Evolution of Indian Nationalism Under British Rule

Posted on Mar 2, 2024 in Social sciences

The history of seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth-century India is primarily the history of the formation of a nation and the struggle against British Colonial rule. Indian nationalism is a historical phenomenon which happened in modern history. Nationalism in India evolved during the British colonial period as a result of various subjective and objective factors and forces, which developed within the Indian society under the conditions of British rule and have impacted the world.

Pre-British India was unique, differently structured and traditionally set under various princely states which sharply differed from the pre-capitalist medieval societies of Europe. It was a vast country inhabited by a huge population speaking many languages with different religions. Socially it was dominated by a population which was Hindu in character, but there was no homogeneity. This extreme social and religious division of the Hindus in particular and the Indians, in general, presents a peculiar background to the growth of Indian nationalism. It was under the conditions of political subjection that the British introduced for their purposes certain changes which introduced new social forces which radically changed the economic structure of Indian society. It established in particular:

• A centralised state (with a modem civil service, centralised administration, a judiciary based on English common law substantially new land ownership laws, the zamindari system etc.)
• Modern education including in western sciences (with the establishment of universities and colleges)
• Modern means of transport and communication (postal system, railways, roads etc.)
• The modern printing press
• Mechanised machine-based industries

Thus, British Raj tried to bring changes to all social forces and tried to exploit the Indian society for the benefit of the British Crown. Revolting against all such exploitative characteristics of British rule Indian nationalism has raised its voice and tried to manifest into a new nation.

It has been argued by some scholars that the development of a nationalist consciousness happened as part of a historical process triggered by the national movement which, to begin with, was anti-colonial but later was deeply national.

Concept of Nationalism

In the very concept of nationalism in general (and not merely the development of nationalism in India) some of the nationalist approaches have been quite novel and different from each other. For example, J Anthony Smith has argued that there is a ‘core doctrine of nationalism’ which includes three ideals: (a) collective self-determination of the people, (b) the expression of the national character and individuality and (c) the vertical division of the world into unique nations each contributing its special genius to the common fund of humanity.

Looking at the cultural aspects, Plamenatz has said nationalism is a cultural phenomenon which takes a political form through the acceptance of a common set of standards by which the state of development of a particular national culture is measured. Thus, with the nationalist approach, it can be assumed that homogeneity between people in a group leads to the birth of a nation. As Gellner has said: ‘it is not the case that nationalism imposes homogeneity; it is rather that a homogeneity imposed by objective, inescapable imperative eventually appears on the surface in the form of nationalism’. The objective inescapable imperative that Gellner refers to is the cultural homogeneity that he argued is an essential concomitant of the industrial society that evolves from the growth of industrial capitalism. Gellner also argued nationalism though it may define and identify itself in the name of a folk culture or original culture of a particular people may be just an imposition of a high culture on society.

Anderson, in his study of nationalism, has found usually a historically political community always existed before the cultural systems of a religious community and the development of the dynastic realm. He had identified that the printing press and the spread of Christianity particularly Protestantism had played a substantive role in the emergence of nationalism. He has argued what made the new communities possible was an interaction

Imperialist Perspective

In many ways, India had never been a nation until the British came and ruled us for centuries. In a land as vast and inhabited by a population as large and as varied as India’s, the process of the growth of Indian nationalism has been very complex and interesting. The Indian population spoke many languages and followed many religions and sects (within a religion) and the population of the most populous faith, Hindus, was divided along caste lines. With the existing diversity, Indian nationalism has simply been strengthened by the anti-colonial spirit.

Thus many thinkers, particularly many British historians, have taken the view that India could not have seen the development of nationalism and become one united nation unless the British had come and established (as they did) a colony by uniting the nation into one administrative whole. So, students, it’s always important to think now, “could India have developed to a greater extent if the colonial rule had not intervened?”. How we can conclude that nationalism in India has evolved in the background to eradicate the exploitative characteristics of the British administration.

Let us discuss the various definition of nationalism and try to find out how and why India wasn’t readily regarded as a nation by various eminent histories. It is been said that India is a state but a “nation in Making”. The British historian E.H. Carr termed nationalism as the term nation has been used to denote a human group with the following characteristics:

• The idea of a common government whether as a reality in the present or past or as an aspiration of the future.
• A certain size and closeness of contact between all its members.
• A more or less defined territory.
• Certain characteristics (of which the most frequent is language) clearly distinguishing the nation from other nations and non-national groups.
• Certain interests’ common to the individual members.
• A certain degree of common feeling or will, associated with a picture of the nation in the minds of the individual members’ (E.H. Carr (1939), NATIONALISM, quoted in R.P. Dutt: 21)

It is evident from the above definition, that India could hardly have been called a nation by them when they arrived. The early British imperialists before any sort of national fervour had made a beginning was convinced that India wasn’t a nation.

The Britishers found it difficult to mentally cope with the idea of a national India even as late as the 1930s when the Simon Commission’s Report was published. Even as late as the 1930s the British were holding on to their belief that India was somehow being held and governed by them and without them would break into pieces. But in reality that nationalist conception among the masses had set in.

British scholars like L.F. Rushbrook Williams whom R.P. Dutt described as one of the ‘modem imperialist apologists’ had tried to suggest that it was the civilised British regime and its modernising and influence that contributed to the creation of national consciousness. They have suggested that Indians were educated by the British in the democratic liberal ways of English history and its gradual acquisition of popular liberties impressed British-trained and educated Indians who then as the next step demanded or started wishing for the same standards for themselves and the Indian people.

In the words of R.P. Dutt, the democratic evolution of the modern age, which developed in many lands, including England as one of its earliest homes is not the peculiar patent of England. Nor is it correct that it requires the alien domination of a country to implant the seeds of democratic revolution. The American Declaration of Independence, and still more the great French Revolution with its gospel of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, far more than the already ageing English parliamentary-monarchical compromise, was the great inspirers of the democratic movement of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 performed a corresponding role as the signal and starting point of the awakening of the peoples, and especially of the awakening consciousness of the subject peoples of Asia and all the colonial countries to the claim of national freedom

Imperialist Perspective Continued

The colonial approach mainly supported and believed in the benevolent attitude of the British administration. They wished to emphasise the benevolent effect of British rule and many of them genuinely believed what they said. The colonial approach was theorised for the first time by Bruce T. McCully, an American scholar, in 1940. The liberal academic structure to this approach was developed by Reginald Coupland and after 1947 by Percival Spear who argued the British proved their benevolent intentions by ultimately agreeing to grant India independence which they could have easily refused and held on to. A new group of neo-traditionalist historians who are referred to as the Cambridge School with prominent thinkers being Anil Seal, John Gallagher, Judith Brown and others have also argued along essentially adopting the colonial approach when they have argued that India was not even a ‘nation-in-making’ but a conglomeration of castes, religious and ethnic communities and linguistic groups of masses.

They have argued the national movement was a forum for the various divisions to compete for favours and to strengthen their positions and pursue their narrow communities. The basic contradiction between the interests of the Indian people and the British rulers that led to the rise of the Indian national movement is denied by them. They also vehemently deny or refuse to accept that the economic, social, cultural and political development of India required the overthrow of colonialism. They do not agree that India was in the process of unfolding into a nation and insist India was just a conglomeration of castes and communities. The nationalism that was expressed was merely a cover for political organisations that were formed basically along caste and community lines and were competing with each for favours and gains from the state. Anil Seal of the Imperialist writes: ‘What from a distance appear as their political strivings were often, on close examination, their efforts to conserve or improve the position of their prescriptive groups’? (Anil Seal: 342) (Old Study Material, SOL)The colonial approach ignores the effects of war, inflation, disease, drought, depression etc as causative factors in the rise of Indian nationalism not to mention spiritual and other reasons and the kinship of religious culture that existed between peoples from different regions who spoke different languages but shared similar religious beliefs. The school of analysis that adopts the colonial approach has argued the Indian national movement was a cover for the struggle for power between various sections of the Indian elite, and between them and the foreign elite.

Marxist Perspective

The Marxist approach can be said to have been pioneered by R. Palme Dutt and later by A.R. Desai but many others have contributed. The Marxist approach recognises the contradiction and conflict that developed between the interests of the Indian people and the British rulers. They have seen that as the principal reason for the development of nationalism but they also recognise the inner contradictions and conflict of interests between the various economic classes. They highlight and bring out the difference in the interests of the Indian rich elite and the poorer classes and integrate that into their analysis of the development of Indian nationalism and the resistance to colonialism. They argued that the Indian national movement of India was a movement of the bourgeoisie class.

Indeed while agreeing with the nationalist analysis that the British rule resulted in mass poverty because of the exploitative destruction of the rural economy of agriculture and handicrafts they also see it as having caused some good as it also caused a structural transformation of the Indian society by destroying the feudal systems and modes of production and replaced that by a capitalist machine led mode of production. Thus the feudal caste and class hierarchies of the villages were weakened, and new classes emerged in Indian society particularly as people migrated to the cities to work in factories. Also, a new state structure was created based on a new administrative and judicial system of English.

Colonial Exploitation and Poverty

In the words of Prof. Irfan Habib the unification of the country on an economic plane through the construction of railways and the introduction of the telegraph in the latter half of the nineteenth century, undertaken for its benefit by the colonial regime, and the centralisation of the administration which the new modes of communications and transport made possible, played their part in making Indians view India as a prospective single political entity. The modernization of education (undertaken in a large part by indigenous effort) and the rise of the press disseminated the ideas of India’s nationhood and the need for constitutional reform.The imperialist exploitation of India for instance and the role of the British finance capital (business groups like Andrew Yule and Jardine Skinner), of the profits made by the British ruling class and the common misery of the people as a consequence of that exploitation and the struggles that that misery inevitably led to among the masses irrespective of religious or racial divisions and the ruthless suppression of those struggles by the British administration all combined and added up and piled up over the years to cause the birth and growth of national consciousness among the Indian people. During the British colonial rule, first under the East Indian Company and subsequently, under the British government from 1858 onwards, the Indian people entered into a period of severe repression and exploitation. There were several peasant rebellions, which were prominent in the history of eighteen-century India. There were of course a large number of famines, diseases and death during this period.

Rise of Indian Bourgeoisie to the dominant position

According to Dutt, the Indian National Movement arose from social conditions, from the conditions of imperialism and its system of exploitation, and from the social and economic forces generated within Indian society under the conditions of that exploitation; the rise of the Indian bourgeoisie and its growing competition against the domination of the British bourgeoisie was inevitable, whatever the system of education also strengthened the bourgeoisie, clerks or Babus. (R. Palme Dutt: 303)

The Marxist approach sees the natural uprising of the poor in reaction to British exploitation having been usurped by the elite bourgeois leadership that develop particularly in the Congress. The Marxist approach has been criticised for having ignored the mass aspects of the national movement and the emotive religious and cultural aspects and reactions. Professor Bipan Chandra (and others) for instance has commented: ‘They see the bourgeoisie as playing the dominant role in the movement – they tend to equate or conflate the national leadership with the bourgeoisie or capitalist class. They also interpret the class character of the movement in terms of its forms of struggle (i.e., in its non-violent character) and in the fact that it made strategic retreats and compromises.