Shaheed Bhagat Singh College

Batch – 2021 - 22

Name - Ayush Pandey

Roll No – 3070
Subject - POLITICAL SCIENCE
(Nationalism In India)
Course - BA Geography Hons.
Submitted to - Rityusha Tiwary
 QUESTION:
Define Nationalism in India. Discuss it from Nationalist and Marxist
perspectives.

DEFINATION
 Nationalism is a very vague and in fact it is very difficult to define
it precisely and accurately.
 According to Mahatma Gandhi “A nationalism spirit is necessary
for national existence. A flag is a national aid to the development
of such spirit”
 According to Gooch “Nationalism is an Organism, a Spiritual
entity and all attempts to penetrate its Secrets by the light of
Mechanical interpretations break down before the test of
experience.”
 Barker has defined it by saying that, “ A nation is a body of men
in habiting a definite territory who normally are drawn from
different races but possess a common stock of thoughts and
feelings acquired and transmitted during the course of a common
History, but on the whole are the men though more in the past
than in the present, include in that common stock a common
religious belief who generally and as a role use a common
language, as the vehicle of the thoughts and feelings and who
besides common thoughts and feelings all so cherish a common
will and accordingly from or did not form a separate state for the
expression of that will.”
 In India Aurobindo Ghosh gave a new interpretation to
nationalism when he said, “Nationalism is a religion that has
come from god. Nationalism is a creed in which you shall have to
live. It is an attitude of heart, of the soul. What the intellect, could
not do this mighty force of passionate conviction bon out of the
very faiths of national consciousness, will be able to accomplish.”
Thus it will be safe to say that, on the whole, Nationalism is a
political sentiment whereas for the people of India it was both a
religion and a creed. Both the masses as well as leaders of modern
India aroused these national feelings for seeing Mother India
from foreign yokes and once again India’s Occupying the pride
place of being called the leader and teacher of the whole world.

NATIONALISM IN INDIA

 Indian nationalism developed as a concept during the Indian

independence movement which campaigned
for independence from British rule. Indian nationalism is an
instance of territorial nationalism, which is inclusive of all of the
people of India, despite their diverse ethnic, linguistic and
religious backgrounds. It continues to strongly influence
the politics of India and reflects an opposition to the sectarian
strands of Hindu nationalism and Muslim nationalism.

 In simple words we can define nationalism in India, the political

ideology which unites Indian people for taking back our freedom
from the hands of British rule.
 The main reasons for the emergence of Nationalism in India are:
1. Western education
Macaulay had instituted a western educational system in India with
the sole aim of creating a class of educated Indians who could serve
 their colonial masters in the administration of the ‘natives’. This
idea sort of backfired because it created a class of Indians who
became exposed to the liberal and radical thoughts of European
writers who expounded liberty, equality, democracy and
rationality. Also, the English language united Indians from various
regions and religions.

2. Vernacular languages

The 19th century also saw the revival of vernacular languages. This
helped the propagation of the ideas of liberty and rational thought
to the masses.

3. End of the old social order

British imperialism put an end to the old social order of the country.
This was resented by many Indians.

4. Socio-religious reform movements

Socio-religious reform movements of the 19th century helped a

great deal in the rise of nationalism in India. These movements
sought to remove superstition and societal evils prevalent then, and
spread the word of unity, rational and scientific thought, women
empowerment and patriotism among the people. Notable reformers
were Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Jyotiba
Phule and so on.

5. Economic policies of the British

The oppressive economic policies of the British led to widespread

poverty and indebtedness among the Indians especially farmers.
Famines which led to the deaths of lakhs were a regular occurrence.
 This led to a bitter sense of suppression and sowed the seeds of a
yearning for liberty from foreign rule.

6. Political unity

Under the British, most parts of India were put under a single
political set-up. The system of administration was consolidated and
unified throughout all regions. This factor led to the feeling of
‘oneness’ and nationhood among Indians.

7. Communications network

The British built a network of roads, railways, post and telegraph

systems in the country. This led to increased movements of people
from one part of the country to another and increased the flow of
information. All this accelerated the rise of a national movement in
India.

8. Growth of the modern press

This period also saw the rise of the Indian press, both in English
and in the regional languages. This also was an important factor
that helped in the dissemination of information.

9. Lord Lytton’s policies

Lord Lytton was the Viceroy of India from 1876 to 1880. In 1876,
there was a famine in south Indian which saw the deaths of almost
10 million people. His trading policies were criticised for having
aggravated the famine. Also, he conducted the grand Delhi Durbar
in 1877 spending huge amount of money at a time when people
were dying of hunger.
 Lytton also passed the Vernacular Press Act 1878 which authorised
the government to confiscate newspapers that printed ‘seditious
material’. He also passed the Arms Act 1878 which prohibited
Indians from carrying weapons of any kind without licenses. The
act excluded Englishmen.

10. Legacy of the Revolt of 1857

After the Revolt of 1857 and its bitter crushing by the British, there
was deep racial tension between the British and the Indians.

11. Ilbert Bill controversy

In 1883, the Ilbert Bill was introduced which gave Indian judges
the power to hear cases against European, by the then Viceroy
Lord Ripon and Sir Courtenay Ilbert, the legal advisor to the
Council of India. But there was a huge outcry against this bill
from Britishers in India and in Britain. Arguments made against
this bill displayed the deep racial prejudice the English had for
Indians. This also exposed the true nature of British colonialism to
the educated Indians.

12. National movements outside the country

There were many national movements outside the country that

inspired the Indian nationalists like the French Revolution, the
American War of Independence and so on.

 The study of any historical occurrence is filled with debates

and contradictions. It is viewed from various different
perspectives and makes a wide variety of opposing assumptions.
 It is even more fascinating in India's case the study Colonialism
and Nationalism in India has been done from four major different
perspectives:

1. Nationalist Approach
2. Marxist Approach
3. Imperialist Approach
4. Subaltern Approach

NATIONALIST APPROACH
 Nationalist views on Indian nationalism and national movement
were formed in response to the colonialist view. While the
nationalist writers accepted some of the ideas present in
colonialist historiography, they strongly reacted against colonialist
denigration of India and its people.

 In the colonial period, This school was represented by the political

activist like as Lajpat Ray, A.C Majumdar, R.G Pradhan, Pattavi
Sitharamya, Surendarnath Banerjee, C.F Andrews, and Girija
Mukherjee.

 Nationalist perspective on Indian historiography was an outcome

of re interpretation of her past by the leaders of freedom
movement. This school emerged as a juxtaposition of Imperialist
school. Social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and counter
reformer like Dayanand Saraswati were the prominent people
who contributed in formation of nationalistic perspective in India.
They played a major role in formation of pan-Indian identity of
India.
 Early nationalists were trying to hegemonies over various regional
and provincial identities and later nationalist were trying to
hegemonies the whole south-east Asian identities and try to
manipulate and subordinate those identities into pan-Indian
identity.

 Post-colonial Scholar Gyanpraksh in his famous article “Writing

Post Orientalist Histories of Third World: Perspectives on Indian
Historiography” argues that Nationalist Historiography was an
attempt of writing post-orientalist history of India. They emerged
to affirm their voice against imperialist view that India is an

unchanging, and static society. He argues that, in their attempt of

taking a break from Imperialist Historiography, Nationalist
Historiographer bring both continuity and change from
the orientalist history.

 Nationalist continued the “Essentialisation process” as projecting

the image of India as spiritual, metaphorical land as compare
to scientific West.Thus as imperialistic perspective they also see
India as “other” of The West, but then there is a rupture.
Nationalist Historiography in opposition to
imperialist perspective constructed transformed India as an object
of knowledge, from a passive to an active subject, from an inert to
a sovereign territory.

 Gyan Prakash quoted some Nationalist-Historian like H.C. Rai

Choudhary, Beni prasad, R. C. Mazumdar, and says that
these historians located the idea of India as a modern nation state
in ancient Indian history, in history of Gupta and Maurya
Dynasty.
 Romila Thapar argues that nationalist historiographer claimed
that everything good in India like spirituality, Aryan Origin,
political ideas, art and rich tradition had its completely Indian
origin. Nationalist even claimed that India’s golden age made
strong contribution in development of Southeast Asian culture.
Nationalist Historiographers dismantled the concept of “oriental
despotism”.

 Gyan Prakash and Romila Thapar both argues that nationalists

were agree on the periodisation of Indian History into Hindu,
Muslim and the British Period. Acceptance to this Imperial
divides of Indian past, further inaugurated a birth of religious
nationalism in India.

 Jawaharlal Nehru, V.D. Sawarkar, Dada Bhai Naroji, Lala Lajpat

Rai, R.C. Majumdar, S.N. Banerjee, and B.R. Nanda were the
prominent scholar and leader of this school, who invented,
developed, and discussed the thoughts and philosophies of
this school.

 There are two opinions among them: some claim that the
nationalist ideals were introduced under Western influence and
some claim that they had evolved since ancient times. At the
height of the national revolution, mainstream nationalists usually
felt that this independence ideology came mostly from Western
forces. Western schooling and freedom theories are, according to
these scholars, largely responsible for the creation of the national
consciousness.

 Later, as it rose in scale in the national movement, authors started

to quest for indigenous origins. Both of them remained in the
work of numerous nationalist historians. Often in their various
 books, the same historian will express different opinions. Thus,
these methods should essentially be marked as thoughts instead
of historians separating them.

 In the first perspective, the fermentation produced in India as a

result of western ideas formed a nationalism of the English-
educated middle classes. Their love for freedom and
liberty reinforced their patriotic sentiments. The National
Congress of the Indians was the product of a quest for ways to
articulate oneself and to assert oneself, that is, "self-expression
and self-assertion".

 Certain nationalist leaders represented India as a society where

diverse outsiders came and were assimilated, such as the Greeks,
Shakas, Huns, Turks, Persians, the Afghans etc. in its cultural and
enrichment. Therefore India was not only a political entity, but
had a much larger civilisation and cultural structure. In this
“inclusive & assimilative spirit, not in the troubling political
struggle, the national identity” of India and made it distinct from
European nationalism.

 In accordance with the spirit of independence, a broad range of

influences relating to the emergence of the nationalist uprising are
being stressed by the nationalist historians, the traditionally
unfriendly conduct of the colonial figures, Vice-Christ Lytton’s
reactionary strategy, the conflict of Ilbert Bill, modern culture, the
print media, modern literature. The sense of racial supremacy
exhibited by the English people in India and the official policy of
racial segregation humiliated the Indians in some instances.
 The nationalistic historians have outlined economic conditions
that caused the Indians to feel disaffected. These were exploitation
of agriculture, high profits on land, forced indigo and other cash
crops and the draining of capital, excessive Indian money
investment to retain large-scale armed forces against the Indians,
insurgency, and so on.

 Nationalist scholars have pointed out that the imperialistic law

contradicts the Indian people as a whole. In so doing, they

 extended the full spectrum of inconsistencies of ethnicity, race,

linguistics, regions and faith in Indian culture, portraying a
whole-India anti-imperialist front. The national movement was a
movement of all classes in the Indian community, according to the
nationalist historians. The national movement reflected the
Indians' feelings toward imperialism, as the whole country
contradicted imperialism.

 The nationalist historians commonly assumed that the people

were unable to behave independently and that the leaders of the
middle class needed to be mobilised. It is the educated middle
class in every nation that drives the drive for political equality or
progressive change. 'The power in the newly trained middle
classes was that of the All-India campaign. The national
revolution, thus organised by the Congress, embodied both the
middle classes' socioeconomic ambitions in India and the supreme
need for democracy and racial justice.

 The nationalist historians conclude that the nationalist leaders

were idealists motivated by "patriotism & national well-being". In
this view, even though nationalist leaders came from the middle
 class, they were committed to the cause of their country and the
Indians, without personal or party or class concerns. They
behaved as selfless, silent majority spokesmen who couldn't
speak for themselves. They served all races, individuals and
cultures and promoted progressive, liberal and national political
policies.

 This prespective can be understood in 3 different types :-

 SECULAR NATIONALIST PRESPECTIVE

 RELIGIOUS NATIONALIST PERSPECTIVES

 ECONOMIST NATIONALIST PERSPECTIVES

Secular Nationalist Perspective

Secularist approach emerged in response of specific identification
of India’s past with certain specific religion [Hindu]. Gyanprakash
suggests that Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru’s “discovery of India”
could be a major source for development of this faction of
nationalist perspective.

Pandit Nehru argues that “it was undesirable to use Hindu or

Hindu religion for Indian culture. He states in this book that India
is a culturally diverse country. It has been a great combination of
religious, cultural, and social diversity. India according to Nehru,
was a land of “unity in diversity”. He denied any specific
relationship between Hindu religion and India’s ancient past.
“discovery of India” was according to Gyanpraksh is a
documentation of Indian united past through history. Thus he
constructed an image of India as a secular, and united territory.
Though India has witnessed lots of religious creed-based divides
but finally it has achieved a victory over it. Now India is a unified,
undivided and glorious territory.

Religious Nationalist Perspective

This approach of nationalist historiography was based upon
Hindu revivalism. They argued that India was essentially a Hindu
nation. It has been a land of veds and upnishad. It has been a land
of great sanskritik tradition and spirituality. They projected India
as a fatherland for Hindus. Then they argued that in later part of
history means (middle age) Islam came to India and after arrival of
Muslims, India’s history decayed into current status. Their
nationalism was based upon religious sentiment and Hindu
glorification Further rise, of religious nationalism led to the rise of
communalism in India. This led to the Hindu Muslim divide in
India and facilitated the idea of religious identity in India. These
leaders also supported use of force and coercion to bring
revolution against colonial power.

Chetan bhatt in his book Hindu nationalism: origins, ideologies

and modern myth presented a great critique of Hindu nationalism
in India. He argues that Hindu nationalism is based on the claim
that it is a product of authentic, spiritual, ethnic, and religious
tradition of India but it’s a myth. He suggested that Hindu
nationalism is a modern myth and ideology of Hindutwa is an
outcome of influence of European romanticism and enlightenment
ideas. Hindu religious identity according to bhatt is based upon
Primordialism, organicism, vitalism as well as racism.

Economic Nationalist Perspective

Economic nationalism was based on the economic critique of
colonialism. Economic nationalist strongly criticises the economic
exploitation of colonial power. Dadabhai Naroji, justice
M.R. Manade and R.C. Dutt represented this school. Economic
nationalist argues that poverty in India is an outcome of
application of the classical economic theory of free trade.
Shekhar Bandyopadhyay argues that by challenging the whole
concept of paternal imperialism, economic nationalist like other
nationalist strand questioned the whole moral authority of
colonial power. Economic nationalist argued that India could only
achieve the path of development through promotion of India’s
indigenous capitalism.

Bipan Chandra argues, the liberal nationalist writers tend on the

whole to base themselves on the view of history and see the
national movement as a result of the spread and realization of the
idea or spirit of nationalism.

Criticism
The major weakness, of this approach is that scholars tend
to ignore the inner contradictions of Indian society which was
divided on the basis of various caste and class. The nationalist
movement represents the interest of whole nation
against colonialism, but in reality only few classes were
represented. There was constant struggle between different social,
ideological perspective for hegemony over the movement. This
approach in present context usually takes up the position adopted
by right wing of the nationalist movement and equates it with the
movement as a whole. Their treatment of the strategic and
ideological dimensions of the movement is also inadequate.
MARXIST APPROACH
The Marxist school emerged on the since later. Its foundations, so
far the study of the nationalist movement in concerned, were laid
by R. Palme Dutt and A.R. Desai, but several other have
developed it over the years. Unlike the imperialist school, the
Marxist historians clearly see primary contradiction as well as the
process of nation making and unlike the nationalist, they also take
full note of the inner contradiction of Indian society. According to
the soviet historian, the foundation of the Indian National
Congress was inseparably connected with the rise of an
indigenous Indian Capitalist industry. Accordingly to the theory
of economic determinism, changes in the structure of the economic
produced new social relationship, transforming society from the
status-based to a contract-based one, and set in motion a large
scale social mobility which had never taken place in India before.
The political struggle for freedom was a culmination of the social
change which started in Bengal during the second half of the
eighteenth century a product of the disruption of the old economic
and social order proceeding from the gro6h of a market society.
The penetration of British trade in the interior and the British land
settlements which made land a saleable and alienable commodity,
helped the growth of a market economy in India and as a result a
new social class of traders, merchants, subordinate agent of the
company and Private British Traders, middlemen and money-
leaders sprang up. The political development of modern India
since the beginning of the nineteenth century can be considered as

the history of the struggle of this class to find a new identity. B.B.
Mishra, a non-Marxist historian, has also expressed the view that
radical changes under British rule, emanating from progress sf
education and advancement of technology, led to the growth of a
middle class whose component parts exhibited an element of
uniformity in spite of being heterogeneous and even mutually
conflicting at time. Mishra also specifies the economic process by
which these social developments were brought about. Modern
capitalism in India developed from the import of foreign capital
and skill as pill of the transformation of India as an appendage to
the imperial economy, for producing raw materials to feed British
industry. The export of agricultural produced created a trade
surplus which paid for the construction of railways and other
public works, as well as for the import of capital goods and
machinery which began to process locally the raw materials earlier
developed for export. K.M. Panikkar, another non-Marxist
historian, also emphasized the central role of the new middle class
in the national movement, but instead of specifying any decisive
economic change behind their emergence, he pointed to shift in
the centre of power and influence within Indian society as a result
of the administrative and political impact of the British Raj.

Panikkar uses the term class rather loosely. Sometimes using it

almost as a synonym forecaste. Marxist historians have used the
concept in a more rigorous manner and have attributed the
emergence of new classes in Indian society to specific economic
progress. R.P. Dutt whose Indian Today still remains the most
authoritative Marxist work on modern India, wrote that the
growth of modern industry in the second half of the nineteenth
country led to the rise of the bourgeoisie, together with a new
educated middle class of lawyers, administrators, teachers and

journalists. The writings of quite a few Marxian historians and

sociologists echoed the same view before and after Independence.
But gradually there was a shift of emphasis from R.P. Dutta’s
bourgeoisie to intermediate groups variously designated as the
educated middle class the Petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia.
A.R. Desai's work on Indian nationalism took up in this respect
the earlier threads woven into the brilliant analysis of M.N. Roy.
With the growth of modern industries, wrote Professor Desai, new
classes of modern bourgeoisie and a working class came into
existence, along with the processional classes. The intelligentsia,
drawn from the professional classes, developed before the
industrial bourgeoisie and led the national movement in each
phase.

The more recent work of the soviet historians has followed the
lines indicated by A.R Desai. N.M. Goldberg, a leading soviet
ideologist, has introduced a somewhat tentative distinction the
class basis of the moderate and extremist movements within the
Indian National Congress. In his view the native capitalist class,
weak ad tied to foreign economic interests, was irresolute on the
demand which it express leaders; but the petty bourgeois i.e., who
lay behind the extremist movement, were more forthright. In a
complementary study of urban Maharastra in the late nineteenth
century, V.l. Pavlov observes that India's national industrial
bourgeoisie first developed in Bombay by accumulating capital in
comprador activities associated with European merchant capital
operating in the overseas cotton trade and the opium trade with
China. Bipan Chandra, who exhibits this new reaction, assigns the
most important role in the riseof Indian nationalism to the
formulation of an ideology by the Indian intelligentsia, though he
allows some weight to the growth of the Indian capitalist class. To
him, the problem concerns thereal nature of imperialism and how

it contradicted the true interests of all classes of Indian people. In

his view, the realization of this problem by the intelligentsia and
their consequent propagation of an anti-imperialist ideology,
which represented the common interests of all classes of India,
gave rise to Indian nationalism. In any case, Bipan Chandra points
out. It was not until after the First World War that they received
any support from leading men of commerce and industry. Sumit
Sarkar also expresses similar doubts about the simplistic version
of the class-approach used by R.P Dutta and certain soviet
historians. He point to the inconvenient facts of indifference and
even hostility shown towards swodeshi by the bulk of the
professional trading community in Bengal and the lukewarm
attitude of the industrial bourgeoisie of Bombay and Gujarat. He
also observes that the glib talk the urban betty-bourgeois character
of the swodeshi movement obscures the link which so many of the
participants had with land through some form of Zamindari or
intermediate tenure.

Criticism
Bipin Chandra points out that Marxist approach failed to fully
integrate primary anti-imperialist contradiction and the secondary
inner contradictions and tend to counter pose the anti-imperialist
struggle to the class struggle. They also see national movements as
only a bourgeois class movement. They see bourgeoisie playing
the dominant role in the movement- they tend to equate the
national leadership with the bourgeoisie or capitalist class. They
divided the society on the basis of class rather than on national
identity. For Marxist nationalism is a false consciousness.

CONCLUSION
Imperialism was largely responsible which influenced our past.
Being from different religion, caste, language, ethnicity, the only
thing which kept us united was the feeling of love to watch our
country. We fought hard to earn this sovereignty. Yes it’s true that
we faced some real and tough problems, still we managed to keep
ourselves going. Nationalism was not a very new thing. It was just
a very underrated one in the past. With passing time we mastered
the idea of nationalism and even had different perspectives about
it. As more and more people became a part of the movement we
gained more knowledge about it. The nationalist historians were
really vocal about colonialism. They further were divided among
themselves upon their opinions. Some believed that this
nationalism emerged after the arrival of westerns but some still
believe that India had a much bigger past than the westerns
showed.

The Marxist Historians argued against the complete ideology

of nationalists as well as Imperialists. For them the movement was
never about themselves, but it was largely influenced by the
middle class or the bourgeois. They divided the people on the
basis of class and tried to highlight the mindset and the
perceptions of each class. Marxist historians even tried to protest
against this concentrated share of power, though their efforts went
in vain.

This takes us to a fact that the idea of nationalism can differ a lot
depending upon the individual needs. The idea of nationalism is
important but these perspectives are also important as they help in
representing each and every section of the society. Several other
ideologies are also mentioned like the imperialistic and subaltern
which also discusses other factors in detail. At last the notion of
nationalism should not be hijacked by issues like ideologies at all.