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Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918
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Historical SummaryThis penetrating summary of political thought in India appeared in the report of the Simon Commission which was appointed in 1927, representing all three major British parties, and which published its findings in two volumes in 1930. The report was not popular in India.
World History 108.
Political Thought in British India44
Political thought in British India to-day is derived from Europe. The keen intelligence of the educated Indian has been stimulated by study of Western institutions. It is remarkable how the theories and phrases of political science as expounded in England and America have been adopted and absorbed. But the sudden impact of ideas drawn from the experience and conditions Of other peoples in other climates is bound to have a disturbing effect. Down to thirty or forty years ago India stood entirely outside the influence of the course of political ideas which at length produced democratic self-government in some other parts of the world. But in the last generation she has been swayed, at one and the same time, by the force of several conceptions which in Europe had followed a certain sequence. Thus, the struggle for power between rival religious communities, the rise of an intense national spirit, the spread of toleration, the growth of democracy, and the controversies of socialism, mark fairly well-defined epochs in European history. But, in India, these various influences are contending side by side for the allegiance of the politically-minded. The growth of national self-consciousness is retarded by communal separatism. The movement towards Western industrialism is countered by the return to the spinning wheel. The equality of Asiatic and European is proclaimed, while the clash of Brahmin and non-Brahmin, or caste and outcast, is intensified. Ultrademocratic constitutions are propounded, although the long process which was a necessary antecedent to democracy in Europe, viz. the breaking down of class and communal and occupational barriers, has only just begun. Indian political thought finds it tempting to foreshorten history, and is unwilling to wait for the final stage of a prolonged evolution. It is impatient of the doctrine of gradualness.
44Report of the Indian Statutory (Simon) Commission. Presented by the Secretary of State for the Home Department to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, vol. 1, Cmd. 3568, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1930, p. 406.
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Chicago: "Political Thought in British India," Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918 in Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, ed. Walter Consuelo Langsam and James Michael Egan (Chicage: Lippincott, 1951), 374–375. Original Sources, accessed December 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=L24ZUACYSYZFAD2.
MLA: . "Political Thought in British India." Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, in Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, edited by Walter Consuelo Langsam and James Michael Egan, Chicage, Lippincott, 1951, pp. 374–375. Original Sources. 21 Dec. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=L24ZUACYSYZFAD2.
Harvard: , 'Political Thought in British India' in Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918. cited in 1951, Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, ed. , Lippincott, Chicage, pp.374–375. Original Sources, retrieved 21 December 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=L24ZUACYSYZFAD2.
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