Excerpt from "A Postindustrial Prelude to Postcolonialism: John Ruskin, William Morris, and Gandhism" by Patrick Brantlinger:

According to Homi Bhabha's theory of hybridity, imperialisms-indeed, all master/slave relations-are always two-way streets and more.1 Kipling's hybrid, Kim, a sort of Anglo-Irish-Indian Huckleberry Finn, is emblematic of the countless racial and cultural mixings that characterize Britain's four centuries of contact with India. Any tourist who sees the government buildings in New Delhi, or journeys on Indian-really, Anglo-Indian-railroads, or talks to waiters or shopkeepers in English gets a glimpse, at least, of Britain's influence on the subcontinent. Except for numerous tandoori restaurants, a tourist in London may not see many overt signs of India's influence on Britain, but they are there nonetheless, from the Jamme Masjid Mosque in Brick Lane to such Anglo-Indian words as pajamas, thug, bungalow, pundit, curry, and loot.2

Here I explore the interchange between late-Victorian socialism and the arts and crafts movement on the one hand, and emergent Indian nationalism on the other. I begin by asking how two prominent British intellectuals, John Ruskin and William Morris, both important for aesthetic theory and for British socialism, responded to Indian politics and Indian traditional arts and crafts. I also explore how two prominent Indian intellectuals, Mahatma Gandhi and Ananda Coomaraswamy, responded to Ruskin and Morris. This cultural interchange involved a creative hybridity that challenged or at least destabilized Western Orientalism and alleged Eastern mimicry. Furthermore, from this conjuncture emerged the concept and term postindustrial, together with the idea of an "`inverted Marxism,'" some thirty years before Indian independence in 1947. I conclude by considering the significance the Anglo-Indian genealogy ofpostindustrial might have for current work on postcolonial cultures and politics.