The Development of Indian National Identity

According to academic Gianfranco The Development of Poggi, national identity is an essential Indian National Identity ingredient of citizenship. Each nation-state is And the impact of the British “made [a] historical reality… purposively constructed, functionally specific machine.”18 Raj Each has a constant need to legitimize itself in Zainab Zaheer the eyes of its citizens by providing a national ideology. The modern nation-state mobilizes his paper will attempt to answer the commitment based on this idea of national question “How did modern-day identity. This commitment requires that T Indian national identity develop and Indian national identity be fluid, continually in what ways was it a product of the British sustained, and able to change. Raj?” In order to do this, the essay will first The study of how these definitions trace the development of a unifying national apply to different states is vast, but for the identity in British India, and then tie this to purposes of this paper we will focus on Indian key elements of national identity in the nationalism. modern-day state. In order to explore the gradual formation of a distinct national FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO INDIAN rhetoric, this paper will briefly explore the NATIONALISM work of both Mahatma Gandhi and British India was ruled by centralized Jawaharlal Nehru, and the roles they played in state and political institutions. By building this shaping Indian national consciousness. overarching administrative structure, the British would unknowingly ease the NATIONAL IDENTITY VS. NATIONALISM development Indian nationalism. During and In order to define national identity, it after Indian independence, influential is necessary to understand the closely linked nationalist leaders would emphasize that both but distinct concept of nationalism. This the beliefs and efforts of the Indian people paper chooses to define nationalism as a belief would be best served if the unity of the in the significance of a geographical or imperial state were kept intact but was demographical region and a conviction in that controlled by Indians. region’s right to independence in order to Unlike most colonial nationalist protect its culture or ethnicity. In contrast, projects, Indian nationalists did not want to scholars often define national identity as a carve one piece of British India for sense of belonging to a state or nation, which themselves. Instead, they sought to claim the is represented by a culture and language, and a entirety of that empire, aiming to bring a land 17 variety of traditions. with fourteen major languages and over two hundred dialects under an overarching identity: India. According to Joya Chatterji, 17 Richard D. Ashmore, Lee Jussim and David Wilder, Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict, and 18 Gianfranco Poggi, The Development of the Conflict Reduction (New York: Oxford University Modern State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 74–75. Press, 1978), 95-101. JPI: Spring 2016 Issue 8 “[t]he British in India were not in the business communications networks such as railways, of promoting nationhood amongst their roads, and a telegraph network were expanded subjects: indeed, when challenged by critics in order to rapidly send troops across the claiming to speak for an Indian nation, their subcontinent in case of rebellion, and response was to declare that India was irrigation projects were carried out throughout nothing more than a “geographical the Punjab (a geographical region in one of expression”.19 This geographical expression the northernmost parts of the Indian did not consist of a community that identified subcontinent). This transformation came at a itself as a nation or as a strong state that huge cost. White troops were paid higher sought to create a sense of nationalism. Unlike wages and taxes were raised and collected other nationalist projects in the nineteenth more efficiently in order to pay for century (such as the Egyptians against the widespread development. Ottoman Empire or the Slavs against the More white men were brought to Habsburg Empire) India did not face internal India to “develop” the Indian economy and revolutions or external wars, both of which local bodies were created to collect taxes. had proven to inspire modern nationalist Local populations took the opportunity to call movements in the past. for self-government and to try to influence After the War of Independence in policy locally and at imperial centers of power, 1857, the East India Company’s rule was such as Calcutta and London. This process replaced by the British monarchy and new continued to escalate over the next several structures of government were established, years, resulting in a situation where: including governors, presidencies and provinces. A system of civil servants and [T]he very structures of the British subordinates was created with the express Empire unwittingly generated the goal of involving the “natives” in government, motor force that drove Indians in order to create a sense of ownership among operating in these different arenas of the population without truly devolving power politics to forge new linkages and to them. “This new apparatus of rule sought alliances. These alliances were the to recruit Indians in vast numbers into the crucial adhesive that came to bind the service of a government capable of local, the provincial, and the all-India intervening more effectively than before in arenas into a single, interconnected Indian life in areas that the East India field of politics, matching the Company—its reformist policies interconnected structures of notwithstanding—had in practice left well government with which it aimed to alone.”20 To bring stability and prevent any engage.21 threat of revolt, several measures were taken: more white troops were stationed in India, THE INDIAN NATION AS AN IDEA 19 Joya Chatterji, “Nationalisms in India, 1857- As the state developed in the 1947,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of nineteenth century so did civil society, public Nationalism, ed. John Breuilly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 243. 20 Ibid., 245. 21 Ivi. JPI: Spring 2016 Issue 9 awareness, and involvement. Religious, legal, that concerned Indians, regardless of region and bureaucratic literati (those whose families or religion. By this time, all-Indian nationalism had served British rulers for generations, had spread beyond elitist circles, spurred by including Mughals and regional nawabs) had the increasing intervention of British learned English and understood European administration and an increase in English history. They began to question the education. This further catalyzed the creation disparaging “white man’s narrative” that of a “secular-intelligentsia” that pushed for explained how and why earlier rulers on the nationalism.24 subcontinent had so easily been defeated. As more natives gained an English Convinced that it must be because Indians education and became involved in local and had lost their culture, some like Raja Ram provincial government structures, they Mohun Roy and Sayyid Ahmed Khan, called became increasingly aware of the enforced for modernization and reform by lobbying the difference between themselves and the British government to support educational “whites.” The blatant racial discrimination initiatives (like Khan’s university at Aligrah) they faced turned many “would-be and to outlaw “backward” practices such as collaborators” against their colonial masters.25 satti (the burning of widows).22 Some scholars Their resentment needed an outlet; the argue that these movements were early number of printing presses owned by Indians examples of India’s emerging constitutional increased dramatically. The content they liberalism because such reformers insisted that produced challenged the government and it was the government’s responsibility to included the Indian public in the conversation provide for the common good. Later, the on the Indian nation. The desire for paper will argue that Indian nationalists only protection and justice from the state inspired sought to gather power for the greater good a generation of lawyers and journalists. Slowly, of those who fit their definition of “Indian.” the term “native” came to define one’s Towards the close of the nineteenth “Indian-ness”. The varied peoples ruled by century, the idea of a nationalism began to the Raj came together under a unifying, come to the forefront on the Indian territorially-defined sense of identity. subcontinent. In 1893, Dadabhai Naoroji, one of the founding fathers of the Indian National THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL Congress, said, “I am an Indian and owe duty CONGRESS & GANDHI to my work and all my countrymen. Whether The Indian National Congress was a I am a Hindu or a Mahommedan, a Parsi, a group of lawyers and journalists, educated Christian, or of any other creed, I am above elites with Western education, who sought all an Indian. Our country is India and our greater native representation, freedom of nationality is Indian.”23 This was became the INC’s central tenet, to influence policy issues 24 Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1983), xxii–xxiii. 22 Christopher A. Bayly, “Rammohun Roy and 25 Rajat Kanta Ray, Social Conflict and Political the Advent of Constitutional Liberalism in India, Unrest in Bengal, 1875–1927 (Oxford: Oxford 1800–1830,” Modern Intellectual History 4, 1, University Press, 1984); 2007, doi: 10.1017/S1479244306001028. Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885–1947 (New 23 Chatterji, “Nationalisms in India,” 249. York: Macmillan, 2000), 22–24. JPI: Spring 2016 Issue 10 press, equal treatment, and economic refuse to uphold the Government by opportunity. The Congress contributed withdrawing cooperation from it. 27 significantly to all-India nationalism by Gandhi encouraged the all-India providing a forum for conversation and Congress to demand full independence, or organized all-India nationalism by fashioning swaraj, and called for Indians to boycott “a secular critique of British rule.”26 Their promotions to the provincial councils strategy was to appeal to the British promised under diarchy (the Act of 1920).

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