— Amir Ali

(The Indian Express has launched a new series of articles for UPSC aspirants written by seasoned writers and scholars on issues and concepts spanning History, Polity, International Relations, Art, Culture and Heritage, Environment, Geography, Science and Technology, and so on. Read and reflect with subject experts and boost your chance of cracking the much-coveted UPSC CSE. In the following article, political scientist Amir Ali analyses the prolonged process of decolonisation in India and the continuing debate about the unfinished task of decolonisation at large.)

The process of decolonisation in India was a prolonged one. There were inklings of it with the first stirrings of national consciousness and the realisation that India should not be ruled as a colony by alien British rulers. It was felt that the British did not rule in the interests of Indians but for the purposes of advancing the interests of the British Empire. 

In this sense, the 1857 Great Indian Mutiny, often called the First War of Independence, can be considered a strong, though ultimately thwarted, attempt at decolonisation on the part of native Indians as they rallied around the besieged, embattled and tragic figure of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. 

However, this significant event in modern Indian history led to the consolidation of British control as the British Crown assumed direct rule over India, setting aside the East India Company’s governance. 

Here, decolonisation can be understood as a dynamic process in which the coloniser was sometimes compelled to loosen control in response to demands from the subjugated Indian society, which persistently pushed to unshackle itself from colonial control. These prolonged efforts culminated in India’s independence in August 1947. 

In this process, the Indian National Congress, established in 1885, emerged as one of the most important political platforms for expressing nationalist ideas, which slowly and gradually increased by degrees and levels of political autonomy for Indians. 

One of the earliest manifestations of this slow and gradual increase of Indian autonomy came in 1892, seven years after the establishment of the INC, with the passage of the Indian Councils Act. This Act expanded legislative councils, though the number of Indian members remained quite low. The Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909, also known as the Indian Councils Act of 1909, increased the number of Indian members. 

A decade later, the 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms marked a significant shift, with the Secretary of State for India, Edwin Samuel Montagu, pointing out to the House of Commons that the British government aimed for ‘the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire’. 

Notably, until the late 1920s, the nationalist movement did not demand complete independence but instead called for dominion status within the British Empire. In 1928, the Nehru Report, chaired by Jawaharlal Nehru’s father Motilal Nehru, demanded dominion status for India. 

When the British rejected the demand for dominion status, the INC responded the following year by passing the historic Purna Swaraj or Complete Independence resolution during its December session in Lahore. The 750-word resolution stressed that India ‘must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj or complete independence’.

An important aspect of India’s decolonisation movement is its firm rejection of violence in favour of ‘civil disobedience’.

The Gandhian imprint on the national movement is evident. As mentioned earlier, the process of decolonisation in India was prolonged and gathered momentum after the end of the Second World War. 

By this time the economic costs of maintaining colonies had become prohibitive for many European colonial powers. This was especially true of the British Empire, which had the most extensive colonies across the world and which was famously known as ‘the empire on which the sun never sets’. 

A good way of making sense of the process of decolonisation is to think of the many colonies of the British Empire such as India, Pakistan, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Burma (now Myanmar), Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In addition, there were many other colonies of other European powers. It gives us some understanding of how the process of decolonisation created a new world, as the newly independent countries entered the comity of nations. 

The prolonged process of decolonisation brought about the ultimate outcome of political independence from British rule through the Indian Independence Act, passed in the British parliament in July 1947. This act led to the creation of Pakistan and India on August 14 and 15, 1947, respectively. The act was passed by the Labour government of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, while the powerful Conservative Leader of the opposition Winston Churchill reluctantly accepted Indian independence. 

On 26 January 1950, India became a sovereign and democratic republic. It is worth bearing in mind that 26 January was the date that had been observed as Purna Swaraj Diwas since 1929 as the resolution of that name had been publicly announced on that very date. 

Despite the new political facts that ushered in the new world order with the end of the Second World War and the process of decolonisation, the new order was skewed in favour of the former colonial metropolitan countries and to the detriment of newly independent nations like India.  

As the Second World War came to an end, the Bretton Woods system was created largely under the inspiration and guidance of the famous Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes. This was a system that established financial and development institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) also known as the World Bank. These institutions were meant to ensure financial and economic stability in the world economy but were created from the perspective of the developed countries.

The imbalance in the international world order resulted in the call for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in 1974, which sought to integrate the newly independent countries into the global economy more equitably by addressing the imbalance in terms of trade and protecting their sovereignty.

The impetus for the NIEO came from the G77, a coalition of developing countries formed in 1964. Initially comprising 77 countries, the G77 was intended to put forward the interests of the developing countries, many of which were also part of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a group that India played a pivotal role in establishing. 

While the NAM tended to look after the political interests of countries of the Global South, the G77 focused on protecting their economic interests. These economic interests were also protected and furthered through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which was established in 1964.

The economic and political thinking that governed the early days of decolonisation in the 1950s, 1960s and until the 1970s were modernisation and development. The idea seemed to be that the newly decolonised countries needed to undergo a process of development in order to catch up with the nations of the First World. 

In other words, it was felt that the developing nations needed to compress into a few decades the development processes that the more ‘advanced countries’ had taken much longer to attain. However, such attitudes have since been critiqued by post-colonial theorists, who question why decolonised countries should be expected to take the same trajectory and play a game of catch-up in development. 

One of the most important scholarly interventions that questioned the centrality of development and its role in perpetuating the domination of Global South societies by the Global North was Columbian scholar Arturo Escobar’s 1995 book Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, where he argued in the direction of post-development.  

Critics of post-colonial theory have pointed towards a tension between the representational and discursive concerns often associated with post-colonial theory and the material practices emphasised in development theories. Despite all contestations and critiques of post-colonial theory, what it has done is to emphasise the unfinished task of decolonisation, especially in the intellectual sphere. 

How did the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857 signify an early attempt at decolonization in India?

In what ways did the 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms contribute to the gradual realisation of self-rule in India?

How did the Indian Independence Act of 1947 shape the final stages of India’s journey to independence?

What were the main criticisms of the Bretton Woods system from the perspective of Global South countries?

What were the central arguments made by Arturo Escobar in Encountering Development regarding the role of development in shaping Global South societies?

(Amir Ali is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)

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