In what novels were helpful for …

The novel in colonial India proved itself very useful for both the colonisers as well as the nationalists:
(a)Novel in colonial India for colonisers:
Colonial administrators found ‘vernacular’ novels a valuable source of information on native life and customs. Such
information was useful for them in governing Indian society, with its large variety of communities and castes. As
outsiders, the British knew little about life inside Indian households. The new novels in Indian languages often had
descriptions of domestic life. They showed how people dressed, their forms of religious worship, their beliefs and
practices, and so on. Some of these books were translated into English, often by British administrators or Christian
missionaries.
(b)Novel for the nationalists:
Novels produced a sense of a pan-Indian belonging. They imagined the nation to be full of adventure, heroism, romance
and sacrifice – qualities that could not be found in the offices and streets of the nineteenth-century world. The novel
allowed the colonised to give shape to their desires.
The imagined nation of the novel was so powerful that it could inspire actual political movements. Bankim’s Anandamath
is a novel about a secret Hindu militia that fights Muslims to establish a Hindu kingdom. It was a novel that inspired many
kinds of freedom fighters