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Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes The Process of becoming a Nation
India had just entered the process of becoming a nation or a people. The first major objective of the
founders of the Indian national movement was to promote this process, to weld Indians into a
nation, to create an Indian people. It was common for colonial administrators and ideologues to
assert that Indians could not be united or freed because they were not a nation or a people but a
geographical expression, a mere congeries of hundreds of diverse races and creeds. The Indians
did not deny this but asserted that they were now becoming a nation. India was as Tilak,
Surendranath Banerjee and many others were fond of saying — a nation-in-the-making. The
Congress leaders recognized that objective historical forces were bringing the Indian people together.
But they also realized that the people had to become subjectively aware of the objective process
and that for this it was necessary to promote the feeling of national unity and nationalism among
them.
Above all, India being a nation-in-the-making, its nationhood could not be taken for granted. It
had to be constantly developed and consolidated. The promotion of national unity was a major
objective of the Congress and later its major achievement. For example, P. Ananda Charlu in his
presidential address to the Congress in 1891 described it ‘as a mighty nationalizer,’ and said that
this was its most ‘glorious’ role. Among the three basic aims and objectives of the Congress laid
down by its first President, W.C. Banerjee, was that of ‘the fuller development and consolidation
of those sentiments of national unity.’ The Russian traveller, I.P. Minayeff, wrote in his diary that,
when travelling with Banerjee, he asked, ‘what practical results did the Congress leaders expect
from the Congress,’ Banerjee replied: ‘Growth of national feeling and unity of Indians.’ Similarly,
commenting on the first Congress session, the Indu Prakash of Bombay wrote: It marks the beginning
of a new life . . . it will greatly help in creating a national feeling and binding together distant
people by common sympathies, and common ends.’
The making of India into a nation was to be a prolonged historical process. Moreover, the Congress
leaders realized that the diversity of India was such that special efforts unknown to other parts of
the world would have to be made and national unity carefully nurtured. In an effort to reach , all
regions, it was decided to rotate the Congress session among different parts of the country. The
President was to belong to a region other than where the Congress session was being held.
To reach out to the followers of all religions and to remove the fears of the minorities, a rule was
made at the 1888 session that no resolution was to be passed to which an overwhelming majority
of Hindu or Muslim delegates objected. In 1889, a minority clause was adopted in the resolution
demanding reform of legislative councils. According to the clause, wherever Parsis, Christians,
Muslims or Hindus were a minority their number elected to the Councils would not be less than
their proportion in the population. The reason given by the mover of the resolution was that India
was not yet a homogenous country and political methods here had, therefore, to differ from those
in Europe.
The early national leaders were also determined to build a secular nation, the Congress itself
being intensely secular.
The second major objective of the early Congress was to create a common political platform or
programme around which political workers in different parts of the country could gather and
conduct their political activities, educating and mobilizing people on an all-India basis. This was
to be accomplished by taking up those grievances and fighting for those rights which Indians had
in common in relation to the rulers.
For the same reason the Congress was not to take up questions of social reform. At its second
session, the President of the Congress, Dadabhai Naoroji, laid down this rule and said that ‘A
National Congress must confine itself to questions in which the entire nation has a direct
participation.’ Congress was, therefore, not the right place to discuss social reforms. ‘We are met
together,’ he said, ‘as a political body to represent to our rulers our political aspirations.’
Modem politics — the politics of popular participation, agitation, mobilization — was new to India.
The notion that politics was not the preserve of the few but the domain of everyone was not yet
familiar to the people. No modern political movement was possible till people realized this. And,

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