| Nehru
was their idol from the time of his rise to prominence in the Indian
National Congress, the party of the freedom movement, in the
twenties, precisely because he was the most Westernized of Congress
leaders as well as the most critical of the pillars of the
pre-British, as well as the British, order - the landed gentry and
the business class. Mahatma Gandhi too swept this class of Indians
off their feet. But Indian intellectuals gave him at best a grudging
acceptance. They regarded him as being antediluvian in social and
economic matters.
There was doubtless a gap between
members of the intelligentsia who jointed the government in some
capacity and those who took to agitation against the British, in the
first instance, primarily because the imperial order could not
create enough jobs for them and refused to concede social equality
to them which they were convinced was their due by virtue of their
Western education. Indianization of the services and admission of
British clubs were, it may be recalled, among the earliest demands
of Indian nationalists.
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