Understanding India: Bhadralok,Modernity and Colonial India

This article explores the understandings of mid-nineteenth-century colonial India through the perceptions of Bholanauth Chunder, an anglicised Bengali bhadralok and his early attempt at seeing and experiencing a historical entity called India. The role played by the middle class in forging a sense of anti-colonial nationalism has received significant attention, but this focuses on late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By focusing on the perceptions and visions of an Indian middle class during the mid-nineteenth century, I provide an early articulation of nationalism which preceded the later nationalist movement by several decades. The ambiguous nature of the colonial middle class demonstrates that although they were concerned with articulating an incipient sense of nationalism, this did not involve a complete repudiation of the British. The influence of Western education is evident in Chunder’s strong desire for progress and modernity; his appreciation and use of history as an instrument in forging a common national past, although it is largely an imagination of a ‘Hindu’ past; and his critique of religious orthodoxy, which is inimical to progress. However, Chunder’s ethnographic observations demonstrate that his perceptions of Indian society were not entirely predetermined by colonial knowledge.