The fight against British Colonialism shaped nationalism in independent India
The national movement was clear that it would not be enough to overthrow British rule in India. Independence would be meaningless if people continued to languish in poverty. Independence meant not only throwing out the colonial rulers but also development for its people. That is why Subhash Chandra Bose, as the Congress President in 1938, asked Nehru to head the National Planning Committee. Planning for development was a core vision of the national movement. Developing the capabilities of its people and removing poverty was integral to this vision of a free India. This is why economic nationalism – making the economy free of foreign capital – was central to the independence movement.
Those who shared the vision of India defined by race and religion proposed by Golwalkar and Savarkar, such as the RSS, did not share this vision of a free India. For them, a sovereign economy was never a of nationalism. When Golwalkar defined the nation, he talked about land, race, religion, culture and language but never about the economy. In this concept of the nation, economic freedom from foreign capital was a non-issue.
After independence, the key challenge for India was to develop its scientific and technological capabilities. It built the Central Scientific and Industrial Research laboratories, the five Indian Institute of Technologies (IIT's), the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and a host of scientific institutions. It did not just build the public sector, but invested in people. When Damodar Valley Corporation was created, more than 50 engineers were sent to Tennessee Valley Authority. They were the ones who formed the core of the Indian power sector. In steel, again a core set of people were sent to US Steel to learn about the steel industry, who later on went on to lead the Steel Authority of India.
The Information Technology (IT) sector is viewed as an example of the success of economic liberalisation. What is forgotten is the role played by public sector bodies in its explosive growth. The key figures in the IT sector – Naryana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, Sam Pitroda (who built C-DOT), and a host of others came out of IIT's or similar premiere institutions. Without the experience of building indigenous computers, Indian software skills would never have been built. This, coupled with the Indian skills developed in the public education system, has provided the human power for the development of the IT sector.
After independence there was an agreement that development needed infrastructure and only the Indian state has the capacity to develop infrastructure at a scale that India required for rapid development. This is what was embodied in its successive Five-Year plans. At the time of independence, apart from railways, India had very little infrastructure. The entire installed capacity of electricity generation was less than 1,500 MW and restricted to only metro cities and a few towns. Similarly, the telephone system. There were only a few heavy industrial plants in the country. After independence, India's industrialisation – from oil exploration, refineries, steel plants, power plant equipment, machine tools, heavy engineering – was powered by the public sector.
The proponents of nationalism based on race and religion -- the RSS and its political front, the Jan Sangh -- were completely against this path. They wanted India to be completely left to the mercy of market forces and wanted free entry of global capital
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