The untold story & unsung heroes of Indian liberalism
19th century intellectuals such as Parmanand
who was a teacher at Elphinstone who later took service in a princely state till he had to return to Bombay for health reasons. William Wedderburn appointed him Registrar of the High Court & he later held other important offices. His empirical knowledge of local administration in both Princely and Directly ruled states was quite valuable.
point to a forgotten tradition of liberalism in India,
this is ' Beamtenliberalismus (Bureaucratic or Civil Servants' Liberalism) of the German type. It describes a movement where enlightened, educated civil servants, rather than a commercial bourgeoisie or a democratic parliament, initiated liberal and economic reforms from the top down. Since it lacks popular support, it is an anaemic creature.
which measured progress by the well-being of individuals
that is Benthamite Utilitarianism of the type championed by James Mill & his son, John Stuart, both of whom worked for the East India Company.
For more than a century, Indian liberalism has been mocked as little more than mimicry.
The Indian Liberals were part and parcel of the 'moderate' wing of the INC till 1919 when they formed the "Indian National Liberal Federation" in 1919 under the leadership of Surendranath Banerjee. Its leading spirits were Tej Bahadur Sapru, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri and M. R. Jayakar. It has been speculated that they played a role in securing the October 1933 trade agreement between the Bombay Millowners' Association (led by H.P. Mody) and British Lancashire textile interests (led by Sir William Clare Lees). If Sapru had been able to persuade enough of the Princes to join a Federal Government, it may be that the country could have become a de facto dominion. After War was declared and Congress resigned from office in the Provinces where they had formed Ministries, the role of the Liberals diminished. However Rajaji's Swatantra party (which lasted from 1959 to 1974) might be considered its successor.
The British laughed at the ideals preached by “Jabberjees” at the Indian National Congress. Indians were hardly kinder. Radicals from either end of the political spectrum lambasted “moderates” for their “peculiar servility”. The jibes have only multiplied since 1947 — “kala sahibs”, “Macaulayputras”, the “Lutyens” cabal.
in other words, an Anglicized Ivory Tower elite is mocked for its Ivy League style virtue signalling and its disdain for indigenous religion or idiographic issues of concern to the masses.
The earliest defences of individuality emerged out of rationalist associations such as the Manav Dharma Sabha,
founded in Surat
the Paramahansa Mandali,
which had to remain a secret society because of the power of the orthodox in Maharashtra
and the Prarthana Samaj.
which played a role in creating 'new Brahmins' freed from the more oppressive features of the caste system- e.g. a young Brahmin teacher posted to a school in a village without any Brahmins would have to cook his own food (since he would lose caste if he accepted cooked food from a non-Brahmin!). It such was the plight of the Brahmin, imagine how bad things were for the Dalit!
However, reform of religion & social customs can be done by Conservatives (who support the existing distribution of power) as well as Liberals or those without any political views. The question is whether there was an Indian Liberalism which championed the economic interests of the Indian entrepreneur and mercantile bourgeoisie. The answer was there was a 'Listian' (protectionist) type of Economics (Swadesi- i.e. import substitution) but this was better promoted by religious figures. If people could be persuaded to burn foreign cloth, the reason was that such commodities came to be seen as polluting or 'unclean'.
The name-calling is hard to resist — if we study only what was said and done in British India where, as Aurobindo put it, “grave citizens” raised on an “English diet” were prone to toasting and petitioning.
This is a fair point. We may point to Indian administrators in Princely States who sought to curb the power of local notables so as to ensure more money went into the Ruler's treasury. Tanjore Madhava Rao, in Baroda, & C. V. Rungacharlu in Mysore, stand out as pioneers in this connection. Mysore got a representative assembly in 1881. If Princely states were introducing such reforms, why should the British not do the same thing? The obvious answer was that the administrator in a Princely State had to fear intrigue, false accusations or even assassination by local notables. Few dared try such monkey tricks on a White official.
But there was more to India than this. By focusing on the grievances raised and compromises made by liberals in British India, we have overlooked what liberals imagined and tried to do in Indian India.
This is the heart of the matter. Could the Liberals have survived without the protection of the Raj? Would they not be swept away by the forces of orthodoxy and a revival of the martial spirit of previously hegemonic races?
In the case of Hinduism, we may say that orthopraxy did change (rather gradually) and that an ecumenical notion of 'Hindutva' was established. Interestingly, a pamphlet by Tanjore Madhava Rao titled 'minor hints' had been reprinted by Gujarat Government & was circulating since 1985. Narendra Modi took a shine to it and wrote the foreword to a new edition of it!
At the core of liberalism is the idea of protecting the individual against external pressure.
Conservatives want the same thing. They fear that Liberalism may create an oppressive bureaucratic/legal regime in the name of 'Progress'. People should be allowed to live as they always have done even if this offends the sensibilities of some intellectuals and busy-bodies.
Interestingly, Herbert Spencer (whom Shyamji Krishna Varma did so much to popularize that he was known as 'Harbhat Pendse' among young Marathas) was opposed to excessive Government interference in commercial or personal life. Like Dadhabhai, Varma moved in a Left wing direction. Gandhi, though a moderate, like Gokhale, was far from being a Liberal. He believed that the best Government is the one which governs least.
Liberals in 19th-century Europe were worried about the vast and impersonal forces unleashed by modernity — mass democracy, mass industrialisation, and mass media —
some were. Some weren't. Those who feared universal franchise tended to ally with Conservative forces (e.g. Liberal Unionists in UK) while those who saw it as inevitable moved towards a 'Social Democrat' platform.
that made it increasingly difficult for individuals to act and think independently.
One big worry, in England, was that Catholic working men would vote as their Priest told them to.
This was not what troubled Indian liberals. They feared instead the intimate tyranny of the joint family, the panchayat, and the local priest, any of whom could override an individual’s private choices such as what they ate, whom they married or dined with, what occupations they engaged in, and where they travelled.
Sadly, many Provinces had laws against inter-caste marriage. Even in the 1930s. Nehru's younger sister, as a Brahmin, had to pretend to convert to Brahmo religion to marry a non-Brahmin. When Indira married a Zoroastrians, some Parsis joked that she was now a concubine, not a married woman!
One may say that the need for an elected legislature to fully reform Hindu law gave an impetus to Democracy in India. If a person who broke a caste convention- e.g. Nehru letting his sister and daughter marry non-Brahmins- got elected by a huge margin, it showed that 'best practice' had changed. In Hindu law you may depart from customary observances if 'the best people' in the area have adopted a different practice. Since it is Society itself which decides who is the best to represent the area, there is a 'Tardean mimetic effect'. Previously, the ban of 'crossing the black water' or letting women come out of purdah (both of which personally affected Rajendra Prasad) created a barrier to professional advancement or the upliftment of the family and sub-caste. Clearly, to make progress, the whole of Society had to be mobilised otherwise the 'first movers' would face high penalties and their miserable fate would deter others from following suit.
This is why the earliest defences of individuality emerged out of rationalist associations such as the Manav Dharma Sabha, the Paramahansa Mandali, and the Prarthana Samaj.
This is foolish. All such reformist groups took inspiration from earlier 'Bhakti' Saints. The argument was that oppressive customs were 'apadh dharma'- i.e. a response to adverse circumstances. There was no need for them because Pax Brittanica had been established. Hindus could return to the pure Vedantic religion.
Founded in the middle of the 19th century, these organisations challenged a range of social strictures such as bans on intercaste dining and widow remarriage. But they found the going hard. As challenges to custom were met with tearful pleas from family and threats of excommunication from the community, even earnest reformers buckled under pressure. They soon accepted they needed help from the State.
More urgent was the need to get legal sanction for converts to Christianity inheriting ancestral property. Many Missionaries regarded the new reformist movements as a 'Trojan Horse' for the spread of their own Religion.
But this path was unappealing, as they did not want the colonial State to regulate social norms. The British were not keen to meddle either, especially after 1857. The irony was profound: When Indians quoted Gladstone, Britons quoted Manu.
Manu had been admired in the late eighteenth century. Incidentally, Gladstone was a 'High Church' Anglican who gradually modified his views. It was his championing of the Irish cause which made him a hero to anglicized Indians.
Happily, liberals in Western India had a card to play. In their part of the country, large numbers of Native States were still in existence.
It was usual for such states to bring in English educated clerks or lawyers to help reform the administration & restore fiscal health. Some such imports could be described as intellectuals with a political ideology. But this was seldom the case. Still, it was in the interest of these people to gain countervailing power against the local notables.
Though governed erratically, these principalities were headed by Maharajas who could lead by example, and who retained control over religious and educational establishments that could shape the populace.
They themselves had to be careful not to offend the religious sentiments of influential groups. The British took a dim view of Princes who slaughtered Pundits or Moulvis so as to crush such opposition.
Consequently, for the remainder of the century, liberals in Western India, especially those clustered in the East India Association and the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, devoted their energy to lobbying the rulers of these principalities.
Only if the Brits approved. The plain fact is, if the British Resident (Political Agent) took it into his head that you were up to mischief, you would be externed & perhaps even prosecuted for seditious libel.
The most influential of these figures was Narayan Mahadev Parmanand (1838–1893), one of the saptarishis of Elphinstone (the informal title given to its esteemed first seven graduates). His closest companions — RG Bhandarkar, MG Ranade, KT Telang, and Karsandas Mulji — are household names but Parmanand stayed out of the limelight because he believed that fame threatened integrity. As a consequence, his fingerprints are everywhere and his name nowhere, despite being a pioneering newspaper editor, naib dewan, and senior civil servant.
We may also mention Bahram Malabari who published Parmanand's work.
Parmanand’s crowning achievement came at the end of his life when, bedridden with Parkinson’s, he dictated a series of essays that appeared in 1891 as Letters to an Indian Raja. Published under the pseudonym, “A Political Recluse ”, the essays were the first full-fledged work of political theory in modern India.
There had been earlier pamphlets by Naoroji & even the Chemist PC Ray which attracted some attention in England. However, it was the cow-protection movement, formally launched in 1881, which enabled Congress to achieve 'mass-contact'. Interestingly, A.O Hume, a vegetarian Vedantin (he had previously been a Theosophist), supported cow-protection for agronomic reasons.
It must be said, Theosophy was a big influence on educated Indians. They might not know the name of Parmanand, but they did know Annie Beasant. Motilal Nehru was a Theosophist and he hired an English Theosophist to tutor his son.
Instead of merely complaining about what the British had or had not done, they laid out the principles and institutions that would allow the Native States to “go ahead” of British India.
No. The Princely states had been importing people like Parmanand from Directly ruled areas so as to 'catch up'. Baroda & Mysore were doing well. Parmanand himself was seen as a protege of William Wedderburn. Nobody cared about his ideas. What mattered was that if the Brits had downgraded you to third class status (as happened to the small State of which Gandhi's father was the Diwan) then you needed to make some pretence of adopting fashionable reforms. Kipling made fun of this in a poem where he pointed out that the new Prince had built a 'thana' (police station) hoping the Viceroy would take notice, but then had turned it into a 'zenana' (harem) because nobody was interested in his potty little Principality.
Parmanand chose to address the Maharajas rather than his fellow subjects in British India on the grounds that, in a society where social norms were deeply entrenched and jealously guarded, a ruler could be made liberal by advice, but the people could only be made liberal by law.
This is not Classical Liberalism. It is 'enlightened despotism' in the manner of Fredrick the Great or Catherine the Great.
The theory Parmanand developed was elegant in design and global in perspective.
It was senile garbage. Nobody gave it a thought. Cow-protection was taking off. Tilak was getting ready to turn the Ganapati festival into a vehicle of mass-mobilization.
On one side, he argued that Maharajas ought to modernise their households and their administration to make them more orderly and meritocratic (for instance, princes ought to study in public schools, as they did in Germany, and bureaucratic appointments and promotions ought to be by examination, as in China).
Send your kids to Mayo College or some other such British 'Chieftain's College'. The Brits had introduced competitive exams for East India Company appointments in 1853. Mimic them and they might give you a knighthood or other such reward.
On the other side, he showed how Maharajas could foster a capable civil society that could check and eventually share power (for instance by making education free and compulsory and by breaking down caste barriers that hindered development and citizenship).
AO Hume had done much to raise school attendance in Etawah when he was the Collector there. He had published two newspapers. The result was that Etawah remained loyal during the Mutiny. If people are illiterate and there are no newspapers, they will listen to rumours and may run amok.
The Maharajas had a good reason to bind their own hands and unbind those of their subjects, Parmanand argued, because otherwise their principalities would become museum pieces. Already, their subjects were beginning to migrate to the metropoles of British India where progress was painfully slow but at least evident.
So, Parmanand was doing British propaganda. Nothing wrong with that. The Brits had promoted him. The reforms he was suggesting weren't mischievous in themselves. The question was, where would the money come from to pay for them? As AO Hume saw, India needed to raise agricultural productivity. Utility is just the reverse side of the coin of productivity. Gassing on about liberalism doesn't magically enable more corn to be grown. Hume was foolish enough to think educated Indians would want total factor productivity to go up and that they would be keen to take a hand in solving collective action problems. Sadly, they just wanted to talk bollocks. It wasn't till LBJ threatened to cut off PL480 food aid that Lutyens's Delhi stirred itself to permit the Green Revolution. Incidentally, an Indian revolutionary who had taken refuge in Mexico, played a big role in creating hybrid strains which greatly increased the size of the harvest. On returning to India, after Independence, he doesn't seem to have accomplished anything by way of getting the Government to promote such new seed strains. I may mention that the American led 'Etawah project' in the Fifties only succeeded because a new seed strain was introduced. The Indians thought Etawah could be scaled up on the basis of everybody talking more and more virtue signalling bollocks. They were wrong.
These were not vain hopes. Letters to an Indian Raja was addressed to the Gaekwad of Baroda, who admired Parmanand and enacted many of his proposals.
He had been an ordinary farmer's son when he was suddenly elevated to the throne because the previous ruler was a debauched scoundrel who emptied the treasury and poisoned the British Resident. Since he himself didn't want to be depose and because he preferred having lots of money to being bankrupt. he hired smart people and did sensible things. Could he play a bigger role in Indian politics? Maybe. That is why he hired people like Aurobindo- and later tried to make Ambedkar his Military Secretary. Then, family bereavements and poor health caused him to spend most of his time on his English estate.
But the text soon obtained a wider audience, ending up on the reading lists of princes across the country. It went on to have a particular impact on the Maharajas of Mysore and Kolhapur, the latter of whom shocked the British by his “extremely radical” adherence to “liberal principles” when, for instance, he expanded the role of the “depressed castes” in the professions (in 1902), introduced free and compulsory primary education (in 1911), supported widow remarriage and intercaste marriage (in 1917), and lifted disabilities imposed on “untouchables” (in 1919).What radicalised the Prince was the Vedokta Controversy (1899–1901): As a Maratha king and direct descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji, Shahu was denied the right to Vedic religious rituals by orthodox Brahmin priests. The priests claimed Marathas were Shudras entitled only to lesser Puranic rites.
Sadly, despite its elegance and reach, Parmanand’s text was eventually forgotten.
It was worthless. AO Hume's brief work on Agricultural reform wasn't worthless. It too was forgotten because Indians are too lazy to want to raise productivity. I may mention, the Agronomic Research Institute Hume proposed was set up once an American millionaire paid for it.
As the Congress strengthened, it became clear that the days of the Native States were numbered.
Not really. In the interwar period, the Princes thought they would have more freedom to do what they liked. If Gandhi tried to interfere (e.g. Rajkot satyagraha) they could outflank him by lifting up the Dalits and minorities.
At the same time, the growth of radicalism led the British to be more conciliatory toward the Native States. These developments lessened the incentive the Maharajas had to reform themselves and Letters disappeared from bookshelves.
It wasn't reprinted because nobody would buy it.
The variant of Indian liberalism that subsequently came to dominate the public sphere was the one that evolved in British India after 1919.
i.e. Sapru running too and fro between the Viceroy & Gandhi. Sadly, Viceroys lost interest in talking to the Maha-crackpot. Lock up Congress-wallahs and threaten to expropriate their property and they soon come to their senses. The Brits had been forced to give independence to Ireland, Egypt & Afghanistan in 1922. Gandhi unilaterally surrendered and subsequently the Brits dictated the pace and scope of constitutional reform. Maybe, if Churchill had defeated Atlee in 1945, his dream of 'Prince-stan' would have been achieved. India might be a loose federation. Different Rajahs & Nawabs would take turns as Governor General of the Dominion.
It focused not on empowering individuals but on representation based on group membership,
separate electorates? Congress was against that & got rid of them when it came to power.
which meant that its victory came, as Parmanand feared, at the expense of both individuality and solidarity.
Meaningless jibber-jabber. The Second World War had led the State to greatly expand its control of the Economy. Would this be rolled back? No. The politicians & bureaucrats gained 'rents' though the country as a whole stagnated. In particular, Nehru did not permit the textile industry to grow. Why? He did not want an Indian bourgeoisie of the 'Manchester' type. Worse yet would be what you saw in America where the Bench severely checked the powers of the Executive with backing from the large class of entrepreneurs and industrialists. Galbraith, as Ambassador to India, condemned laissez faire America as creating 'private affluence' amidst 'public squalor'. The Indian President lived in a huge palace with over a thousand servants. The American President had a potty little 'White House' and often drove himself to the air-port to welcome a foreign dignitary. I may mention that Galbraith thought the Punjabi peasant was better off than the Appalachian hillbilly! This encouraged Indian economists like Amartya Sen to claim that African American New Yorkers are worse off than Bangladeshis or Malyalees! Incidentally, India had plenty of food. It didn't need no stinkin' American technology. The only reason so many Bengalis starved to death in 1943 & 1974 was because of neglect by evil economists of capabilities and functionings and the need to consult impartial observers from the planet Pluto.
And so, when we are puzzled by the condition of Indian liberalism today, which speaks boldly about group rights
as do woke nutters in campuses across the globe
but quavers over individual merit and a uniform civil code,
for Muslims? Do you really want to be fatwa'd?
it is worth remembering that there once existed another liberalism in another India, which
was as weak as piss. Still, if you managed to get a Government job or a pat on the back from the British Collector or Political Agent, it was worth doing till something better came along. Shyamji Krishna Varma made money investing in textile mills and thus could retire to England where he could safely indulge in revolutionary activity- e.g. assisting the Savarkar brothers.
measured progress by the well-being of individuals rather than groups.
Groups are composed of individuals. If an individual's productivity goes up, others in the group can copy him and get richer. That is progress. It doesn't depend on talking bollocks. All that matters is productivity which rises when collective action problems are tackled in an incentive compatible manner.
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