Chapter 10 - Inter-war

Summary

This chapter and the one following consider the decline and transformation of liberal ideologies in India after the First World War. In broad terms, the liberal project had been built around the concept of the politically empowered and educated subject, who was expected to debate rationally with his peers. This subject was to operate in a public sphere in which informed Indians resolved political issues within a constitution broadly modelled on the British version, but independent of direct British control. This public sphere was also to remain separate from a parallel sphere of this-worldly religion which would inform but not intrude into it.

Every one of these foundations was fragmented or destroyed after 1914. The rational, debating subject was assailed by the Gandhian ideal of satyagraha and the nationalist construct of a sacrificing, ascetic subject, whether violent or non-violent. Equally, Gandhi, early proponents of Hindutva and Muslim idealists smashed down the fragile liberal barrier between the public and religious spheres. Marxist notions of class undermined ideas of tutelage and education. In the public sphere, what social scientists have called a ‘bank-run’ of claim-making and political outrage by people who would no longer accept patient subservience to either the British or Indian elites, buffeted projects of constitution-making and civil society bodies alike.