Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps and tables
- Preface to the second edition
- Glossary
- Introduction: Change, the societies of India and Indian society
- Part I The changing countryside
- Part II Change from above
- Appendix One Major political events in the related histories of British imperialism and Indian nationalism, 1858–1947
- Appendix Two Major political events in the history of the Indian Union, 1947–2002
- Notes
- Guide to further reading
- Index
Part II - Change from above
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 April 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps and tables
- Preface to the second edition
- Glossary
- Introduction: Change, the societies of India and Indian society
- Part I The changing countryside
- Part II Change from above
- Appendix One Major political events in the related histories of British imperialism and Indian nationalism, 1858–1947
- Appendix Two Major political events in the history of the Indian Union, 1947–2002
- Notes
- Guide to further reading
- Index
Summary
There are six essays in part II. The underlying argument of the first two essays in chapter 5 is this: Bourgeois revolution in Indian society was initiated in its experiences of British imperialism. It was domesticated, particularly, by the Indian National Congress which evolved in response to British imperialism; became an India-wide, mass nationalist movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi; and finally succeeded the Raj in 1947. Because of its relevance here and to my earlier discussions of subcontinental Islam, I have added an essay on Muslim separatism
In the first two essays in chapter 6, I pick up the thread of bourgeois revolution in the Indian Union and trace its course. Through its policies of political and economic development, the Union has promoted and institutionalized the growth in tandem of capitalism and parliamentary democracy. Unrelated to this argument, but certainly related to development in India, the final essay of chapter 6 deals with New Delhi's international politics.
Following both a suggestion of Barrington Moore, Jr. and what seems to me self-evident, I accept the following proposition: A major contribution to the development of bourgeois revolution in India lay in the composition of the dominant classes in the Indian National Congress's pre-Independence alliance. The allies were English-educated professional people, landed peasants and, with some reluctance until the late 1930s, modern industrial entrepreneurs. Certainly, there were other contributions, without which bourgeois revolution might well have aborted or died long before the Union's fifty-fifth birthday.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Changing IndiaBourgeois Revolution on the Subcontinent, pp. 129 - 130Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
- 2
- Cited by