For more than a century, Indian liberalism has been mocked as little more than mimicry. 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.
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. 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.
At the core of liberalism is the idea of protecting the individual against external pressure. Liberals in 19th-century Europe were worried about the vast and impersonal forces unleashed by modernity — mass democracy, mass industrialisation, and mass media — that made it increasingly difficult for individuals to act and think independently. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
The theory Parmanand developed was elegant in design and global in perspective. 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). 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). 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.
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. 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).
Sadly, despite its elegance and reach, Parmanand’s text was eventually forgotten. As the Congress strengthened, it became clear that the days of the Native States were numbered. 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. The variant of Indian liberalism that subsequently came to dominate the public sphere was the one that evolved in British India after 1919. It focused not on empowering individuals but on representation based on group membership, which meant that its victory came, as Parmanand feared, at the expense of both individuality and solidarity. And so, when we are puzzled by the condition of Indian liberalism today, which speaks boldly about group rights but quavers over individual merit and a uniform civil code, it is worth remembering that there once existed another liberalism in another India, which measured progress by the well-being of individuals rather than groups.
Rahul Sagar is a Global Network associate professor at NYU Abu Dhabi. His latest book is The Birth of Indian Liberalism. The views expressed are personal
