THE CLASS CHARACTER OF THE 19TH CENTURY 71 intellectual-cultural endeavour made by the leaders of the renaissance movement which gave birth to the process of nation-making in India. While the author is entirely correct in pointing out the role played by the intellectual-cultural movement known as the renaissance in preparing the soil for the subsequent rise and growth of the organised freedom movement, he seems to be ignoring the fact that the very origin of the renaissance ideology should be traced to the spontaneous anti-imperialist revolts that broke out almost for a century since the British established their rule in India. ORGANISED FREEDOM MOVEMENT The intellectual-cultural movement founded by the leaders of the renaissance did undoubtedly sow the seeds of the subsequent freedom movement led by the Indian National Congress. But, long before the ideological-cultural movement struck its roots among the Indian people, the actual mass resistance to British colonialism had taken shape. In fact, it was this actual movement that facilitated the very rise and development of the ideological-cultural phenomenon known as the renaissance. The earlier anti-British revolts however had a serious weakness; the ideologies that guided the masses in these revolts were revivalist in outlook and were led by the feudal lords who had lost their state political power at the hands of the British rulers. Those who participated in these revolts were therefore moved by the idea of restoring the old society that had been destroyed by the British rulers. Those who led those revolts were naturally the classes that stood at the head of the old society. In area after area in India, it was the deposed rulers and the dispossessed landlords who led the militant people in anti-British revolts. Naturally therefore, the leaders of the renaissance movement kept away from the 1857 national revolt which shook almost the entire North India. On the contrary, the renaissance movement was not aimed at the revival of the pre-British Indian society. Its aim was a renewal of Indian society. For the first time in Indian history, the ideology of modern nationalism and parliamentary democracy, together with social (caste) equality, secularism and the scientific outlook, was disseminated by Ram Mohan Roy and other leaders of the renaissance movement. They took up the task of uprooting the old society weakened by the British rulers. They however were not pro-British in the sense of being blind to the oppression and exploitation of the British rulers. As a matter of fact, the leaders of the renaissance movement (as Professor Panikkar documentsjn his essay) exposed the oppression and exploitation which was inherent in British rule. The period of the 19th Century Renaissance was in fact precisely the time when a galaxy