Philanthropy and the Development of Modern India: In the Name of Nation (Critical Frontiers of Theory, Research, and Policy in International Development Studies)

Drawing on the history of the philanthropy of India's economic elites, Arun Kumar discusses how their ideas and understanding of development have shifted and changed over time. Going beyond the more familiar criticisms of development's entanglements with colonialism, Kumar interrogates the changes in development imaginaries in terms of modernity's entanglements with the national question, including anti-colonial nationalism and post-colonial nation-building during the twentieth century. Development, he suggests, can be usefully read and critiqued as national-modern. Philanthropy and the Development of Modern India plots the careers of the national-modern in four main sites of development: civil society, community, science and technology, and selfhood. In an unusual move reading socio-economic nationalist reform from the first half of the twentieth century alongside post-colonial development from the second half, Kumar uncovers the lineages of contemporary development ideas such as self-care, self-reliance, merit, etc. In all this, elites were driven by a 'pedagogic reflex': to teach different sections of Indian society of how to be modern and developed. Contrary to development studies' characterization of elites as anti-development or captors of scarce resources, Kumar shows how elites longed for development for others. Development provided the moral justification, in their calculations, for protecting their commercial interests as they navigated the turbulent Indian twentieth century. Through their philanthropy, Indian elites have played an influential role in the country’s development in the twentieth century. Presenting an innovative history of postcolonial development, the book plots elites’ formulations and formations of modernity and its entanglement with the national question. In an unusual move that reads more familiar forms of modernization from the second half of the twentieth century alongside earlier ideas of nationalist reform, it interrogates the influence of anti-colonial nationalism in India on contemporary development. It also brings into relief the longer historical trajectory of popular development ideas such as ‘self-care’ and ‘responsibility’. The book covers the differences and shifts in elites’ imaginaries of development across a range of sites—self, community, science and technology, and civil society. It concludes that as elites privileged their imaginaries of development over others, they have come to assume a pedagogic role for themselves as they justify their development choices and its exclusions: in the name of nation. Dedication Acknowledgements Contents List of Abbreviations Note on Sources 1. Development, Modernity, Nation: An Introduction 2. Community: In Nation’s Name 3. Self: Meritorious Few, Masses, and Citizens 4. Making Science Indian 5. Development: Elites’ Pedagogic Reflex Coda: The Calculus of Development Appendix: Elites’ Historiographic Anxieties: A Methodological Caution Bibliography Index This volumes draws on the history of the philanthropy of India's economic elites to examine how their ideas and understanding of development have shifted and changed over time. Kumar shows how development in India provided the moral justification for the protection of commercial interests during a turbulent period of Indian history.