This article looks at the politics of modernity within Telugu culture by focusing on Kandukuri Viresalingam, the most prominent Westernizing social reformer from the Telugu-speaking region of British India in the nineteenth century. It analyses two of his major literary productions—an autobiography and a novel—and his wider interventions within the public sphere. This study reflects on the ambivalences and contradictions within the reformist project, and the nature of its association with nationalism. It is suggested that in the battle between social reformers and political nationalists, the former managed to assert their social leadership. This allowed Viresalingam's legacy to be successfully appropriated by the nationalist ideology of the region. By showing that political nationalism could indeed accommodate critiques of Indian society from Western or colonial perspectives, the article puts forward an argument different from some of the current understandings of Indian nationalism.
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