As the Western-educated intelligentsia became increasingly
aware of the exploitative and racist dimensions of British
rule, the impulse towards nationalism was inexorable. The
consciousness of political subordination and discrimination
encouraged Indians to set up their own associations to act
as pressure groups to petition and coax the government. There
were two catalysts in Calcutta which signaled this passage
to nationalism. One was the intelligentsia’s involvement
in the early 1860s in the campaign against the oppression
of the indigo planters in rural Bengal. Harish Chandra Mookerjee,
the editor of The Hindu Patriot, drew attention to this oppression.
And Dinabandhu Mitra wrote a play, Nil Darpan (translated
as “The Mirror Of Indigo”), on the conditions
of peasants coerced into cultivating indigo. Its translation
into English led to the arrest of Reverend James Long, the
publisher, and the banning of the play. The other incitement
was the governments’ decision, in the 1880s, to allow
Indian judges to try Britons. The entire British community
raised an outcry and pressurized the government to reverse
its decision. The blatant bias of the ruling power could but
only open the eyes of an elite versed in the tenets of English
liberalism and, ultimately, shock its innocence and naivete
into political action.
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