In what ways was the novel in colonial India useful for both the colonisers as well as the nationalists?

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