Five Phases of Nationalism

Nation: E. H. Carr's Definition

Regarding the traits which distinguish a nation from a non-national community, E. H. Carr
remarks as follows:
'...The term nation has been used to denote a human group with the following characteristics:
(a) The idea of a common government whether as a reality in the present or past, or as an
aspiration of the future.
(b) A certain size and closeness of contact between all its individual members.
(c) A more or less defined territory.
(d) Certain characteristics (of which the most frequent is language) clearly distinguishing the
nation from other nations and non-national groups.
(e) Certain interests common to the individual members.
(f) A certain degree of common feeling or will, associated with a picture of the nation in the
minds of the individual members.

Development of Nationalism in different Countries

The development of nationalism in different countries followed lines determined by its
respective social and cultural history, the extant political, economic, and social structures, and
the specific character of the psychological and economic traits of the social classes which were
the vanguard of the struggle for a national social existence in those countries. Every nation was
thus born and forged in a unique way.The history of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries is primarily the history of theformation of nations in enlarging zones of the human
world, of the struggles of nascent nationsseeking to be full-fledged nations against internal and
external obstacles, and of the struggles ofalready formed nations, among themselves, for self-
preservation or self-aggrandizement. The process of nation formation has continued during the
twentieth century also when the awakenedpeoples of Asiatic and African continents, such as the
Indians, the Chinese, the Turks, the Arabs and the Egyptians, organized movements to remove
indigenous feudal or foreign imperialist obstacles in the way of their full development as free
nations. These movements have expressed their yearnings for a free and unobstructed
development of economic and cultural life on a national basis. Even in Europe, at the end of the
First World War (1914-18), a number of national groups like the Magyars, the Hungarians, the
Czechs, and others, who lived in a state of subjection under the multinational Austro-Hungarian
Empire, organized struggles to shake off that subjection.

Development of Nationalism in India

The study of the rise and growth of Indian nationalism, is of great significance from the
standpoint of a general study of nationalism. The process of the growth of Indian nationalism has
been very complex and many-sided. This is due to a number of reasons. Pre-British Indian
society had a social structure quite unique and perhaps without a parallel in history. It sharply
differed in its economic base from the pre-capitalist medieval societies of European countries.
Further, India was a vast country inhabited by a huge population, speaking many languages and
professing different religions. Socially, the Hindus, comprising two-thirds of the population were
almost atomized in various castes and sub-castes, a phenomenon peculiar to the Hindu society.
Again, Hinduism itself was not a homogeneous religion but a conglomeration of religious cults
which divided the Hindu people into a number of sects. This extreme social and religious
division of the Hindus in particular and the Indians in general, presented a peculiar background
to the growth of nationalism in India. Nationalism in other countries did not rise amidst such
peculiarly powerful traditions and institutions. India's peculiar social, economic and political
structure and religious history, together with its territorial vastness and a teeming population,
make the study of the rise and growth of Indian nationalism more difficult, but also more
interesting and useful. The self-preservative will of the past social, economic and cultural
structure was stronger in India than perhaps in any country in the world. Further, the significance
of the Indian nationalist movement for the present and future history of humanity is also great
since it is the movement, increasingly becoming dynamic, of an appreciable section of the human
race.Another very striking thing about Indian nationalism is that it emerged under conditions of
political subjection of the Indian people by the British. The advanced British nation, for its own
purpose, radically changed the economic structure of the Indian society, established a centralized
state, and introduced modern education, modern means of communications, and other
institutions. This resulted in the growth of new social classes and the unleashing of new social
forces, unique in themselves.
These social forces by their very nature came into conflict with British Imperialism and became
the basis of and provided motive power for the rise and development of Indian nationalism.
Thus, Indian nationalism has grown and is developing in a complex and peculiar social
background.

Five Phases of Indian Nationalism

Indian nationalism passed through various phases of development. As it advanced from one
phase to another its social basis broadened, its objective became more clearly defined and bold,
and its forms of expression more varied. As a result of the impact of forces of Indian and world
development, increasing strata of the Indian people evolved a national consciousness and outlook
and were drawn into the orbit of the nationalist movement. This national awakening found
expression in varied spheres of national life, social, political, cultural. Further, we have seen how
the nationalist movement grew and gathered strength as new classes, offsprings of the new
economic structure and living under the same state regime, finding their free and full
development thwarted under the extant social and political conditions, increasingly organized
themselves on a national scale and started various movements to remove the obstacles impeding
their growth.
First Phase
In its first phase, Indian nationalism had a very narrow social basis. The intelligentsia were the
product of the modern education imparted in the new educational institutions, established by the
British in India in the first decades of the nineteenth century, and had studied western culture and
greatly assimilated its democratic and nationalist ideas. They formed the first stratum of the
Indian society to develop a national consciousness and aspirations. Raja Ram Mohan Roy and
his group of enlightened Indians were the pioneers of Indian nationalism. They were the
exponents of the concept of the Indian nation which they propagated among the people. They
initiated socio-reform and religio-reform movements which represented endeavours to remould
the Indian society and religion in the spirit of the new principles of democracy, rationalism, and
nationalism. In fact, these movements were the expression of the rising national democratic
consciousness among a section of the Indian people. These founders and first fighters of Indian
nationalism stood up for democratic rights, such as the freedom of the Press, and put forth
demands like the right of the nation to have a voice in the administration of the country.

Second Phase
The first phase extended till 1885 and culminated in the rise of the Indian National
Congress in that year. The second phase roughly covered the period from 1885 to 1905.

The Liberal intelligentsia who were at the helm of the Congress were the leaders of the Indian
nationalist movement during the second phase. Their ideology and methods determined the
programme and forms of the movement which reflected the interests of the development of the
new bourgeois society in India. The social basis of the movement was extended during this
period to the educated middle class which, by the end of nineteenth century, had appreciably
grown as a result of the expansion of modern education, and to a section of the merchant class
which had developed during this period as a result of the growth of Indian and international
trade. Modern industries also grew steadily during this period as a result of which the class of
industrialists emerged and began to gain strength. They started orienting towards the Congress
which adopted the programme of industrialization of the country and in 1905 actively organized
the Swadeshi campaign.

The Indian National Congress, under the leadership of the Liberals, mainly voiced the demands
of the educated classes and the trading bourgeoisie such as the Indianization of Services, the
association of the Indians with the administrative machinery of the state, the stoppage of
economic drain, and others formulated in the resolutions of the Indian National Congress. It also
set forth such democratic demands as those of representative institutions and civil liberties. Its
methods of struggle dominated by Liberal conceptions were principally constitutional agitation,
effective argument, and fervent appeal to the democratic conscience and traditions of the British
people.
Since the British government did not satisfy the most vital demands of the Indian nationalist
movement, disillusionment set in among a section of the nationalists regarding the ideology and
methods of the Liberals. A group, with a new philosophy, political ideology and conception of
the methods of struggle crystallized within the Congress.
Increasing unemployment among the educated middle class youths due to the inability of the
social and state apparatus to incorporate them, and further, economic misery among the people
due to devastating epidemics and famines at the close of the nineteenth century, created
favourable conditions for the growth of the influence of the new group, the Extremists. Various
unpopular measures during the viceroyalty of Lord Curzon, such as the Indian Universities Act
and the Partition of Bengal, further estranged the people from the government and made the
politically conscious middle class rally round the Extremists who possessed such capable and
self-sacrificing leaders as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Aurobindo Ghose, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Lala
Lajpat Rai. By 1905, even some of the Liberals began to lose faith in the British government.
However, they did not renounce their political philosophy and methodology of struggle.
The ideology of the Extremists was, in vital respects, the antithesis of that of the Liberals. While
the Liberals had a profound faith in the mission of Britain to raise the Indian people to a high
level of progressive social, political and cultural existence, the Extremists interpreted
the British rule in India as the means of the British to keep the Indian people in a state of
subjection and economically exploit them. Further, while the Liberals glorified the western
culture, the Extremists harked back to India's past, idealized the ancient Hindu culture and
desired to resuscitate it.

Again the Extremists had no faith in the political efficacy of the Liberal method of appealing to
British democracy. Instead, to secure a demand, they stood for organizing extra-parliamentary
pressure on the government such as the Boycott campaign. The Extremists were also not
satisfied merely with the demand of administrative reform but set forth the goal of self-
government which was endorsed by the Liberals in 1906.
Political discontent, during the second phase, also expressed itself in the growth of the terrorist
movement. A small section of nationalist youths organized themselves in terrorist bands and
relied upon such methods as assassination of individual officials and sometimes fomenting of
mutinies in the army for achieving political freedom.

Third Phase
The third phase in the development of the nationalist movement extended from 1905 to
1918.
During this phase, the Liberals were supplanted by the Extremists as the leaders of the nationalist
movement.In spite of the strong government repression, the nationalist movement registered an
advance.The political propaganda of the Extremists instilled a feeling of national self-respect and
selfconfidence among the people who, instead of looking to the British for political freedom as
counselled by the Liberals, began to rely on their own strength for achieving it. The movement,
however, suffered from the defect that its leaders attempted to base it on a resurrected Hindu
philosophy. This, to some extent, mystified the movement and weakened its secular character. It
was also one of the reasons why it could not appeal to the Muslims. During the third phase, the
Indian nationalist movement became militant and challenging and acquired a wider social basis
by the inclusion of sections of the lower-middle class. The agitation for Home Rule during
wartime further strengthened the political consciousness of the people.
It was during this phase that sections of upper class Muslims developed political consciousness
and founded their all-India political organization in 1906, the Muslim League. Due to a number
of reasons, the rising political consciousness of the Muslim upper and educated middle classes
took a communal form, and resulted in the formation of their organization on a communal basis.

Fourth Phase
The fourth phase in the evolution of the Indian nationalist movement commenced from
1918 and extended roughly up to the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930-34.
One striking development during this phase was that the nationalist movement gained a broad
mass basis and added to its arsenal, the weapon of direct mass action.
The nationalist movement, which was hitherto restricted mainly to upper and middle classes,
further extended, during this phase, to sections of the Indian masses.
There were a number of factors which brought about national awakening among the Indian
masses during the years immediately succeeding the war. The post-war economic crisis, the
disillusionment about the government promises, and the increased repression by the state had
seriously affected the people including the peasantry and the working-class and they were in a
state of great ferment.The great events in the international world such as a number of democratic
revolutions in European countries and the socialist revolution in Russia had deeply stirred the
consciousness of the Indian people. The Home Rule agitation during wartime also had the effect
of intensifying and extending political consciousness among the Indian people. The Treaty of
Sevres had offended the Indian Muslims thereby also creating the pre-condition for a united
nationalist mass movement.
The Indian capitalists who had become economically stronger during the war as a result of
industrial expansion, also, more actively than before, supported the Indian National Congress
and the N.C.O. Movement started by the latter. The Swadeshi and Boycott slogans of the
Congress objectively served the interests of industrialists who financially supported it. Gandhi's
doctrine of class harmony and social peace and his support to the Swadeshi resolution at the
Calcutta
Congress in 1919 made sections of the Indian bourgeoisie support Gandhi, the Congress, and the
nationalist movements organized by the Congress under Gandhi's leadership from this time
onward. It was from 1918 that the Indian industrial bourgeoisie began to exert a powerful
influence in determining the programme, policies, strategies, tactics and forms of struggle of the
Indian nationalist movement led by the Congress of which Gandhi was the leader.
Another development during this phase was the growth of socialist and communist groups in the
country. By 1928, these groups succeeded in initiating independent political and trade union
movements of the working class based on the doctrine of class struggle. They further stood for a
socialist state of India declaring it as the objective of the Indian national movement. While in the
non-co-operation Movement, politically conscious workers, who participated in it, lacked an
independent class programme, after 1926 those who joined movements like the Simon
Commission Boycott, did so with their own slogans and flag, and frequently under their own
leaders. Thus, after 1926, the Indian working class increasingly entered the nationalist movement
as an independent political unit. This was a new phenomenon in the history of the nationalist
movement.
It was during this period that the Congress defined its political objective from the nebulous term
Swaraj to that of Independence. Various Youth and Independence Leagues which sprang up in
the country also adopted Independence as their political goal.
Parallel to these developments, reactionary communal forces also began to organize themselves
during this period. The period witnessed a number of communal riots.
The phase culminated in the Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-4) organized by the Congress
under the leadership of Gandhi. It was the second mass movement in the history of Indian
nationalism.
The principal gains to the Indian nationalist movement during this phase were the acquisition of
a mass basis, the definition of its goal as Independence, the entry of a section of the working
class into the movement as an independent political force, the growth of various Youth and
Independence Leagues, and the wider participation of peasants in the movement. The factors
which had a retarding influence on the movement were mainly the combining of religion with
politics by Gandhi, with the result that the national consciousness was befogged and national
movement confused; the increased grip of the capitalists over the Congress organization and the
resultant modulation of its programme and policies to serve their sectional interest at the expense
of national advance; and the accentuation of communal feelings.
Fifth Phase
The next phase covers the period from 1934 to 1939, the year of the outbreak of World
War II.
There were a number of new developments during this period. A section of Congressmen lost
their confidence in the ideology, programmes and methods of Gandhi and formed the Congress
Socialist Party which stood for the organization of the workers and peasants on class lines, and
made them the motive force of the nationalist movement. The party, however, remained
heterogeneous, being composed of groups who broke from Gandhism in varying degrees and
having a petti-bourgeois social basis. There also grew up other dissident tendencies from
Gandhism like the Forward Bloc led by Subhas Chandra Bose.
Another development was the steady growth of the movements of the depressed classes. The
Muslim League also, organizationally and politically, grew stronger in the final years of this
period. Further, a number of other Muslim organizations, both of nationalist and communal
political hues, also sprang up.
The rapid growth of the Communist Party increasingly spreading its influence among students,
workers, and kisans, also was another significant development. The rapid growth of the peasant
movement was one of the striking developments during this period. Larger and larger sections of
peasantry developed national and class consciousness. Further, they began to evolve their own
class organizations, class leadership, programmes, slogans and flags. Hitherto, the politically
awakened peasants had followed the Congress leadership; henceforth, a large section of them
followed its own leaders, put forth their own class demands including those of the abolition of
landlordism itself and the repudiation of all debts. The All-India Kisan Sabha, the organization of
the conscious section of the Indian peasantry, formulated for its objective the socialist state of
India. It organized independent struggles of the kisans and joined the nationalist movement as an
independent unit.
Another remarkable development during this phase was the growth of the democratic struggle of
the people of the Indian states with a programme of demands such as the abolition of state
monopoly, representative institutions, civil liberties, and others. The states' peoples' movement
was mainly controlled by the merchant class of these states. The Indian National Congress
supported and aided the struggle of the people of these states.
Another development of importance during this period was the growing awakening among the
nationalities constituting the Indian people. This awakening was reflected in their demands of the
recon-stitution of provinces on a linguistic basis. The movements of such nationalities as the
Andhras, the Oriyas, the Karnatakis, and others, which had awakened to life and which felt and
expressed the urge to be integrated into distinct political administrative zones based on common
language, revealed this new development.
The rise of an independent kisan movement, the growth of socialist forces, the movements of
awakened nationalities, and other developments, however, still represented only minority
tendencies within the nationalist movement. The national movement still remained essentially
determined and dominated by the Gandhian outlook and Gandhi's political philosophy and
leadership. It still, in the main, reflected the interests of the capitalists and others upper classes.
However, the new forces and movements had begun to exert some pressure of the Indian
National Congress as a result of which the latter included in its programme a charter of
fundamental rights guaranteeing civil liberties and alleviatory economic measures to the workers
and peasants. The Indian National Congress, the premier national organization in the country and
the principal leader of the nationalist movement, also recognized the cultural and other
aspirations of awakened nationalities, stood for cultural autonomy and linguistic provinces
andHowever, a struggle that was increasingly sharpening, went on among the various social
classes within the nationalist movement for the hegemony of the movement. The political groups
representing workers, kisans and left sections of the middle classes, were striving more and
more, as they gathered more political consciousness and independent organizational strength, to
influence the programme and policies of the Congress which had hitherto been appreciably
controlled by the capitalist class. The awakened nationalities were also increasingly pressing
their demands vigorously for the removal of the obstacles which thwarted their free and
full development.