THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT AND ITS LEGACY

While India inherited its economic and administrative structures from the precolonial and colonial periods, the values and ideals—the vision—and the well-defined and comprehensive ideology that were to inspire it in nation-building were derived from the national movement. Representing the Indian people, it incorporated various political trends from the right to the left which were committed to its ideological goals.

1. Character of the National Movement

1. Mass Movement -The freedom struggle was perhaps the greatest mass movement in world history. After 1919, it was built around the basic notion that the people had to and could play an active role in politics and their liberation, and it succeeded in politicizing, and drawing into political action a large part of the Indian people. Gandhiji, the leader who moved and mobilized millions into politics
2. Satyagraha, as a form of struggle a violent revolution, which could be waged by a minority of committed cadres and fighters, a non-violent revolution needed the political mobilization of millions and the passive support of the vast majority.
3. Representative The Indian national movement was fully committed to a polity based on representative democracy and the full range of civil liberties for the individual. From its foundation in 1885, the Indian National Congress, the main political organ of the national movement, was organized on democratic lines. From the very beginning, the movement popularized democratic ideas and institutions among the people and struggled for the introduction of parliamentary institutions based on popular elections. Starting from the turn of the twentieth century, the nationalists demanded the introduction of an adult franchise. Much attention was also paid to the defence of the freedom of the Press and speech against attacks by the colonial authorities besides the promotion of other political and economic policies. Furthermore, the democratic style of functioning was not peculiar to Congress. Most other political organizations such as the Congress Socialist party, trade unions and Kisan Sabhas, students’, writers’ and women’s organizations, and professional associations functioned in the manner of political democracies.

4. Civil Liberties-Congress ministries, formed in 1937, visibly extended civil liberties to the resurgent peasants’, workers’ and students’. The major leaders of the movement were committed wholeheartedly to civil liberties. For example, Lokamanya Tilak proclaimed that ‘liberty of the Press and liberty of speech give birth to a nation and nourish it’. Gandhiji wrote in 1922: ‘We must first make good the right of free speech and free association.
5. National movement indigenized popular sovereignty, representative government and civil liberties- It was the national movement and not the bureaucratic, authoritarian colonial state that indigenized, popularized and rooted then in India. The colonial administration and ideologies not only tampered with civil liberties and resisted the nationalist demand for the introduction of a parliamentary system based on popular elections but, from the middle of the nineteenth century, promoted the view that for geographical, historical and socio-cultural reasons India was unfit for democracy. It was in opposition to this colonial ideology and practice that the national movement, influenced deeply by democratic thought and traditions of the Enlightenment, succeeded in making democracy and civil liberty basic elements of the Indian political ethos. If free India could start and persist with a democratic polity, it was because the national movement had already firmly established the civil libertarian and democratic tradition among the Indian people.

2. Economic Underpinnings of the National Movement

1. Self-reliance -The vision of a self-reliant independent economy was developed and popularized. Self-reliance was defined not as autarchy but as avoidance of a subordinate position in the world economy.
2. Economic Development- the nationalists accepted from the beginning and with near unanimity the objective of economic development towards modern agriculture and industry based on modern science and technology. They also emphasized the close link between industry and agriculture. Industrial development was seen as essential for rural development, for it alone could reduce population pressure on land and rural unemployment. Within industrialization, the emphasis was on the creation of an indigenous heavy capital goods or machine-making sector whose absence was seen as a cause both of economic dependence and underdevelopment. Simultaneously, for essential consumer goods, the nationalists advocated reliance on medium, small-scale and cottage industries. Small-scale and cottage industries were to be encouraged and protected as a part of the development strategy of increasing employment.

3. Foreign Capital - Indian nationalists were opposed to the unrestricted entry of foreign capital because it replaced and suppressed Indian capital, especially under conditions of foreign political domination. According to them, real and self-reliant development could occur only through indigenous capital. On the other hand, the nationalists averred that if India was politically independent and free to evolve its own economic policies, it might use foreign capital to supplement indigenous efforts, because of its vast capital requirements and need to import machinery and advanced technology from other countries.

4. Economic Planning- Economic planning by the government and the massive development of the public sector was widely accepted in the thirties. The state was to develop large-scale and key industries apart from infrastructure, such as power, irrigation, roads and water supply, where large resources were needed, and which were beyond the capacity of the Indian capital. As early as 1931, the Resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic Programme, adopted at the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress declared that in independent India ‘the State shall own or control key industries and services, mineral resources, railways, waterways, shipping and other means of public transport. Congress sponsored in 1938 the National Planning Committee while the Indian capitalists formulated the Bombay Plan in 1943.

5. Socialist orientation- The Indian national movement was quite radical by contemporary standards. From the beginning, it had a pro-poor orientation. For example, the poverty of the masses and the role of colonialism as its source was the starting point of Dadabhai Naoroji’s economic critique of colonialism. With Gandhi and the rise of a socialist current, this orientation was further strengthened. The removal of poverty became the most important objective next to the overthrow of colonialism. From the late twenties, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, the Congress Socialists, the Communists, the Revolutionary Terrorists and various other socialist groups strove to give the national movement a socialist orientation and to popularize the vision of a socialist India after independence. Socialist ideas assumed prominence within the movement, attracting the younger nationalist cadre and large sections of the nationalist intelligentsia, but they did not become the dominant current. Jawaharlal Nehru, the major ideologue of socialism in pre-1947 India, readily conceded that Congress had not in any way accepted socialism as its ideal.

6. Egalitarian Society- An aspect of its commitment to the creation of an egalitarian society was the national movement’s opposition to all forms of inequality, discrimination and oppression based on sex and caste. It allied itself with and often subsumed movements and organizations for the social liberation of women and the lower castes. The national movement brought millions of women out of their homes into the political arena. Its reform agenda included the improvement of their social position including the right to work and education and to equal political rights. The movement, however, failed to form and propagate a strong anti-caste ideology, though Gandhiji did advocate the total abolition of the caste system itself in the forties. It was because of the atmosphere and sentiments generated by the national movement that no voices of protest were raised in the Constituent Assembly when reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were mooted. Similarly, the passage of the Hindu Code Bills in the fifties was facilitated by the national movement’s efforts in favour of the social liberation of women.

3. Secularism

• Secularism was defined in a comprehensive manner which meant the separation of religion from politics and the state, the treatment of religion as a private matter for the individual, state neutrality towards or equal respect for all religions, absence of discrimination between followers of different religions and active opposition to communalism From its early days, the national movement was committed to secularism.
• Karachi resolution of 1931 declared that in free India ‘every citizen shall enjoy freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess and practice his religion,’ that all citizens would be ‘equal before the law, irrespective of caste, creed or sex,’ that no disability would attach to any citizen because of caste, creed or sex ‘regarding public employment, office of power or honour, and in the exercise of any trade or calling,’ and that ‘the State shall Observe neutrality regarding all religions.’
• It is true that the national movement was not able to counter the forces of communalism adequately or evolve an effective strategy against them. This contributed to the Partition and the communal carnage of 1946-47.
• But it was because of the strong secular commitment of the national movement that, despite these traumatic events, independent India made secularism a basic pillar of its Constitution, as well as of its state and society.

4. Nation the Making

• From the outset the movement emphasized its all-Indianness. For example, the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 not as a federation of the existing provincial political organizations but as a new nationwide organization committed to nationwide political mobilization based on all-India demands.
• Its cadres and its appeal, its audience and above all its leadership were drawn from all over India. From the beginning, it emphasized the unity and integrity of the country.
• In fact, it was the alliance of the state's peoples’ movements, as part of the all-India national movement that enabled easy integration of the princely states with the rest of India after independence.
• This all-Indianness was not a peculiar feature of the Indian National Congress. Other political parties and popular mass organizations too followed suit.
• To the nationalist leaders, the notion of a structured nation did not contradict its unity.
• They not only acknowledged but also appreciated India’s rich cultural, linguistic, religious, ethnic and regional diversity.
• The emergence of a strong national identity and the flowering of other narrower identities were seen as mutually reinforcing processes.
• The diversity and multiple identities were not seen as obstacles to be overcome but as positive features that were sources of strength to Indian culture, civilization and the nation.

Foreign Policy

Independent India’s foreign policy was also rooted in the principles and policies evolved by the nationalists since the 1870s. Over time, Indian leaders had developed a broad international outlook based on opposition to colonialism and sympathy and support for the people fighting for their independence. In the thirties and forties, the national movement took a strong anti-fascist stand.

Political Norms

• A mass movement has also to incorporate and accommodate diverse political and ideological currents to mobilize millions Congress, therefore, succeeded in uniting persons of different ideological bents, different levels of commitment and vastly different capacities to struggle together for some broad common objectives and principles.
• Congress was able to achieve this task by functioning democratically. There was a constant public debate and contention between individuals and groups which subscribed to divergent political-ideological tendencies or paradigms, even though they shared many elements of a common vision and were united in struggle.
• The legacy of the national movement could be summarized as a Commitment to political and economic independence, modern economic development, the ending of inequality, oppression and domination in all forms, representative democracy and civil liberties, internationalism and independent foreign policy, promotion of the process of nation-in-the making based on the joyous acceptance of the diversity, and achievement of all these objectives through accommodative politics and with the support of a large majority of the people.