Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire

by Bayly, C. A.

• ISBN13: 9781107013834
• ISBN10: 1107013836
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-12-29
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

One of the world's leading historians examines the great Indian liberal tradition, stretching from Rammohan Roy in the 1820s, through Dadabhai Naoroji in the 1880s to G. K. Gokhale in the 1900s. This powerful new study shows how the ideas of constitutional, and later 'communitarian' liberals influenced, but were also rejected by their opponents and successors, including Nehru, Gandhi, Indian socialists, radical democrats and proponents of Hindu nationalism. Equally, Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire contributes to the rapidly developing field of global intellectual history, demonstrating that the ideas we associate with major Western thinkers Mills, Comte, Spencer and Marx were received and transformed by Indian intellectuals in the light of their own traditions to demand justice, racial equality and political representation. In doing so, Christopher Bayly throws fresh light on the nature and limitations of European political thought and re-examines the origins of Indian democracy.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: the meanings of liberalism in colonial India

The social and intellectual contexts of early Indian liberalism, c.1750-1840

The advent of liberal thought in India: constitutions, revolutions and juries

The advent of liberal thought in India and beyond: civil society and the press

After Rammohan: benign sociology and statistical liberalism

Living as liberals: Bengal and Bombay c.1840-1880

Thinking as liberals: historicism, race, society and economy, c.1840-1848

Giants with feet of clay: Asian critics and Victorian sages to 1914

Liberals in the Desh: North Indian Hindus and the Muslim Dilemma

'Communitarianism': Indian liberalism transformed, c.1890-1916

Inter-war: Indian discourse and controversy 1919-1935

Anti-liberalism, 'counter-liberalism' and liberalism's afterlife, 1920-1950

Conclusion: lineages of liberalism in India

Bibliography

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