How freedom movement is related to social and religious reform movement in pre independence India: An Analysis

and materialist philosophical ideas slowly began to spread in India after 1930.This was due to numerous reasons such as wider spread of Indian intelligentsia in the political, sociological and philosophical literature of the west after the war of 1914-18.

The pioneers and leaders of nationalism were the educated class and bourgeoisie. They based themselves on the new capitalist society which, historically the higher type, increasingly replaced the medieval social system in India. They accepted its economic foundations. They desired the free development of society. Liberalism was the philosophy of rising capitalism. It was a body of principles which guaranteed its growth. And just as capitalism was higher social system than the pre-capitalist one, liberalism with its principles of national unification, individual liberty, democracy, equal rights of man, democratic institutions and rationalism, was higher a philosophy than pre capitalist philosophies which were mostly based on religious obscurantism and defended ranks and privileges based on birth.

Logically, the Indian intelligentsia, the pioneers of Indian nationalism, should have adopted the liberal philosophy in toto. However, since liberalism originated in the west and since the Indian people were ruled by the western power, they rather remobilized the masses.[11]

5.5.3 Religious reform movements, thier reactionary role and progressive significance

In its initial stages, when Indian nationalism was immature, just sprouting, it found expression in such liberal religio-reform movement as Brahmo Samaj. The religious form of the national movement was conditioned by its very immaturity. As such these movements played a progressive role in mass awakening against

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