The British produced many myths about the nature of Indian society. They borrowed from the Indological and orientalist writings while developing their own views on India. One of these essentialist myths was that India had been a land of "village republics." Many in the nationalist movement accepted these myths as true representations of India's past and developed their own theories of change and possible freedom of the Indian nation based on these categories of knowledge.

In contemporary discourse, oppositional ideas of India and Bharat persist, where Bharat is seen to be the “real India,” represented by the untouched values of the village society.

In this graphic narrative, we explore what the most prominent leaders of the nationalist movement —that is, M K Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and B R Ambedkar—thought of Indian villages.

This narrative is based on Surinder S Jodhka’s article, “Nation and Village: Images of Rural India in Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar,” which discusses how the nation has been imagined since the time of independence, particularly through the writings of three of its most important leaders, Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar.

Curated by: Titash Sen [titash@epw.in]

Visualisation by: Titash Sen [titash@epw.in]

Designed by: Parimal Chahande [parimal@epw.in]

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