1) leaders like mahatma gandhi and others
political leaders , religious leaders and social reformers wrote their views in newspapers and periodicals. these affected the higher sentiments of indian people and helped them to realise national unity
british treated indians as sub human. they developed societies for themselves and prevented natives from entering there. this made indians conscious about the national humiliation and accelerated the pace of disillusionment with foreign rule.
- 3) understanding the true nature of british rule
politically conscious leaders were convinced that the purpose of british rule was to exploit india economically and enrich england at the cost of india. they realised that india could make little progress in the field of economy unless british imperialism was replaced by a govt. controlled and run by indians. industries will not flourish under british govt. consequent famines and political events made the people to think of national movement.
- 4) result of colonial exploitation
domination of britsh over the whole of india enabled the people to think and act as one nation. it helped in the unification of the country.
- 5) impact of national literature, songs , poems and folklores
Ideas of nationalism also developed through a movement to revive Indian folklore. In late-nineteenth-century India, nationalists began recording folk tales sung by bards and they toured villages to gather folk songs and legends. These tales, they believed, gave a true picture of traditional culture that had been corrupted and damaged by outside forces. It was essential to preserve this folk tradition in order to discover one’s national identity and restore a sense of pride in one’s past. In Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore himself began collecting ballads, nursery rhymes and myths, and led the movement for folk revival. In Madras, Natesa Sastri published a massive four-volume collection of Tamil folk tales, The Folklore of Southern India. He believed that folklore was national literature; it was ‘the most trustworthy manifestation of people’s real thoughts and characteristics’.
6) english language
it made people of different regions to sit together and discuss the common problems faced by the country. it made indians inheritors of a great literature full of great ideas and ideals
7) images , icons and symbols
The identity of the nation is most often symbolised in a figure or image. This helps create an image with which people can identify the nation. It was in the twentieth century, with the growth of nationalism, that the identity of India came to be visually associated with the image of Bharat Mata. The image was first created by Bankim Chandra ChattopadhyayMoved by the Swadeshi movement, Abanindranath Tagore painted his famous image of Bharat Mata. In this painting Bharat Mata is portrayed as an ascetic figure; she is calm, composed, divine and spiritual. In subsequent years, the image of Bharat Mata acquired many different forms, as it circulated in popular prints, and was painted by different artists. Devotion to this mother figure came to be seen as evidence of one’s nationalism.
As the national movement developed, nationalist leaders became more and more aware of such icons and symbols in unifying people and inspiring in them a feeling of nationalism. During the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, a tricolour flag (red, green and yellow) was designed. It had eight lotuses representing eight provinces of British India, and a crescent moon, representing Hindus and Muslims. By 1921, Gandhiji had designed the Swaraj flag. It was again a tricolour (red, green and white) and had a spinning wheel in the centre, representing the Gandhian ideal of self-help. Carrying the flag, holding it aloft, during marches became a symbol of defiance.
8) Reinterpretation of History
Another means of creating a feeling of nationalism was through reinterpretation of history. By the end of the nineteenth century many Indians began feeling that to instill a sense of pride in the nation, Indian history had to be thought about differently. The British saw Indians as backward and primitive, incapable of governing themselves. In response, Indians began looking into the past to discover India’s great achievements. They wrote about the glorious developments in ancient times when art and architecture, science and mathematics, religion and culture, law and philosophy, crafts and trade had flourished. This glorious time, in their view, was followed by a history of decline, when India was colonised. These nationalist histories urged the readers to take pride in India’s great achievements in the past and struggle to change the miserable conditions of life under British rule.
