or
social collectivity. It evolved within a grid, in which two principles – dharma and cultural Aryan-ness set
apart Indian society from the west, and also underpinned the imagination of the nation. This emblematised
the ‘independence’ of the subjugated through contestation of certain basic tenets of colonial power-
knowledge. This shows that there was an interpenetration of different related freedoms, in the site of a
harmonious social order (samaj), and this crucially influenced ways of rethinking Indian-ness and
nationhood.

Introduction

This essay explores multiple dimensions of the idea of freedom, which were reflected in
various forms in the Congress movement and the struggle for independence. As
movements do not operate in a void, it is necessary to delve the ideational dynamics of
actual identity-movements in practice. I argue that specific dimensions/features of the
idea of freedom in colonial Bengal formed a genealogy and a backdrop to Congress
politics and programme. The Congress movement had various incarnations / forms in
different parts of India, but in this paper, I would be seeing how the concept of freedom
(its various types or levels) intersected with multilayered, including political ideas of
swaraj, especially in Bengal, which fed into the struggle for independence.
I begin with a comparison between ‘freedom’ and ‘independence.’ The two terms
are connotatively interlinked though having shades of difference. Freedom, implying the
condition of not being subject to, or affected by something resonates to the connotation of
independence, meaning freedom from outside control or influence. In this paper, I would
be using the terms interchangeably to some degree. Independence from colonial rule
 2

contained within it, the idea/ideas of freedom – of both individuals and groups, which
was linked to the wider nationalist movement. Thus, the ideational aspect of the term
travelled to the realm of actuality, experience and movement via the Congress movement.
Before seeing how multiple forms of freedom in the Bengali nationalist discourse
intersected, and were mirrored in Congress ideology and practice, I highlight the
difference as well as connection between freedom and independence. Further, I show
how different freedoms intersected with the notion of political freedom or swaraj, which
was central to the nationalist agenda. This was succintly expressed by Bankinchandra
Chattopadhyay.
Ideas about freedom (and its descriptive labels/terms) imbricated in cultural
nationhood woven around samaj / social collectivity, impacted and intersected with more
politically-charged concepts such as swaraj1 and swadhinata. While swadhinata meant
political freedom from alien rule/political independence, it was different from the idea of
liberty in the literati’s mental universe. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay in Bharatbarsher
Swadhinata O Paradhinata distinguished between independence and liberty, and argued
that a country could be politically free and yet lack liberty, while a country could be
subject to alien authority but could still enjoy a high degree of freedom. His concept of
liberty was not predicated upon political independence, and resonates with the idea of
samajik independence. I make the point that while such distinctions between samajik
liberty and political freedom remained, there could also be connections between semantic
spheres and processes. A relational grid facilitated connection between different
freedoms, and between two levels of the nationalist discourse: (1) cultural nationhood,
not engaging with overt opposition of the raj; and (2) associational politics of the
Congress brand, opposing the alien regime through moderate/constitutional agitation. The
idea of intersecting freedoms was anticipated since the early nineteenth century
(Rammohun Roy’s agitation for freedom of the press, and his opposition to religious and
racial discrimination – equality before law). Agitation at individual level developed into
political associations of the pre Congress period – from the Landholder’s Society to the
Indian Association (1876), and its roots can be traced to an earlier period. Political

1
Swaraj literally means one’s own kingdom, state, self-government, autonomy and home rule. In this paper
I delve into its metaphorical import which went beyond, but complemented its territorial, political and
governmental implications.
 3

freedom developed in distinct stages, through reorientations of indigenous origins via a

critical interaction with western intellectual currents. It was predated and complemented
by other interrelated types of freedom, such as freedom of the mind and social freedom. I
set the evolving connotations of these different freedoms within older, historical, cultural,
religious and social settings.

Freedom: East and West

Freedom is a supremely valorised ideal in the West,2 seen as rooted in the very existence
of men, as well as in the ontology of being, and emblematised by such iconic events as
the French Revolution. Given the intellectual tendency to see Asian awakenings to
modernity and colonial nationalisms through western paradigms, a key question leaps to
the mind. Are we to talk of freedom in the east/Asia in terms of, and with reference to a
universal definitional category produced in the west? Recent years have witnessed a turn
toward evaluations and reconsiderations of the idea/ideas of freedom in Asia. Despite a
novel analytic orientation, dispensing with methodological hegemonies of both
Orientalism and Occidentalism, and addressing the issue of Asian freedoms through a
social-constructionist3 approach, the quest is incomplete and limited. To many minds (in
the west) freedom is still an anathema in Asia. Some writers rue the stillbirth of freedom
in Asia, seen as “a kind of Antarctica of freedom, a cultural zone where social order is the
controlling value and where… members of family-centred communities reject Western
political institutions as harbingers of alienation and chaos.”4 Turning from such
conceptions, scholars have attempted a conciliation and conjunction between languages
of freedom in Europe and Asia. The mapping of this ‘Eurasian mosaic’ reflects two main

2
Freedom has been regarded as a widely held vision of life in the medieval, and above all in the modern
West. See Orlando Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, Vol. I (New York: Basic Books,
1991). Chandran Kukuthas has expressed: ‘The value of freedom is so positive that political ideologies as
diverse as liberalism and Marxism all vie to claim an exclusive title to its use.’ See David Kelly and
Anthony Reid (eds.), Asian Freedom: The Idea of Freedom in East and Southeast Asia (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 2.
3
Orlando Patterson admitted that the idea underlying the Bangkok Declaration (1993), underscoring
national and regional particularities and various historical and cultural factors in understandings of
freedoms in the non-West was fundamentally correct.
4
Kelly and Reid (eds.), Asian Freedoms, p. 4.
 4

convictions: (1) Asia accepted western ideas of freedom but transformed them through
local practices and concepts; and (2) the appropriation of western ideas of freedom is a
contentious terrain, as the Asian peoples’ appeal to freedom cannot be considered as a
western hegemonic imposition.5
Despite this turn, Asian freedoms are still far from being seen as sui generis. The
present essay formulates a different focus and framework to explore Asian (particularly
Indian/Bengali) ideas of freedom. Rather than asking – How were western ideas about
freedom adapted into an Asian grid/grids?, I ask and try to answer the question: How did
indigenous (Indian/Bengali) origins and traditions of freedom differ from western
concepts, and how were they reoriented through a critical internalisation of western
currents, and articulated in India’s own terms? Asian (particularly South Asian/Bengali)
ideas about freedom cannot be simplistically or solely understood through western
semantics, concepts and methodologies. I apply a historicist perspective to glimpse and
glean aspects of multiple freedoms in Bengal, and their intertwined nature with a view to
tracing their impact on nationalist discourses during the colonial period. Through such
interconnection, I aim to demonstrate that the ontology of nationhood in Bengal cannot
be analysed within a western-derived mould.6 The ideas of freedom and cultural
nationhood were complementary and interpenetrative domains, creatively redefining
both ‘freedom’ and ‘nationhood’, and illuminating their indigenous origins. By
highlighting such origins, I do not claim that indigenous ideas about freedom did not
intersect at any level or point with western uses and applications of the term. Rather, I
open a heuristic field for seeing how some ideas were markedly indigenous, while others
were adapted from a western intellectual universe through “a bazaar of older expressions
rooted in local institutions, practices and concepts”, which have “often been reworked to

5
An analysis and comparison of western and Asian notions of freedom in the formulation of the idea of
freedom in Bengal were discussed in my paper ‘Facets of Freedom in Bengali Nationalist Discourse:
Indigenous Origins, Reorientations and Interrelations’, presented in a National Conference organised by
Panjab University, Chandigarh and ICSSR, on 22 February, 2008.
6
I suggest a shift from ideas about colonial nationalisms which operate within ‘borrowed’ or ‘derivative’
moulds, and stress the tremendous difficulty of transcending western paradigms. See Benedict Anderson,
Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London,: Verso, 1983) for
arguments relating to the ‘modular’ nature of colonial nationalisms, and Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist
Thought and the Colonial World. A Derivative Discourse? (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986) for an
elucidation of the model of ‘derivative discourse’.
 5

serve the new ideologies of nation-building, liberation, revolution, and development.”7 I

argue that though in the indigenous lexicon, the term ‘freedom’ like ‘nation’ did not have
an exact connotative counterpart (to the western term) or a definitional fixity, history and
discourses shaping identity do throw up certain equivalents and terms which resonate
with, as well as deviate from western ideas. The deviations involved a shift from certain
specific hallmarks and conceptual foundations (criteria) associated with the western
meaning of freedom. Just as Rabindranath Tagore asserted in the late nineteenth century
that history cannot have the same meaning in all countries,8 freedom too has different
connotative inflections, nuances and bases.
The analytic departure implies a shift from seeing South Asian/Indian/Bengali
ideas of freedom as primarily connected to clusters of legal, ethical and political
practices, as in the west. By making this point, I critique and qualify existing literature
which has tended to emphasise the birth and development of ideas about freedom in
Bengal in terms of its political connotations in a modernist western-derived frame: civil
liberty and rule of law, liberty against governmental interference and an urge for
democratic government. Instead, I prioritise the trajectory of multiple freedoms reflected
in a discourse on cultural nationhood, which was not overtly connected to political-
democratic-legal ideas about freedom. I argue that this was more significant than the
politico-legal concepts borrowed and adapted from the west because herein lay the
uniqueness and difference shaping an essentially Indian consciousness. By thus
redefining the relation between freedom and nationalism, I counter B.B. Majumdar’s idea
of nationalism in Bengal aimed at securing democracy and popular control over
government, founded on a rather simplistic equation between liberalism and nationalism.9
Obviously, when we talk about freedom in the context of colonial subjugation and
nationalist thought, what springs to the mind immediately is ‘freedom struggle’ against
the colonial raj. But, as said, freedom in Bengal meant more than ‘freedom struggle’ in a
primarily political sense against the raj. It remained enmeshed with a multistranded
psychic, cultural and historic weave. This reflected an interpenetration of social,

7
Kelly and Reid (eds.), Asian Freedoms, p. 13.
8
Rabindranath Tagore, Itihas (reprinted Calcutta, 1955).
9
See Bimanbehari Majumdar, History of Political Thought from Rammohun to Dayananda (Calcutta:
Firma KLM Private Limited, 1996).
 6

religious, spiritual and cultural connotations of freedom. My prioritisation of such

freedoms entwined in cultural nationhood10 does not mean an elision of political
processes and ideas, but an interconnection of multiple freedoms and their intersection
with the idea of political freedom. I interrogate the conceptual category of samaj to
demonstrate how it acted as a prime site facilitating the interrelated-ness of multiple
freedoms. By formulating this focus, I argue that freedom in the sense of political
struggle needs to be linked to other connotative genealogies, sets of ideas, principles and
ideological precursors that underlay that struggle.

Beyond Political Subjugation: The Independence of Samaj11

By the very nature of historical circumstances, freedom could not be an essentially

political concept in Bengal. For how can we talk about political freedom in a land fettered
since the fateful combat at Plassey (1757) or even earlier, when supposedly seventeen
cavalrymen eclipsed the glory of Sena rule in the twelfth century? The colonial
predicament of political subjugation awakened the Bengali mind to an awareness and
prioritisation of a different kind of freedom, which was a composite and multistranded
idea – of which political freedom was but one strand. This formulation of freedom
developed from a deep and burning need to forge an empowered identity within the
constraints of colonial rule. To an intelligentsia torn by conflicting feelings of loyalty to
the raj (because of their material interests in the colonial order)12 on the one hand, and a
deep need for self-expression and empowerment on the other, the conceptualisation of
freedom operated in a mould which avoided (until the 1870s) any overt opposition of the
raj. If Bengal was shackled politically, where and how could freedom be located and
articulated? There had to be a kind of freedom or independence which political subjection

10
The search for an empowered identity particularly from the middle of the nineteenth century prioritised a
connection between culture and nationhood, concretely expressed in the Hindu Mela’s agenda since 1867.
While this did not involve an elision of political conceptualisations of identity, the trajectory of culture was
a more significant one during 1867-1905 (Swadeshi upsurge).
11
For details about how the conceptual category of samaj implied an inclusive connotative framework and
a means for welding fragments into a complex whole in order to approximate the notion of a nation in late
colonial Bengal, see Swarupa Gupta, ‘Notions of Nationhood in Bengal: Perspectives on Samaj, 1867-
1905’, Modern Asian Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Vol. 40, No. 2 (May, 2006), pp.
273-302. Also see Swarupa Gupta, Notions of Nationhood in Bengal: Perspectives on Samaj, c. 1867-1905
(Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2009).
12
Judith Brown:1994, quoted in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition (Delhi: Orient
Longman, 2004), p. 176.
 7

could not eclipse, and which was rooted in an indigenous history. Colonial allegations of
Bengalis being a history-less,13 and therefore identity-less people were a spur to quests
for an empowered identity. In this quest, the Bengali literati addressed the question of
freedom entwined in a nexus between identity and history through a different focus. The
engrossing question was: what kind of history could forge an empowered identity which
could conceptualise freedom beyond, and in contention with the reality of political
subjection? Political history, ruptured due to the absence of reliable sources, could not
bring a collective self (rooted in history) into existence. It could not be a counterpoint to
the political unfreedom of a people languishing under the shadow of alien rule. There had
to be a different strategy. Through a quest for a ‘new’ history14 which could provide a
continuity and unity with the past, as well as forge a collective self (jati), freedom came
to be woven around the conception of the social collectivity or the samaj. Battles fought
between kings (and by extension, between the Bengal and the British) were not people’s
wars, and so the people, who formed the commonalty, had never been defeated.15 As
Rabindranath Tagore pointed out, the independence of samaj was greater than all other
forms of independence.16 Kaliprasanna Das succinctly observed:

The expression of Hindu collective life is not the state, but the samaj. The key to its unity
is not law, but dharma [religion, righteous life, duties to the family, society, caste and
community, and moral law]; and the customs, manners and practices approved by the
chiefs of the samaj are an integral part of that dharma.17

Through a prioritisation of a history of culture and attachment, a multidimensional

concept of freedom developed in the conceptual site of an ‘independent’ samaj,
unfettered by, and indifferent to political bondage. The following sections would analyse

13
W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal (seventh edition, London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1897), p. 87.
14
A search for an indigenous history woven around the social collectivity (samaj) developed in Bengal
even at a time when professionalised accuracy and source-critical, positivist Rankean conceptions of
history formed a reference point and standard. For details, see Swarupa Gupta, ‘Samaj, Jati and Desh:
Reflections on Nationhood in Bengal’, in Studies in History, Vol. 23 (2) (Sage Publications: London, New
York, Los Angeles and Singapore), pp. 177-203.
15
Akshoykumar Moitreya, Gourer Katha (reprinted Calcutta, 1984), p. 31.
16
Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Swadeshi Samaj’, Bangadarshan (Ashvin, 1904), printed in Satyendranath Ray
(ed.), Rabindranather Chintajagat: Samajchinta (Calcutta: 1985), p. 19.
17
Kaliprasanna Das, Barnasram Dharma O Hindu Jiban (Calcutta, 1935), p. 127.
 8

the specific features, elements and related-ness of the different freedoms – personal,
spiritual, social and political as they came to be conceptualised and woven around samaj
and its ideological principles: (1) dharma; and (2) cultural Aryan-ness (acceptance of the
epics and puranas, connections with Sanskrit and belief in a supreme Godhead), opening
up a space for including groups within and beyond Bengal who were culturally
Aryanised. From these principles emanated the trajectories underlying the connection
between multiple freedoms and nationhood. The idea of the individual as integral to the
samaj, and part of the reinvigorated Indian nation meant that he was much more than a
component of the sectarian entity of a mere community. This spirit of man-making was
central to the conception of freedom of the mind and personal freedom, as well as in
ideas about social freedom aiming to build up a new social order based on inclusion of
‘others’, and valorisation of certain ‘approved’ codes of social conduct and moral
behaviour. Further, as samaj and polity/political processes were interconnected arenas,
the personal (freedom of the mind) and social facets could not be isolated from ideas
about swaraj/political freedom. As a conceptual background to my thematic explorations
of multiple interrelated freedoms in Bengal, I focus on indigenous etymologies and
semantic significations, terms and labels relating to freedom.

Etymologies and Semantics

In Bengal, various indigenous labels were used to conceptualise different kinds of

freedom. They included ‘atmashakti’, ‘moksha’, ‘mukti’, ‘swaraj’ and ‘swadhinata’.
These terms, I argue, cannot be simplistically regarded as homologous to western
terminologies and definitions. Abstract variants such as physical, mental, positive,
negative, aesthetic, ethical and so on, gathered under the rubric of ‘freedom’ as an
umbrella term in the west, lodge an existential concept within an ontological framework
undergirded by legal, political and institutional frames. A list of freedoms and its various
metonymic and metaphorical registers such as democracy, rights, sovereignty and law (in
the west) operate within a particular ideological matrix and are contingent on particular
historical, socio-cultural and material settings. The matrix was different in India (Bengal).
As a result, as David Kelly writes, non-European languages lacked unambiguous
 9

equivalents for either freedom or rights.18 In 1993, representatives of Asian states in the
Bangkok Declaration recognised that while human rights are universal in nature, they are
moulded by particularities of histories, cultures and religions (of Asia).19
Each of the descriptive indigenous labels mentioned above operated within the
ideological ethos of samaj, seen as different from European society. The semantics of
freedom in Bengal, emanating from the distinctive nature of indigenous society, were
also different. In a colonial climate of subjugation, the distinction between Indian and
European society was a means of articulating an empowered and distinctive identity,
expressed through a rhetoric of related freedoms. The idea of atamashakti (one Bengali
variant of the idea of freedom) implied self help, self-reliance and an inner strengthening
of the self. This was sought to be awakened from within, even as an alien regime denied
sovereignty and self-determination to the subjugated. Its genealogy could be traced to the
idea of self help articulated in the early nineteenth century by the poet Iswar Gupta. 20 It
was expressed in the programmatic impulse of jatiya (collective) regeneration through
organisations such as the Jatiya Gourab Sancharini Sabha (precursor of the Hindu Mela),
encouraging a return to Indian customs and practices. During the Swadeshi period,
Rabindranath Tagore valorised this idea, and it was related to a concrete constructive
programme in the villages through a revival of the traditional Hindu samaj or
community.21 The example shows how one kind/idea about freedom travelled in time
(across decades) and was applied at two interrelated contexts: (1) inner strengthening of
indigenous society distinguished from European society; and (2) application in discourses
of cultural nationhood (Hindu Mela) as well as in associational politics (Swadeshi
upsurge). Atmashakti cannot be understood in terms of classic western dichotomies of
positive/negative liberties. While at one level, it implied the absence of external

18
Kelly and Reid (eds.), Asian Freedoms, p. 4.
19
Ibid., p. 5.
20
Iswar Gupta referred to atmasakti as self-help in Sambad Prabhakar in the early nineteenth century.
21
Sumit Sarkar has pointed out that the perspective of slow and unostentatious development of what
Tagore called atmasakti had little appeal to the educated youth of Bengal, who felt drawn more to the creed
of a political extremism. See Sumit Sarkar, Modern India (New Delhi: Macmillan, 1983), p. 113. My point
is that despite such limitation, atmasakti did form a significant strand in the associational phase of
Swadeshi in Bengal, and intertwined with the idea of samaj, underpinning ideas about nationhood
grounded in culture.
 10

obstacles/constraint/coercion,22 at another – it signified the power to be something: a

strengthened social entity. It simultaneously strove to combat (non-confrontationally) an
external (colonial/British) obstacle, as well as awaken an inner power oriented to
choosing the proper alternative/rational path implied in the notion of dharma.
Like atmashakti, the terms moksha (liberation as a goal of life; future fruition)23
and mukti (salvation) were also indices of difference between Indian (Bengali) and
European societies. These indigenous ideas about freedom were closely related to the
idea of samajik unity rooted in dharma. The Bengali literati identified dharma as
embodying the ‘unique’ nature of indigenous society. They contrasted the state-centric
character of European society with dharma, the ideological basis of Indian society.
Reinterpreted in late nineteenth century Bengal, dharma was contrasted with the essence
of Europe – rights. The former implied the law of renunciation, while rights signified the
law of resistance.24 As Bipin Chandra Pal pointed out, dharma represented self-
abnegation, while rights stood for self-assertion. Diametrically contrasting dharma to
rights (India to Europe), he expressed the binaries inbuilt into civilisational and social
difference: collectivism versus individualism; and synthesis versus antithesis. Dharma
was the soul of order, while rights were the parent of revolution.25 I feel that this view
reflects a nuanced contrast between ideas about freedom and its metonyms in India and
the west. This was a means to underline civilisational difference. Anandachandra Mitra,
applying a teleological perspective, argued that civilisation and social progress in India
and Europe had flowed along different lines. While dharma guided the indigenous

22
J.S. Mill, On Liberty (London, 1859); Bertrand Russell, ‘Freedom and Government’, in Ruth N. Anshen
(ed.), Freedom: Its Meaning (New York: Harcourt, 1940).
23
See the elements for the schema for Hinduism based on Radhakrishnan and Moore (eds.), A Source Book
in Indian Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957) and K.M. Sen, Hinduism (London:
Penguin, 1961), in Subrata Dasgupta, The Bengal Renaissance. Identity and Creativity from Rammohun
Roy to Rabindranath Tagore (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), p. 47. Mukti and moksha were
interrelated and often interchangeable terms. Mukti, meaning the cessation of sorrow/salvation intersected
with the idea of kaivalya (Jaina philosophy) and nirvana (Buddhist idea). A crucial connotative strand in
the idea of moksha was the conviction that lack of knowledge or false knowledge was the reason for
sorrow. To dispel sorrow, knowledge (true) had to be acquired. This brings out the interconnection between
knowledge and freedom reflected also in western ideas of freedom. For details about intersections between
mukti and moksha and how different Indian philosophical schools such as Samkhya, Naiyayik, Jaimini and
Vedanta envisaged these interrelated ideas, see Nagendranath Basu (ed.), Bisvakosh, Vol. 15, (Delhi: B.R.
Publishing Corporation, undated), pp. 98-100, 420-421, 428.
24
Bipin Chandra Pal, Soul of India (Calcutta, 1911), pp. 67-68, quoted in Papia Chakravarty, Hindu
Response to Nationalist Ferment. Bengal, 1909-1935 (Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1992), p. 116.
25
B.C. Pal, Soul of India. A Constructive Study of Indian Thoughts and Ideals (Calcutta, 1911), pp. 67-68.
 11

society toward salvation or mukti, the state-centric European civilisation had utility as its
goal.26 Since the eighteenth century, European society was inextricably linked to
enlightenment notions of progress and utility.27

Freedom of the Mind: Personal / Individual Freedom or the Movement of Religious

Freedom

In western political and social discussion ‘freedom’ implies freedom from,

(negative/liberal notion) and freedom for, that is freedom to achieve a purpose or to
become something (positive conception).28 Freedom as absence of obstacles to the
exercise and satisfaction of specific interests and forms of activity relates especially to
those areas of life having moral and social significance. To delve into the dynamics of
specific freedoms in Bengal, we need to ask: What was socially and morally relevant to
the Hindu Bengali intelligentsia during the colonial period? To put it more specifically:
Why was there a deep need and relevance of freedom of the mind in colonial Bengal?
This was because India was seen as not just being unfree politically, but also enslaved by
a non-liberal socio-religious ethos. As Keshab Chandra Sen lamented:

We are a subject race… and have been so for centuries. We have been too long under
foreign sway to feel anything like independence in our hearts. Socially and religiously,
we are little better than slaves. From infancy we have been trained to believe that we are
Hindus only so far as we offer slavish obedience to the authority of the shastras and the
priests, and that any amount of disobedience would be too much want of our nationality.
Not only in the important concerns of our life but even in the trivial details of our social
and domestic economy… we are fettered by a rigid routine of action, invested with the
inviolable sanctity of religion. If any individual gets a spark of moral independence, the
surrounding atmosphere soon extinguishes it. Under such circumstances, all the higher
impulses and aspirations of the soul must naturally be smothered; and hence it is that,
though educated ideas rebel, and organised communities of enlightened men often
protest, the general tenor of Native life is a dead level of base and unmanly acquiescence
in traditional errors.29

26
Anandachandra Mitra, Prachin Bharat O Adhunik Iturope Sabhyatar Bhinna Murti (Mymensingh, 1876),
p. 22.
27
Keith Michael Baker, ‘Enlightenment and the Institution of Society: Notes for a Conceptual History’, in
Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds.), Civil Society: History and Possibilities (New Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), p. 84.
28
For details relating to distinctions between negative and positive liberties, see Isaiah Berlin, Two
Concepts of Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958).
29
B.C. Pal, The Brahmo Samaj and the Battle of Swaraj in India (Calcutta, 1926), pp. 51-52.
 12

Indeed, India had to be made ‘free’ in spirit and mind, and rescued from the sense of
inferiority accorded to her in a civilisational scale crafted by her political masters (the
British) before the movement for political freedom could gather momentum. Thus the
idea of freedom was a composite and multi-faceted/multi-stage concept. It had to begin
with freedom of the mind. Further, such freedom had to be formulated within an
indigenous framework. It was not that India lacked lineages of liberty. The task of the
colonial intelligentsia lay in tracing the lineage/genealogy of freedom of the mind within
an indigenous Hindu ethos. In fact, the search for an indigenous genealogy of this kind of
freedom occurred in a framework of distinctness of Hindu/Indian ideas and ways of life
from the European, contrasting it with the destructive effects of European vengeance and
violence.30
The idea of personal freedom implicated in freedom of the mind was
emblematised in the protest of individual reason and conscience (as embodied in Brahmo
ideology) against all outside authority including scriptures. This according to Bipin
Chandra Pal formed the background to the freedom movement in the political sense, and
was rooted in an indigenous precolonial and early colonial tradition. It began as a
movement of protest against the bondage of medieval social and sacerdotal laws and
institutions. Marking out the indigeneity of this freedom, B.C. Pal remarked: “This
protest was not really consequent upon our contact with modern European thought and
speculations.” The call for this protest first came from Rammohun Roy, the apostle of
personal freedom. He raised the slogan of protest, symbolic of personal freedom, long
before he came into living contact with modern European thought and learning.31 The
supremacy of rationalism and reason against all outside authority epitomising the kernel
of freedom in a western sense therefore predated the impact of the west in India. India
had her own tradition of protest symbolising a particular kind of freedom which could
reckon on equal terms with western intellectual influence and ideological hegemony.
Published in 1803-1804, Rammohun’s Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhidin (A Gift to the

30
Ibid., p. 52-53.
31
Alexander Duff and the later writer S.D. Collett believed that Roy became proficient in the English
language around 1801-1802. His western education began properly with his association with John Digby in
1805. As late as 1817, Roy had not developed adequate writing skills in the English language. This has
been mentioned in Subrata Dasgupta, The Bengal Renaissance, p. 60. At the time of writing Tuhfat, as
Subrata Dasgupta writes, it seems unlikely that the British Orientalists had any serious impact on Roy’s
cognitive identity. See Subrata Dasgupta, The Bengal Renaissance, pp. 59-60.
 13

Monotheists)32 mirrored this idea of freedom, drawing on the Mutazala tradition of

rationalism.33 Though indigenous, it was not retrogressive or archaic. On the contrary, it
rejected blind faith in the authority of religious leaders, and religious prejudice and
dogmatism. The tool for reform was not emotion or devotion, but reason and rationality.
The Tuhfat’s ideological foundation rested on a prioritisation of empirical evidence over
faith,34 and a welding of Upanishadic and Vedantic trajectories with Mutazala rationalism
to give concrete shape to, and provide evidence in support of two basic tenets: (1) unity
of God and (2) evil of idolatry.35 Rammohun’s aim was to awaken and free Indian minds
from their ‘dream of error’, and acquaint them with their true scriptures. This form of
mental awakening was closely related to an awakening of the indigenous society. Only an
unchained mind could visualise an unchained nation woven around a rejuvenated social
order. This did not necessarily imply the end of British rule. Tuhfat as a text reflected
Roy’s dream for unity for he was convinced that the Brahmans, supporting idolatry (for
their own material and selfish motives) had created and perpetuated disunion among the
people.36 It weakened the fabric of Indian samaj. I argue that as the latter was crucial in
the imagining of nationhood, the ideals expressed in the Tuhfat reflected a braiding of a
rationalist idea of personal/mental freedom with an emerging sense of nationhood woven
around samaj.
The indigeneity of freedom’s genealogy did not mean that there was no
interaction with, or a critical internalisation of western currents. On the contrary, it was
precisely because of the strength of the indigenous tradition that such internalisation was
facilitated, and India could reorient, distil and articulate western ideas on her own terms.

32
A Bengali translation of the Tuhfat was published in 1821. The first English translation appeared much
later, in 1884. See S.D. Collett, The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy (Calcutta, 1988), mentioned in
Subrata Dasgupta, The Bengal Renaissance, p. 58.
33
The Mutazili theology originated in the 8th century in Basra when Wasil ibn Ata pioneered a trend of
thought which sought to ground the Islamic creedal system in reason. The main tenets of this school were
divine unity and oneness of God; and divine justice and the free will of human beings. Human beings
possessed free will or the capacity for choice. It represented a synthesis between reason and revelation and
the privileging of the strand of rationalism within Islamic theological framework. It celebrated the power of
human reason and intellect. For details, see Michael Cooperson, Al Ma’mun (Makers of the Muslim World)
(Oxford, 2005) and J.V. Ess, The Flowering of Muslim Theology (U.S.A.: Harvard University Press, 2006).
34
S.D. Collett, The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy (Calcutta, 1988) p. 31, mentioned in S.
Dasgupta, The Bengal Renaissance, p. 61.
35
Ibid.
36
Ibid., p. 62. Also see Rammohun Roy, A Second Defence of the Monotheistical System in the Veds
(1817).
 14

A section of the literati, including the Brahmos, felt that Bengal was moved far more
powerfully than the other Indian provinces by the new ideals of freedom and equality of
eighteenth-century European illumination, which the British brought with them, because
of the original genius and age-long individuality of the Bengali people. Keshab’s lament
about a stifling socio-religious ethos was only one side of the story. Offsetting this dark
foil of unfreedom were strong indigenous traditions of rationalism. Apart from the
Mutazala tradition, there was a Buddhist lineage of social democracy and rationalism.
This was seen as a counterpoint to Brahmanical hegemony. It explained why the Muslim
occupation of Bengal was not opposed as strongly as elsewhere in India. A poem cited by
Dinesh Chandra Sen described the combat between Muslims and Brahmanical Hindus of
Maldah/Gour. It captured the sense of gratification with which the Buddhists watched the
defeat of the Brahmans.37 This illustrates the difference between the ways in which Islam
and Hinduism interacted in Bengal and elsewhere in India. While upper India adapted
itself to the trappings of Islamic civilisation and culture, Bengal assimilated itself to its
inner spirit, its social egalitarianism, and reworking of sociological and spiritual
affinities. Thus the fact of political defeat faded/receded while the mind/spirit came to the
fore. The psychological interpretation of the Bengal conquest by the Muslims was similar
to Clive’s conquest in historical memory. Even as political freedom floundered on the
fields of Plassey, the individuality of Bengal was unhampered. Strengthened by earlier
genealogies and legacies of freedom and the sense of the spiritual and the universal in the
religion, the instinct of personal freedom and social equality was considered to be
original in the Bengali people.38 This was not a simple utopic construction or a nostalgic
fantasy to retreat from the bitter reality of a social dystopia of caste restrictions and
inequality. It integrated an intellectual strand to a social experiential reality (samaj as an
idea-in- practice).
This conjunction and orientation made it possible to critically internalise western
currents (modern education, positive western sciences and individualism). These currents,
interacting with the indigenous idea of personal freedom prepared the ground for the
crystallisation of swaraj (which is why Rammohun was called the first swarajist). But as

37
B.C. Pal, Beginning of the Freedom Movement in Modern India (Being Introduction to Memories of My
Life and Times, Vol. II, 1885-1900), p. 5.
38
Ibid., pp. 6-7.
 15

the idea of freedom developed through a critical internalisation and re-articulation of

western ideas refracted through the prism of an indigenous pre and non-western tradition,
the modernity it represented cannot be simplistically termed as a ‘western’ modernity.
Two points are important here: (1) Freedom of the mind undergirded and led to political
freedom, which was a modern phenomenon; (2) But this modern political freedom was
impossible to conceive without the conceptual base of personal freedom (rooted in an
indigenous lineage). The point was hammered home by Bipin Chandra Pal: The rebellion
of 1857 was not a democratic freedom movement because there was no idea of a real
government after freeing India. More fundamentally and significantly, it was not
preceded by the movement of personal freedom.39
The idea of personal freedom was carried further by Debendranath Tagore who
championed the absolute sovereignty of human reason to know the highest truths about
God, the soul and salvation (mukti). The burgeoning and development of this particular
brand of spiritual freedom was not completely de-linked from political processes and dual
roles of individuals (champions of personal freedom were also members of associations
concerned with political liberties). Debendranath was closely associated with the British
Indian Association, and was, according to Bipin Chandra Pal, the first, most persistent
non-co-operator, not in a direct political vein, but in intellectual and moral terms. 40

Social Freedom

In the history of philosophical and social thought, ‘freedom’ has a specific use as a moral
and a social concept – to refer either to circumstances which arise in the relations of man
to man, or to specific conditions of social life.41 Rammohun and Debendranath’s ideas
about moral, rational, spiritual and individual or personal freedom formed the
background to Keshab Chandra Sen’s rearticuation of freedom through a different idiom.
For him, the ideological tool was not devotion (as in the case of Debendranath), but
reason. He linked the idea of freedom as developed in a universe of thought to the arena
of social action. Freedom of the mind translated and situated in a field of action, was a

39
Bipin Chandra Pal, The Brahmo Samaj and the Battle of Swaraj, p. 12.
40
Ibid., pp. 18, 22-23.
41
P.H. Partridge, ‘Freedom’, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vols. 3 and 4 (New York, London:
Macmillan and Free Press, 1967), p. 221.
 16

harbinger of a social change / progress.42 The interconnected-ness between personal and

social freedom was reflected in two main strands as formulated by Keshab: (1) the
supremacy of individual reason to determine what was true or not true in religious
matters; (2) the supremacy of individual conscience to determine what was right and
wrong in matters of personal conduct, and domestic and social relations, which was
closely related to the imperative duty of harmonising opinions and convictions with life
and conduct.
The second strand intertwined with, and paralleled the idea of samaj as a site for
forging an indigenous identity on the basis of relating certain norms and principles
(especially dharma and a code of conduct) at two levels: idea and practice. Bipin
Chandra Pal argued that the idea of personal freedom intersecting with social freedom
was an index and indicator of how the individual was related to the social collectivity.
This framework of reasoning seems closely allied to the conception of samaj (shared by
different sections of the literati) as a site interrelating the social collectivity and the
individual. But there was a tension between the individual and the society stemming from
the regulatory role that samaj had. It regulated the individual and the social group
according to specific norms, codes of morality and rules. The tension between the
individual and the samaj came to the fore especially in the 1820s and 1830s due to the
new message of Rammohun Roy’s Brahmo faith, the spread of western education, and
John Stuart Mill’s liberalism.43 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay tried to mediate the
elevation of the samaj above the individual,44 while Haraprasad Shastri tried to resolve
the problem by arguing that samaj comprised individuals, and was created for their good.
Individuals could not be subordinated to something they had themselves created. 45 In a
similar vein, Rammohun’s idea of personal freedom which formed a background to the

42
Bipin Chandra Pal, The Brahmo Samaj and the Battle of Swaraj, pp. 23-25.
43
Rachel Van M. Baumer has pointed out that during the first decades of the nineteenth century, while
moral social behaviour and individual liberty remained strong and personal, individual action and sense of
social obligation underwent a change. Men were obligated to act toward other men in a way they
themselves wished to be treated. They were to respond to other men’s needs with compassion and
sympathy. See Rachel Van M. Baumer, ‘The Reinterpretation of Dharma in Nineteenth Century Bengal:
Righteous Conduct of Man in the Modern World’, in Rachel Van M. Baumer (ed.), Aspects of Bengali
History and Society (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1975), p. 89.
44
Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Dharmatattva, 24th Adhyay, in Jogeshchandra Bagal (ed.), Bankim
Rachanabali, Vol. II (Calcutta, 1965).
45
Haraprasad Shastri’s ideas in this regard have been referred to in Satyanarayan Das, Bangadarshan O
Bangalir Manan Sadhana (Calcutta, 1974), p. 48.
 17

notion of swaraj attempted a reconciliation between individual judgement and scriptural

authority, between the individual and social conscience.46 This twin interrelation (idea
and practice; and individual and society) facilitated the contextualisation of social
freedom within a wider nexus of evolving dynamics of democracy, ethics and socio-
religious transformation, eloquently captured in Bipin Chandra Pal’s viewpoint:

The spirit of freedom and democracy was organised for the first time by the Brahmo
Samaj. The Brahmo Samaj was practically the first institution which sought to reduce the
ideals of freedom and democracy into a new law of life and a new code of domestic
relations and social ethics. It repudiated the law of caste [implying social freedom],
thereby not only proclaiming the equality of all humans, but seeking to build up a society
where this equality will be established upon a religious basis… the sanctity of man as
man became the inspiration of this new socio-religious movement.47

Though B.C. Pal regarded the Brahmo Samaj as the vanguard of the movement of social
freedom, it was far from being an isolated Brahmo strand. There was a coalescence of
viewpoints and ideological rendezvous among the literati.48 They participated in, and
gave textual voice to a socio-religious movement seen as occurring through specific
socially-transformative stages. Western ideas no doubt had much to do with the
transformation. But it was actually a catalytic combination of many factors which led to,
and moulded this movement. It gathered momentum during the 1840s to the 1860s, when
connections between the Derozians and intellectuals of other ideological affiliations were
evocative of a larger social movement in Bengal. 49 Shibanth Shastri regarded

46
Bipin Chandra Pal, The Brahmo Samaj and the Battle of Swaraj, p. 18.
47
Ibid., pp. 35-36.
48
The literati comprised an internally differentiated group. However, it is possible to map ideological
rendezvous and connections and trace the specific ways and contexts in which mentalities coalesced. One
way of tracing such consensus is the cognitive approach of Subrata Dasgupta. See Dasgupta, The Bengal
Renaissance, Introduction and p. 58.
49
Like Rammohun Roy and his Brahmo followers, the Derozians opposed idolatry and superstition. This
was a point of intersection between two ideological groups distinct in certain respects. The Derozians
‘drank deep of the waters’ of European thought and literature and represented a more extreme form of
westernisation. This was different from the critical assimilation and internalisation of western intellectual
currents and their refraction through indigenous traditions in Brahmo ideas. The difference lay in the
degree and form of interaction with, and assimilation of the west. As David Kopf has pointed out, the
Derozians ‘overidentified’ with the other, to make the other culture their own, and their own culture the
other. See Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernisation,
1773-1835 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 255, quoted in S. Dasgupta, The Bengal
Renaissance, p. 85. But the Derozians were Indians and they could not discard their Indian mentality. The
boundaries between groups were thus blurred and contextually sharpened or faded off in accordance to
specific contexts, circumstances and periods. Ramtanu Lahiri, a well known Derozian educationist became
 18

Rammohun, David Hare and Derozio to be the pioneers of the movement, as their ideas
awoke the slumbering sprit of the people, and were crucial in the social progress of
Bengal. Roles and ideologies (Brahmo, Derozian) intersected within the space of a wider
social history of Bengal, forming a significant context for the discourse on social
freedom. Applying a social-progress/decline paradigm, Shibnath prioritised a teleology of
social progress. He lamented the decline in jatiya character and conduct, tracing this both
to the Muslim as well as to the British invasions. While the progressive intellectual
currents of the west were critically internalised, the technologies of imperial rule and its
epistemic foundations were challenged at many levels. The British revenue system, law
and law courts were external forces or obstacles corroding the ‘true’ spirit of the people
and shackling the simplicity of the society. A change was needed. This came about
through an interface between the old and the new. The periods 1825-1845 and 1856-
186150 comprised a new age or nabajug, during which changes in political, social and
educational spheres as well as internal revolts in the minds of the people of India
heralded the dawn of a new social spirit.
This social transformation was inherent in the deployment of samaj as a
methodological tool and concept for conceptualising nationhood, which gathered
momentum especially from the second half of the nineteenth century. Etymologically
meaning to move in a united manner, samaj could mean a union of castes, families and
people of a specific region. It was both the historical society from whence the nation
emerged, as well as an idea-in-practice having a modern functionality. Social freedom
embedded in a religious ethos was related to the linkage between dharma and cultural
Aryan-ness (two main ideological principles of samaj) which could open up a space for
social inclusion. ‘Others’ on the fringes of society could be incorporated contextually if
they adhered to cultural Aryan-ness. The logic of inclusion was extended to ‘lower
others’ within Bengal as well as to contiguous ethnic groups and other Indians. Thus the

a Brahmo. The crucial point here is these groups shared a common concern about India and its uplift, often
seen through the prism of social progress and a reworking of social harmonies.
50
This period was considered a mahendrakhhon or a momentous phase of many opportunities. During this
period, widow remarriage agitation, the Indian Mutiny, Indigo Revolt, the emergence of Harish Chandra
Mukherjee, the publication of Som Prakash, the emergence of Michael Madhusudan in the literary scene,
Keshabchandra’s entry into the Brahmo Samaj, all infused new life into society and energised and deeply
impacted the Bengali samaj. See Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj (Calcutta,
1904), p. 202.
 19

idea of social freedom traversed, intersected with, and impacted the imagining of an
inclusive and harmonious social universe, which went far beyond a mere social or
religious movement. It formed the core of imagining and conceptualising India as a
Bharatbarshiya Samaj. Though the idea of inclusion was framed in a high-Hindu vein,
there was a tension in the rhetoric and multiple strands in the discourse. The idea of
dharma moving beyond an essentially religious connotation could contextually include
even communal others such as Muslim.51 Thus it created a space for flexible groundings
of identity which could imagine an overarching unity existing alongside, and in
contention with bonds of caste, class, clan, micro-region, ethnic category and religious
community. This formed the matrix within which the idea of nationhood grounded in
cultural terms evolved. But as this process intersected at many levels with the making of
identities in an outer/public sphere, it cannot be de-linked from political processes. The
inner/outer and private/public were interpenetrative domains.52

Political Freedom or the Idea of Swaraj

The term ‘swaraj’ was first used by Dadabhai Naoroji in 1906, to mean self-government.
But swaraj was not simply a reactive term or concept emerging at a modern moment,
counterpoised to the (colonial) ‘raj’. Writing in 1926, Bipin Chandra Pal affirmed that
though swaraj as a clear-cut goal-oriented term was recent in the political literature of
India, its idea was present for more than a century.53 Political freedom was thus given a
legacy and a lineage independent of western epistemic and ideological influence.
Endowing the idea of political freedom with an indigenous antiquity, Bipin Chandra Pal
argued that the idea had been a regulative one in the evolution of modern Indian thought
and activity. Swaraj literally and etymologically, in ancient Indian thought and culture,

51
Akshoy Moitreya emphasised a joint Indo-Islamic heritage, and the need to frame a social history of
Bengal of the eighteenth century and even earlier on the basis of the manuscripts of Saiyad Elahi Baksh
Angrejabadi. His was a voice that underlined plurality and a nostalgia for a pre-British Nawabi Bengal.
Satishchandra Raychaudhuri wrote that during the period of the rise of Taki’s Choudhuri family in
Basirhat, some high-born Muslim families acquired samajik status. Satishchandra Raychauduri, Bangiya
Samaj (Barahanagar, 1899), p. 306.
52
The making of identities in an inner, ‘already sovereign’ cultural domain cannot be delinked or given an
earlier, prior genealogy than political processes and associational politics. The strand of cultural nationhood
intersected with the making of identities in an outer civil society or public sphere.
53
Bipin Chandra Pal, The Brahmo Samaj and the Battle of Swaraj, p. 1.
 20

meant: supreme authority or domination of the self (aham) over non-self (all except
aham, expressed as idam). Aham signified the knower, while idam was that which had to
be, or which was known (knowledge).54 This conceptual genealogy brings out the
multilayered connotation of swaraj. Swaraj in India was a category of the spiritual, as
reflected first in the Upanishads.
Foregrounding the idea of swaraj in a spiritual frame, the Upanishadic reference
related and equated it with moksha (release) and salvation (stressed in the context of
civilisational goals of India, as seen above). The spiritual and moral values and ideals
undergirding this Bengali/Indian idea of political freedom set it apart from European
definitional standards. The Upanishadic strand intertwined with the pre-colonial strand of
protest against authoritarianism, filiating swaraj to an ancient and precolonial
genealogy.55
This idea of swaraj was conceptualised through an interrelation of different
freedoms in the site of samaj. It could not be delinked from a wider search for an
empowered identity which sought to awaken a pride and glory in indigenous culture. This
formed the ideological background to later brands of associational politics, specifically
the Congress. Theoretical models influenced by the Saidian perspectives tend to delink
culture from politics, and counterpoise community and fragmentation to the modern
political nation state. Instead, by linking the two domains, this paper returns the gaze to
processes relegated to ‘internal’ domains, seeing how they interacted with political
processes in an ‘outer’ world. The interlocking of multiple freedoms in the site of samaj
(an arena of culture and attachment, which intersected with ‘outer’ ‘public’ domains)
needs to be lodged within this theoretical framework. This would help us to understand
the intricacies of continuities through change, and the dynamics of the making of
identities implicated in complex strands of imagining the nation. Personal or individual
liberty or protest against dogma and orthodoxy allied to the defence of Hinduism against
Christian propaganda awoke a pride in the ancient faith of India and indirectly created a
new national consciousness through a reinterpretation of the spirit of Hindu religion.

54
Ibid., p. 2.
55
Ibid., p. 3.
 21

According to Bipin Chandra Pal, this formed part of a wider cultural defence, and laid the
foundation of swaraj:

Our English educated people who could not by the highest stretch of their imagination
conceive of any superior intellectual and moral powers than their English masters and
who therefore had been weighted down with a sense of the intellectual and moral
inferiority of their race, to the British and other European races, were at once relieved of
this sense of inferiority and found a new consciousness of great powers and possibilities
in themselves.

This demonstrates how the interlocking of multiple freedoms and their interpretation
through the framework of samaj quickened a new national pride and self-respect and
fashioned a new cult of patriotism. It was seen as the background and basis contributing
to the growth of the ‘new’ freedom movement culminating in the ‘Swaraj Movement.’56
As Bipin Chandra Pal put it: The connotations of spiritual and social freedom (implying a
religious and social movement) impacted and reacted on the political consciousness of
the Bengali people. It formed the foundation for the swaraj state built on the basis of the
swaraj character of the community,57 and inaugurated an organised campaign of political
emancipation and progress under S.N. Banerjee.58 Political nationalism of the Congress
brand was undoubtedly generated by concrete material and economic factors, but the
genealogical basis I have talked about – must be seen as complementing the Congress
movement.59 In 1920, the delegates of the Indian National Congress supported swaraj.
There was the official launching of the swaraj movement by the Congress. Gandhi’s idea
of swaraj (its main thrust being social, and not political) was very different from that of
the Congress,60 which was a politically inclined goal demanding complete independence
from the British. This difference exists despite the fact that counter-arguments may be
deployed to interrelate the two conceptions of swaraj. Gandhi’s concept of independence
from foreign domination underscored self rule or governance through community
building. It focused on political decentralisation. It implied the discarding of British

56
Ibid., p. 55.
57
Ibid., pp. 5-6.
58
Bipin Chandra Pal, Beginning of Freedom Movement in Modern India, pp. 2-4.
59
In 1917, there was a petition demanding swaraj. In 1919, the Navajiban trust was set up to teach the
principles of swaraj.
60
Congress leaders such as Nehru regarded Gandhian swaraj as an unreal dream.
 22

political, economic, bureaucratic, legal, military and educational institutions. Gandhi

wanted a system of a classless, stateless, direct democracy. In its fullest sense swaraj was
much more than freedom from all restraints. It was self rule and self restraint, and could
be equated with moksha or salvation. It acquired both moral and political meanings,
grounded in the individual, but embracing society as a whole. Gandhi’s conception of
swaraj shows how political swaraj was predated and complemented by the ideologies
discussed in this section. Power was conceived as residing in the people; and swaraj as
independence had to begin from the bottom, in ever-widening circles. It was not a
pyramid with power concentrated at the apex, but an oceanic circle whose centre would
be the individual. This brings back the point about samaj and the individual. The
outermost circumference would give support and strength to the individual, and derive
strength from him.

Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated how multiple ideas of freedom (having indigenous origins)
were interrelated in the conceptual site of samaj to frame a nationalist discourse in
Bengal. I have shown how different facets of freedom complemented each other to
produce a multidimensional, internally-integrated concept. By deploying samaj to
construct this interpretative framework, I have attempted to redefine both the idea/ideas
of freedom/independence in Bengal, as well as the related idea of Indian nationhood. The
redefinition works at two main levels (1) shift from the western gaze in understandings of
freedoms in Asia/India/Bengal; and (2) shift from derivative and modular paradigms of
colonial nationalisms. Trajectories of religious and social freedoms emanating from
samaj were crucial in understandings of swaraj in Bengal. The process involved a shift
from the centrality of the political connotation in western ideas about freedom.61 It
implied the social means and power to be something, primarily the improvement of samaj
and achievement of swaraj and swadhinata through atmashakti.

61
In western conceptions of freedom, a primacy is given to political freedom. Political activity and
participation in government form a central pivot of a wider structure of liberties informing and flowing
into other areas of social life.
 23

In discussing how multiple freedoms were mirrored in the ideology and practice
of the Indian National Congress, I try to illuminate a new conception/brand of Asian
freedom. As said, some ideas were markedly indigenous, while others were adapted from
a western intellectual universe, and reworked to serve the new ideologies of nation-
building, liberation, revolution, and development. Though in the indigenous lexicon, the
term ‘freedom’ like ‘nation’ did not have an exact connotative counterpart (to the western
term) or a definitional fixity – history, and discourses shaping identity do throw up
certain equivalents and terms which resonate with, as well as deviate from western ideas.
The deviations involved a shift from certain specific western hallmarks and conceptual
foundations (criteria) associated with the western meaning of freedom. Just as history
does not have identical connotations and complexions in all countries, freedom too has
different connotative inflections, nuances and bases.
This paper has contextualised and situated ‘freedom struggle’ against the colonial
raj in a mould which moves beyond the usual/familiar single or sole connotation of
political agitation against colonial rule. It has shown that the struggle for independence
remained enmeshed with multistranded psychic, cultural and historic trajectories. By
articulating ideas about the indigenous self through a redefinition of tradition, this essay
has shown how the conception of multidimensional freedom was integral to the
conceptualisation of nationhood in terms of culture. This reflected an interpenetration of
social, religious, spiritual and cultural connotations of freedom. My prioritisation of such
freedoms entwined in cultural nationhood62 does not mean an elision of political
processes and ideas, but an interconnection of multiple freedoms and their intersection
with the idea of political freedom which enmeshed with the Congress movement. By
formulating this focus, I have tried to demonstrate that freedom in the sense of political
struggle needs to be linked to other connotative genealogies, sets of ideas, principles and
ideological precursors that underlay that struggle.

62
The search for an empowered identity particularly from the middle of the nineteenth century prioritised a
connection between culture and nationhood, concretely expressed in the Hindu Mela’s agenda since 1867.
While this did not involve an elision of political conceptualisations of identity, the trajectory of culture was
a more significant one during 1867-1905.
24