22 "Presenting" the Past
humiliation commonly suffered at the hands of the colonizer in the form
of racism, economic exploitation, and sociopolitical domination kindled
dissension, and the freedom movement brought the peoples of the sub-
continent together. However, it is a mistake to view Indian nationalism(s)
as purely a response to Europeanization, as there were varieties of inner
struggles that arose out of the political and historical melee that the region
was going through. The form and content of nationalism varied from what
M.N. Roy calls the "social radicalism of the Congress," whose leaders
were "rather constitutional democrats and reformers than nationalists,"
to the "orthodox nationalism" of the Hindu revivalists, who attempted
to clothe India's backwardness in the glorious garb of "spiritual" civiliza-
tion.^25 The reformist and revivalist tendencies have cohabitated in many
national leaders and movements, with erratic fluctuations in some cases
and a relatively steady flow in others.
Emanating from the Indian intellectual renaissance, Indian nationalism
has included indigenous visions, derivative models of different types, and
dangerous schemes that appropriate the former discourses in ingenious
ways. The movements such as the Brahmo Samaj (founded in 1830) in
Bengal, the Prarthana Samaj (1867) in Maharashtra, the Arya Samaj (1875)
in Punjab, the Theosophical Society (1875), the Ramakrishna Movement,
and the dynamic leaders such as Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), Swami
Dayananda (1824-1883), Mahadeva Govinda Ranade (1842-1901), Swami
Vivekananda (1863-1902), Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891), and Annie
Besant (1847-1933) emerged and articulated new ideas amid the situ-
ational background of the political institutions of the day. Echoing the
social, moral, and spiritual vigor of the renaissance, most of them strongly
believed in India's delivering an important message to the West and even
to the whole of humanity.
The establishment of the Indian National Congress in 1885 as much as
the subsequent political metamorphosis it underwent intermittently came
to be crucial for Indian nationalism. The political ideas and activities of
both the moderate and the extremist nationalists, such as Vishnu Krishna
Chiploonkar (1850-1882), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838-1898), Dada-
bhai Naoroji (1825-1917), Surendranath Banerjee (1848-1925), Gopal
Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915), Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920), Bipin
Chandra Pal (1858-1932), Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928), Aurobindo Ghose
(1872-1950), and others, resonated both indigenous visions and derivative
nationalisms of different types.
When the Congress program remained one of nation building, the
extremists such as Tilak interrupted it with their "integral nationalism"
toward the close of the nineteenth century. This revolt, which was more
against the Congress old guard than the government, operated with the
idea that the nationhood of the Indian people was a reality given their
religio-cultural unity, and hence the Indian nationalism should be nur-