Decline of an EmpireShila Sen INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS VERSUS THE BRITISH By M.N. Das Ajanta Publications, Delhi, 1978, pp. 424, Rs. 100.00 VOLUME IV NUMBER 3 November/December 1979 The book
is not a mere addition to the much discussed topic of Britain's responsibility
towards India and India's response to it as well as her reaction. Nor is it a
mere narration of the emergence and growth of a political party. Indian National
Congress Versus British presents a factual analysis of how an all powerful
alien government and a national political party fought their elaborate battle
over six decades. The expansion and consolidation of the empire and the
British desire to give it a semblance of justified possession let to the
emergence of rebel India, which itself, the author asserts, was the creation of
the British. The growth of the Indian nationalism signified the decline of the
British Empire. This in a nut-shell is what the book is about.
The British Empire was an established institution when the Indian National
Congress was founded in 1885 or rather the latter was the end product of the
process of evolution of the British Empire. Therefore the history of the sixty
years from the birth of Indian National Congress to the departure of the
British is the story of adjustment of two forces.
The entire story has been told in two parts. The first volume deals with
the period from the birth of Congress in 1885 to the First World War when the
nature of both British attitude and India's response changed. The second volume
therefore would carry the story upto the end of British rule. The end of the
First World War signalled, according to the author, the end of the Indo-British
cooperation and prelude to Indo-British confrontation of a momentous character
which with occasional intermission continued to the end of British rule.
There are many studies on the Indian National Congress discussing its
birth, growth and transformation besides a host of books on India's struggle
for freedom. There are also many studies on British policy in India covering
this period. This book has however portrayed both sides of the picture i.e. the
interplay of the clash of ideology and clash of interests between the two
forces, British imperialism and Indian nationalism.
The book is a welcome exception to the recent
trend in writing history of India's national movement which tends to deny the
relevance/existence of an all-India nationalist ideology and concentrates on
factionalism at the local level which, according to them, with some inner pulls
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