Ebook: Developing India: An Intellectual and Social History, c. 1930-50

This book is about ideas which were crucial for the articulation of a vision of a future independent India. Such ideas were organized around notions of ‘development’— a term which encompassed far more than the narrowly economic meaning to which it was later reduced. The book deals with underlying notions of progress, self-government, and nation-building contained in developmental goals articulated in India in the late colonial period, the middle of the twentieth century. It concentrates on the period c. 1930–50, reaching back to earlier debates where relevant, and carrying the narrative into the 1950s to show the significance of the ideas discussed. It studies three main groups of contributors to the debates in some detail: British Indian administrators, Gandhians, and other Indian nationalists—the last often loosely referred to as ‘modernizers’ or incorrectly lumped together as ‘Nehruvians’. It attempts to show the interactions and interconnections among these ideas, and the processes through which the ideas were articulated and placed before an audience.