ABSTRACT
The historiography of Indian nationalism has for a long time been dominated by elitism, colonialist elitism and bourgeois-nationalist elitism. Both originated as the ideological product of British rule in India, but have survived the transfer of power and been assimilated to neo-colonialist and neo-nationalist forms of discourse in Britain and India respectively. Elitist historiography is of course not without its uses. Elitist historiography of the colonialist or neo-colonialist type counts British writers and institutions among its principal protagonists, but has its imitators in India and other countries too. Elitist historiography of the nationalist or neo-nationalist type is primarily an Indian practice but not without imitators in the ranks of liberal historians in Britain and elsewhere. Both these varieties of elitism share the prejudice that the making of the Indian nation and the development of the consciousness nationalism which informed this process were exclusively or predominantly elite achievements.
