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  • Power, Knowledge And The Rhetoric Of Post-Enlightenment: A Struggling Context Of Nationalism And Communism In Pre-Independent India

  • 1Assistant Professor, Department of History, C.K.B. College, Teok (Jorhat)
    2Associate professor in Education, C.K.B College, Teok, Assam.

Abstract

The evolution of power as a definite ideological orientation outing into effect for controlling the time and conscious positioning of the common masses has a narrative of its own in terms of its role in interpretation of the reason of otherness of the spirit which has been far away from the actual center of power. In a sense, we could say that the forms of power have been evolved because of the logical adaptation of the will into a spatial circumference of the thought that is made resolute enough of defending the cause of indignity as well as making out an attempt of alternative discourse of power. The forms of European enlightenment had created a zone of nervous breakdown for the struggling groups who were conscious of leading a different path of mobility in power system and in the mode of bringing transition to the spirit of social metaphors of time and progress they in fact they brought the critical methods of inquiry without substantiation of the causes of their own realm of empirical social reality .This occurred primarily during the period of the growth of colonized intellectual journey to overcome the boundary of the dominant logic of colonial spirit in the shape of the British imperialists versus the Indian educated nationalists. The ultimate point of arrival of the politics of communism signified the final battle to re-imagine a perfect domain of freedom and justice to all with full force of enlightenment but again it met it failure because of their inarticulate –desperate appeal to change without taking into account the social context of India which had been civilizationally unfit to come into terms of the logic of power as emphasized by the communism as transgressive modality .The paper would try to look into the trajectory of the dichotomy between the power and knowledge at the backdrop of the rhetoric of post-enlightenment with special reference to the departure made by the praxis of nationalism and consequent to it the arrival of communism.

Keywords

Power, ideological, time, otherness, spirit, will, enlightenment, critical, colonized.

Introduction

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The evolution of power and the forms of knowledge has a different trajectory in colonial India from its Western counterpart in terms of its relation to giving birth a separate system of power as well as conditioning the thoughts of its traditional beliefs and cultural patterns of living within a spectrum of philosophical introspection that is quite new in spirit .In the West , the forms of power had been developed in quite close relation with the political economy of the state where it could make definite impacts in defining its jurisdiction of activity in influencing a conscious section of the society to its fold in overwhelming presence over the large bulk of the population .In contrast, in India there was the absence of the political culture of the state because of the fact, the native Indians were themselves not part of the organization and subsequent development of the colonial state and hence ,the realm of power was dominated exclusively by the colonialists where the colonized Indians were just meek followers of the ideological apparatus of the colonial state .Through the struggle against the colonial rule ,there was the attempt of challenging colonialism ‘not only at a political or intellectual level, but also on an emotional plane’ where in fact ‘the idea of a national was a powerful vehicle for harnessing anti-colonial energies at all these levels’(Loomba,2005,pp.182-183).The ideology of the colonial power system had to make amendment in the previous forms of the ruling contents when they had successfully tried to discuss the supremacy of the absolute rulers of the ancient India with specific emphasis on the stratification in society with a perfect division of labour within broad hegemony of the caste system .

The Colonial state as a whole redefined the social relations in the colony quite unlike their own country where ‘the same social, political and economic process that produced industrial development and social and cultural progress in Britain the metropolis, also produced and then maintained economic underdevelopment and social and cultural backwardness in India , the colony’ (Chandra,1999,p.4). So, what they underlined the importance of the social division only as the continuation of that systemic apparatus in the colonial period also where they had created differences  among the colonized in terms of their authority in explaining the essence of a new incarnation of hegemony  .The autonomous  development of the  communication  between the culture of the colonized and rule of the colonial power in developing the conscience of the state had been mediated  by their mutual emphasis on continuance of the forms of a state that would cater to the necessity  of the production of knowledge which would prioritize the signs of rule rather than the signs of the ruled. The paper would analyze the discourse of the post-enlightenment rhetoric of power and knowledge in light of the discursive practices of the principles of nationalism and communism . The paper will try to discuss some of the specific points of the inter-textuality of the nationalism and communism in the context of post-enlightenment essentialities of knowledge and power syndrome during the period of India’s struggle for independence.

1.2   Signs and the Process of Signification of the Power relation:   What were the signs of the signified in the manifestation of the duality of  the signification of power  ? One of the basic symptoms  of that dual position of the power  was in externalizing the  opposition to  the colonialism  in the shape of contradictions those were nothing else  than internalization  of the discourse of the language of power by the colonized in the act of defiance to the centre .The centre which was brought into the contradiction or opposition between the  programme of a state  and its basic features of the ideological apparatus had been considered to be real objective of struggle but which was not in actuality . The Centre had been understood  to be its own language of interpreting the basic necessity of change in any point of social context and it thought  to be the original enough of leading the state of nationalism from within  the centre of consciousness to a greater stage of the state as articulated through the centre of the colonial state .

The Indian National Movement which was a great example of the ‘Passive Revolution’ fought on the basis of ‘war of manoeuvre’ to ‘war of position’(Gramsci,2015,p.108) made a great intervention in terms of utilizing the limited ‘constitutional space offered by the existing structure’but ‘without getting co-opted by it’(Chandra, et.al.2001,p.13).The forms of the colonial state had been brought into the discourse of nationalism so far as its utter negligence of the rights of the individuals those were considered to be capable of leading the administrative apparatus with due recognition from the ruling class from above and in a great way ,the interests of the bulk of the poor Indians had been substituted  with the ideology of nationalism .This kind of substitution of the greater interests of the masses invoked the teleology of a different perspective of power in implicit reckoning of the colonial paradigm of power and in this context , the teleology of that specific forms of power is meant to be dominance of the power of nationalism which encompassed all the other features of deprivation whether in the field of economy or social necessities of a robust production relation.  Thus, there grew up  the discursive practices of the nationalization of the whole cultural tropes of a given social structure and there never sprang up the   the prospects of a state of consciousness from within that  could annihilate the bonded social relation to a significant degree  . So, the act of sublimation over the basic formation of the colonial state had never happened unlike the great revolutionary movements of the world history.

In this context ,  the movement for the organized formation of a nation –state under the middle class led nationalism took the turn of a popular upheaval in some instances where the language of protests had been conformed to the subaltern resistance against the coercive cum  oppressive technique of the state. The rumours of breakdown of the state power worked as a catalyst to unite the masses in a specific context against the immediate authority of control (Sarkar,2018,p.456).It was the peasant, labourers and other classified backward classes those were bent upon in times of crisis immediate seizure of power in order to define their own understanding of power with a sense of collective frame of consciousness and Gandhi’s ideas of Satyagraha and Non-violence were interpreted in their own way of political standpoint against the authority (Sarkar,2017,pp.72-73).

    1. The spirit of the Colonial Power Left Unchallenged

The conditions of overwhelming presence of a public denial of the repositories of the colonial power relations had been left unchallenged . In its place a separate methodology of inference of the colonial state was interpreted by the nationalists where the  epistemology and the power of inversion of the state had been understood to be change of the guardians of the ruling state and not the deepest change in turning the power hidden  under the web of the politics of representation initiated through the colonial interventions.  The explanation of the idioms of progress in the sphere of nationalism was determined in how far there would be stiff resistance to the particular rules of the colonial functioning state within a jurisdiction of law that would ensure in possibilities of transferring the right to determine the making of those concerning the vision of the nationalists .There was a large emphasis on construct of the nation-state but at the same time there was the renewed interest in simulation about the truth of its tradition but which was singularly affected  badly only through the colonial interference and the duty of the nationalists lied in describing the failure of that form of interference .

There was the sustained agitation against the colonial rule with the issues of economic stagnation which in fact did initiate the routes for ‘ political demands as they came to realize that economic policies could best be influenced from the seats of political power’(Chandra,1991,p.755).The researches of Dipesh Chakrabarty has amply  proved one point very clear about the ‘relative absence of bourgeois notions of “equality” or “individualism” in the political rhetoric of enlightenment in modern India and of course these notions are too relevant in the Indian context but ‘the hierarchy and the violence that sustains it still remain the dominant organizing principles in everyday life’(Chakrabarty, 1996, p.xii). The practices of social inequities at the core of human relation among the common masses of India during the colonial time as well as in later period also played a critical role

    1. Truth and the Realm of Power in the Non-Violent Movement:

What was the rule of the truth in India’s non-violent movement ?How actually  the means of absolute concept of power in the form of the God  has been developed around the conceptualization as focus of human welfare? When was the active mode of the movement helped in  developing the ideas of progress that in turn could help in individuality of the people concerned? The methods of non-violence  as ‘doctrine of the sword’ had been evaluated by Nehru ‘not only as the right method but as the most effective one for our purpose’which was ‘the very opposite of a meek submission to a tyrant’s will’(Nehru,1997,p.82).Gandhiji’s hold over the national politics was interpreted by  Subhash Bose ,another firebrand leader who was forced to resign from all positions of the INC due to his opposition to the right-wing leadership controlled by Mahatma as the ‘virtual dictator’(Bose,2010,p.30).The role of the truth was given importance in legitimizing the search for an identity that would ensure in seeking the hold of an alternative traditional base of power which would be more interrelated with the colonial production of knowledge and if there was the struggle for making out a separate space of power based on the traditional routes of knowledge then it was the improved  version of the knowledge system deeply interwoven through the  principles of colonial modernity.  For Gandhi the principles of seeking after truth was synonymous with the search for the God and there the truth was recognized as ‘the sovereign principle’ where it was pronounced in the words of the most powerful leader ‘I worship God as Truth only I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him. I am prepared to sacrifice the things dearest to me in pursuit of this quest’ (Gandhi, 2001,p.15). The truth was thought to be absolute and supremely important in terms of leveraging the truth and practice of its in everyday lives but the exact impacts of other factors in influencing the practices of truthful activities were not given much importance in discourse of the nationalist medium of truth which was individualistic in its social origin. Gandhi tried to deconstruct the possibilities of political power through the communication with the sphere of religion where the individuals would at first establish their control over the self which controls all the activities beyond the external political role because of his perception of looking ‘at politics more from the standpoint of the rebel than of the ruler, of freedom than of authority , of the individual than of the state’ with the understanding that ‘true power resides in the people and not in governments or legislatures’(Iyer,2000,p.53).

Absoluteness of the power of truth was determined irrespective of the social  dialectical mechanism and it was thought out first that in order to define the forms and boundary of struggle against the colonial rule it would  be imperative  in alienation of the body from the spirit .In the newly founded discourse of truth in nationalist age ,the emphasis was laid on the spirituality of the existence of truth  as innocuous rendering  of the social metaphors and the logic of truth was indispensable one of getting one’s control over his immediate circumference of the mind for better  understanding over the conditions of reality . There was the distance between the causal appropriation of the truth and the forms of metaphysical territoriality of truth which had the historical coincidence with the growth of nationalism as one of the intrinsic methods to make a strong resilient idiom of ideological narrative against the idiosyncrasies of the colonial state .The positioning of the truth was made in terms of the changes brought about the large scale determinants of the colonial modernity where the relative significance of the spirit of the Indian thought process and the whole cultural logic of capital was considered to  be inadvertently  paused in terms of locating the self of the colonized Indians within the paradigm of colonial language of power.

    1. Indian Social Infrastructure and the Realm of Power:

The infrastructure of the  Indian social structure incorporated already certain things in its relation to the social mode of the colonial systemic juncture and the core features of the colonized Indian society developed out of the perplexing  political difference with the colonial masters in terms of safeguarding the traditional knowledge system . There was the increasing stress on differentiating the modern  and Western form of the liberating ideas of the spirit from the phenomenological abstraction of the Indian knowledge system when there was the comparison of possibilities of transforming the ideals of human nature in relative significance to the distant ideology of the colonial modernity .There was the continuous and rigorous translation of the spirit of indigenous cultural tropes to the rhetoric of nationalism at the level of broad conceptualization of the narrative juncture of the state of the nation in image of the spirit of resistance to the strong existence of the alien knowledge system that was assumed to be quite retrogressive in adjustment to the original culture of the colonized. The consideration of the civilization controlled by the Western knowledge system  as a form of alienation  from the culture and society of the country  had given a new kind of logic to the political philosophy of nationalism .Thus , the power of understanding the reality through the  imposed paradigm of knowledge  had been considered to be unfit enough of representing the causes of the Indians and in its place , the discursive practices of the cultural ideals of refined texture had been thought to be definitely more progressive in initiation of the new morality of social mobility of the Indians. But in Gandhi’s consideration the dominance of the West through its advanced civilization was not only a curse for the colonized Indians but it had become the ‘irreligion’and the religion was thought to be true because ‘the humbug of Civilization …is not to be found in religion’(Gandhi,2004,p.37&p.43)

There was the systematic  authorization of the Indian values in respect of nurturing the position of a self confident  nationalist and its egoistic defiance to the cause of the colonial modernist principles where it had a lively interest to challenge the spirit of that ego of the Western imperial intervention .The subjection of India to the British rule was analyzed in terms of culture where the European culture was considered to be differently ‘equipped for power and progress’(Chatterjee,2012,p.55).But ironically , the methods of implying the essence of the religiosity of the Indian context  as the normative answer to the civilization of the West had not been brought into the continuous mode of transgression of the absolute entity of the individual proper irrespective of the differences  . The normative juncture of the Indian social order was never brought into a strong ideological entity of challenging the imposing ideas of the British colonialism that actually hindered in realizing the true goals of enlightenment .

On the one hand , there was the politicization of the sphere of religion without invoking the structural adjustment to the programme of socio-economic paradigm of progress and on the other hand, the religion had been brought into the context of spiritualism and a moral reconnaissance against the masculinity of the Western religion in absence of the making of a philosophical conditioning of the whole discourse of sociological imperative of religion . So, the medium of conditionalizing the essence of religion in the Indian perspective during the colonial period was never turned into the creation of an alternative transcendental mobility of enthusing the masses and its psychological obduracy against any intervention from the above . When the forms of religion had been brought into the political domain of beliefs there had been germinated the spirit of a conservative as well as determined spiritualization of the power of spirit and the absolute senses of coming into the modern grips of civilization had been neglected by citing the improper development of the western civilization and its will of confounding the position of the colonized with the rigour of their language of civilization only.

The discovery of India was emphasized in the context of coming into terms of the Western mode of knowledge system but which had become a sordid affair of contact in absence of the path of transition towards the beginning of an ethical substantiation  of the reality .   The Indian nationalistic narration of the religion as another form of civilization actuated through the defined injunction of the political actualization of the present was vitiated in a mode of reified nature of the absoluteness of spirit in absence of the pragmatic reference to the socio-political configuration the existing infrastructure of the social hold of the power system as manifested in language of modernity. When the forms and practices of religion were conformed to the ideas of modern principles of living but without making any deeper revelation in the realm of thought of the culture and spirit of engendering the ideological contents of its own to interact more boldly against the hegemony of the colonial imperialists with their methods of cultural systemization over the colonized subjects. The powerful influence of the colonial ruling class was depended upon the negation of the cultural capital of the colonized as non-cultural  and impractical in establishing communion with the greater ideology of the colonial structure and the rhetoric or the narration of the ideas of progress as well as the forms of power were deployed in such a way that the impacts of those cultural mitigation of their faith would not provide any necessary infrastructure to contain the expansive basis of power relation among the colonized .

    1. The Questions of Individuality and the Signification of Power:

Since the beginning of the organized demand for complete independence  the question of  freedom at the level of individuality had been due importance which was declared to be the ‘inalienable right of the Indian people , as of any other people, to have freedom’(Dev(ed.),2011,p.49). The individualization of the systemic ambience of the colonial power relation into the orbit of the political spirit of the colonized body had a determining effect on consideration of the nobility of the western theory cum  practices of the science and logic of that  civilization as full of possibilities of transformation in social paradigm of the act of labour up to a degree of freedom which would be more in consonant  with the traditional reverberation of power . How the methods of individualization of power were implied in the context of socialization of the functioning of the colonial state in India? One of the basic strategies appropriated by the colonial rulers was in starting of the process of  negation of the traditional routes of knowledge in such a manner of completion that the colonized consciousness had understood it to be the real image of the progressive vision of the West  bypassing the authority of the previous mode of power relation in its individuality to the social embodiment of the spirit of negation . But what happened in the case  of the colonized Indian context was that the social revelation of the truth of negation had not been corroborated with the changing aspects of the time and space where the invention of tradition was given an added emphasis  percolating down to the lowest rung of the society . The social landscape of the colonized society had been oriented  to the image of the colonial power structure in order to rehabilitate the lost paradigm of its own history where it wanted to recreate in a new domain of rule with concern of superficial augmentation  of the reality where the ideas of feudal  influences worked more in determining the relation between the rulers and the ruled .

The relation between the colonial masters and the subject  people of India had been vitiated through the  language of obfuscating  the possibilities of any consciousness among the colonized about their rights  to represent themselves .The power of representation to the Indian was denied on the principle that they were not in conformity to the means of deliverance of the will of the realm of power unlike the colonial masters due to the non-individuality of inhaling the language of disciplining the psyche of the common masses .There was the essence of the civilization controlled from a determined objectivity of a class of people those had been bent upon introducing  ever changing narrative of production and techniques of appropriation of labour power for the grand design of an industrial society in which the colonized being was substantially poor . Where the  power of the being of the colonized intelligence  had been reiterated with its undetermined approach of actuality in terms of its relation to organic hold of the individual over his self and the corresponding ego was henceforth neutralized in response to the demand of the authority of the super ego controlled through  the power  of the  colonial knowledge system . There was assumed to be forms of nothingness inherent in the knowledge of the colonized  and in fact there was thought to be no systemic apparatus of that particular phenomena of  knowledge for which there  were considered of not capable enough in representing their interests without the presence of the colonial power . The nationalist denunciation of the logic and rationality of the colonial power was just at the point of negotiation for seeking approval to represent the cause of the Indians through the same apparatus of the power relation prompted at the behest of the colonial ruling design  .The struggle for freedom  led under the leadership of the Indian National Congress was also the methodological objective of snatching out a pure space of  liminality where they could occupy a position of strength against the supreme power of the colonialists those were active in determining the boundary of  political exercises of the forms of liminal positionality for the colonized . The emphasis on the freedom from the colonial rule also meant the process of doing away with the power of authorization  utilized by the colonial rulers in developing a separate sphere of culture  for the colonized where the ideas of  interpreting the indigenous philosophical and cultural practices were hugely determined by the powerful object of  separating the spirit  from the body of the colonized .The nationalists on the other hand tried to negate the authority of the centralized power system of colonialism through the efforts of bringing into live the alternative discourse of resistance at the moral and political level against the superior representation of the colonial super ego which bedeviled the  native origin of power from the beginning of language to represent the unrepresented . So, there was a contradictory but which was quite natural in regionalizing the sphere of the knowledge as acquired  through the dialectics of negation in relation to the process of colonizing the spirit of deductive functioning of the reason of resistance against the supremacist attitude of the colonial realm of power .

When there was sole importance laid upon the structural  intervention in the discursive practices of the colonial rule through the concrete methodological and programmatic  political routes of the theme of dissent against the imposing reality of the life under colonialism .There was systematic orientation of  the morality of nationality in the purpose of legitimacy of a construct of nation as the first preference to come into terms with the prerogatives of a modern idea of progress within the territoriality of power and language of its own .If we are saying the basic thrust of the national movement was first of all in liberating the spirit of the Indians from the clutches of the colonial power and discipline was not the whole truth of the game of protests against the reification of the colonized mind .But it was on the one hand of naturalizing the art of negotiation as the way of coming into understanding the limits of the colonial juncture of modernity in the sense of utilizing those limited reflexivity for the grand narration of the nation as an alternative super ego replaced through the ego of the colonialists .

    1. Systemic build up of the Knowledge and the Power System:

The forms of the colonial jurisdiction of power relation had given preference to the birth of a knowledge system that would be greatly indebted to the rhetoric of the paradigm of the pre-modern systemic revelation of knowledge and the power of determining their self within the broad corpus of the social complex as given recognition through the ideological perspective of the time and its means of discipline over the indiscipline of the colonized body and mind.  There was the analysis of the methods of disciplining the spirit of the colonized through the introduction of methods of enlightenment which had been considered to be more necessary in providing a loose infrastructure of development of the social will that would essentailize the need of bringing development only in the perspective of socialized coloniality . By the term ‘socialized coloniality’ we want to mean the rationalization of the colonial basis of power and its functioning juncture into the very core of the colonized society where the ideas of transferring the will to the spirit was always comprehended through the intervention of the systemic mobility of colonial power  .In that form of  structural configuration ,the powerful obsession of the colonialists with the purpose of recurring increasing privileges out of the  loose construct of that rationalized division of power between the native elites with considerable social positioning and above all a willingness to be produced which would prefer to  accept unquestionably the determinants of the injunction of the internalities of the language of power which would contribute in ensuring of their hold over the common masses even after the lapse of colonialism to an another alternative discourse of power.  The otherness of the colonized  being was  given primacy to legitimize the hold of the colonialists  as a way of dealing with the rising grievances of the  conscious section of the people those were contemplating the vision of an image of the progress as underlined in the mother country of the colonialists . Through the discursive practices of the ideals of nationalism, the Indian leadership of the freedom movement tried to invent the credible inferences of the laws and culture of the English as the prime objective of their struggle in order to define the trajectory of the space for the practices of the nationalist politics where the aims of distributional orientation of the game of power had been stimulated with the goals for libertarian principles of freeing the space for the imposition from above.

    1. Ideas of Communism as the form of Departure  from the Dominance of Colonially Induced Power:

The aims and objectives of the national movement had been brought into the criticism of the Communist path of liberation where they had been disassociated with the practices of nationalism to the degree of bourgeois emphasis on the body of consciousness  in absence of the will of defending the rights of an individual first. But the real spirit of a liberating soul was never experienced in its totality when the rationality of freedom at the level of individuality was left unjustified .The practices of the Communist political reasoning also failed to put forward with certain consistency the conditions of unfreedom.

The members of the Communist Party of India  did not support the leadership of the Indian National Congress in basic ground of the nationalists’ lack of direct opposition  to the bourgeois or other pre-capitalist features of the colonized society but they were not providing a quite radical discourse of overcoming the pitfalls of the colonial rule in terms of transforming the social context of the individuality .In Communism , the liberty of the individuals were considered to be not so important from the point of view of the liberation of the social objectivity of labour and the production relation  from the clutches of the ownership of capital where the power of the individual decisions were understood to be subservient to the interests of the social will that would be determined through the relation between the individual as the product of the will and the systemic relevance of power. So, in a sense it will be pertinent to say in this context that the individualization of the forms of liberty had been restrained in the Communistic political paradigm by citing the larger interests of the people in essentialization of the base of freedom and justice from the internal and external social malcontents those were considered to be more antagonistic than the immediacy of independence from the foreign colonial rule .They emphasized upon the analysis of the dangers to the social context of India both from the exploiting classes like the landlords, money lenders , zamindars who with the help of the foreign rulers had made atrocities upon the common poor masses before whom the cause of freedom from the foreign yoke seemed to be insignificant .

The philosophical orientation of the Communists laid upon the fact that the power was essentially in transferring the rights in terms of providing enough capacity to the people to decide their own fate in accordance with their socio-economic necessities when the perfect form of class consciousness among the poor peasants and workers would finally make it clear the establishment of a realm of development where the people would eventually get the golden touch of freedom from all other social and economic irrationalities and inequities .The analysis of power in the discourse of communism was always influenced by the discourse of classlessness and gradual development of the negation of the state as functioning political entity because of the fact that in permanent extinction of the class exploitations over the poor masses the infrastructure of containing the narrative of power through the structure of  the state would lose its essence of existence . In the final stage of a particular socialistic economy , the relevance of the classless political space would determine the social and economic activities of the people where the formation of the communal property relation would eventually contribute in replacement of the private property relation the power of controlling the spirit of the people .The disintegration between the political philosophy of the communism in India and the followers of the nationalist ideals occurred not in consideration of the effects of the exploitative British colonial rule because both these ideas were similarly agreed upon the context of the hazards of the colonialism , But they were not in agreement regarding the actual analysis of the forces both internal and external which had been making the social relation more enervating with full inequalities among the classes and the Communists regarded the social context more in urgent need of transformation where as the nationalists prioritized the political aspects of freedom more important rather than the social aspects of underdevelopment.

The Communist movement of the pre-independent India  since the 1920s thus gave emphasis under the leadership of  M.N.Roy, Abani Mukherjee ,Muzzafar Ahmed, P.C.Joshi, S.A.Dange ,E.M.S.Nambodoodiripad, A.K.Gopalan, G.Adhikari, B.T.Ranadive etc. on the needs of uniting the Indian masses through the ideas of a communist social revolution that ensure in eradicating the bad effects of the caste system as well as removing the strains of  economic burden upon the people when the state controlled by the colonial regime with support from the bourgeois  class representatives  those were organized through the  prominent political party INC. Lenin’s consideration of the role of the bourgeois leadership in the organization of the national movement was clear that theBourgeois nationalism of oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that was unconditionally support ‘but it must come with the capacity of the workers to distinguish the class aims of the bourgeoisie (Surjeet, 1998, p.29). In their analysis, the political ideological orientation of the INC was no different from the colonial bourgeois ruling class which had been hegemonized by the philosophy of the capitalistic exclusivity in terms of controlling the basic foundation of the production relation and in contradiction to the bourgeois ideas of freedom where the democratic rights of representation were meant to be only the utilization of one aspect of the human rights only. In order to fulfill the perfect form of freedom in a sense of the perfect ordering of the rights , it was thought essential in permanent eradication of the socio-economic deformities or the forms of exploitations over their lives perpetrated through the bourgeois-capitalist structure .If the practical insight of the structural contents of power from the level of the political society had been analyzed from the corresponding figure of the right to represent their own interests with forms of capabilities then the meaning of freedom in its essence would be fulfilled . The forms of independence in its externalities were nothing more than abstraction of the reality where the idealistic presentation of freedom would not able to add anything to the necessity of bringing into the present the forms of expropriations and powerful control over the body and spirit of the Indian masses .

    1. Communistic Ideas of Freedom:

In the Communistic orientation of knowledge about the ideas of freedom had been deeply woven up with the demarcation of the authority proper in the sense of legitimizing the interests of the poor workers and the peasants over their immediate exploiters both foreign and indigenous lackeys of the colonial state .To acquire the modern means of knowledge in the distinctive category of communism is to gather enough strength and consciousness to snatch the centre of power from the centre of capital where the stage of colonialism was just one of the stages of the growth and expansion of the capitalist system where the fountainhead of power was concentrated in the few richest representatives of the capitalist class and with the aim of expanding their network of accumulation of capital in the form of trade ,industry and commerce a specific social consciousness was moulded  within the distinct social relations. The relationship between the knowledge and power had been established primarily to distinguish the space of consciousness for the poor workers where the power of capitalists would not get its success to put its hold permanently because of the evolution of the poor workers as the most conscious section of the society when they would be turned into the grand reality of the proletariat which would unite all the workers of the world.

There was the incoherence between the ideals of nationalism as underlined by the Indian National Congress and the political orientation of the essence of social change through the intervention made by the revolutionary attempt of overthrowing the exploitative social roles of the classes those were in control of power structure under the specific force of the capitalism with the ideas and principles of communism. The national movement in India was considered to be a great step forward in fulfilling the dream of an egalitarian society that would be conducive in emulating the basic principles of the communism and that was the reason of collaborating with the movement from time to time but not in permanent coalition against the colonial state despite the presence of huge dissatisfactions against the colonial ream of power.

    1. Base of Struggle for Power between the Nationalists and the Communists:

The leadership of the national movement since the early 1920s was divided on the basic grounding of their opposition against the colonial rule where the one influential group under the followers of Gandhiji defined independence or the ideas of freedom broadly from the vantage point of liberation at first from the clutches of the exploitative colonial regime. On the other hand , the more radical political entity under the Communist Party emphasized upon the essence of freedom from the foreign rule as the bourgeois vision of essentializing the question of individual liberty and their struggle was geared towards  independence both from the internal and external agency of exploitation of the Indian masses . Gandhiji’ technique of non-violence was in toppling the pre-modern agency  of power which was represented through the colonial rule where  the violent tactics were adopted to  instill  a fear psychosis  among the colonized regarding the power system as wielded by the colonial state and his philosophy of the search for truth and non-violence was in creating an modern base of power where the individuals would be more concerned in rationalizing their inner coherence of thought with the external representation of their will .

 The  thrust laid upon the ideas of enlightenment was more in emulating the liberal principles of the West with the modern social and political strength of entrusting the power of control to the state that was thought to be responsive in safeguarding the little tradition of the masses as well as providing substantial ground of a great tradition derived from the understanding about the  essence of power of the state as supreme representation of the people beyond all other agencies of representation. The Communist Party’s emphasis on the spatial configuration of the ideas of independence of a particular territory in terms of its national distinctiveness also had pointed towards the fact of complete secession of the networks of exploitations both economic and social characteristics  of domination from the web of political identity of the particular citizens and in order to actualize power in the broadest sense of the term it would be a fruitless exercise if it remained at the stage of disconnection from the essence of a classless social horizon. But the Nehruvian analysis of the  goals of  social development had provided a good compromise or a rapprochement with the features of both the schools of thought  in his new vision of the Indian governance and structural features of the state during the years of national movement as well as after that . The post-enlightenment rhetoric of power in the context of India was always mediated by the vision of a democratic society with overwhelming predominance of the elitist base of the middle class as well as synthesizing the groundwork of a welfare model of a state when the role of the governing paradigm of the state would largely determine the spectre of the power relation but not bypassing the traditional base of the social relations in a revolutionary intervention.

CONCLUSION

The deconstruction of the traditional base of power through the forceful intervention of the British colonial state had forwarded a new construct of power that was sought to be dismantled by the interpretation of the new Indians those were bent upon legitimacy of the nation as the perfect bonanza of freedom .There was the attempt made both by the nationalists and the Communists to bring into focus the rationality of post-enlightenment overture for the purpose of bringing into effect as the point of dislocating  the colonial systemic apparatus of knowledge and its ideology of adherence to the thoughts of carrying  the impacts of enlightenment to the sphere of the colonized society .through a form of codification of the original cultural praxis of the ruled subjects under the hegemony of the British imperial rule . That process of  codification had  been initiated also in terms of leading the modern phenomena of progress a separate public sphere for the Indian educated persons those were eager to make a difference from their colonial masters and this kind of making the political society more modernistic ,the ideology of nationalism developed with the objectives of establishing a liberal social order with certain provisions of development . Through the invigoration of the principles of the search for truth and the critique of the West and the colonial power system by taking into view the senseless expansion of the civilization of the West largely ignoring the independent noble base of knowledge of the colonized Indians thus helped in giving birth to the unique methods of struggle based on non-violence and civil disobedience against the colonial state .

So, the non-violent movement as a whole tried to make a departure from the ruling colonial regime only in perspective of making it a truly modern and enlightened that would contribute in distribution of the rights and equities irrespective of any differences based on class and power .It was on the one hand a method of legitimizing the  rules  of the epistemic disciplines of the ideological apparatus of the colonial state through the goals of making a true society of the modern political thought and enlightening the poor and middle class Indians with the goals of western philosophy of development  largely dominated by the upper echelon .The Communists were bent upon differentiating the structure of knowledge from the power relation in terms of providing independence first at the level of standard of living where the basic rights to live decently with sufficient guarantee of economic cum social entitlements would be provided by the state .There was the involvement of the masses at the level of discipline  through  the middle class  representation of their interests which was the power of the post-enlightenment that  legitimized the utilization of reason as to categorize the conscious mobilization of the rightful resources of rights over the absence of understanding about legitimacy of  representing the interests

REFERENCES

  1. Loomba, Ania. 2005. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Routledge:  London
  2. Chandra, Bipan.1999. Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India. Orient Longman: Hyderabad
  3. Chandra, Bipan ,et.al.2001.India’s Struggle Since Independence 1857-1947.Penguin Books: New Delhi
  4. Chandra,Bipan.1991.The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India.People’s Publishing House: New Delhi
  5. Chakrabarty,Dipesh .1996.Rethinking Working –Class History –Bengal 1890-1940.Oxford University Press: New Delhi
  6. Gramsci, Antonio.2015.Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Aaakar Books:New Delhi
  7. Sarkar, Sumit.2018.Essays of a Lifetime, Reformers-Nationalists-Subalterns. Permanent Black:Ranikhet
  8. Sarkar, Sumit.2017.’Popular’ Movements & ‘Middle Class’ Leadership in Late Colonial India –Perspectives & Problems of “History from Below”. Aakar Books: New Delhi
  9. Nehru, Jawaharlal.1997.An Autobiography. Oxford University Press: New Delhi
  10. Bose ,Subhash.2010.The Indian Struggle 1920-42 .Oxford University Press: New Delhi
  11. Gandhi, M.K.2001. An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth .Penguin Books:London
  12. Gandhi, M.K.2004.Hind Swaraj and other writings. Cambridge University Press: New Delhi
  13. Chatterjee, Partha.2012. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World ,in The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus. Oxford University Press: New Delhi
  14. The Independence Pledge ,26January,1930,in Dev,Arjun(ed.).Gandhi-Nehru Correspondence –A Selection .National Book Trust: New Delhi
  15. Surjeet, Harkishan Singh .1998.March of the Communist Movement in India –An Introduction to the Documents of the Communist Movement in India. National Book Agency: Calcutta

Reference

  1. Loomba, Ania. 2005. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Routledge:  London
  2. Chandra, Bipan.1999. Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India. Orient Longman: Hyderabad
  3. Chandra, Bipan ,et.al.2001.India’s Struggle Since Independence 1857-1947.Penguin Books: New Delhi
  4. Chandra,Bipan.1991.The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India.People’s Publishing House: New Delhi
  5. Chakrabarty,Dipesh .1996.Rethinking Working –Class History –Bengal 1890-1940.Oxford University Press: New Delhi
  6. Gramsci, Antonio.2015.Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Aaakar Books:New Delhi
  7. Sarkar, Sumit.2018.Essays of a Lifetime, Reformers-Nationalists-Subalterns. Permanent Black:Ranikhet
  8. Sarkar, Sumit.2017.’Popular’ Movements & ‘Middle Class’ Leadership in Late Colonial India –Perspectives & Problems of “History from Below”. Aakar Books: New Delhi
  9. Nehru, Jawaharlal.1997.An Autobiography. Oxford University Press: New Delhi
  10. Bose ,Subhash.2010.The Indian Struggle 1920-42 .Oxford University Press: New Delhi
  11. Gandhi, M.K.2001. An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth .Penguin Books:London
  12. Gandhi, M.K.2004.Hind Swaraj and other writings. Cambridge University Press: New Delhi
  13. Chatterjee, Partha.2012. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World ,in The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus. Oxford University Press: New Delhi
  14. The Independence Pledge ,26January,1930,in Dev,Arjun(ed.).Gandhi-Nehru Correspondence –A Selection .National Book Trust: New Delhi
  15. Surjeet, Harkishan Singh .1998.March of the Communist Movement in India –An Introduction to the Documents of the Communist Movement in India. National Book Agency: Calcutta

Photo
Jiban Boruah
Corresponding author

Associate professor in Education, C.K.B College, Teok, Assam.

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Bikash Nath
Co-author

Assistant Professor, Department of History, C.K.B. College, Teok (Jorhat)

: Bikash Nath1, Jiban Boruah2*, Power, Knowledge And The Rhetoric Of Post-Enlightenment: A Struggling Context Of Nationalism And Communism In Pre-Independent India, Int. J. Sci. R. Tech., 2026, 3 (6), 1655-1665. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21032807

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