Social Background of Indian Nationalism

Title: Social Background of Indian Nationalism

Author: A. R. Desai

Publisher: Popular Prakashan, 1990 (First published 1948)

ISBN: 0861320867

Pages:461

 

When the Muslims demanded partition of pre-independent India on the basis that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate nations, the nationalists were completely taken aback. The very concept of nationhood in the modern sense was hardly a century old by then. Civilizational unity of the country stretching thousands of years was an undisputable fact but the political unity of the landmass was uncertain for most of the time. India arose as a modern nation after the British conquest that subjected her to the ignominy of being a colony to a European power. Nationalism germinated after the rebellion of 1857 and was spearheaded by various socio-economic groups in many phases. As the economy underwent a change from feudalism to full-fledged capitalism, the social groups also changed in texture and content. This book seeks to assess the social background of Indian nationalism from a Marxian perspective. What sets it apart from other books is that it was written very close to independence. Akshay Ramanlal Desai (1915-94) was an Indian sociologist, Marxist and a social activist. He was professor of sociology at the University of Mumbai. He is mainly remembered as the author of this book.

 

Desai presents a good picture of pre-British India that lived out a sordid existence under centuries of Islamic rule. The villages which accommodated the bulk of the population were in a time warp that blindly reproduced the socio-economic activities it had practiced for millennia. The village was self-sufficient and was based on agriculture carried out with the primitive plough and bullock power. A few people were employed in handicrafts by means of simple instruments. A curious thing to note in this basic economic unit was the absence of private ownership of land, which was managed by the community elders. The overlord got his tribute from the produce but had no right of eviction of individual peasants in case of no or short payment. In this crucial sense, Indian feudalism was different from the West. National consciousness did not grow in such an atmosphere of self-contained village societies as it presupposed common political and economic life. Besides, there was no significant economic exchange in the form of trade.

 

The towns performed somewhat better. Desai claims that the economic and cultural life of towns was rich and progressive. It had constant contact with the outside world. Artisans produced articles for the king or other aristocrats for conspicuous consumption. As long as the feudal system prevailed, there were takers for their products. When it collapsed, the workers were rendered jobless. The ruin of urban handicrafts helped to set up exchange relations grow through markets. The producers adapted to the change in demand and diversified into articles which are useful for ordinary and rich merchants. The slew of counterfeit production centres in towns like Agra or Aligarh is a relic of that distant era. Consequent to this, a weak native merchant capitalist class emerged in India at the disintegration of Mughal Empire. However, the exchange and distribution of commodities was only between urban centres.

 

The changes wrought by the British after they conquered India form an interesting part of the narrative. The British conquest was the first of India’s conquests by a modern nation which had abolished feudalism and created a modern bourgeois society in its place. But there were vast differences between the systems existing in India and which existed in Britain. The zamindars had no right of ownership on the land and performed the function of revenue collectors. The British swept away this system with Lord Cornwallis’ Permanent Land Settlement (1793). It converted the revenue-collecting nobles into landlords upon payment of a fixed amount to the government. In return, this new class of landlords supported the British thereafter. In the Deccan, it was the small landholders who proliferated. So they introduced the Ryotwari system in which the individual cultivator became the owner of the land. In this way, private property was introduced in India which is the basic requirement of a capitalist society. The village agricultural output was brought within the sphere of domestic and foreign markets by trade in grains and cash crops such as indigo, tea and coffee. This helped the villages to become an organic part of Indian economy. The author acclaims this as a positive aspect of the British conquest. The political unity which was enhanced by the exchange-based economic system set up a capitalist economy in India and nationalism was a byproduct of the unity of the land politically, socially and economically.

 

Once nationalism takes root, it needs to be nurtured. This task was taken up by English-educated intellectuals who advocated social reform measures such as the banning of suttee and encouraging widow remarriage. After the 1857 revolt, the government did not intervene in religious matters. Very soon movements taking sustenance from India’s perceived glorious past emerged. Mass participation came about in movements related to agriculture, trade and demands for representation in the bureaucracy. The plan for regeneration and restructuring of national agriculture presupposed a national government which reflected the will of the people. The colonial government viewed India only as a producer of raw material for British industry and as a market for their produce. As the nationalists discerned the true colours of the British administrators, there arose a strong desire among them to unseat the aliens and bring in a government elected and governed by Indians. Development of transport, communication and modern education cemented nationalist ideas.

 

The book is authored by a Marxist scholar and he goes on to examine the involvement of Indian industrialists in the national movement and how the movement was bankrolled by them. He accuses Gandhi of dancing to the tune of Indian industry. Indian capitalists began to enter the nationalist movement in the first decade of the twentieth century. They gravitated to the Congress and supported the program of Swadeshi and boycott of British goods since it also served its own class interest. Industrialists strongly supported Gandhi and his control over the Congress. Wealthy industrialists subsidized such anachronous schemes as revival of handspun clothing. Moreover, Gandhi opposed the revolutionary concept of class struggle and instead called for collaboration of all sections of people. This endeared him to the industrialists. Going a step further, Desai alleges that the bourgeois leadership of the Congress under Gandhi was closely aligned to the vested interests like the Zamindari (p.354). Gandhian mass movements had a pressure value which the capitalists appreciated. The movements became levers to secure from the British the satisfaction of their demands such as safeguards for Indian industry and commerce.

 

The author’s ideological commitment to Marxism clouds his judgement, colours the analysis and confounds the results. In his statement that ‘pre-British Indian education was controlled only by Brahmins and they imparted superstition and conformity in the pupils’, the entire corpus of Indian knowledge is blackened as superstition. But on the other hand, ‘Islamic schools were open to all because of the democratic character of Islam’ (p.138). Clearly, the Leftist-Islamist nexus is very old and solid. Desai fails to recognise the civilizational unity that integrated India from the very distant past but claims that the religio-ideological unity did not overlap into political unity. He then grudgingly admits that ‘it is true that a conception of unity of India existed and flourished in pre-British times’, but then qualifies this ‘to be conceived as the religio-cultural unity of the Hindus’ (p.167). In this metaphorical twisting of the knife, the entire edifice of Indian unity is trivialized as naturally occurring among the followers of a common religion! In addition to this biased rhetoric, the book abounds in a nauseating excess of communist lingo. The word capitalism/capitalist in its political sense is used 220 times in this book along with a liberal dose of quotes from Karl Marx, Lenin and even Stalin. The author claims that ‘capitalism is socially, politically and culturally stronger than feudalism because it employs a higher technique of production’. The sole reason behind this generalization is that Marx said so. This book was written when Indian independence was fast approaching and Desai’s estimation of the nation’s forward movement exposes the lack of his perceptive rigour. He prophesies that independence, self-determination of nationalities and socialist economic system are the prerequisites for a complete solution of the problem of nationalities and minorities. This is all very well until one recollects that the socialist economic system brought the country very near to the edge of bankruptcy in 1991 and had to be disbanded on a war footing.

 

One upside of the author is that he doesn’t attempt to hide his political orientation. Right at the start, he confirms that historical materialism is the methodology applied to his study. This book treats the various language groups in India such as Marathas, Kannadas, Telugus or Gujaratis as separate nationalities, but stops just short of advocating self-determination and sovereignty to them. But the depressed classes among Hindus are treated as a ‘national minority’ like Muslims. The author claims to follow a rational outlook and terms like ‘superstition’, ‘oppression’ and ‘discrimination’ are freely used in the discourse on early Indian belief systems. However, when it comes to Islam, he takes on kid gloves and is all praise! He even compares pan-Islamism to humanism (p.301) and argues that ‘Islam arose out of the democratic ferment of the common people of Arabia against the privileged state of society’ (p.301). Statements like ‘communalism of the Muslim masses in India is generated by the economic exploitation by capitalists, landlords, moneylenders and merchants who were all Hindus’ (p.372) provide a secular prop to the fanatical argument that divided India. With such a partisan view in mind, Desai considers the Moplah Rebellion in Malabar to be ‘economic in content’. At this point, he might have felt a pang of guilt and proceeds to admit that it was ‘religious in form’.

 

The book typifies the genre of leftist analysis of Indian history and society. It is recommended with a caveat that readers should first dehusk the political narrative to reach the kernel of truth inside.

 

Rating: 2 Star