If a modern Diogenes were to hunt out for Indians with his lantern in these days, he would be sure to come across fervid Hindus, bigoted Muslims and fanatical souls deeply engrossed with the problem of tirelessly finding out how unjustly their own particular community was being treated, and he would have to ask in sorrrow: "Where are the Indians".

– Syed Abdullah Brelvi [1]

Not to give way at a critical point to the temptation of exaggeration – some dramatically extremist doctrine which rivets the eyes of one's own countrymen and the world, and brings followers and undying fame and a sense of glory and personal fulfilment – not to yield to this, but to seek to find the truth in the face of scorn and threats from both sides – left and right, Westernisers and traditionalists – that seems to me to be the rarest form of heroism.

– Isaiah Berlin, writing about Rabindranath Tagore [2]

I

The campus of the University of Pune used to be the summer home of the governor of Bombay. Expansive and green, dotted with lovely old ficus trees, the property's centre-piece is a grand double-storeyed stone building. This was once the governor's residence and is now the university's Senate Hall. The signs of decolonisation are everywhere. In the wood-panelled conference room, the portraits of governors and viceroys have been covered over with red curtains. The only paintings now exposed look out over the main stairway. These are new – or relatively new – and number four in all. Their subjects are Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Bhimrao Ambedkar and Jyotiba Phule.

One can understand these choices without necessarily endorsing them. For these men were all charismatic and influential, and all had strong Pune connections. They were writers of distinction in their native Marathi, but also public figures who imposed their stamp on the history of modern India. Each, in his own way, embodied the fusion of national relevance and regional pride that our universities seek to represent. There is, nonetheless a striking absence, of a man who was both politician and social reformer, both scholar and teacher, both Maharashtrian and Indian, and who lived and died in this city. Why does the Senate Hall of the University of Pune have no space for a portrait of Gopal Krishna Gokhale?

II

In 1930, well before the University of Pune was founded, a social science institute was established in the city. Its prime mover, D R Gadgil, had taken an M Litt from Cambridge, writing a thesis on the industrial evolution of India. (It was an outstanding thesis, which remained in print for 70-years after its first publication.) Unlike other Oxbridge graduates of his generation he had no desire to enter the Indian Civil Service. On his return he taught in a college in Surat, before persuading his father-in-law, R R Kale, to help finance a research institute. The Servants of India Society also provided support, in the shape of a slice of real estate under its control. As it happened, the home of the society's founder stood on this land. One suspects that it was not this alone which suggested to Gadgil that he name his new venture the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics.

D R Gadgil was an intellectual of rare ability and self-confidence. The range of his own research was impressive: at various times he did important work on planning, economic history, and the sociology of business communities. His instincts and orientation were 'interdisciplinary' before that term became known or fashionable. Likewise, he was a public intellectual before public intellectualism: he was one of the founders of the cooperative movement in Maharashtra. He was not lacking in courage, either. Once, he even took on Mahatma Gandhi. In 1946, Gadgil and A D Gorwala were the two members of an expert committee appointed by the government of Bombay to recommend measures to assure a fairer distribution of food in a time of scarcity. Gandhi thought the market would do the trick; Gadgil and Gorwala insisted that the situation called for state intervention. As the columnist D F Karaka wrote:

It would be difficult to find a truer picture of all that is best in the ancient Indian tradition than Gadgil. A slim, gaunt man, argumentative and aggressive on the right occasions, full of courage and with a wisdom grounded in deep knowledge of both theory and facts, Gadgil had devoted himself for many years to the building up of a true school of politics and economics, eschewing all profitable pursuit. On occasion after occasion he had turned down offers of employment by the government. He joined the board primarily because he felt the situation in the country was so critical that a right lead was essential and without the right lead it might become disastrous.[3]

One might cavil at the use of the term 'ancient' – if anything, Gadgil represented the best of the 'modern' Indian tradition – but otherwise this tribute was deeply felt and richly merited. When Gadgil founded the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics he was not yet 30. He was precocious and so was his institute. It was, to my knowledge, the first social science institute in India, combining pure with applied research. (Intriguingly, it placed 'politics' before 'economics', thus reversing the order preferred by, for instance, the London School of Economics, that other experiment in the marriage of knowledge with the public weal.) The singularity of Gadgil's achievement is still insufficiently recognised. Our histories of intellectuals somehow assume that all good or meaningful things first happened in Bengal. In this instance, however, what Pune thought of in 1930 Kolkata was to think of at least a year later. For it was only in the last weeks of 1931 that P C Mahalanobis founded the Indian Statistical Institute in that city.

Mahalanobis was also a Cambridge man of wide-ranging interests. A physicist by training, he shared Gadgil's appreciation of fields other than his own. It was said that he knew the works of Rabindranath Tagore better than the poet himself. To have a department of literature, alas, fell well outside the mandate of his new institute. Nonetheless, in time that mandate was stretched to successfully incorporate anthropology, economics, and biology, apart from statistics and mathematics.

In a recent column in EPW, offered ironically as an appreciation of D R Gadgil, AM has suggested that the main difference between Gadgil and Mahalanobis was that the Pune man was more 'feudal' in his orientation. He reaches this conclusion on the grounds that the Bengali scholar counted more Marxists among his friends and colleagues.[4] The facts suggest otherwise. Gadgil may have dominated his colleagues, intellectually, but Mahalanobis ran his own institute exactly like a personal fiefdom: among the chapter titles of Ashok Rudra's biography are 'The Big Banyan' and 'The Great Dictator'. It was this manifest authoritarianism that led to the departure from his institute of that remarkable British scientist who had taken Indian nationality, J B S Haldane.[5]

The more salient distinctions between Gadgil and Mahalanobis lie in the realm of politics rather than personality. Gadgil was a classical liberal, devoted to democracy and human rights. Like Gokhale he sought to bring about change incrementally. And while not discounting the role of the state, like Gokhale again he placed great emphasis on voluntary and collective civic action. Mahalanobis, on the other hand, was more enamoured of the transformative powers of the state. Hence, perhaps, his affinities to Marxism and his strong sympathies for Soviet-style planning. The one was content with identifying the social conditions for incremental change; the other was of the "conviction that qualitative problems could find quantitative resolution, that uncertainty in all walks of life could be reduced and mastered by the use of statistical models".[6]

To the Gokhale Institute in Pune and the ISI in Calcutta one must add at least three other initiatives begun in colonial times. There was the Bombay School of Economics and Sociology, with teachers like C N Vakil and G S Ghurye and students like M N Dantwala and M N Srinivas. There was the Deccan College in Pune, with its exciting programmes in anthropology and archaeology led by Irawati Karve and H D Sankhalia. And there was Lucknow University, which from the 1930s had a faculty of some calibre in the humanities: notably, the 'prabashi' trio of Radhakamal Mukerjee, D P Mukerji and D N Majumdar. Nor should one forget individuals, such as N K Bose in Calcutta, who rose above their institutions.[7]

After 1947 these older initiatives were joined by plenty of others. New universities sprung up all across India, each with its departments of economics, sociology, history, and the like. Particularly influential in this regard was the Delhi School of Economics, founded by V K R V Rao in 1948, with a department of sociology added 10-years later. Also to be noted are two Delhi-based initiatives that focused exclusively on research: the Institute of Economic Growth, set up by V K R V Rao in 1958, and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, founded by Rajni Kothari, which began life in 1962.

Accompanying the birth and growth of these institutions was the birth and growth of independent-minded research journals in history and the social sciences. The ISI and the Gokhale Institute had published their own journals – Samkhya and Artha Vijnana, respectively – but by the 1960s these had been joined (and in some respects supplanted) by the new entrants on the block: Contributions to Indian Sociology, Sociological Bulletin, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, and Economic Weekly (renamed in 1966 as Economic and Political Weekly).

Much of the work published in these journals was of a high quality, and much of it was addressed to the urgent issues of the day: political development, economic growth, poverty alleviation, the career and course of nationalism, the future of caste. My concern here, however, is not principally with content but with form. Reading the back issues of these journals for the 1950s and the 1960s, one reaches the surprising conclusion that the world of Indian intellectuals was then surprisingly indifferent to radical thought. Extremisms of right and left were shunned. There were absolutely no saffron intellectuals, and not many who were flaming red either. Rather, it was the middle ground which was capacious and well colonised.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary offers three definitions of a liberal thinker: one who is "open minded, not prejudiced"; one who "favours individual liberty, free trade, and moderate political and social reform"; and one who regards "many traditional beliefs as dispensable, invalidated by modern thought or liable to change". Of these three criteria, perhaps two-and-two-thirds applied to the professors and scholars of newly independent India. The exception being the idea of free trade, which was rejected in favour of the then regnant 'swadeshi' or import-substituting model of economic development.

There are more things on earth than can be contained in the Concise-or indeed Complete-Oxford Dictionary, and to the above listing must be added at least three other founding features of Indian liberalism. First, while there was a critical attitude towards the past, there was also a, sometimes extreme, hopefulness about the future. Liberals were convinced that the idealism nurtured by the national movement would find constructive expression in free India, with scientists, civil servants, politicians and scholars working unitedly to eliminate poverty, disease, and illiteracy, thus allowing India and Indians to take their place with honour in the modern world.

Second, there was an implicit and somewhat unselfconscious patriotism. Intellectuals might go overseas to study or learn, but they would return to help in the task of 'nation building'. The liberal intellectuals of the 1950s were patriotic to a degree the contemporary post-nationalist might find embarrassing. However, the best among them took care not to appear partisan, that is, not to identify with any one social/religious group, political party, or politician.

Third, Indian liberals paid close attention to the promotion of institutions of civil society such as the law courts and universities, and to the fostering of impartial, rule-bound procedures within them.

True, one could recognise subtle differences of approach and emphasis. There were the liberals qua liberals – such as D R Gadgil – who were unwavering in their commitment to democracy and human rights, and who in the cold war would have tilted slightly towards the west. There were the fellow travelling liberals – such as P C Mahalanobis – who were enchanted by the Soviet Union – particularly by its economic model – and who thought that despite its faults it was more to be trusted than its North American adversary. And there were what I would call the 'traditionalist' liberals – such as the Bombay sociologist G S Ghurye – who thought that institutions such as family and community were not to be sacrificed in the march to modernity.

These three groups had, however, a shared idea of India. This included a commitment to democracy – that is, a multi-party system, regular elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary – to the creation of a more just and equitable society, if by incremental means, and to inter-religious harmony, this guaranteed by state neutrality in affairs of faith. Whether left, right, or traditionalist, the overwhelming majority of Indian intellectuals were, as I have defined the term here, 'liberal'.

It is important to recognise that Indian liberalism was a sensibility rather than a theory, a product of empirical engagement rather than an elaboration of principles laid down in canonical texts. Burke, Mill, Tocqueville, or Smith; the thinkers to whom western scholars turn for definitions or understandings of liberalism were largely unknown in India or at least largely unread. Rather, liberalism was a response to experience, an intellectual practice that flowed from the peculiarities of independent India, a sensibility that seemed in tune with the heterogeneity of its cultures and the commitment to democracy of its ruling class.

The flowering of Indian liberalism cannot be set apart from the political context in which it operated. It was, in the best sense of the word, Nehruvian. Jawaharlal Nehru understood that in a society as poor and divided as his, the task of nation building had necessarily to be inclusive rather than exclusive. He thus wished to take everyone along with him: Muslims, Hindus, capitalists, workers, tribals, peasants, Hindiwallahs and 'Madrasis'.

In his autobiography Nehru wrote of the Servants of India Society that while he respected their commitment, their work "might not be on wholly right lines". "Its politics", he remarked, "were too moderate for me".[8] At this time Nehru tended also to display a certain impatience with the views of Gokhale's most influential admirer, Mahatma Gandhi. But the arrogant and impatient rebel was to be tamed and humanised by office. As prime minister of this bafflingly complex land he learnt to appreciate the beauties of compromise.

It is now fashionable to posit Gandhi against Nehru, but in two signal respects the disciple came to follow the master: in his preference for consensus over conflict, and in his deep abhorrence of violence in thought and deed. As he once told the French writer-politician, Andre Malraux, the greatest challenge before him, and India, was how to "build a just society by just means".

While the British were still in India Nehru sometimes spoke and sounded like a utopian revolutionary. But as a prime minister he worked always for "moderate political and social reform". Now he, in turn, attracted the scorn of the young and hot-tempered. The hard core Marxist deplored his compromises with capitalists and landlords, the Jan Sanghi his desire to effect a rapprochement with Indian Muslims and with Pakistan. Reds and saffronites alike could not understand Nehru's respect for non-violence, for the norms and procedures of democracy. At this time there were not many extremists of either kind. The vast majority of Indian intellectuals were liberals: left liberals, centre liberals, and right liberals. And they all admired, even worshipped Nehru.

III

Although Nehru's death, in 1964, did not lead immediately to the decline or disappearance of liberalism, it must in retrospect be viewed as an important factor that set in motion the slide. Lal Bahadur Shastri came and went, and then Indira Gandhi took over as prime minister. Although her term was interrupted by one three-year spell in opposition, all told she held office almost as long as her father did. Long enough, at any rate, to decisively influence the trajectory of intellectual life in this country.

Unlike her father, Indira Gandhi was no liberal. She cultivated committed intellectuals much as she cultivated committed judges and civil servants. Scholars, including some very fine ones, were lured to her side by the hope of using the instruments of the state to promote their models of teaching and research. Not coincidentally most of these scholars were Marxist or Marxisant.

Till the 1960s, Marxism had little serious influence in the Indian academy. Marxists enjoyed greater visibility and power in the cultural realm: in literature, drama, and, especially, film. To be sure, there were some able scholars of this persuasion, such as A R Desai, Irfan Habib, and above all, D D Kosambi. But not many more. Things changed rather swiftly in the late 1960s and thereafter. One important influence was Mao's China, whose alleged successes, economic as well as cultural, were widely (and uncritically) bruited about. The attractions of China were reinforced by the activities of the Naxalites, by the young men and women who might have been lacking in tactical sense but certainly not in bravery.