About the Book
Seventeen distinguished historians and political scientists discuss the phenomenon of Indian Nationalism, one hundred years after the founding of the Congress party. They offer important new interpretations of Nationalism’s evolution during more than six decades of crucial change and rapid growth. As India’s foremost political institution, the National Congress with its changing fortunes mirrored Indian aspirations, ideals, dreams, and failures during the country’s struggle for nationhood.
Many difficulties faced by the pre-independence Indian National Congress are critically examined for the first time in this volume. Major times of crisis and transition are considered, as well as the tension between mass action and political control, and the problem of creating and maintaining unity in the face of divisive social and economic interests and between deeply hostile religious communities. A composite portrait of the Congress Party emerges. We see a coalition of often conflicting communities and interests much like India itself, struggling to stay together, tenuously united by little more at times than a common “enemy,” the imperial British Raj. But linked together in precarious, seemingly haphazard fashion, shifting networks of elite political entrepreneurs manage to keep India’s National Congress alive. They kept it alive long enough to convince the British that it would be easier to “Quit India” than to try to hang onto it by force.
With the abrupt transfer of power from the British to the independent Dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947, Congress provided institutional sinews for the administration of what had been British India and over 500 Princely States. By contributing to a deeper understanding of India’s nationalist experience, this volume may illuminate the experience of other Third World states.
Contributors
S. Bhattacharya
Judith M. Brown
Mushirul Hasan
Zoya Hasan
D.A. Low
Claude Markovits
John R. McLane
W.H. Morris-Jones
Gyanendra Pandey
Bimal Prasad
Rajat Kanta Ray
Barbara N. Ramusack
Peter D. Reeves
Hitesranjan Sanyal
Richard Sisson
Stanley Wolpert
Eleanor Zelliot
Contents
Part I. Congress and Indian Nationalism
1. Congress and Indian Nationalism: Political Ambiguity and the Problems of Social Conflict and Party Control / Richard Sisson
2. The Indian National Congress in Nationalist Perspective / Stanley Wolpert
Part II. The Emergence of Political Elites and the Problem of Mobilization
3. The Early Congress, Hindu Populism, and the Wider Society / John R. McLane
4. Moderates, Extremists, and Revolutionaries: Bengal, 1900-1908 / Rajat Kanta Ray
5. "If It Be Real, What Does It Mean?": Some British Perceptions of the Indian National Congress / W. H. Morris-Jones
Part III. Social Representation and the Problem of Political Control
6. Congress and the Nation, 1917-1947 / Gyanendra Pandey
7. Congress and "Mass Contacts," 1936-1937: Ideology, Interests, and Conflict over the Basis of Party Representation / D.A. Low
8. Adjusting to Congress Dominance: The UP Landlords, 1937-1947 / Peter Reeves
9. Congress and the Untouchables, 1917-1950 / Eleanor Zelliot
10. The Muslim Mass Contacts Campaign: Analysis of a Strategy of Political Mobilization / Mushirul Hasan
11. Swaraj and the Kamgar: The Indian National Congress and the Bombay Working Class, 1919-1931 / S. Bhattacharya
12. Congress Policy Toward Business in the Pre-Independence Era / Claude Markovits
Part IV: Leadership, Conflict, and the Problem of Unity
13. The Mahatma in Old Age: Gandhi's Role in Indian Political Life, 1935-1942 / Judith Brown
14. Congress versus the Muslim League, 1935-1937 / Bimal Prasad
15. Congress in Aligarh District, 1930-1946: Problems of Political Mobilization / Zoya Hasan
16. Congress in Southwestern Bengal: The Anti-Union Board Movement in Eastern Medinipur, 1921 / Hitesranjan Sanyal
17. Congress and the People's Movement in Princely India: Ambivalence in Strategy and Organization / Barbara N. Ramusack
About the Author / Editor
Richard Sisson is Professor of Political Science and
Stanley Wolpert is Professor of Indian History at the California, Los Angeles.
