Question

legacy of nationalist movement

Answer 1

An appreciation of the hundred-year-old freedom struggle is integral to an analysis of developments in post-1947 India. While India inherited its economic and administrative structures from the precolonial and colonial period, the values and ideals—the vision—and the well-defined and comprehensive ideology that were to inspire it in nation-building were derived from the national movement. Representing the Indian people, it incorporated various political trends from the right and the left which were committed to its ideological goals; it excluded only communalists and those loyal to the colonial rulers.

These goals and values were, moreover, not confined to the intellectuals and the middle classes. During the era of mass politics, tens of thousands of the most humble cadres disseminated them among the common people in urban as well as rural areas. Consequently, these ideals were to play a critical role in integrating and keeping together Indian society and polity. They served to link the national liberation movement with the efforts to develop India, in what Jawaharlal Nehru characterized as ‘a continuing revolution’. It is, in fact, these ideals by which people and parties are still evaluated and judged.