The Indian Freedom Struggle and the Kenyan Diaspora

Matatu ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Pheroze Nowrojee
Keyword(s):  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Full Independence ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Freedom Movement ◽  
Indian National Congress

Abstract The connections between the Indian Freedom movement and the Kenyan Indian diaspora after the First World War led to the involvement of the Indian National Congress and Gandhi in the struggle of the Kenyan Indians for equality and equal treatment with the British white settlers in Kenya. The Congress considered that the success of the equality struggle in Kenya would also lead to equal treatment of Indians in India itself. This was consistent with the prevailing political goal of the freedom movement in India in 1919, which was self-rule through Dominion Status under the British Crown. But when the struggle of the Kenya Indians failed and equality was denied to them by the famous Devonshire Declaration in 1923, there the Indian freedom movement realized that this signalled unequal status and a denial of self-rule to India itself. Historic consequences followed. This was the turning point and over the years immediately after the Kenyan decision (1923–1929), the Indian National Congress changed its political aim from Dominion Status to Full Independence as a Republic, realized over the 17 years to 1947.

STRIKING A JUST BALANCE: MAULANA AZAD AS A THEORIST OF TRANS-NATIONAL JIHAD

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
AYESHA JALAL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Law And Ethics ◽  
The First World War ◽  
National Congress ◽  
First World ◽  
Indian National Congress

This article probes the link between anti-colonial nationalist thought and a theory of jihad in early twentieth-century India. An emotive affinity to the ummah was never a barrier to Muslims identifying with patriotic sentiments in their own homelands. It was in the context of the aggressive expansion of European power and the ensuing erosion of Muslim sovereignty that the classical doctrine of jihad was refashioned to legitimize modern anti-colonial struggles. The focus of this essay is on the thought and politics of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. A major theoretician of Islamic law and ethics, Azad was the most prominent Muslim leader of the Indian National Congress in pre-independence India. He is best remembered in retrospectively constructed statist narratives as a “secular nationalist”, who served as education minister in Jawaharlal Nehru's post-independence cabinet. Yet during the decade of the First World War he was perhaps the most celebrated theorist of a trans-national jihad.

The Idea of Freedom in Bengali Nationalist Discourse

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Swarupa Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Nationalist Discourse ◽  
Political Idea ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Freedom Movement ◽  
Multidimensional Concept ◽  
Political Term

While the concept of freedom in India has mainly been seen through the lens of the freedom struggle/movement, this article conjoins the idea (concept) and practice (movement) of freedom as reflected in the Bengali nationalist discourse during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It argues that freedom was a multidimensional concept and contained many connotative strands. Indigenous lineages were linked to the political idea of freedom, expressed as swaraj. But this political term was not seen in terms of politics alone. Rather, it was an evocation and extension of the older idea of freedom in India (as a category of the spiritual, emphasizing identity with the universal). This strand symbolized the indigeneity of freedom by highlighting aspects of personal and social freedom. To understand the nature of freedom as woven into the texture of the freedom movement in India—pioneered by the Indian National Congress, I explore how indigenous origins were refracted through a critical internalization and rearticulation of Western concepts of freedom in India’s own terms. This developed through a discourse on freedom on the site of samaj or social collectivity. It evolved within a grid, in which two principles— dharma and cultural Aryan-ness—set apart Indian society from the West and also underpinned the imagination of the nation. This emblematized the ‘independence’ of the subjugated through contestation of certain basic tenets of colonial power-knowledge. This shows that there was an interpenetration of different related freedoms, in the site of a harmonious social order ( samaj), and this crucially influenced ways of rethinking Indianness and nationhood.

scholarly journals HINDUTVA AND HINDU NATIONALISM

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-39
Author(s):  
Suchithra T.
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Hindu Nationalism ◽  
Ethnic Nationalism ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Liberal Nationalism ◽  
Revolutionary Nationalism ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Indian National Congress

In Europe the concept of nationalism emerged with the rise of nation state. In states like India nationalism emerged as a result of anti-colonial movement. Nationalism is nothing but feeling of belongingness or oneness. There are different kinds of nationalism. Ethnic nationalism, Expansionist nationalism, Revolutionary Nationalism, liberal nationalism, cultural nationalism and so on. There are two major kinds of nationalism emerged in India in different points of time and how nationalism converted over a period of time. The first kind of nationalism developed du ring our freedom struggle largely under the leadership of Indian National Congress, The second one is Hindu Nationalism. This paper is discussing about how Hindutva and Hindu Nationalism developed through exponents and organizations of Hindutva ideology.

Home Rule for India

1919 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-305
Author(s):  
Graham H. Stuart
Keyword(s):  
Civil Service ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Queen Victoria ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Office ◽  
National Congress ◽  
The Government ◽  
Indian National Congress

The epoch-marking proclamation issued by Queen Victoria in 1858 announced to the people of India that they were to be admitted freely and impartially to political office. The autocratic bureaucracy of foreigners, culminating in the régime of Lord Curzon, when only about 4 per cent of the members of the Indian civil service were natives, was hardly a fulfillment of the spirit of this proclamation. Nor did the peoples of India consider it such. The spirit of unrest finally took shape in the Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, to give expression to the ideas of the educated classes; and this body soon came to be regarded as the unofficial Indian parliament. Each year it brought forward a list of ills which the government of India as then organized could not hope to remedy.

Ayodhya Dispute and Responses of India’s Islamic Neighbors and Hindu Nationalism in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-236
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Asian Country ◽  
Hindu Nationalism ◽  
Mahatma Gandhi ◽  
South Asian Country ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Independence Movements ◽  
Indian National Congress

India has been noted for its independence movements including the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements under the leadership of the Indian National Congress in general and Mahatma Gandhi in particular. However, in this South Asian country, there is another kind of nationalism that roots in Hinduism. The objective of the article is to explain the nature of Hindu nationalism in India. To gain this aim, the author is going to implement three tasks including giving a brief overview of the Ayodhya dispute; reporting the reactions from India’s neighbors to the Ayodhya issue; and explaining the relations among the Ayodhya related legal fights and responses from Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as Hindu nationalism. As a result, the study is helpful to comprehend the politics of India and its nationalism. Received 25th September 2020; Revised 2nd January 2021; Accepted 20th February 2021

Democratic Institutions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumit Ganguly ◽  
William R. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Political Agitation ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Democratic Principles

This chapter looks at Indian democratic institutions. Contrary to popular belief, the British did little or nothing to promote the growth of democratic institutions in India. Instead, Indian nationalists from the late nineteenth century onward successfully appropriated liberal-democratic principles from the United Kingdom and infused them into the Indian political context. Under the influence of Mohandas K. Gandhi in the 1930s, these beliefs and principles were disseminated to a broad swath of India's population via the Indian National Congress, the leading nationalist political party. As this was occurring, the British colonial regime was losing few opportunities to thwart or at least contain the growth of democratic sentiment and practice in India. The Indian nationalists can justifiably claim that each step toward self-rule and democratic governance was the result of sustained and unrelenting political agitation against authoritarian colonial rule.

Mobilization in a Mass Movement: Congress ‘Propaganda’ in the United Provinces (India), 1930—34

1975 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Mass Movement ◽  
The People ◽  
Constructive Work ◽  
National Congress ◽  
United Provinces ◽  
Indian National Congress

From 1919 to 1922 the Indian National Congress carried out its first country-wide programme of mass agitations against the British. For the next six or seven years the party concentrated on the electoral arena. By fits and starts, it also carried on a programme of so-called ‘constructive’ work among the mass of the people. This helped to maintain some of the popular contacts earlier established. Elections, and the bitter communal conflicts that were a feature of the mid-1920s, at least in the United Provinces (U.P.), forged other links.

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