Predecessors of INC

The Indian National Congress (INC), founded in December 1885, was the first organized expression of the Indian National Movement on an all-India scale. It had, however, many predecessors.

Major Public Associations

• Following are the important public associations, established before the Indian National Congress −

  --> The Landholders' Society − founded in 1837, it was an association of the landlords of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. Its purpose was to promote the class interests of the landlords.

  --> The Bengal British Indian Society − founded in 1843, it was organized to protect and promote general public interests.

  --> In 1851, the Landholders’ Society and the Bengal British Indian Society merged to form the British India Association.

  --> The Madras Native Association and the Bombay Association were established in 1852.

  --> The Scientific Society founded by Sayyid Ahmad Khan, were established in different towns of the country.

• All the above-discussed associations were dominated by wealthy and aristocratic elements — called in those days’ prominent persons and were provincial or local in character.
• The members of public associations worked for reform of administration, association of Indians with the administration, and spread of education, and sent long petitions, putting forward Indian demands, to the British Parliament.
• In 1866, Dadabhai Naoroji organized the East India Association in London to discuss the Indian question and to influence British public men to promote Indian welfare. Later he organized branches of the Association in prominent Indian cities.
• Born in 1825, Dadabhai Naoroji devoted his entire life to the national movement and soon came to be known as the 'Grand Old Man of India.'
• Dadabhai Naoroji was the first economic thinker of India. In his writings on economics, he showed that the basic cause of India’s poverty lay in the British exploitation of India and the drain of its wealth.
• Dadabhai was honored by being thrice elected president of the Indian National Congress.

Surendranath Banerjea

• Surendranath Banerjea was a brilliant writer and orator. He was unjustly turned out of the Indian Civil Service as his superiors could not tolerate the presence of an independent-minded Indian in the ranks of this service.
• Banerjea began his public career in 1875 by delivering brilliant addresses on nationalist topics to the students of Calcutta.
• Led by Surendranath and Anandamohan Bose, the younger nationalists of Bengal founded the Indian Association in July 1876.
• The Indian Association set before itself the aims of creating a strong public opinion in the country on political questions and the unification of the Indian people on a common political program.
• In order to attract large numbers of people to its banner, the Indian Association fixed a low membership fee for the poorer classes.
• The first major issue that the Indian Association took up for agitation was the reform of the Civil Service regulations and the raising of the age limit for its examination.
• Surendranath Banerjea toured different parts of the country during 1877-78 in an effort to create an all-India public opinion on this question.
• The Indian Association also carried out agitation against the Arms Act and the Vernacular Press Act and in favor of protection of the tenants from oppression by the reminders.
• During 1883-85, the Indian Association organized popular demonstrations of thousands of peasants to get the Rent Bill changed in favor of the tenants.
• The Indian Association agitated for better conditions of work for the workers in the English-owned tea plantations.
• Many branches of the Indian Association were opened in the towns and villages of Bengal and also in many towns outside Bengal.
• Some other Important Public Associations were −

  --> Justice Ranade and others organized the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha in the 1870's.

  --> The Madras Mahajan Sabha was started in 1881 and the Bombay Presidency Association in 1885.

  --> The most important of the pre-Congress nationalist organizations was the Indian Association of Calcutta.

• The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha brought out a quarterly journal under the guidance of Justice Ranade. This journal became the intellectual guide of new India, particularly on economic questions.
• These organizations were mainly devoted to criticism of important administrative and legislative measures.

Indian National Congress

A. O. Hume, a retired English Civil Servant along with prominent Indian leaders founded all-India organization namely the “Indian National Congress. The first session of the Indian National Congress was held at Bombay in December 1885. It was presided by W. C. Bonnerjee and attended by 72 delegates.

Aims of INC

• The aims of the National Congress were declared to be −
  --> Promotion of friendly relations among nationalist political workers residing in different parts of the country;
  --> Development and consolidation of the feeling of national unity irrespective of caste, religion, or province;
  --> Formulation of popular demands and their presentation before the Government; and
  --> Training and organization of public opinion in the country.
• One of the main aims of Hume in helping to found the National Congress was to provide an outlet i.e. 'a safety valve'—to the increasing popular discontent against British rule.
• In 1879, Wasudeo Balwant Phadke, a clerk in the commissariat department, had gathered a band of Ramoshi peasants and started an armed uprising in Maharashtra. Though this crude and an ill-prepared attempt was easily crushed, it was a portent of events to come.
• Hume as well as other English officials and statesmen were afraid that the educated Indians might provide leadership to the masses and organize a powerful rebellion against the foreign government. As Hume put it: "A safety valve for the escape of great and growing forces generated by our own action was urgently needed."
• Hume believed that the National Congress would provide a peaceful and constitutional outlet to the discontent among the educated Indians and would thus help to avoid the outbreak of a popular revolt.
• The National Congress represented the urge of the politically conscious Indians to set up a national organization to work for their political and economic advancement.
• In any case, the Indian leaders, who cooperated with Hume in starting this National Congress, were patriotic men of high character who willingly accepted Hume's help as they did not want to arouse official hostility towards their efforts at so early stage of political activity.
• Surendranath Banerjea and many other leaders of Bengal had not attended the first session of the National Congress as they were busy with the Second National Conference at Calcutta.
• In 1886, Surendranath Banerjea and other leaders of Bengal merged their forces with those of the National Congress whose second session met in Calcutta in December 1886 under the president-ship of Dadabhai Naoroji.
• From the Calcutta session, the National Congress became 'the whole country's Congress'. Its delegates, numbering 436, were elected by different local organizations and groups.
• The National Congress met every year in December, in a different part of the country.
• The number of its delegates soon increased to thousands. Its delegates consisted mostly of lawyers, journalists, traders, industrialists, teachers, and landlords.
• In 1890, Kadambini Ganguli, the first woman graduate of Calcutta University addressed the Congress session.
• This was symbolic of the fact that India's straggle for freedom would raise Indian women from the degraded position to which they had been reduced for centuries past.
• Some of the great presidents of the National Congress during its early years were Dadabhai Naoroji, Badruddin Tyabji, Pherozeshah Mehta, P. Ananda Charlu, Surendranath Banerjea, Ramesh Chandra Dutt, Ananda Mohan Bose, and Gopal Krishna Gokhale.

INC & Reforms

• Reforms after the Indian National Congress can be studied under the following heads −
  --> Constitutional Reforms
  --> Economic Reforms
  --> Administrative Reforms
  --> Methods of Political Work

Constitutional Reforms

• From 1885 to 1892, the nationalist leaders demanded the expansion and reform of the Legislative Councils. They demanded membership of the councils for elected representatives of the people and also an increase in the powers of the councils.
• The British Government was forced by their agitation to pass the Indian Councils Act of 1892. By this Act, the number of members of the Imperial Legislative Council as well as of the provincial councils was increased.
• Some of the members of Councils could be elected indirectly by Indians, but the officials' majority remained as it is.
• The Councils were also given the right to discuss the annual budgets though they could not vote on them.
• The nationalists were totally dissatisfied with the Act of 1892 and declared it to be a hoax. They demanded a larger share for Indians in the councils as also wider powers for them. In particular, they demanded Indian control over the public purse and raised the slogan that had earlier become the national cry of the American people during their War of Independence: 'No taxation without representation.’
• By the beginning of the 20th century, the nationalist leaders advanced further and put forward the claim for Swarajya or self-government within the British Empire on the model of self-governing colonies like Australia and Canada.
• This demand was made from the Congress platform by Gokhale in 1905 and by Dadabhai Naoroji in 1906.

Economic Reforms

• Dadabhai Naoroji declared as early as 1881 that British rule was "an everlasting, increasing, and every day increasing foreign invasion" that was "utterly, though gradually, destroying the country."
• The nationalists blamed the British for the destruction of India's indigenous Industries. The chief remedy they suggested for the removal of India's poverty was the rapid development of modern industries.
• The Indian people made a great effort to popularize the idea of swadeshi or the use of Indian goods and the boycott of British goods as a means of promoting Indian industries.
• Students in Poona and in other towns of Maharashtra publicly burnt foreign clothes in 1896 as part of the larger swadeshi campaign.
• Indians agitated for improvement in the work conditions of the plantation laborers.
• The nationalists declared high taxation to be one of the causes of India's poverty and demanded abolition of the salt tax and reduction of land revenue.
• The nationalists condemned the high military expenditure of the Government of India and demanded its reduction.

Administrative Reforms

• The most important administrative reform the Indians desired at this time was Indianization of the higher grades of administrative services. They put forward this demand on economic, political, and moral grounds.
• Economically, the European monopoly of the higher services was harmful on two grounds −

  --> Europeans were paid at very high rates and this made Indian administration very costly—Indians of similar qualifications could be employed on lower salaries; and

  --> Europeans sent out of India a large part of their salaries and their pensions were paid in England. This added to the drain of wealth from India.

Politically, the nationalists hoped that the Indianization of these (civil) services would make the administration more responsive to Indian needs and hence, they −

• Demanded separation of the judiciary from executive powers;
• Opposed the curtailment of the powers of the juries;
• Opposed the official policy of disarming the people;
• Asked the government to trust the people and grant them the right to bear arms and thus defend themselves and their country in times of need;
• Urged the government to undertake and develop welfare activities of the state;
• Demanded greater facilities for technical and higher education;
• Urged the development of agricultural banks to save the peasant from the clutches of the money-lender; and
• Demanded extension of medical and health facilities and improvement of the police system to make it honest, efficient, and popular.

Methods of Political Work

• The Indian national movement up to 1905 was dominated by leaders who have often been described as moderate nationalists or Moderates.
• The political methods of the Moderates can be summed up briefly as constitutional agitation within the four walls of the law and slow orderly political progress.
• Moderates believed that if public opinion was created and organized and popular demands presented to the authorities through petitions, meetings, resolutions, and speeches, the authorities would concede these demands gradually and step by step.
• In 1889, the British Committee started a journal called ‘India.’
• Dadabhai Naoroji spent a major part of his life and income in England in popularizing India’s case among England’s people.
• Moderates genuinely believed that the continuation of India's political connection with Britain was in the interests of India at that stage of history. They, therefore, planned not to expel the British but to transform British rule to approximate to national rule.
• Later, when Moderates took note of the evils of British rule and the failure of the government to accept nationalist demands for reform, many of them stopped talking of loyalty to British rule and started demanding selfgovernment for India.
• From the beginning, many nationalist leaders had no faith in the good intentions of the British. They believed in depending on political action by, and the strength of the Indian people themselves.
• Tilak and numerous other leaders and newspaper editors represented the trend, that later came to be known as Extremists or radical nationalists.

Attitude of the Government

• The British authorities were from the beginning hostile to the rising nationalist movement and had become suspicious of the National Congress.
• The British officials branded the nationalist leaders as 'disloyal babus', 'seditious brahmins' and 'violent villains'.
• As the British became apparent that the National Congress would not become a tool in the hands of the authorities, but rather it was gradually becoming a focus of Indian nationalism. British officials now began to criticize and condemn the National Congress and other Rationalist spokesmen openly.
• In 1887, Dufferin attacked the National Congress in a public speech and ridiculed it as representing only 'a microscopic minority of the people.’
• In 1900; Lord Curzon announced to the Secretary of State, that "the Congress is tottering to its fall, and one of my great ambitions, while in India, is to assist it to a peaceful demise".
• The British authorities also pushed further the policy of ‘divide and rule.’ They encouraged Sayyid Ahmed Khan, Raja Shiva Prasad of Benaras, and other proBritish individuals to start an anti-Congress movement.
• Some critics say that the nationalist movement and the National Congress did not achieve much success in their early phase; however, it established the political truth that India must be ruled in the interests of the Indians and made the issue of nationalism a dominant one in Indian life.

Religious & Social Reforms

Many Indians realized that social and religious reformation was an essential condition for the all-round development of the country on modern lines and for the growth of national unity and solidarity. After 1858, the earlier reforming tendency was broadened. The work of earlier reformers, like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Pandit Vidyasagar, was carried further by major movements of religious and social reform.

1. Brahmo Samaj

• After 1843, the Brahmo tradition founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy was carried forward by Devendranath Tagore and after 1866 by Keshub Chandra Sen.
• Devendranath Tagore repudiated the doctrine that the Vedic scriptures were infallible.
• The Brahmo Samaj made an effort to reform Hindu religion by removing abuses, by basing it on the worship of one God and on the teachings of the Vedas and Upanishads, and by incorporating the best aspects of modern western thought.
• The Brahmo Samaj denied the need for a priestly class for interpreting religious writings. Every individual had the right and the capacity to decide with the help of his own intellect what was right and what was wrong in a religious book or principle.
• The Brahmos were basically opposed to idolatry and superstitious practices and rituals, in fact, the entire Brahmanical system; they could worship one God without the mediation of the priest.
• The Brahmos were also great social reformers. They actively opposed the caste system and child-marriage; and supported the general uplift of women, including widow remarriage, and the spread of modern education to men and women.
• The Brahmo Samaj was weakened by internal dissentions in the second half of the 19th century.

2. Religious Reform in Maharashtra

• Religious reform was begun in Bombay in 1840 by the Parmahans Mandali, Which aimed at fighting idolatry and the caste system.
• The earliest religious reformer in Western India perhaps was Gopal Hari Deshmukh, known popularly as 'Lokahitwadi'. He wrote in Marathi, made powerful rationalist attacks on Hindu orthodoxy, and preached religious and social equality.
• Later the Prarthana Samaj was started with the aim of reforming Hindu religious thought and practice in the light of modern knowledge.
• It preached the worship of one God and tried to free religion of caste orthodoxy and priestly domination.
• Two of its great leaders were R.G. Bhandarkar, the famous Sanskrit scholar and historian, and Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-1901).
• Prarthana Samaj was powerfully influenced by the Brahmo Samaj. Its activities also spread to South India as a result of the efforts of the Telugu reformer, Viresalingam.

3. Theosophical Society

• The Theosophical Society was founded in the United States by Madam H.P. Blavatsky and Colonel H.S. Olcott, who later came to India and founded the headquarters of the Society at Adyar near Madras in 1886.
• The Theosophist movement soon grew in India as a result of the leadership given to Mrs. Annie Besant who had come to India in 1893.
• The Theosophists advocated the revival and strengthening of the ancient religion of Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism.
• The Theosophists recognized the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul. They also preached the universal brotherhood of man.
• It was a movement led by westerners who glorified Indian religions and philosophical tradition.
• Theosophical movement helped Indians to recover their self-confidence, even though it tended to give them a sense of false pride in their past greatness.
• One of Mrs. Besant's many achievements in India was the establishment of the Central Hindu School at Banaras which was later developed by Madan Mohan Malaviya into the Banaras Hindu University.

4. Religious Reform among Muslims

The Mohammedan Literary Society was founded at Calcutta in 1863. This Society promoted discussion of religious, social, and political questions in the light of modern ideas and encouraged upper and middle class Muslims to take to western education.

5. Religious Reform among Parsis

• In 1851, the Rehnumai Mazdayasan Sabha or Religious Reform Association was started by Naoroji Furdonji, Dadabhai Naoroji, S.S. Bengalee, and others.
• Religious Reform Association campaigned against the entrenched orthodoxy in the religious field and initiated the modernization of Parsi social customs regarding the education of women, marriage, and the social position of women in general.

6. Religious Reform among Sikhs

• Religious reform among the Sikhs was begun at the end of the 19th century when the Khalsa College was started at Amritsar.
• In 1920, the Akali Movement rose in Punjab. The main aim of the Akalis was to purify the management of the gurudwaras or Sikh shrines.
• These gurudwaras had been heavily endowed with land and money by devout Sikhs. But they had come to be managed autocratically by corrupt and selfish mahants.
• The Sikh masses led by the Akalis started in 1921 a powerful Satyagraha against the mahants and the Government which came to their aid.
• The Akalis soon forced the Government to pass a new Sikh Gurudwaras Act in 1922, which was later amended in 1925.

Religious Reformers

1. Ramakrishana and Vivekananda

• Ramakrishna Parmhansa (1834-1886) was a saintly person who sought religious salvation in the traditional ways of renunciation, meditation, and devotion (bhakti).
• Parmhansa, again and again, emphasized that there were many roads to God and salvation and that service of man was service of God, for man was the embodiment of God.
• Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), a disciple of Ramakrishan Parmhansa popularized his religious message and tried to put it in a form that would suit the needs of contemporary Indian society.
• Swami Vivekananda said, “Knowledge unaccompanied by action in the actual world in which we lived was useless.”
• In 1898, Swami Vivekananda wrote – “For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam … is the only hope.”
• Vivekananda condemned the caste system and the current Hindu emphasis on rituals, ceremonies, and superstitions, and urged the people to imbibe the spirit of liberty, equality, and free thinking.
• To the educated Indians, Swami Vivekananda said, “So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold everyman a traitor who having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.”
• In 1896, Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission to carry on humanitarian relief and social work.
• The Mission had many branches in different parts of the country and carried on social service by opening schools, hospitals, and dispensaries, orphanages, libraries, etc.

2. Swami Dayanand (Arya Samaj)

• Arya Samaj was founded in 1875 by Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883).
• Swami Dayanand believed that selfish and ignorant priests had perverted Hindu religion with the aid of the Puranas, which he said were full of false teachings.
• Swami Dayanand rejected all later religious thought if it conflicted with the Vedas. His total dependence on the Vedas and their infallibility gave his teachings an orthodox coloring.
• Swami Dayanand was opposed to idolatry, ritual, and priesthood and particularly to the prevalent caste practices and popular Hinduism as preached by brahmins.
• Some of Swami Dayanand's followers later started a network of schools and colleges in the country to impart education on western lines; Lala Hansraj played a leading part in this effort.
• On the other hand, in 1902, Swami Shradhananda started the Gurukul near Hardwar to propagate the most traditional ideals of education.

3. Sayyid Ahmad Khan (Aligarh School)

• The Mohammedan Literary Society was founded at Calcutta in 1863. This Society promoted discussion of religious, social, and political questions in the light of modern ideas and encouraged upper and middle class Muslims to take to western education.
• The most important reformer among the Muslims was Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898). He was tremendously impressed by modern scientific thought and worked all his life to reconcile it with Islam.
• Sayyid Ahmad Khan, first of all, declared that the Quran alone was the authoritative work for Islam and all other Islamic writings were secondary.
• Sayyid Ahmad Khan urged the people to develop a critical approach and freedom of thought. He said, "so long as freedom of thought is not developed, there can be no civilized life."
• He also warned against fanaticism, narrow-mindedness, and exclusiveness, and urged students and others to be broadminded and tolerant. A closed mind, he said, was the hallmark of social and intellectual backwardness.
• Therefore promotion of modern education remained his first task throughout his life. As an official, he founded schools in many towns and had many western books translated into Urdu.
• In 1875, Sayyid Ahmad Khan founded the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh as a center for spreading western sciences and culture. Later, this College grew into the Aligarh Muslim University.
• Sayyd Ahmad Khan was a great believer in religious toleration. He believed that all religions had a certain underlying unity, which could be called practical morality. Believing that a person's religion was his or her private affair, he roundly condemned any sign of religious bigotry in personal relations. He was also opposed to communal friction. He appealed to Hindus and Muslims to unite.
• Sayyid Ahmad Khan wrote in favor of raising the women's status in society and advocated removal of purdah and spread of education among women. He also condemned the customs of polygamy and easy divorce.
• Sayyid Ahmad Khan was helped by a band of loyal followers who are collectively described as the Aligarh School.

4. Muhammad Iqbal

• One of the greatest poets of modern India, Muhammad Iqbal (1876- 1938) also profoundly influenced by his poetry, the philosophical and religious outlook of the younger generation of Muslims as well as of Hindus.
• Iqbal was basically a humanist. In fact, he raised human action to the status of a prime virtue.

Nationalist Movement (1905-1918)

The Indian national movement in its early days had increasingly made a large number of people conscious of the evils of foreign domination and of the need for fostering patriotism. It had imparted the necessary political training to the educated Indians. There was a strong demand for more vigorous political action and methods than those of meetings, petitions, memorials, and speeches in the legislative councils.

Recognition of True Nature of British Rule

• The politics of the moderate nationalists were founded on the belief that British rule could be reformed from within. But the spread of knowledge regarding political and economic questions gradually undermined this belief.
• The nationalist writers and agitators blamed British rule for the poverty of the people. Politically conscious Indians were convinced that the purpose of British rule was to exploit India economically, that is, to enrich England at the cost of India.
• The nationalists realized that India could make little progress in the economic field unless British imperialism was replaced by a government controlled and run by the Indian people.
• In 1898, a law was passed making it an offence to excite "feelings of disaffection" towards the foreign government.
• In 1899, the number of Indian members in the Calcutta Corporation was reduced.
• In 1904, the Indian Official Secrets Act was passed restricting the freedom of the press.
• The Nathu brothers were deported in 1897 without trial; even the charges against them were not made public.
• In 1897, Lokamanya Tilak and other newspaper editors were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for arousing the people against the foreign government.
• The moderate leader Gokhale complained that "the bureaucracy was growing frankly selfish and openly hostile to national aspirations."
• The Indian Universities Act of 1904 was seen by the nationalists as an attempt to bring Indian universities under tighter official control and to check the growth of higher education.
• Gradually, an increasing number of Indians were getting convinced that selfgovernment was essential for the sake of the economic, political, and cultural progress of the country and that political enslavement meant stunting the growth of the Indian people.

Growth of Self-respect and Self-confidence

• By the end of the 19th century, the Indian nationalists had grown in selfrespect and self-confidence. They had acquired faith in their capacity to govern themselves and in the future development of their country.
• Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal preached the message of self-respect and asked the nationalists to rely on the character and capacities of the Indian people.
• The nationalists taught the people that the remedy to their sad condition lay in their own hands and that they should, therefore, become fearless and strong.
• Swami Vivekananda, though not a political leader, again and again, drove home the message that “If there is a sin in the world it is weakness; avoid all weakness, weakness is sin, weakness is death… and here is the test of truth – anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject as poison, there is no life in it, it cannot be true.”
• Swami Vivekananda wrote that “The only hope of India is from the masses. The upper classes are physically and morally dead.”
• The educated Indians became the best propagators and followers of militant nationalism both because they were low-paid or unemployed and because they were educated in modern thought and politics and European and world history.

Existence of Militant Nationalist School of Thought

• From almost the beginning of the national movement a school of militant nationalism had existed in the country. This school was represented by leaders like Rajnarain Bose and Ashwini Kumar Dutt in Bengal and Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar in Maharashtra.
• The most outstanding representative of militant school was Bal Gangadhar Tilak later popularly known as Lokamanya Tilak.
• Tilak was born in 1856. From the day of his graduation from the Bombay University, he devoted his entire life to the service of the country.
• From 1889, Tilak edited the Kesari and preached nationalism in its columns and taught people to become courageous, self-reliant, and selfless fighters in the cause of India's independence.
• In 1893, Tilak started using the traditional religious Ganpati festival to propagate nationalist ideas through songs and speeches, and in 1895, he started the Shivaji festival to stimulate nationalism among young Maharashtrians by holding up the example of Shivaji for emulation.
• During 1896-1897, Tilak initiated a ‘no-tax’ campaign in Maharashtra. He asked the famine-stricken peasants of Maharashtra to withhold payment of land revenue if their crops had failed.
• Tilak set a real example of boldness and sacrifice when the authorities arrested him in 1897 on the charge of spreading hatred and disaffection against the government. He refused to apologize to the government and was sentenced to 18 months rigorous imprisonment.

Partition of Bengal

• The conditions for the emergence of militant nationalism had developed when in 1905 the partition of Bengal was announced.
• On 20 July 1905, Lord Curzon issued an order dividing the province of Bengal into two parts i.e. Eastern Bengal and Assam with a population of 31 million and the rest of Bengal with a population of 54 million, of whom 18 million were Bengalis and 36 million were Biharis and Oriyas.
• The Indian National Congress and the nationalists of Bengal firmly opposed the partition.
• The Anti-Partition Movement was initiated on 7 August 1905. On that day, a massive demonstration against the partition was organized in the Town Hall in Calcutta.
• The partition too effect on 16 October 1905. The leaders of the protest movement declared it to be a day of national mourning throughout Bengal.

Swadeshi and Boycott

• Mass meetings were held all over Bengal where Swadeshi or use of Indian goods and boycott of British goods were proclaimed and pledged. At many places, public tannings of foreign cloth were organized and shops selling foreign cloth were picketed.
• The Swadeshi movement gave a great deal of encouragement to Indian industries. Many textile mills, soap and match factories, handloom weaving concerns, national banks, and insurance companies were opened.
• The Swadeshi movement had several consequences in the realm of culture. There was a flowering of nationalist poetry, prose, and journalism.
• National educational institutions where literary, technical, or physical education was imparted were opened by nationalists who regarded the existing system of education as denationalizing and, in any case, inadequate.
• On 15 August 1906, a National Council of Education was set up. A National College with Aurobindo Ghose as principal was started in Calcutta.

Role of Students, Women, Muslims, and Masses

• A noticeable part in the Swadeshi agitation was played by the students of Bengal. They practiced and propagated swadeshi and took the lead in organizing picketing of shops selling foreign cloth. They were perhaps the main creators of the swadeshi spirit in Bengal.
• The government made every attempt to suppress the students. Orders were issued to penalize those schools and colleges whose students took an active part in the Swadeshi agitation: their grants-in-aid and other privileges were to be withdrawn.
• Many students were fined, expelled from schools and colleges, arrested, and some time beaten by the police. However, students refused to be cowed down.
• The traditionally home-centered women of the urban middle classes joined processions and picketing. Likewise, from this time, students were taken an active part in the nationalist movement.
• Many prominent Muslims joined the Swadeshi movement including Abdul Rasul, the famous barrister, Liaquat Husain, the popular agitator, and Guznavi, the businessman.
• Tilak quickly observed that with the inauguration of this movement in Bengal, a new chapter in the history of Indian nationalism had opened i.e. the challenge and an opportunity to lead a popular struggle against the British Raj and to unite the entire country in one bond of common sympathy.
• The Governments of the two Bengals, particularly of East Bengal made active efforts to divide Hindus and Muslims. Seeds of Hindu-Muslim disunity in Bengal politics were perhaps sown at this time, which embittered the nationalists.
• As the consequences of Swadeshi movement −

  Shouting of ‘Bande Mataram’ in public streets in East Bengal was banned;

  Public meetings were restricted and sometimes forbidden;

  Laws controlling the press were enacted;

  Swadeshi workers were prosecuted and imprisoned for the long periods;

  Many students were given corporal punishment;

  Prosecutions against a large number of nationalist newspapers were launched and freedom of the press was completely suppressed;

  Military police was stationed in many towns where it clashed with the people;

  In December 1908, nine Bengal leaders, including the venerable Krishna Kumar Mitra and Ashwini Kumar Dutt were deported;

  Earlier in 1907, Lala Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh had been deported; and

  In 1908, the great Tilak was again arrested and given the savage sentence of 6 years imprisonment.

Growth of Revolutionary Terrorism

• Government repression and frustration caused by the failure of the political struggle ultimately resulted in revolutionary terrorism.
• The Yugantar wrote on 22 April 1906 after the Barisal Conference: "The remedy lies with the people themselves. The 30 crores of people inhabiting India must raise their 60 crores of hands to stop this curse of oppression. Force must be stopped by force."
• The revolutionary young men did not try to generate a mass revolution. Instead, they decided to copy the methods of the Irish terrorists and the Russian Nihilists, that is, to assassinate unpopular officials.
• In 1897, the Chapekar brothers assassinated two unpopular British officials at Poona.
• In 1904, V.D. Savarkar had organized the Abhinava Bharat, a secret society of revolutionaries.
• After 1905, several newspapers had begun to advocate revolutionary terrorism. The Sandhya and the Yugantar in Bengal and the Kal in Maharashtra were the most prominent among them.
• In April 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at a carriage, which they believed was occupied by Kingsford, the unpopular Judge at Muzzaffarpur. Prafulla Chaki shot himself dead while Khudiram Bose was hanged.
• Many secret societies of terrorist youth came into existence. The most famous of these was the Anushilan Samiti whose Dacca section alone had 500 branches.
• Soon terrorist societies became active in the rest of the country also. They became so bold as to throw a bomb at the Viceroy, Lord Harding, while he was riding on an elephant in a state procession at Delhi. The Viceroy was wounded.
• The terrorists also established centers of activity abroad. In London, the lead was taken by Shyamji Krishnavarma, V.D. Savarkar, and Har Dayal, while in Europe Madam Cama and Ajit Singh were the prominent leaders.
• The terrorists did make a valuable contribution to the growth of nationalism in India.

Indian National Congress (1905-1914)

• After Bengal partition, all sections of the National Congress united in opposing the partition and supported the Swadeshi and Boycott movement of Bengal.
• There was much public debate and disagreement between the moderate and the militant nationalists. While the latter wanted to extend the mass movement in Bengal as well as in the rest of the country, the Moderates wanted to confine the movement to Bengal and even there to limit it to Swadeshi and Boycott.
• There was a tussle between the militant nationalists and moderates for the president-ship of the National Congress. In the end, Dadabhai Naoroji, respected by all nationalists as a great patriot, was chosen as a compromise.
• Dadabhai electrified the nationalist ranks by openly declaring in his presidential address that the goal of the Indian national movement was 'self-government' or Swaraj, like that of the United Kingdom or the colonies.
• The split between the two came at the Surat session of the National Congress in December 1907: The moderate leaders having captured the machinery of the Congress excluded the militant elements from it.
• In the long run, the split did not prove useful to either party. The moderate leaders lost touch with the younger generation of nationalists.
• The British Government played the game of 'Divide and Rule' and tried to win over moderate nationalist opinion so that the militant nationalists could be isolated and suppressed.
• To appease the moderate nationalists it announced constitutional concessions through the Indian Councils Act of 1909, which are known as the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909.
• In 1911, the Government also announced the cancellation of the partition of Bengal. Western and eastern Bengals were to be reunited while a new province consisting of Bihar and Orissa was to be created.
• In 1911, the seat of the Central Government was moved from Calcutta to Delhi
• The Morley-Minto Reforms Increased the number of elected members in the Imperial Legislative Council and the provincial councils. But most of the elected members were elected indirectly, by the provincial councils in the case of the Imperial Council and by municipal committees and district boards in the case of provincial councils. Some of the elected seats were reserved for landlords and British capitalists in India.
• Out of the 68 members of the Imperial Legislative Council, 36 were officials and 5 were nominated non-officials.
• Of the 27 elected members, 6 were to represent the big landlords and 2 the British capitalists.
• The reformed councils still enjoyed no real power, being merely advisory bodies. The reforms in no way changed the undemocratic and foreign character of British rule or the fact of foreign economic exploitation of the country.
• The Reforms also introduced the system of separate electorates under which all Muslims were grouped in separate constituencies from which Muslims alone could be elected. This was done for the sake of protecting the Muslim minority. But in reality, this was a part of the policy of dividing Hindus and Muslims and thus maintaining British supremacy in India.
• The system of separate electorates was based on the idea that the political and economic interests of Hindus and Muslims were separate. This notion was unscientific because religions cannot be the basis of political and economic interests or of political groupings.
• The moderate nationalists did not fully support the Morley-Minto Reforms. They soon realized that the Reforms had really not granted much.

Nationalists and World War I

• In June 1914, the First World War broke out between Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Japan, and the United States of America on one side and Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey on the other.
• In the beginning, the Indian nationalist leaders, including Lokamanya Tilak, who had been released in June 1914, decided to support the war effort of the British Government.
• The nationalists adopted an actively pro-British attitude mainly in the mistaken belief that grateful Britain would repay India’s loyalty with gratitude and enable India to take a long step forward on the road to self-government.

Muslim League & Growth of Communalism

• Modern political consciousness was late in developing among the Muslims. As nationalism spread among the Hindus and Parsees of the lower middle class, it failed to grow equally rapidly among the Muslims of the same class.
• After the suppression of the 1857 Revolt, the British officials had taken a particularly vindictive attitude towards the Muslims, hanging 27,000 Muslims in Delhi alone.
• To check the growth of a united national feeling in the country, the British decided to follow more actively the policy of 'Divide and Rule' and to divide the people along religious lines. They encourage communal and separatist tendencies in Indian politics.
• The British promoted provincialism by talking of Bengali domination. They tried to utilize the caste structure to turn the non-Brahmins against Brahmins and the lower castes against the higher castes.
• In U.P. and Bihar, where Hindus and Muslims had always lived in peace, the British actively encouraged the movement to replace Urdu as a court language by Hindi.
• Sayyid Ahmad Khan laid the foundations of Muslim communalism when in the 1880's he gave up his earlier views and declared that the political interests of Hindus and Muslims were not the same but different and even divergent.
• Sayyid Ahmad Khan preached complete obedience to British rule. When the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, he decided to oppose it and tried to organize along with Raja Shiva Prasad of Varanasi a movement of loyalty to British rule.
• Sayyid Ahmad Khan urged the Muslims not to listen to Badruddin Tyabji’s appeal to join the National Congress.
• Sayyid Ahmed Khan and others raised the demand for special treatment for the Muslims in the matter of government services.
• Bombay was the only province where the Muslims had taken to commerce and education quite early; and the Nationalist Congress included in its ranks such brilliant Muslims as Badruddin Tyabji, R.M. Sayani, A. Bhhimji, and the young barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
• In his presidential address to the National Congress of 1886, Dadabhai had given the clear assurance that the Congress would take up only national questions and would not deal with religious and social matters.
• In 1889, the Congress adopted the principle that it would not take up any proposal which was considered harmful to the Muslims by a majority of the Muslim delegates to the Congress.
• Many Hindus began to talk of Hindu nationalism and many Muslims of Muslim nationalism.
• The politically immature people failed to realize that their economic, educational, and cultural difficulties were the result of common subjection to foreign rule and of economic backwardness and that only through common effort they could free their country, develop it economically, and thus solve the underlying common problems, such as unemployment and poverty.
• In 1906, the All India Muslim League was founded under the leadership of the Aga Khan, the Nawab of Dacca, and Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk.
• The Muslim League supported the partition of Bengal and demanded special safeguards for the Muslims in government services.
• To increase its usefulness, the British also encouraged the Muslim League to approach the Muslim masses and to assume their leadership.
• The educated Muslim young men were, in particular, attracted by radical nationalist ideas.
• The militant nationalist Ahrar movement was founded at this time under the leadership of Maulana Mohammed Ali, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Hann Imam, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, and Mazhar-ut-Haq. These young men disliked the loyalist politics of the Aligarh school and the big nawabs and zamindars. Moved by modern ideas of self-government, they advocated active participation in the militant nationalist movement.
• Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Maulana Mohammed Ali and other young men preached a message of courage and fearlessness and said that there was no conflict between Islam and nationalism.

Home Rule Leagues

• Two Home Rule Leagues were started in 1915-16, one under the leadership of Annie Besant, and S. Subramaniya Iyer.
• The two Home Rule Leagues carried out intense propaganda all over the country in favor of the demand for the grant of Home Rule or self-government to India after the War.
• It was during Home Rule agitation, Tilak gave the popular slogan i.e. “Home Rule is my birth-right, and I will have it.”
• The war period also witnessed the growth of the revolutionary movement, as the terrorist groups spread from Bengal and Maharashtra to the whole of northern India.
• Indian revolutionary in the United States of America and Canada had established the “Ghadar (Rebellion) Party in 1913.”
• Most of the members of Ghadar Party were Sikh peasants and soldiers, but their leaders were mostly educated Hindus or Muslims.
• Ghadar Party had active members in some other countries as well including Mexico, Japan, China, Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, Thailand, East and South Africa.
• The Ghadar Party was pledged to wage a revolutionary war against the British in India.
• As soon as the First World War I broke out in 1914, the Ghadarites decided to send arms and men to India to start an uprising with the help of soldiers and local revolutionaries.
• Several thousand men volunteered to come back to India. Millions of dollars were contributed to pay for their expenses. Many gave their life-long savings and sold their lands and other property.
• The Ghadarites also contacted Indian soldiers in the Far East, South-East Asia, and all over India and persuaded several regiments to rebel.
• 21 February 1915 was fixed as the date for an armed revolt in the Punjab. Unfortunately, the British authorities came to know of Ghadarites’ plans and took immediate action.
• The rebellious regiments were disbanded and their leaders were either imprisoned or hanged. For example, 12 men of the 23rd Cavalry were executed. The leaders and members of the Ghadar Party in the Punjab were arrested on a mass scale.
• 42 of arrested men were hanged, 114 were transported for life, and 93 were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
• Many of the Ghadarites, after their release, founded the Kirti and Communist movements in the Punjab. Some of the prominent Ghadar leaders were: Baba Gurmukh Singh, Kartar Singh Saraba, Sohan Singh Bhakna, Rahmat Ali Shah, Bhai Parmanand, and Mohammad Barkatullah.
• Inspired by the Ghadar Party, 700 men of the 5th Light Infantry at Singapore revolted under the leadership of Jamadar Chisti Khan and Subedar Dundey Khan. They were crushed after a bitter battle in which many died. Thirty-seven others were publicly executed, while 41 were transported for life.
• In 1915, during an unsuccessful revolutionary attempt, Jatin Mukerjea popularly known as 'Bagha Jatin’ died while fighting a battle with the police at Balasore.
• Rash Bihari Bose, Raja Mahendra Pratap, Lala Hardayal, Abdul Rahim, Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi, Champak Raman Pillai, Sardar Singh Rana, and Madam Cama were some of the prominent Indians who carried on revolutionary activities and propaganda outside India.

Congress Lucknow Session

• The nationalists soon saw that disunity in their ranks was injuring their cause and that they must put up a united front.
• Urge for the unity produced two historic developments at the Lucknow Session of the Indian national Congress in 1916: i.e.

  --> The two wings i.e. Indian National Congress and Muslim League united, as their split had not benefited either group; and

  --> The Congress and the All Indian Muslim league put up a common political demands

• An important role in bringing the moderates and extremists together was played by Lokamanya Tilak.
• The British felt necessary to appease the nationalists; therefore, they heavily relied on repression to quieten the nationalist agitation. Large numbers of radical nationalists and revolutionaries had been jailed or interned under the notorious Defence of India Act and other similar regulations.

Struggle for Swaraj

• To win popular support for their war effort, the Allied nations – Britain, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan, promised a new era of democracy and national self-determination to all the peoples of the world; but after their victory, they showed little willingness to end the colonial system.
• Nationalism had gathered its forces and the nationalists were expecting major political gains after the war; and they were willing to fight back if their expectations were thwarted.
• The economic situation in the post-war years had taken a turn for the worse. There was first a rise in prices and then a depression in economic activity.
• The Indian industries, which had prospered during the war because foreign imports of manufactured goods had ceased, now faced losses and closure.
• The Indian industrialists wanted protection of their industries through imposition of high customs duties and grant of government aid; they realized that a strong nationalist movement and an independent Indian Government alone could secure their demands.
• The workers, facing unemployment and high prices and living in great poverty, also turned actively towards the nationalist movement.
• Indian Soldiers, returned with their triumphs from Africa, Asia, and Europe, imparted some of their confidence and their knowledge of the wide world to the rural areas.
• The peasantry, groaning under deepening poverty and high taxation, was waiting for a lead. On the other hand, the urban educated Indians were dissented because of increasing unemployment.
• A major impetus to the national movements was given by the impact of the Russian Revolution.
• On 7 November 1917, the Bolshevik (Communist) Party, led by V.I. Lenin, overthrew the Czarist regime in Russia and declared the formation of the first socialist state, the Soviet Union, in the history of the world.
• The Russian Revolution gave people self-confidence and indicated to the leaders of the national movement that they should rely on the strength of the common people.
• The Government, aware of the rising tide of nationalist and anti-government sentiments, once again decided to follow the policy of the 'carrot and the stick,' in other words, of concessions and repression.

Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms

In 1918, Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State, and Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy, produced their scheme of constitutional reforms which led to the enactment of the Government of India Act of 1919.

Government of India Act

Major provisions of Government of India Act of 1919 were −

• The Provincial Legislative Councils were enlarged and the majority of their members were to be elected.
• The provincial governments were given more powers under the system of Diarchy.
• Under the Diarchy system, auditory subjects, such as finance and law and order, were called 'reserved' subjects and remained under the direct control of the Governor; others such as education, public health, and local selfgovernment, were called 'transferred' subjects and were to be controlled by ministers responsible to the legislatures.
• The Governor retained complete control over the finances. The Governor could, moreover, overrule the ministers on any grounds that he considered special.

At the center, there were to be two houses of legislature i.e.

• The lower house, the Legislative Assembly, was to have 41 nominated members in a total strength of 144.
• The upper house, the Council of State, was to have 26 nominated and 34 elected members.

The legislature had virtually no control over the Governor-General and his Executive Council. On the other hand, the Central Government had unrestricted control over the provincial governments and the right to vote was severely restricted.

Indian nationalists had, however, advanced far beyond such halting concessions. They were no longer willing to let an alien government decide their fitness for self-government, nor would they be satisfied with the shadow of political power.

The Indian National Congress met in a special session at Bombay in August 1918 under the president-ship of Hasan Imam to consider the reform proposals. It condemned them as "disappointing and unsatisfactory” - and demanded effective self-government instead.

The Rowlatt Act

• In March 1919, the British Government passed the Rowlett Act even though every single Indian member of the Central Legislative Council opposed it. Three of them, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Madan Mohan Malaviya, and Mazhar-ul-Huq resigned their membership of the Council.
• This Act authorized the Government to imprison any person without trial and conviction in a court of law.
• The Act would thus also enable the Government to suspend the right of Habeas Corpus which had been the foundation of civil liberties in Britain.
• The Rowlett Act came like a sudden blow. To the people of India, promised extension of democracy during the war, the government step appeared to be a cruel joke.
• People felt humiliated and were filled with anger. Unrest spread in the country and a powerful agitation against the Act arose.
• During this agitation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, took command of the nationalist movement.
• Gandhiji planned for a “Satyagraha” against the Rowlatt Act. In 1919, a Satyagraha Sabha was formed and 6 April was fixed as the date to launch Satyagraha.

Mahatma Gandhi Assumes Leadership

• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 at Porbandar in Gujarat.
• After attaining his legal education in Britain, Gandhiji went to South Africa to practice law.
• Imbued with a high sense of justice, Gandhiji was revolted by the injustice, discrimination, and degradation to which Indians had to submit in the South African colonies.
• Indian laborers who had gone to South Africa, and the merchants who followed were denied the right to vote. They had to register and pay a poll-tax. They could not reside except in prescribed locations, which were insanitary and congested.
• In some of the South African colonies, the Asians, also the Africans, could not stay out of door after 9 p.m.; nor could they use public footpaths.
• Gandhi soon became the leader of the struggle against these conditions and during 1893-94 was engaged in a heroic though unequal struggle against the racist authorities of South Africa.
• It was during this long struggle lasting nearly two decades that Gandhiji evolved the technique of Satyagraha based on truth and non-violence.
• The ideal satyagrahi was to be truthful and perfectly peaceful, but at the same time, Gandhiji would refuse to submit to what he considered wrong. He would accept suffering willingly in the course of struggle against the wrong-doer. This struggle was to be part of his love of truth.
• In a famous article in his weekly journal, Young India, published in 1920, Gandhiji wrote that "Non-violence is the law of our species, as violence is the law of the brute", but that "where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence ....."
• Gandhiji returned to India in 1915 at the age of 46. He was keen to serve his country and his people.
• In 1916, Gandhi founded the Sabarmati Ashram at Ahmedabad where his friends and followers were to learn and, practice the ideals of truth and nonviolence.

Champaran Satyagraha (1917)

• Gandhi's first great experiment in Satyagraha came in 1917 in Champaran, a district in Bihar.
• In Champaran, the peasants of the indigo plantations were excessively oppressed by the European planters. They were compelled to grow indigo on at least 3/20th of their land and to sell it at prices fixed by the planters.
• Similar conditions had prevailed earlier in Bengal, but as a result of a major uprising during 1859-61 the peasants there had won their freedom from the indigo planters.
• Having heard of Gandhi's campaigns in South Africa, several peasants of Champaran invited him to come and help them.
• Accompanied by Baba Rajendra Prasad, Mazhar-ul-Huq, J. B. Kripalani, and Mahadev Desai, Gandhiji reached Champaran in 1917 and began to conduct a detailed inquiry into the condition of the peasants.
• The infuriated district officials ordered him to leave Champaran, but he defied the order and was willing to face trial and imprisonment. This forced the Government to cancel its earlier order and to appoint a committee of inquiry on which Gandhi served as a member.
• Ultimately, the disabilities from which the peasantry was suffering were reduced and Gandhi had won his first battle of civil disobedience in India.

Ahmedabad Mill Strike

• In 1918, Mahatma Gandhi intervened in a dispute between the workers and mill owners of Ahmedabad.
• Gandhiji undertook a fast unto death to force a compromise. The mill owners relented on the fourth day and agreed to give the workers 35 per cent increase in wages.
• Gandhiji also supported the peasants of Khaira in Gujarat in their struggle against the collection of land revenue when their crops had failed.
• Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel left his lucrative practice at the Bar at this time to help Gandhiji.
• These experiences (discussed above) brought Gandhiji in close contact with the masses whose interests he actively exposed all his life.
• Gandhiji was the first Indian nationalist leader who identified his life and his manner of living with the life of the common people.
• The following issues were very close to Gandhi's heart −

  Hindu-Muslim unity;

  The fight against untouchability; and

  The raising of the social status of women in the country.

Satyagraha Against Rowlett Act

• Along with other nationalists, Gandhiji was also aroused by the Rowlett Act.
• In February 1919, he founded the Satyagraha Sabha whose members took a pledge to disobey the Act.
• Gandhiji asked the nationalist workers to go to the villages. That is where India lives, he said.
• Gandhiji increasingly turned the face of nationalism towards the common man and the symbol of this transformation was to be null, or hand-spun and handwoven cloth, which soon became the uniform of the nationalists.
• Gandhiji emphasized on the dignity of labor and the value of self-reliance. India's salvation would come, he said, when the masses were wakened from their sleep and became active in politics.
• March and April 1919 witnessed a remarkable political awakening in India. There were hartals (strikes) and demonstrations. The slogans of Hindu-Muslim unity filled the air. The entire country was electrified. The Indian people were no longer willing to submit to the degradation of foreign rule.

Khilafat & Non-Cooperation Movement

• The politically-conscious Muslims were critical of the treatment meted out to the Ottoman (or Turkish) Empire by Britain and its allies who had partitioned it and taken away Thrace from Turkey proper.
• This was in violation of the earlier pledge of the British Premier, Lloyd George, who had declared: "Nor are we fighting to deprive Turkey of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace which are predominantly Turkish in race."
• The Muslims also felt that the position of the Sultan of Turkey, who was also regarded by many as the Caliph or the religious head of the Muslims, should not be undermined.
• A Khilafat Committee was soon formed under the leadership of the Ali brothers, Maulana Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan, and Hasrat Mohani, and a countrywide agitation was organized.
• The All-India Khilafat Conference held at Delhi in November 1919, decided to withdraw all cooperation from the Government if their demands were not met.
• The Muslim League, now under the leadership of nationalists, gave full support to the National Congress and its agitation on political issues.
• The Congress leaders, including Lokamanya Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi, viewed the Khilafat agitation as a golden opportunity for cementing Hindu-Muslim unity and bringing the Muslim masses into the national movement.
• The Congress leaders realized that different sections of the people—Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, capitalists and workers, peasants and artisans, women and youth, and tribes and peoples of different regions—would come into the national movement through the experience of fighting for their own different demands and seeing that the alien regime stood in opposition to them.
• In June 1920, an all-party conference met at Allahabad and approved a program of boycott of schools, colleges, and law courts.
• The Khilafat Committee launched a non-cooperation movement on 31 August 1920.
• The Congress met in special session in September 1920 at Calcutta. Only a few weeks earlier it had suffered a grievous loss—Lokamanya Tilak had passed away on 1 August at the age of 64.
• The Congress supported Gandhi's plan for non-cooperation with the Government till the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs were removed and Swaraj established.
• “The British people will have to beware,” declared Gandhiji at Nagpur, that if they do not want to do justice, it will be the bounden duty of every Indian to destroy the Empire.
• The Nagpur session also made changes in the constitution of the Congress. Provincial Congress Committees were reorganized on the basis of linguistic areas.
• Congress membership was thrown open to all men and women of the age of 21 or more on payment of 4 annas as annual subscription. However, in 1921, the age limit for membership was reduced to 18.
• The years 1921 and 1922 witnessed an unprecedented movement of the Indian people. Thousands of students left government schools and colleges and joined national schools and colleges.
• Hundreds of lawyers, including Chittaranjan Das (popularly known as Deshbandhu), Motilal Nehru, and Rajendra Prasad, gave up their legal practice.
• The Tilak Swarajya Fund was started to finance the non-cooperation movement and within six months, over crore of rupees were subscribed.
• Women showed great enthusiasm and freely offered their jewelry.
• Huge bonfires of foreign cloth were organized all over the land.
• Khadi soon became a symbol of freedom.
• In July 1921, the All-India Khilafat Committee passed a resolution declaring that no Muslim should serve in the British Indian army.
• In September, the Ali brothers were arrested for 'sedition'. Immediately, Gandhiji gave a call for repetition of this resolution at hundreds of meetings.
• Fifty members of the All India Congress Committee issued a similar declaration that no Indian should serve the government which degraded India socially, economically, and politically.
• By the end of 1921, all important nationalist leaders, except Gandhiji, were behind the bar along with 3,000 others.
• In November 1921, huge demonstrations greeted the Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne, during his tour of India. He had been asked by the Government to come to India to encourage loyalty among the people and the princes.
• In Bombay, the Government tried to suppress the demonstration by killing 53 persons and wounding about 400 or more.
• The annual session of the Congress, meeting at Ahmedabad in December 1921, passed a resolution affirming "the fixed determination of the Congress to continue the program of non-violent non-cooperation with greater vigor than hitherto ….till the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs were redressed and Swarajya is established."
• The resolution urged all Indians, and in particular students, "quietly and without any demonstration to offer themselves for arrest by belonging to the volunteer organizations."
• All such Satyagrahis were to take a pledge to "remain non-violent in word and deed to promote unity among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians, and Jews, and to practice swadeshi and wear only khadi.
• In Malabar (Northern Kerala), the Moplahs, or Muslim peasants, created a powerful anti-zamindar movement.
• The Viceroy wrote to the Secretary of State in February 1919 that "The lower classes in the towns have been seriously affected by the non-cooperation movement.
• On 1 February 1922, Mahatma Gandhi announced that he would start mass civil disobedience, including non-payment of taxes, unless within seven days the political prisoners were released and the press freed from government control.

Withdrawal of Civil Disobedience Movement

• On 5 February 1922, a Congress procession of 3,000 peasants at Chauri Chaura, a village in the Gorakhpur District of U.P., was fired upon by the police. The angry crowd attacked and burnt the police station causing the death of 22 policemen.
• Gandhiji took a very serious view of Chauri Chaura incident. It convinced him that the nationalist workers had not yet properly understood nor learnt the practice of non-violence without which, he was convinced, civil disobedience could not be a success.
• Apart from the fact that Gandhiji would have nothing to do with violence, he also perhaps believed that the British would be able to crush easily a violent movement, for people had not yet built up enough strength and stamina to resist government repression.
• Gandhiji, therefore, decided to suspend the nationalist campaign. The Congress Working Committee met at Bardoli in Gujarat on 12 February and passed a resolution stopping all activities, which would lead to breaking of laws.
• The Bardoli resolution stunned the country and had a mixed reception among the nationalists, while some had implicit faith in Gandhiji, others resented this decision to retreat.
• The first non-cooperation and civil disobedience movement virtually came to an end.
• The Government arrested Mahatma Gandhiji on 10 March and charged him with spreading disaffection against the Government. Gandhiji was sentenced to six years imprisonment.

End of Khilafat Agitation

• Very soon the Khilafat, question also lost relevance. The people of Turkey rose up under the leadership of Mustafa Kamal Pasha and, in November 1922, deprived the Sultan of his political power.
• Kamal Pasha took many measures to modernize Turkey and to make it a secular state. He abolished the Caliphate (or the institution of the Caliph) and separated the state from religion by eliminating Islam from the Constitution.
• Kamal Pasha nationalized education, granted women extensive rights, introduced legal codes based on European models, and took steps to develop agriculture and to introduce modern industries. All these steps broke the back of the Khilafat agitation.
• In December 1922, Chittaranjan Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Congress-Khilafat Swaraj Party; Das as president and Motilal Nehru as one of the secretaries.
• The communal elements took advantage of the situation to propagate their views and after 1923, the country was repeatedly plunged into communal riots.
• The Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha, which was founded in December 1917, once again became active. The result was that the growing feeling that all people were Indians first received a set-back.
• The Swarajist Party, whose main leaders, Motilal Nehru and Das, were staunch nationalists, was split by communalism.
• A group known as “responsivists” including Madan Mohan Malviya, Lala Lajpat Rai, and N. C. Kelkar, offered cooperation to the Government so that the socalled Hindu interests might be safeguarded.
• In September 1924, Gandhiji went on 21 days fast at Maulana Mohammed Ali’s house in Delhi to do penance for the inhumanity revealed in the communal riots. But his efforts were of little avail.

Second Non-Cooperation Movement

• Socialist and Communist groups came into existence in the 1920s. M. N. Roy became the first Indian elected to the leadership of the Communist International.
• In 1924, the Government arrested Muzaffer Ahmed and S. A. Dange, accused them of spreading Communist ideas, and filed a case against them along the others involved in the Kanpur Conspiracy case.
• In 1928, under the leadership of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the peasants organized a “No Tax Campaign” and won their demand.
• The trade unionism had grown during the early 1920s under the leadership of the All India Trade Union Congress.
• All India Trade Union Congress was established in October 1920 at Bombay.

Resurgence of Terrorist Movement

• The failure of the first non-cooperation movement had led to the revival of the terrorist movement. Therefore, after an All India Conference, the Hindustan Republican Association was founded in October 1924 to organize an armed revolution.
• The terrorists soon came under the influence of socialist ideas; in 1928, under the leadership of Chandra Shekhar Azad, changed the title of the organization from the “Hindustan Republican Association” to the “Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.”
• Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929 to protest against the passage of the Public Safety Bill, which would have reduced civil liberties.
• The bomb did not harm anyone, as it had been deliberately made harmless. The aim was not to kill but, as a terrorist leaflet put it, “to make the deaf hear.”
• Bhagat Singh and B. K. Dutt could have easily escaped after throwing the bomb, but they deliberately chose to be arrested for they wanted to make use of the court as a forum for revolutionary propaganda.
• In April 1930, a raid was manipulated on the government armory at Chittagong under the leadership of Surya Sen.
• The remarkable aspect of the terrorist movement in Bengal was the participation of young women.
• To protest against the horrible conditions in the prisons, Jatin Das sat on hunger strike; as a result of which, he attained martyrdom after 63 days of epic fast.
• In spite of huge protests, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru were executed on 23 March 1931.
• In February, 1931, Chandra Shekhar Azad was killed in a shooting encounter with the police in a public park; later this park renamed as Azad Park (located at Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh).
• Surya Sen was arrested in February 1933 and hanged soon after.
• In March 1929, thirty-one prominent trade union and communist leaders (including three Englishmen) were arrested and after a trial (known as Meerut Conspiracy Case) lasting four years, sentenced for long periods of imprisonment.

Boycott of Simon Commission

• In November 1927, the British Government appointed the Indian Statutory Commission to work on the constitutional reform, named as ‘Simon Commission,’ after the name of its Chairman John Simon.
• All members of the Simon Commission were Englishmen, which was unanimously protested by all Indians.
• At its Madras Session in 1927, presided over by Dr. Ansari, the National Congress decided to boycott the Simon Commission “at every stage and in every form.”
• On February 3, 1928, the day the Simon Commission reached Bombay, an all India strike was proclaimed. Wherever the Commission went, it was greeted with strikes and black-flag demonstrations under the slogan ‘Simon Go Back.’

Nehru Report

• An All Parties Conference was convened for the purpose first at Delhi and then at Poona. The Conference appointed a sub-committee headed by Motilal Nehru and included among its members Ali Imam, Tej Bahadur Sapru, and Subhash Bose.
• In August 1928, the sub-committee submitted its report known as the “Nehru Report.”
• The Nehru Report recommended that

  --> The attainment of Dominion Status should be considered the "next immediate step;"

  --> India should be a federation built on the basis of linguistic provinces and provincial autonomy;

  --> The executive should be fully responsible to the legislature;

  --> The elections should be by joint electorates and on the basis of adult suffrage; and

  --> The seats in the legislatures should be reserved for religious minorities for a period of 10 years.

• Unfortunately, the All Party Convention, held at Calcutta in December 1928, failed to pass the Nehru Report.
• Objections were raised by some of the communal-minded leaders belonging to the Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Sikh League.
• The Muslim League was itself split on the issue along nationalist and communal lines. Mohammed Ali Jinnah put forth his "fourteen points" demands at this time, claiming, among other things −

  --> Separate electorates;

  --> One third of the seats in the central legislature for the Muslims;

  --> Reservation of seats for the Muslims in Bengal and the Punjab in proportion to population; and

  --> The vesting of residual powers in the provinces.

• The Hindu Mahasabha denounced the Nehru Report as pro-Muslim. Thus the prospects of national unity were foiled by communal groups.

Civil Disobedience Movement II

• Gandhiji came back to active politics and attended the Calcutta session of the Congress in December 1928.
• Jawaharlal Nehru was now made the President of the Congress at the historic Lahore session of 1929. This event had its romantic side, as son had succeeded his father (i.e. Motilal Nehru, father of Jawaharlal Nehru was President of the Congress in 1928).
• The Lahore session of the Congress gave voice to the new, militant spirit. It passed a resolution declaring Poorna Swaraj (Full Independence) to be the Congress objective.
• On December 31, 1929, a newly adopted tri-color flag of freedom hoisted and 26 January, 1930 was fixed as the first Independence Day, which was to be so celebrated every year with the people taking the pledge that it was “a crime against man and God to submit any longer” to British rule.

Second Civil Disobedience Movement

• The Second Civil Disobedience Movement was started by Gandhiji on March 12, 1930 with his famous Dandi March.
• Together with 78 chosen followers, Gandhiji walked nearly 200 miles from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, a village on the Gujarat sea-coast. Here Gandhiji and his followers made salt in violation of the salt laws.
• The act of making salt was a symbol of the Indian people's refusal to live under British-made laws or under the British rule.
• The movement now spread rapidly. Everywhere in the country, people joined strikes, demonstrations, and the campaign to boycott foreign goods and to refuse to pay taxes.
• The movement reached the extreme north-western corner of India and stirred the brave and hardy Pathans.
• Under the leadership of Khan Abdul Ghaffer Khan, popularly known as "the Frontier Gandhi", the Pathans organized the society of Khudai Khidmatgars (or Servants of God), known popularly as Red Shirts.
• Nagaland produced a brave heroine i.e. Rani Gaidinliu who at the age of 13 responded to the call of Gandhiji and the Congress and raised the banner of rebellion against foreign rule.
• The young Rani was captured in 1932 and sentenced to life imprisonment. She wasted her bright youthful years in the dark cells of various Assam jails, to be released only in 1947 by the Government of free India.
• The British Government summoned in London in 1930, the first Round Table Conference of Indian leaders and spokesmen of the British Government to discuss the Simon Commission Report. But the National Congress boycotted the Conference and its proceedings proved abortive.
• Lord Irwin and Gandhi negotiated a settlement in March 1931. The Government agreed to release those political prisoners who had remained non-violent, while the Congress suspended the Civil Disobedience Movement and agreed to take part in the Second Round Table Conference.
• The Karachi Session of Congress is also notable for a resolution on Fundamental Rights and the National Economic Program. The resolution guaranteed basic civil and political rights to the people.
• Gandhiji went to England in September 1931 to attend the Second Round Table Conference. But in spite of his powerful advocacy, the British Government refused to concede the basic nationalist demand for freedom on the basis of the immediate grant of Dominion Status. On his return, the Congress resumed the Civil Disobedience Movement.
• Just after the signing of the Gandhi-lrwin Pact, a crowd had been fired in East Godavari, in Andhra Pradesh, and four persons were killed simply because the people had put up Gandhi's portrait.
• After the failure of the Round Table Conference, Gandhiji and other (cadets of the Congress were again arrested and the Congress declared illegal.
• The Civil Disobedience Movement gradually waned and political enthusiasm and exhilaration gave way to frustration and depression.
• The Congress officially suspended the movement in May 1933 and withdrew it in May 1934. Gandhi once again withdrew from active politics.
• The Third Round Table Conference met in London in November 1932, without the leaders of the Congress.

Government of India Act (1935)

• After the Third Round Table Conference, the Government of India Act of 1935 passed.
• The Act provided for the establishment of an All India Federation and a new system of government for the provinces on the basis of provincial autonomy.
• The federation was to be based on a union of the provinces of British India and the Princely States.
• There would be a bicameral federal legislature in which the States were given disproportionate weightage.
• The representatives of the States were not to be elected by the people, but appointed directly by the rulers.
• Only 14 per cent of the total population in British India was given the right to vote. Even this legislature, in which the Princes were once again to be used to check and counter the nationalist elements, was denied the real power.
• Defence and foreign affairs remained outside the legislature’s control, while the Governor-General retained special control over the other subjects.
• The Governor-General and the Governors were to be appointed by the British Government and were responsible for the governance.
• In the provinces, local power was increased. The ministers responsible to the provincial assemblies were to control all departments of provincial administration. But the Governors were given special powers. They could veto legislative action and legislate on their own.
• Moreover, the government retained full control over the civil service and the police.
• The Act could not satisfy the nationalist aspiration for both political and economic power continued to be concentrated in the hands of the British Government.
• Foreign rule was to continue as before, only a few popularly elected ministers were to be added to the structure of British administration in India.
• The Congress condemned the Act as "totally disappointing."
• The federal part of the Act was never introduced, but the provincial part was soon put into operation.
• Though bitterly opposed to the Act, the Congress contested the elections under the new Act of 1935.
• The elections conclusively demonstrated that a large majority of Indian people supported the Congress, which swept the polls in most of the provinces.
• Congress ministries were formed in July 1937 in seven out of eleven provinces. Later, Congress formed coalition governments in two others. Only Bengal and the Punjab had non-Congress ministries.

Congress Ministries

The important features of Congress Ministries after 1937 election were −

• The Congress ministers reduced their own salaries drastically to Rs. 500 per month;
• Most of them travelled in the second or third class railway compartments;
• They set up new standards of honesty and public service;
• They paid greater attention to primary, technical, and higher education and public health;
• They helped the peasant by passing anti-usury and tenancy legislation;
• They promoted civil liberties. Political prisoners were released;
• There was "relaxation of police and secret service raj;"
• Freedom of the press was enhanced; and
• Trade unions felt freer and were able to win wage increases for workers.
• The period between 1935 and 1939 witnessed several other important political developments which, in a way, marked a new turn in the nationalist movement and the Congress.

National Movement During World War II

• The Second World War broke out in September 1939 when Nazi (Germany) invaded Poland in pursuance of Hitler’s scheme of German expansion.
• The Government of India immediately joined the war without consulting the National Congress or the elected members of the central legislature.
• The Congress leaders demanded that India must be declared free or at least effective power put in Indian hands before it could actively participate in the war. The British Government refused to accept this demand the Congress ordered its ministries to resign.
• In October 1940, Gandhi gave the call for a limited Satyagraha by a few selected individuals.
• By March 1942, Japan quickly overran the Philippines, Indo-China, Indonesia, Malaya, and Burma and occupied Rangoon. This brought the war to India’s door-step.
• The British Government now desperately wanted the active cooperation of Indians in the war effort.

Cripps Mission

• To secure this cooperation, British Government sent to India a mission headed by a Cabinet Minister, Sir Stafford Cripps in March 1942.
• Cripps declared that the aim of British policy in India was "the earliest possible realization of self-government in India," but detailed negotiations between the British Government and the Congress leaders broke down, as the British Government refused to accept the Congress demand for the immediate transfer of effective power to Indians.

Quit India Movement

• The All India Congress Committee met at Bombay on August 8, 1942. It passed the famous 'Quit India' Resolution and proposed the starting of a non-violent mass struggle under Gandhiji’s leadership to achieve this aim.
• Early in the morning of August 9, Gandhiji and other Congress leaders were arrested and the Congress was once again declared illegal.
• The news of these arrests left the country aghast, and a spontaneous movement of protest arose everywhere, giving expression to the pent up anger of the people.
• All over the country there were strikes in factories, schools and colleges, and demonstrations which were lathi-charged and fired upon.
• The Government on its part went all out to crush the 1942 movement. Its repression knew no bounds. The press was completely muzzled. The demonstrating crowds were machine-gunned and even bombed from the air.
• In the end, the Government succeeded in crushing the movement. The Revolt of 1942, as it has been termed, was in fact short-lived.
• After the suppression of the Revolt of 1942, there was hardly any political activity inside the country till the war ended in 1945.
• The established leaders of the national movement were behind the bars, and no new leaders arose to take their place or to give a new lead to the country.
• In 1943, Bengal was plunged into the worst famine in recent history. Within a few months over three million people died because of starvation. There was deep anger among the people for the Government could have pre-vented the famine from taking such a heavy toll of life.

Azad Hind Fauj

• The national movement, however, found a new expression outside the country's frontiers. Subhas Chandra Bose bad escaped from India in March 1941, went the Soviet Union for help. But when the Soviet Union joined the allies in June 1941, he went to Germany.
• In February 1943, Bose left for Japan to organize an armed struggle against British rule with Japanese help.
• In Singapore, Bose formed the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army or INA) to conduct a military campaign for the liberation of India. He was assisted by Rash Behari Bose, an old terrorist revolutionary.
• Before the arrival of Subhash Bose, steps towards the organization of the INA had been taken by General Mohan Singh (at that time, he was a captain of the British Indian army).
• Subhash Bose, who was now called Netaji by the soldiers of the INA, gave his followers the battle cry of 'Jai Hind'.
• The INA joined the Japanese army in its march on India from Burma. Inspired by the aim of freeing their homeland, the soldiers and officers of the INA hoped to enter India as its liberators with Subhash Bose at the head of the Provisional Government of Free India.
• With the collapse of Japan in the War during 1944-45, the INA too met defeat, and Subhash Bose was died in an airplane accident on his way to Tokyo.

Post-War Struggle

• The Revolt of 1942 and INA had revealed the heroism and determination of the Indian people.
• The new struggle took the form of a massive movement against the trial of the soldiers and officers of the INA.
• The Government decided to put on trial in the Red Fort at Delhi to Generals Shah Nawaz, Gurdial Singh Dhillon, and Prem Sehgal of the INA, who had earlier been officers in the British Indian Army.
• On the other hand, the Indian people welcomed INA soldiers as national heroes. Huge popular demonstrations demanding their release were held all over the country.
• This British Government was this time in no position to ignore Indian opinion; even though the Court Martial held the INA prisoners guilty, the Government felt it expedient to set free.
• The changed attitude of the British Government is explained by the following factors −

  The war had changed the balance of power in the world; United States of America and the Soviet Union emerged as the big powers and both supported India’s demand for freedom;

  Even though Britain was on the winning side in the war, its economic and military power was shattered;

  Having fought and shed their blood for nearly six years (i.e. World War II), they had no desire to spend many more years away from home in India suppressing the Indian people’s struggle for freedom;

  The British Indian Government could no longer rely on the Indian personnel of its civil administration and armed forces to suppress the national movement. One of the most significant examples was the famous revolt of the Indian naval ratings at Bombay in February 1946. The ratings had fought a seven-hour battle with the army and navy and had surrendered only when asked to do so by the national leaders;

  The confident and determined mood of the Indian people were now evident that they would no longer in mood to tolerate the humiliation of foreign rule; and

  There was large-scale labor unrest and mass strikes all over the country.

Cabinet Mission

• The British Government, therefore, sent Cabinet Mission in March 1946 to negotiate with the Indian leaders; the terms for the transfer of power to Indians.
• The Cabinet Mission proposed a two-tiered federal plan, which was expected to maintain national unity while conceding the largest measure of regional autonomy.
• There was to be a federation of the provinces and the states, with the federal center controlling only defence, foreign affairs, and communications.
• Both the National Congress and the Muslim League accepted this plan. But the two could not agree on the plan for an interim government, which would convene a constituent assembly to frame a constitution for the free, federal India.
• The National Congress and the Muslim League also put differing interpretations on the Cabinet Mission scheme to which they had agreed earlier.
• In September 1946, Interim Cabinet, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, was formed by the Congress.
• The Muslim League joined the Cabinet in October after some hesitation; but it decided to boycott the constituent assembly.

Clement Attlee’s Declaration & Independence

• On February 20, 1947, Clement Attlee, British Premier, declared that the British would quit India in June 1948.
• The ecstasy of coming independence was marred by the large-scale communal riots during and after August 1946. The Hindu and Muslim communalists blamed each other for starting the heinous killings and competed with each other in cruelty.
• Lord Louis Mountbatten, who had come to India as Viceroy in March 1947, worked out a compromise after long discussions with the leaders of the Congress and the Muslim League: the country was to be free but not united.
• India would be partitioned and a new state of Pakistan would be created along with a free India.
• The nationalist leaders agreed to the partition of India in order to avoid the large-scale blood bath that communal riots threatened. But they did not accept the two-nation theory.
• The nationalist leaders did not agree to hand over one-third of the country to the Muslim League as the latter wanted and as the proportion of the Muslims in Indian population would have indicated.
• The national congress agreed to the separation of only those areas where the influence of the Muslim League was predominant.
• In the North Western Frontier Province, and the Sylhet district of Assam where the influence of the League was doubtful, a plebiscite was held.
• The Indian nationalists accepted the partition not because there were two nations in India - a Hindu nation and a Muslim nation, but because of the historical development of communalism, both Hindu and Muslim. In last 70 years, the communalism had created a situation where the alternative to partition was mass killing of lakhs of innocent people in senseless and barbaric communal riots.
• The announcement that India and Pakistan would be free was made on 3 June 1947.
• On 15 August 1947, India celebrated with joy its first day of freedom.
• After the independence, the princely states were given the choice of joining either of the new states (i.e. India or Pakistan).
• Under the pressure of the popular states’ people's movements and guided by the masterful diplomacy of Sardar Patel (the Home Minister), most of the princely states acceded to India.
• The Nawab of Junagadh, the Nizam of Hyderabad, and the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir held back for some time.
• The Nawab of Junagadh, a small state on the coast of Kathiawar, announced accession to Pakistan even though the people of the state desired to join India. In the end, Indian troops occupied the state and a plebiscite was held, which went in favor of joining India.
• The Nizam of Hyderabad made an attempt to claim an Independent status, but was forced to accede in 1948 after an internal revolt had broken out in its Telengana area and then Indian troops had marched into Hyderabad.
• The Maharaja of Kashmir also delayed accession to India or Pakistan even though the popular forces led by the National Conference wanted accession to India. However, he acceded to India in October 1947 after Pathans and irregular armed forces of Pakistan invaded Kashmir.