Introduction

The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. This chapter provides the background of the debates in historiography and political theory, both in the direct usages of the term seva, and at the same time in the theoretical implications of these usages in the broader explanatory frameworks. The problem here is not so much that Gandhi is a ‘romantic idealist’ as whether his ethical precept of ahimsa can form the theoretical basis of a practical political system in our specific historical context. Questions of progress, universality and civilisational maturity drive powerful undercurrents in Indian historiography, anthropology and political theory. The problem of understanding the national movement in relation to the post-Independence political economy is one of understanding the historical formation of the national capitalist class through the national movement.