Comment: Indian nationalism as depicted in S.N. Banerjea’s ‘A Nation in the Making’. (2010, 20 Marks)
Surendranath Banerjea (1848–1925), the “Rashtraguru” whom the British nicknamed “Surrender-not”, published A Nation in Making: Being the Reminiscences of Fifty Years of Public Life (Oxford University Press, 1925) in the year of his death. The dedication states its creed: India had been set on the road to “Constitutional Freedom to be attained by Constitutional Means”, ending in full dominion government. The book is both memoir and the fullest self-portrait of liberal constitutional nationalism.
The core idea: nationhood as a process
The title answers the colonial claim, put by John Strachey, that there was no “India”. Banerjea conceded that India was not yet a nation but insisted it was becoming one through common grievances, English education, the press and all-India organisation. This is the Moderate position, opposed to Aurobindo Ghose’s view of an eternal nation already in being.
How the book shows the nation being made
- From personal to collective grievance: his dismissal from the Indian Civil Service (1874) taught him, he writes, that “I had suffered because I was an Indian”, one of a people treated as helots.
- Mazzini and the young: his lectures to students on Giuseppe Mazzini made patriotism a moral vocation for the educated youth of Bengal.
- Organisation: the Indian Association (26 July 1876), founded with Ananda Mohan Bose, spoke for the educated middle class.
- The first all-India campaign: after the maximum age for the civil service examination was cut to 19, his 1877–78 tours of Upper India, Bombay and Madras carried one grievance across provinces.
- Press and sacrifice: as editor of The Bengalee he became, in 1883, the first Indian journalist jailed, for contempt of court.
- Federation: the Indian National Conference (1883, 1885) merged into the Congress, which he twice presided over (Poona 1895, Ahmedabad 1902).
- Partition and swadeshi: he led the anti-partition campaign, describing swadeshi as a “new note of practicality in agitation”, while calling the scenes at Surat (1907) “rowdyism”.
- Reform as fulfilment: he welcomed the Montagu Declaration (1917), left the Congress in 1918 for the Moderates’ conference, forerunner of the Liberal Federation, and served as Minister of Local Self-Government under dyarchy, piloting the Calcutta Municipal Act, 1923.
Features of the nationalism depicted
| Feature | Expression in the book |
|---|---|
| Liberal | Rights, representation, free press |
| Constitutional | Petition, council and ministry, never law-breaking |
| Gradualist | Dominion status by stages |
| Loyalist | British connection as a partner in the nation’s making |
| Middle-class | The educated class as the nation’s voice |
Theoretical readings
- Benedict Anderson’s imagined community fits closely: tours, newspapers and a shared civil-service grievance made strangers across provinces feel one public.
- Anil Seal and the Cambridge school would read the same record as elite competition for jobs and office.
- Bipan Chandra would stress political education: the early nationalists first had to build the case against colonialism.
Limits
- A memoir of vindication: written after his defeat in 1923 by the Swarajist-backed Bidhan Chandra Roy, it defends dyarchy and treats the non-cooperators as adversaries.
- Peasants, workers, lower castes and Muslims barely figure; the “nation” is largely the bhadralok writ large.
- By 1925 M. K. Gandhi’s mass politics had overtaken the method the book celebrates.
Contemporary relevance
His public life began with access to the higher civil service, a question still contested: in August 2024 the UPSC withdrew an advertisement for lateral entry to 45 senior posts after objections that it bypassed reservation.
Conclusion
The book depicts nationalism as construction, not revelation: a nation assembled by argument, organisation and institutions. That vision laid the institutional foundations the Constitution later built on, but its social narrowness explains why the nation Banerjea made needed Gandhi to become a people.