A new book shows that in 1881, the Mysore Representative Assembly was already pursuing self-rule

Mysore was the first Indian state to have a representative assembly, a purely deliberative forum without powers of legislation whose members included landlords, merchants, and intellectuals nominated by the state. When the Mysore Representative Assembly (MRA) was founded in 1881, the editorial of a major newspaper published in British India noted:

“A new experiment is being tried in the Mysore state whose progress would be extremely interesting to watch because it has been frequently asserted that Eastern nations are not fitted for such councils or such a Government as that of England or the United States. For many centuries before our time, Hindoos have been despotically governed; so very few of them have actually taken part in the government of their country that they know not what real political freedom and true representative government mean.”

Colonial rule had revived older European views of oriental societies as historically subject to arbitrary despotic rule and therefore incapable of self-governance. The founding of the MRA was therefore an endeavour that could potentially prove the Indians’ capacity for self-government, although colonial discourses asserted otherwise. This also becomes evident in Dewan Rangacharlu’s annual speech to the MRA in 1882: “The universal satisfaction with which it (the news of the...

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