The Indian Ideology

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The Indian Ideology
180px
First edition
Author Perry Anderson
Country India
Subject Politics, history
Published 2012 (Three Essays Collective)
Pages vi, 184
ISBN 978-81-88789-90-0

The Indian Ideology is a 2012 book by the British Marxist historian Perry Anderson, published by Three Essays Collective. A near-polemical critique of the modern Indian nation-building project, the book consists of three essays originally published in the London Review of Books (LRB) in July–August 2012.

Content

In the first essay, "Independence", Anderson criticises M. K. Gandhi's role in the Indian independence movement, specifically his injection of religion into it to mobilise the masses. In "Partition", Anderson places the blame for the bloody Partition of India on the Indian National Congress, arguing that its claim to be the sole representative for all Indians led to the inevitable rise of the Muslim League and the two-nation theory. "Republic", the third and final essay, criticises independent India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his legacy—a deeply unequal republic dominated by his descendants, where caste and religion remain entrenched in civic life.

Asked by Praful Bidwai in an interview to sum up The Indian Ideology, Anderson said the book "advances five main arguments that run counter to conventional wisdom in India today":

Firstly, that the idea of a subcontinental unity stretching back six thousand years is a myth. Secondly, that Gandhi’s injection of religion into the national movement was ultimately a disaster for it. Thirdly, that primary responsibility for Partition lay not with the Raj, but Congress. Fourthly, that Nehru’s legacy to Republic was far more ambiguous than his admirers will admit. Lastly, that Indian democracy is not contradicted by caste inequality, but rather enabled by it.[1]

Following the essays' original publication, the LRB received several letters of praise as well as criticism from scholars in India and abroad. When they were collected in book form as The Indian Ideology by Three Essays Collective, a small Gurgaon-based publisher of scholarly material, the work received mixed reviews in the print and digital media.

Repostes

When the Marxist historian Perry Anderson published The Indian Ideology - his scathing assessment of India's democracy, secularism, nationalism and statehood - it created a furore. Anderson attacked subcontinental unity as a myth, castigated Mahatma Gandhi for infusing Hindu religiosity into nationalism, blamed Indian National Congress for Partition of India and saw India's liberal intelligentsia as by and large a feckless lot.

Within the large array of responses to Anderson that appeared, three stand out for the care and comprehensiveness with which they show the levels of ignorance, arrogance and misconstruction on which the Andersonian variety of political analysis is based. Collectively, these three ripostes represent a systematic critique of the intellectual foundations of The Indian Ideology in the book titled "The Indian Ideology: Three Responses to Perry Anderson" Confronting Anderson's claim to originality, Nivedita Menon exposes his failure to engage with feminist, Marxist and Dalit scholarship, arguing that a British colonial ideology is at work in such analyses. Partha Chatterjee studies key historical episodes to counter the “Great Men” view of history, suggesting that misplaced concepts from Western intellectual history can obfuscate political understanding. Tracing their origins to the nineteenth-century worldview of Hegel and James Mill, Sudipta Kaviraj contends that reductive Orientalist tropes such as those deployed by Anderson frequently mar European analyses of non-European contexts.

Gallery

  • The British Marxist historian Perry Anderson in 2008.

  • Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, seen here in 1942, who come in for severe criticism in The Indian Ideology.

  • For Anderson, Subhas Chandra Bose was "the only leader Congress ever produced who united Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in a common secular struggle", whose "fearless militancy and commanding intellectual gifts had made him hugely popular in the party".

See also

The following books were criticised by Anderson for "shar[ing] with the rhetoric of the state itself ... the centrality of four tropes in the official and intellectual imaginary of India":

References

  1. ↑ Praful Bidwai. "Interview: 'Respect Gandhi If You Will, Don’t Sentimentalise Him' ". Outlook. 12 November 2012. Retrieved on 25 January 2014.

Further reading

External links

  • The Indian Ideology at Three Essays Collective
  • The essays on the London Review of Books website:
  1. "Gandhi Centre Stage", 5 July 2012
  2. "Why Partition?", 19 July 2012
  3. "After Nehru", 2 August 2012
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