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Federalism, Representation, and Direct Democracy in 1920s India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2021

Tejas Parasher
Tejas Parasher*
Affiliation:
King's College, University of Cambridge
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article reconstructs an overlooked tradition of direct democracy within early twentieth-century Indian political thought. It focuses on four political thinkers—Radhakumud Mookerji (1884–1964), Brajendranath Seal (1864–1938), Radhakamal Mukerjee (1889–1968), and Beni Prasad (1900–1945)—all of whom were central figures in a genre of federalist historiography of premodern Indian politics which emerged in the 1910s. The article interprets these thinkers as critics of the Indian nationalist movement's embrace of electoral government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through a contextual reading of their major written works in the late 1910s and the 1920s, the article traces the rise of a distinct theory of federalist constitutionalism, modelled on premodern state structures and oriented towards the legislative empowerment of local citizens’ assemblies.

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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 444 - 472
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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36 Niraja Gopal Jayal, Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History (Cambridge, MA, 2013), 41.

37 See especially Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908 (New Delhi, 1973).

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39 Tilak, “The Decentralization Commission,” 95–6.

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47 K. V. Rangaswami Aiyangar, Considerations on Some Aspects of Ancient Indian Polity: Sir Subrahmanya Aiyar Lecture, 1914 (Madras, 1916), 3.

48 Ibid.

49 Pramathanath Banerjea, Public Administration in Ancient India (London, 1916), 1–14.

50 R. S. Sharma, “Historiography of Ancient Indian Polity up to 1930,” in Sharma, Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India (New Delhi, 1959), 1–13, at 9.

51 The swadeshi movement began as a protest against Curzon's decision to partition Bengal along Hindu–Muslim lines in June 1905, and quickly snowballed into political militancy and a far-reaching program of economic boycott and cultural revivalism. See Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal; Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 108–21; Sartori, Andrew, “The Categorial Logic of a Colonial Nationalism: Swadeshi Bengal, 1904–1908,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 23/1–2 (2003), 271–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Manu Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago, 2004), 242–76.

52 Radhakumud Mookerji, “Foreword,” in Haridas Mukherjee and Uma Mukherjee, The Origins of the National Education Movement (1905–1910) (Calcutta, 1957), vii–xi, at viii.

53 E.g. “Part I: Indiana,” Dawn and Dawn Society's Magazine 1/2 (1904), 29–60. For a firsthand account of Radhakumud's involvement with Dawn between 1902 and 1906 see Benoy Kumar Sarkar, Creative India: From Mohenjo-Daro to the Age of Ramkrsna-Vivekānanda (Lahore, 1937), 663.

54 “National Council of Education Bengal: Statement of Objects and Plan of Work,” in Reminiscences, Speeches and Writings of Sir Gooroo Dass Banerjee Kt., ed. Upendra Chandra Banerjee, vol. 2 (Calcutta, 1927), 207–28, at 208.

55 Mukherjee and Mukherjee, The Origins of the National Education Movement, 87.

56 Radhakumud Mookerji, Indian Shipping: A History of the Sea-Borne Trade and Maritime Activity of the Indians from the Earliest Times (Calcutta, 1912), 256. The first edition of Indian Shipping carried an introductory foreword by Brajendranath Seal.

57 Radhakumud Mookerji, Local Government in Ancient India, 1st edn (Oxford, 1919), 20.

58 Ibid., 21.

59 Marquess of Crewe, “Foreword,” in Mookerji, Local Government, 1st edn, vii–ix, at vii.

60 Mookerji, Local Government, 1st edn, 20.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid., 21.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid., 29.

65 Ibid., 171–3.

66 Ibid., 147.

67 Ibid., 132–44.

68 Ibid., 174.

69 Ibid., 150.

70 Ibid., 154.

71 Ibid., 154–5.

72 Ibid., 156–7.

73 Radhakumud Mookerji, Local Government in Ancient India, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1920), 180–81. This sentence (in Ch. 7, Section Two) was absent from the 1919 edition of the text and appears to have been added in only for the 2nd edition.

74 Ibid., 173.

75 Mookerji, Local Government, 1st ed., 210.

76 Jayaswal, Kashi Prasad, “An Introduction to Hindu Polity,” Modern Review 13/1–6 (1913), 535–41Google Scholar, at 536.

77 Mookerji, Local Government, 1st edn, 164 n. 1.

78 Ibid., 9.

79 Ibid., 10.

80 All three studies of the ancient Indian polity published between 1914 and 1918—by Rangaswami Aiyangar, Narendra Nath Law, and Pramathanath Banerjea—saw premodern empires as sovereign monarchical orders, bound by duty (dharma) but centralized in political form and fully in command of subordinate jurisdictions. For Aiyangar, these empires were marked “by intense centralization of the Government which aims at uniformity of administration throughout the kingdom.” For Law, imperial constitutions revolved around states with far-reaching powers of regulation and punishment (dandaniti) and unitary legislation. Finally, for Banerjea, Indian politics after the second century BCE saw a steady growth in “centralized administration,” after which local political power “lost much of its power and prestige.” See, respectively, Aiyangar, Considerations on Some Aspects of Ancient Indian Polity, 35; Law, Studies in Ancient Hindu Polity, 1: 88–135; and Banerjea, Public Administration in Ancient India, 291.

81 Mookerji, Local Government, 1st edn, 4.

82 Ibid., 6.

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87 Ibid., 118.

88 Brajendranath Seal, “An Introductory Note,” in Mookerji, Indian Shipping, xiii–xvi. Sumit Sarkar has shown that Seal's name was listed as an adviser for the National Council of Education in August 1906. In all likelihood, Radhakumud first met Seal when he was employed by the Council's Bengal National College during this time. See Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement, 142.

89 Radhakumud Mookerji, “Preface to the Second Edition,” in Local Government, 2nd edn, xix–xxv, at xxv.

90 “Mysore Constitutional Developments (Seal) Committee 1922–23: Report,” 8.

91 Ibid., 9.

92 Ibid., 17.

93 Ibid., 9.

94 Ibid., 5.

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid., 22.

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid., 26–7.

99 Ibid., 10.

100 On monarchy in Seal's constitution see Bjørn Hettne, The Political Economy of Indirect Rule: Mysore 1881–1947 (London, 1978), 101–4; and Chancellor, Nigel H., “Mysore: The Making and Unmaking of a Model State,” South Asian Studies 13/1 (1997), 109–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 109–11.

101 “The Mysore Report,” Modern Review 34/1–6 (1923), 231–6, at 232.

102 Ibid.

103 Radhakumud Mookerji, Asoka (Gaekwad Lectures) (London, 1928), 49.

104 Ibid.

105 Ibid., 50.

106 Ibid., 49 n. 1.

107 Mukerjee, Radhakamal, India: The Dawn of a New Era (An Autobiography) (New Delhi, 1997), 63–4Google Scholar; and Sarkar, Creative India, 663. Also see Mukherjee and Mukherjee, The Origins of the National Education Movement, 232.

108 Mukerjee, India: The Dawn of a New Era, 87–9.

109 Mukerjee, Radhakamal, Democracies of the East: A Study in Comparative Politics (London, 1923)Google Scholar, viii n. 1.

110 Ibid., 356 n. 1.

111 Ibid.

112 Ibid.

113 Ibid.

114 Ibid., 119.

115 Ibid., 146.

116 Ibid., 147.

117 Ibid., 152.

118 Ibid., 162.

119 Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement, 24–5; Stolte, Carolien and Fischer-Tiné, Harald, “Imagining Asia in India: Nationalism and Internationalism (ca. 1905–1940),” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54/1 (2012), 65–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Aydin, Cemil, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York, 2007), 111–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

120 Mukerjee, Democracies of the East, 90.

121 Ibid., 89.

122 Ibid., 83.

123 Ibid., xvii.

124 Ibid., 156.

125 Ibid.

126 Ibid., 155.

127 Ibid.

128 Ibid.

129 Pratapgiri Ramamurti, The Problem of the Indian Polity (Bombay, 1935), 290.

130 Ibid., 203.

131 Prasad, Beni, The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times (Allahabad, 1928), 504–5Google Scholar.

132 See Chaturvedi, Heramb, “Professor Beni Prasad,” in Chaturvedi, Allahabad School of History (1915–1955) (New Delhi, 2016), 146–74Google Scholar.

133 Beni Prasad, A Few Suggestions on the Problem of the Indian Constitution (Allahabad, 1928), ii.

134 Ibid., 8.

135 Ibid., 9.

136 Ibid., 33.

137 Ibid., 222.

138 Manin, Bernard, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge, 1997), 165–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

139 M. D. Joshi, “Professor Radhakamal Mukerjee: As I Knew Him,” in Mukerjee, India: The Dawn of a New Era, 215–17, at 217.

140 Chaturvedi, “Professor Beni Prasad,” 151.

141 Gandhi, M. K., “Hind Swaraj” and Other Writings, ed. Parel, Anthony (Cambridge, 1997), 29–32Google Scholar.

142 Mukerjee, India: The Dawn of a New Era, 123.