Uncivil Liberalism
Labour, Capital and Commercial Society in Dadabhai Naoroji's Political Thought

Reinterprets Dadabhai Naoroji's Indian contribution to global debates on liberalism, capitalism and labour alongside concerns of civil peace.

Vikram Visana (Author)

9781009215541, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 November 2022

275 pages
23.6 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.44 kg

'Uncivil Liberalism recovers Dadabhai Naoroji's radical liberalism in all its complexity. The author's rich and engaging account sets in its global context Naoroji's famous argument that imperial monopoly capitalism was draining India of its wealth and its moral resources. Visana takes us from Naoroji's roots in the Parsi social reform movements of 1840s Bombay to his encounters with Irish republicans, Fabians, and his own working-class constituents in Britain to explore Naoroji's capacious political vision of a diverse commercial society grounded in labour rights.' Jennifer Pitts, University of Chicago

Uncivil Liberalism studies how ideas of liberty from the colonized South claimed universality in the North. Recovering the political theory of Dadabhai Naoroji, India's pre-eminent liberal, this book offers an original global history of this process by focussing on Naoroji's pre-occupation with social interdependence and civil peace in an age of growing cultural diversity and economic inequality. It shows how Naoroji used political economy to critique British liberalism's incapacity for civil peace by linking periods of communal rioting in colonial Bombay with the Parsi minority's economic decline. He responded by innovating his own liberalism, characterized by labour rights, economic republicanism and social interdependence maintained by freely contracting workers. Significantly, the author draws attention to how Naoroji seeded 'Western' thinkers with his ideas as well as influencing numerous ideologies in colonial and post-colonial India. In doing so, the book offers a compelling argument which reframes Indian 'nationalists' as global thinkers.

Introduction
1. Sociality in an Imperial and Industrial Age
2. Sociality and the Parsis of Western India
3. Civil Society and Social Reform
4. Conceptualizing the Drain Theory
5. Making Commercial Society in India
6. Making Commercial Society in Britain
7. The Afterlives of Naoroji's Political Thought
Conclusion
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Political science & theory [JPA], History of ideas [JFCX], History [HB]