Aayushi BansalAIR 7 · CSE 2024 · 215 wordsTheir whole copy
Opening
Prof AR Desai was an intellectual rebel in Indian sociology departing from dominant structural functional and Indological perspectives to understand Indian society and nationalism. He used Marxist approach.
Body · continuous prose
Prof Desai concidered economic and material reasons behind the core of nationalism. Britishers introduced exploitative land tenure practices. This created antagonistic classes of landlords and peasants in hitherto self suffcient villages.
He considered middle class to be elitistic which led the movement for its own interests.
Capitalists joined the struggle expecting control of industries post independence. Middle class led all the classes making it a mass movement.
On the other hand, nationalist understanding was contradictory to this Marxist perspective. While moderates advocated education and drain of wealth as drivers of nationalism, extremist advocated cultural nationalism. Extremists like Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai glorified India's past which has been destroyed by British. Gandhi's nationalism believed India has always been a nation while Nehru had a socialistic nationalism.
Prof Desai's understanding of class contradictions and economy not education as the driver stood in opposition to rationalists.
However, both these approaches came under criticism. While Desai focussed only on economic base (economic determinism), ignoring role of culture, altruism and religion, nationalist glorified past ignoring cleavages of Indian society.
Close · a summary
Prof Desai's view helped to generate new perspective breaking away from colonial mould.