Internal migration and political change in India : a case study of a new industrial town

Abstract

In India the western-educated urban professional elites (such as the lawyers, landed gentry, journalists, businessmen, and academics) who had implicit faith in British parliamentary democracy played an important role in forming, organizing, and supporting the nationalist movement mainly under the banner of the Indian National Congress (Ghosh 1960:11,12; Krishna 1966b).^ It was a small elite, homogeneous in social background and mainly upper caste, and it constituted almost a one-class ensemble. Sections of this class joined the British administrative structure and in a sense shared power with the British (Weiner 1968:38). According to Kothari, the new middle class created by English education and drawn by the concepts of liberty, democracy, and socialism, was indeed the greatest legacy of the British Raj. This class eventually inherited power from the British and declared itself a modern nation and a sovereign democratic republic (Kothari 1970d:40).