ECONOMIC NATIONALISM AND SWADESHI MOVEMENT

• On 16^th October 1905, Bengal was partitioned by Curzon on the pretext of it being too big to administer.
• Although it is a fact that Bengal with a population of 78 million, had become administrative difficult to manage, the real motive for partitioning Bengal was political. Bengal was the nerve-centre of Indian nationalism and the partition was intended to fracture that strength.
• Dividing Hindu Politicians of West and East Bengal and increase Hindu-Muslim tensions.
• A movement was launched under the moderates. Militant and revolutionary leadership took over in the later stages. Swadeshi and Swaraj became the slogan of the common man

Social Base of Protest

• Surendranath Banerjea, Krishna Kumar Mitra, Prithwishchandra Ray and other leaders launched a powerful press campaign against the partition proposals through journals and newspapers like the Bengalee, Hitabadi and Sanjibani.
• Vast protest meeting were held in the town hall of Calcutta in March 1904 and January 1905, and numerous petitions, some of them signed by as many as 70,000 people.
• Even, the big zamindars who had hitherto been loyal to the Raj, joined forces with the Congress leaders who were mostly intellectuals and political workers drawn from journalism, law and other liberal professions.

Partition

• The Government of India, however remained unmoved.
• Within days of the government announcement, numerous spontaneous protest meetings were held and It was decided in these meetings that the pledge to boycott foreign goods should be first taken.
•  In Calcutta, students organised a number of meeting against the partition and for Swadeshi.

COURSE OF SWADESHI MOVEMENT

• The Swadeshi movement had its origin in the anti-partition movement.
• People from all walks of life joined in and became actively involved in politics. This movement also saw the emergence of all the major political trends of the national movement.

Launching of the Movement

• The formal proclamation of the Swadeshi movement was made on the 7^th August 1905, in a meeting held at the Calcutta town hall.
• Even moderate leaders like Surendranath Banerjea toured the country urging the boycott of Manchester cloth and Liverpool salt.
• On September 1, the Government announced that partition was to be effected on 16^th October 1905.
• Vande Mataram Theme: The day partition took effect – 16^th October 1905 – was declared a day of mourning throughout Bengal. People fasted and no fires were lit at the cooking hearth.
• People took out processions and afterwards walked barefoot, bathed in the Ganges in the morning and then paraded the streets singing Vande Mataram,
• People tied rakhis on each other’s hand as a symbol of the unity of the two halves of Bengal.
• Later in the day, Anandamohan Bose and Surendranath Banerjea addressed two huge meetings which drew crowds of 50,000 to 75,000 people
• Creative Use of Festivals and Melas - The Ganapati and Shivaji festivals, popularized by Tilak, became a medium of Swadeshi propaganda.
• Rabindranath’s contribution lay in the fact that he prepared his people mentally and emotionally for the Swadeshi movement. Besides making public speeches, he wrote profusely in Bangla periodicals – essays, short stories, poems – inspiring the Bengali mind. The other great contribution was his musical compositions. His patriotic songs swayed the Bengali heart with its lyrical and melodic quality, touching a chord within and filling them with love and pride for their country.             

IMPACT OF SWADESHI MOVEMENT

Economic Impact

• Self-reliance also meant an effort to set up Swadeshi or indigenous enterprises.
• The period saw a mushrooming of Swadeshi textile mills, soap and match factories, tanneries, banks, insurance companies, shops, etc.
• While many of these enterprises, whose promoters were more endowed with patriotic zeal than with business acumen, were unable to survive for long. But some others, such as Acharya P.C. Ray’s Bengal Chemicals Factory, became successful and famous.    
• Further, the economic policy followed by the British had reduced the Indian craftsmen to a status of farm labourers. As a result of this movement, these craftsmen got their work back.

Cultural Impact

• It was, perhaps, in the cultural sphere that the impact of the Swadeshi Movement was most marked.
• The song composed at that time by Rabindranath Tagore, Rajani Kanta Sen, Dwijendralal Ray, Mukunda Das, Syed Abu Mohammed and others, later became the moving spirit for nationalist of all hues.    
• Rabindranath’s Amar Sonar Bangla, written at that time, was to inspire liberation struggle of Bangladesh later and was adopted as the national anthem of that country in 1971.
• The Swadeshi influence could be seen in Bengali folk music, popular among masses.

Artistic and Scientific Impact

• In art, this was the period when Rabindranath Tagore broke the domination of Victorian naturalism over Indian art and sought inspiration from the rich traditions of Rajput, Ajanta and Ellora paintings.
• Nandalal Bose, who left a major imprint on Indian art, was the first recipient of a scholarship offered by the Indian Society of Oriental Art founded in 1907.
• In science, Jagdish Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Ray and others pioneered original research that was praised the world over.

Political Impact       

• This movement created great enthusiasm amongst the people at large.
• The students boycotted government schools and colleges, organised meetings and demonstrations, picketed the shops and burnt foreign goods.
• Even the women jumped into the field and marched shoulder to shoulder with men in processions, demonstrations, meetings, prabhat pheris, picketing and patriotism amongst the people.

Origins Of Surat Split And After

• Shortcomings of Moderates: By 1907, the moderate nationalists had exhausted their historical role. Their achievement were impressive, considering the low level of political consciousness and the immense difficulties they had to face when they began. Their failures too were numerous. They lacked faith in the common people did not work among them and consequently, failed to acquire any roots among them. Even their propaganda did not reach them. Nor did they organize any all-India compaigns and when during 1905-07, such an all-India campaign did come up in the form of the Swadeshi and Boycott Movement, they were not its leaders. Their politics was based on the assumption that they would be able to persuade the rulers to introduce economic and political reforms, but their practical achievement in this field was meager. Instead of respecting them for their moderation, British treated them with contempt.
• British Policy of Divide and Rule: The Government of India, headed by Lord Minto as viceroy and John Morley as the Secretary of State, offered a bait of fresh reforms in the Legislative Councils and in the beginning of 1906, began discussing them with the moderate leadership of the Congress. The moderates agreed to cooperate with the Government and discuss reforms even while a vigorous popular movement, which the Government was trying to suppress, was going on the country. The result was a total split in the nationalist ranks.
• Growing Differences between Moderates and Extremists: There was a great deal of public debate and disagreement among moderates and extremists in the years 1905-1907, even when they were working together against the partition of Bengal. The extremists wanted to extend the movement from Bengal to all over the country. They also wanted to extend the boycott of foreign goods to eventually, all kinds of association with the colonial rulers. The moderates were opposed to all these ideas. Matters nearly came to a head at the Calcutta Congress in 1906, over the question of its presidentship. A Split was avoided by choosing Dadabhai Naoroji, who was respected by all the nationalists as a great patriot. Four compromise resolutions on the Swadeshi, Boycott, National Education and Self-Government demands were passed. Throughout 1907, the two sides fought over different interpretations of the four resolutions. By the end of 1907, they were looking over each other as their main political enemy.

COURSE OF THE SPLIT

• Role of Hardliners of Both Sides: the extremists were convinced that the battle of independence has begun as the people had been roused. They felt that this was the time for the big push and the moderates were a big drag on the movement. Most of them, led by Aurobindo Ghosh, thought that the time has come to part ways with the moderates, push them out of the leadership of the Congress, and split the organization if the moderates could not be deposed.  Most of the moderates led by Pherozeshah Mehta, were no less determined on a split. To remain with the extremists was, they felt, to enter dangerous waters. They were afraid that the Congress, built carefully for the past twenty years, would be shattered. Government was bound to suppress any large-scale anti-imperialist movement; why invite premature repression?
• Attempts of Top Leadership of Reconciliation: The main public leaders of the two wings, Tilak (for the extremists) and Gokhale (for the moderates) were mature politicians who had a clear grasp of the dangers of disunity in the nationalist ranks. Tilak could foresee that a powerful national movement could not be built at this juncture without the unity in the nationalist ranks. His tactics was to organise massive support for his political line and force the moderates to a favourable compromise. But having roused his followers in Maharashtra and pushed on by the more extreme elements of Bengal, Tilak found that he could not dismount from the tiger he found himself riding. When it came to the crunch, he had to go with the more extreme leaders like Aurobindo Ghosh. Gokhale, too, saw the dangers of a split in the nationalist ranks and tried to avoid it. But he did not have the personality to stand up to a willful autocrat like Pherozeshah Mehta. He, too, knuckled under pressure.
• Unruly Incidents at Surat: The Congress session was held on 26 December, 1907 at Surat, on the banks of the river Tapti. The extremists were excited by the rumors that the moderates wanted to scuttle the four Calcutta resolutions. The moderates were deeply hurt by the ridicule and venom poured on them in mass meetings held at Surat on the previous three days. The delegates, thus, met in an atmosphere surcharged with excitement and anger. To force the moderates to guarantee that the four resolutions would be passed, the extremists decided to object to the duly elected President for the year, Rash Behari Ghosh. Both sides came to the session prepared for a confrontation. In no time, and hurling chairs at each other. In the meantime, some unidentified person hurled a shoe at the dais which hit Pherozeshah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjea. The police came and cleared the hall. The Congress session was over and the only victorious party at the end of the day were the rulers.
• Formalization of the Split: Tilak had seen the coming danger and made last minute efforts to avoid it. But he was helpless before his followers. The suddenness of the Surat fiasco tool Tilak by surprise. He now tired to undo the damage. He sent a virtual letter of regret to this opponents, accepted Rash Behari Ghosh as the President of the Congress and offered his cooperation in working for Congress unity. But Pherozeshah Mehta and his colleagues won’t relent. They thought they were on a sure wicket. The continued indulging in their own foolish beliefs. They gave up all radical measures adopted at the Benaras and Calcutta sessions of the Congress, spurned all overtures for unity from the extremists and excluded them from the party.
• Government Crackdown: The Government immediately launched a massive attack on the extremists. Extremists newspapers were suppressed. Tilak, their main leader, was sent to Mandalay jail for six years. Aurobindo Ghosh, their ideologue, was involved in a revolutionary conspiracy case and immediately after being judged innocent, left politics and settled down in French Pondicherry and took up religion. B.C. Pal temporarily retired from politics and Lala Lajpat Rai left for Britain in 1908. After 1908 the national movement as a whole, declined. But while the upsurge was gone, the aroused nationalist sentiments did not disappear. The people waited for the next phase. In 1914, Tilak was released and he picked up the threads of the movement.  

Subsequent Developments

• Swadeshi implied that people should use only the goods produced in India and boycott foreign goods.
• Swaraj on the other hand meant self-government. In 1915-16, under the leadership of Tilak and Annie Besant, the Home Rule Movement was started. It demanded the grant of self-government to India after the war. The growing nationalist feeling and the urge for national unity produced two historic developments at the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress in 1916.
• First, the two wings of Congress – Moderate and Extremist – were re-united.
• Secondly, the Congress and the Muslim League sank their old differences and put up common political demands before the government on the condition of separate electorates.
• The unity popularly known as the Lucknow Pact, based on the two separate entities of Hindus and Muslims, left the way open to the future resurgence of communalism in Indian politics.

FIRST PHASE OF REVOLUTIONARY TRENDS

• From the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of twentieth century, in different parts of India a segment of fearless youth dreamt of liberating their country folk by armed revolutionary struggle.
• Two Maharashtrian brothers, Damodar and Vinayak Chapekar assassinated oppressive English officials.
• The Anushilan Samiti was founded in Bengal in 1902 by the barrister, Pramathanath Mitra. Aurobindo Ghosh joined them from Baroda. Swami Vivekananda's spiritual disciple, Sister Nivedita was an important force in this group. After the imperialist repression of 1906 in Barisal, Jugantar the organ of the revolutionary outlook in Bengal openly noted in its editorial that: "If the 30 crores of country's population raise their 60 crores of hands aloft in the vow of resistance, then only will this oppression stop. Only force can silence this use of force".
• The "Mitra Mela" was organized by the Savarkar brothers of Maharashtra.
• Madanlal Dhingra, a follower of Savarkar, assassinated in London Curzon Wylie an English official.
• In her Paris journal "Talwar" the famous Parsee woman revolutionary Bhikaiji Rustom Cama wrote in firm support of his act in an editorial.
• Joining the International Socialist Congress of 1907 in Stuttgart, Madame Cama presented the demand for India's freedom the first time in a world gathering.
• The revolutionary Khudiram Bose was arrested after attempting to shoot the 'Oppressive Magistrate of Bengal Presidency Kingsford, and Khudiram's comrade in arms, Prafulla Chaki committed suicide. Khudiram was hanged.
• In 1906, a British Magistrate, following the verdict of British jurymen ordered six years rigorous imprisonment for Tilak, then the Bombay working class came out in the first general strike of Indian national movement.

The revolutionary movement in South India

• Chidambaram Pillai declared that full independence was India's objective.
• In Tinnevelly, a militant strike followed in protest to his arrest. The British Magistrate Ashe gave firing orders: many lives were lost.
• The revolutionary Vanchi Aiyar took revenge by killing Ashe and evaded arrest by committing suicide.

The revolutionary movement in Punjab

• Punjab too had as glorious a place in the revolutionary movement as Maharashtra and Bengal.
• Rashbihari Bose used to act as a go-between with Sikhs and Bengalis.
• In 1912, on the 12th December, a bomb was hurled at the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge (while he was making his ceremonial entry in British India's new capital of Delhi). The Viceroy was grievously hurt, but recovered. A few revolutionaries were hanged. Rashbihari went underground to carry on revolutionary activities.

Outbreak of WWI (1914) and subsequent events

Indian nationalists felt that if they could exert united pressure, then taking advantage of the War, they could make some advances. The supporter of Irish nationalism, Mrs. Annie Besant called for 'Home Rule’ or limited self-government within the framework of British imperialism. Tilak joined her Home Rule League* after his release from prison. Meanwhile Congress and the Muslim League signed an accord among themselves at Lucknow in 1916. The Muslim League agreed to support demand for Home Rule and the Congress accepted separate electorates. *Refer to a separate sheet on Home Rule League

• Violent revolutionary movement again raised its head.
• In 1913, in U.S.A - Sohan Singh Bhakna, Taraknath Das, Lala Hardayal and others formed the 'Ghadr' Party.
• 'Ghadr' means revolt and it was inscribed in the first issue of the party's paper Ghadr "What is your name? Revolt. What is your work? Revolt. Where will you carry it out? In India. In what will you write the message of revolt? In Blood, not by words"
• Many Sikh migrants reached Canada under leadership of Baba Gurdit Singh in the hired Japanese ship, Komagata Maru but were not allowed to disembark.
• After much suffering, the ship returned towards Calcutta. When British troops attempted to arrest them, conflict broke out with the militant leadership of the travellers at Budge-Budge near Calcutta port on 29 September 1914. 20 travellers lost their lives, more were injured, but Gurdit Singh and some of his comrades-in-arms were able to escape.
• Under the leadership of a teacher in the nationalist Muslim college of Deoband, Maulana Obeidullah Sindhi, many young revolutionary Muslims left India for Baluchistan.
• They set up liberated government in a distant tract there. Later they shifted their headquarters to Kabul.
• They were joined by Raja Mahendra Pratap and Maulana Barkatullah.
• Sending secret news to Deoband students, they began to exert influence in favour of Indian revolution. But their ciphered silk handkerchief was intercepted, and the Government started the Silk Letter Conspiracy Case.
• In Bengal, under leadership of revolutionary hero, Jatindranath Mukherjee, making contact with the German Government through the Indian Revolutionary Committee at Berlin, there was an attempt to bring arms and ammunitions from Germany and build up a mass uprising in Bengal.
• The plan had been that on the 21st February, 1915, the Indian troops would simultaneously mutiny in North India and also where posted outside India. But the plan was betrayed by traitors to the British.
• Vishnu Ganesh Pingle was captured with 10 high explosive bombs in cantonment at Meerut.
• Young revolutionary leader, Kartar Singh Sarabha was captured, seven were hanged in the First Lahore Conspiracy Case and 42 other ghadarites were hanged in Ghadar Conspiracy cases.
• Rashbihari Bose made a dramatic escape of Japan hoodwinking the British. Indian troops at Singapore had not got news of the failure of the concerted mutiny. After revolt they held out heroically for a week. Many of them faced martyrdom.
• Jatindranath's right-hand man, Narendranath Bhattacharya was sent to China and Japan, searching for arms. Evading imperialist arrest, he arrived in the U.S.A. with the assumed name of Manabendranath Roy; and journeyed thence to Mexico.
• Here he accepted Marxist views and was elected Secretary of the Mexican Socialist Party.
• At Lenin's invitation he travelled to Moscow, to participate in the 1920 Second Congress of the Communist International.
• The revolutionary attempts were shattered indeed, but they scared British imperialism.
• It endeavored to compromise with moderate nationalists.

MONTFORD REPORT AND ITS IMPACT

• In August 1917, Montague, the Secretary of State for India announced that after the war ended, India would be given, step by step, responsible self-government.
• A new Government of India Act appeared in 1919, which was rejected as in adequate, unsatisfactory and disappointing by even the middle-of-the-road National Congress.
• Whatever infatuation had been bred in the Indian mind was dispelled by the amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code prepared by Mr. Justice Rowlett.
• At this time, British imperialism was giving leadership in Turkey and the Arab world to dastardly conspiracies against the independence of the whole of West Asia. Anger was growing in the whole of Indian Muslim social consciousness.
• Combined anger burst out against the Rowlett Bill. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who had returned from South Africa, came forward to lead his Satyagrahas in India, and the Indian Khilafat led by Maulana Muhammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali came forward in its leadership.
• Two popular leaders, Dr. Satyapal and Dr. Saifuddin Kichlu were arrested in the Punjab.
• On 13th April, 1919 General Dyer ordered a brutal massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. More than a thousand men, women and children were killed or wounded.
• Martial law was clamped on the Punjab.
• Rabindranath in anguish and insult gave up his British honour-the knighthood conferred by the Crown.
• Even the normally peaceful Mahatma Gandhi wrote in Young India that this satanic government cannot be mended, it must be ended.
• Gandhi was elected President of the All-India Khilafat Committee in November, 1919.
• The proposal for non-violent non-co-operation[7] was practically unanimously accepted at the Nagpur Annual Session of the Congress in December 1920.
• Having united Congress and the Khilafat movement[8], Gandhi called on his countrymen to join the non-co-operation movement to gain Swaraj within a year.
• An unprecedented mass movement began.
• The British publicist Valentine Chirol has written that India had reached the threshold of a popular revolution.
• Hindu - Muslim unity appeared to have entered a new phase.
• Popular awakening flooded beyond the urban intelligentsia's limits into the rural areas of India.
• The peasants of Midnapur decided that they would no more pay revenue to their Union Boards.
• Peasants in South India, in Guntur, in Krishna and Godavari districts embarked on no rent campaigns.
• A widespread movement for no-rent started in the U.P.
• ln Chhotanagpur, many aboriginal tribes people came together in the Tana Bhagat movement.
• The movement spread to jute mills, railways, and even to the Assam tea gardens.
• In Andhra Pradesh, in Madras Presidency, the violent Rampa popular uprising broke out under Alluri Sitaram Raju's leadership.
• Sitaram Raju was martyred: but he lighted the spark of freedom struggle in peasant consciousness.
• The Moplah Revolt burst out in far southern Malabar against zamidars-users oppression backed by British imperialism.
• The imperialists subjected the Moplahs to inhuman tortures.
• Though it was weakened by communal fanaticism, the Moplah Revolt was indubitably a glorious episode in our national struggle.
• Both British imperialism and the national leadership came to realize that the far flung rural society of India was the repository of boundless strength and the demand for Swaraj if channelized into united popular disturbance, would shake British rule to its foundations.

THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT

The Genesis of the Home Rule League

• It can be traced to the proceedings of the Indian National Congress at Surat in December 1907, where the extremist section headed by Mr. B. G. Tilak seceded.
• When this seceding group sought and obtained readmission, it was as an invading body whose aim appeared to be not reunion so much as annexation.
• After this reunion the influence of the Moderate party in the politics of the old Congress steadily declined.

MRS. BESANT'S CAMPAIGN FOR SWARAJYA

• In March 1915 Mrs. Besant started a campaign in favour of the early grant of Swarajya.
• In September she gave definite shape to the opinion demanding an executive organization for the Congress by arranging for a joint meeting at Christmas 1915 of the Committee of the All India National Congress and the Council of the Muslim League to consider the formation of a Home Rule for India League to co-operate with the National Congress in India and the British Committee of the Congress in England.

HOME RULE LEAGUE FOR MAHARASHTRA:

• Between 1916 and 1918, when the war was closing, prominent Indians like Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Joseph Baptista, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, G. S. Khaparde, Sir S. Subramania Iyer and the leader of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant decided to organize a national alliance of leagues across India, specifically to demand Home Rule, or self-government within the British Empire for all of India.
• Tilak founded the first League in the city of Pune, Maharashtra.
• Mohammad Ali Jinnah headed up the League's Bombay Branch.
• With its national headquarters in Delhi, the main cities of activity were Bombay, Calcutta and Madras.
• The move created considerable excitement at the time, and attracted many members of the Indian National Congress and the All India Muslim League, who had been allied since the 1916 Lucknow Pact.
• League spread the political awareness in new areas like Sindh, Punjab, Gujarat, United Provinces, Bihar, Orissa as well as Madras and all stood up for an active political movement.

MRS. BESANT'S HOME RULE LEAGUE

• After the formation of the Maharashtra Home Rule League, Mrs. Besant without awaiting the result of the deliberations of the Joint Committee of the Congress and League, started the English Branch of her Home Rule League in London in June 1916 and inaugurated her Home Rule League in Madras in September of the same year.
• Jamnadas started a journal named Young India which he edited himself.
• Later when government arrested Annie Besant the movement actually spread out and made its impact in interior villages of India.

SUCCESS FOR HOME RULERS

• The election of delegates for the Lucknow Congress of 1916 witnessed the first act of co-operation in Bombay, and later in the Congress, between representatives from the two Leagues.
• In Bombay the Home Rulers assailed the stronghold of the Moderates—the Bombay Presidency Association—and were able to secure election to the Congress of eight out of fifteen delegates.
• They went further in the election at Lucknow of Bombay delegates on the subject Committee and insisted that none but pledged Home Rulers were to be elected.
• The Home Rulers made a determined effort to get the Home Rule Leagues recognized as part and parcel of the Congress organization, but, in spite of their numbers and in view of the necessity for placating the few Moderates that attended to secure the passing of the Congress-League's Scheme of Reforms, they had to rest content with a resolution of the Congress urging the Home Rule and other political organizations to carry on a propaganda in favour of the Joint Scheme.

BAN ON TILAK

• Mr. Tilak, however, made a series of rather strong Home Rule speeches at the Sinnar -Sangamner Conferences, and at Chiplun and Yeola after the Nasik Provincial Conference

MRS. BESANT, PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS

• When the announcement of August 20^th was made, it formed a strong rallying point for the Moderates and strengthened their position considerably. The Home Rulers and their press could, however, only see in it a victory: for their agitation and tactics.
• The Home Rule League, however, was able to secure the election of Mrs. Besant as President of the 1917 Calcutta Congress

GOVERNMENT REFORM PROPOSALS

• On the publication of the Joint Report on Reforms of His Excellency the Viceroy and the Secretary of State, the Home Rule press endeavoured to anticipate any reasoned consideration of the 693 scheme by immediate and contemptous rejection. A special meeting of the Congress having been summoned to discuss the scheme the Moderate party decided to hold a separate meeting. Efforts to induce them to unite with the extremists failed, and this fact had a material effect in mitigating the terms of the resolutions actually adopted by the " extremists " Congress.
• From this point onwards, the Bombay extremist group acted independently, in concert with its country affiliations in Gujerat and Sind. The intensive agitations which followed have been detailed in the general statement.

Difference from the Congress

• Apart from firing up college students, educated Indians and people in the cities, the Leagues elicited little response or enthusiasm from India's masses and the British government.
• It was often divided upon whether to follow up with public demonstrations, or compromise by contesting elections to the legislative councils that were criticized as little more than rubber stamps for the Viceroy.
• Its further growth and activity were stalled by the rise of Mohandas Gandhi and his Satyagraha art of revolution: non-violent, but mass-based civil disobedience.
• Gandhi's Hindu lifestyle and immense respect for Indian culture and the common people of India made him immensely popular with India's common people.
• His victories in leading the farmers of Champaran, Bihar and Kheda, Gujarat against the British authorities on tax revolts made him a national hero.
• Gandhi realized that India was 900,000 villages, not the cities of Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta and Madras. Most of its people were poor, illiterate and farmers, not Western-educated lawyers.
• Many Indian political leaders opposed Gandhi's ideas. These included Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Annie Besant, Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai, who scoffed at the notion or simply favored negotiations and discussions with the British.
• But Gandhi's immense popularity with the people and the younger generation had transformed India's politics.
• He transformed the Indian National Congress from a body of educated Indians and city folk, to a 15 million strong organization spread across almost every province, town and village.

Dissolution

• In 1920, the All India Home Rule League elected Mahatma Gandhi as its President.
• In a year, the body would merge into the Indian National Congress to form a united Indian political front.

Coming of Gandhi

GANDHI (1869-1948)

• Gandhi went to Pretoria, capital of Transvaal in South Africa, in 1893 as a legal consultant for an Indian trading and shipping company.
• Influenced by Thoreau’s essay `Civil Disobedience’, in 1909 he started corresponding with Leo Tolstoy whose ‘Kingdom of God’ is within you had moved him deeply, as had John Ruskin’s ‘Unto This Last’.
• In 1901 itself he moved to Johannesburg to practice law and soon became a leader of the Indian community in South Africa.
• His principal mouthpiece was Indian Opinion (1903).
• He also established his Phoenix Farm near Durban in 1904.
• He also set up the Tolstoy Farm (1910) for all those taking part in the movement.
• In 1907 when the Transvaal (a Dutch colony) legislature passed a law requiring all Asians to take out registration cards, he launched a campaign of passive resistance, coining the phrase, Satyagraha. Despite its initial reign of terror the government finally yielded ground. A settlement was reached through the Gandhi – Smuts Agreement (June, 1914) which enabled Gandhi to return to India.
• On his way home Gandhi raised on Indian ambulance unit in England (during the Boer War) for which, on return, he received a Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal.
• After arriving in India he established a Satyagraha Ashram at Ahmedabad, which was relocated to site near Sabarmati River in 1917 and was named as Sambarmati Ashram.
• During the next two years (1916-18) he organized the peasant movements of Champaran (Bihar) and Khaira (Gujarat), besides championing the cause of Ahmedabad Mill-workers, meanwhile.
• To redress the wrongs inflicted by the Rowlatt Act, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and Khilafat, Gandhi-led Congress organized Non-cooperation Movement.
• After a trial in 1922 he was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment, but was released in February 1924 on health grounds.
• During the next 5 years Gandhi concentrated on the `constructive programme’ – spinning and khadi, Hindu-Muslim unity, prohibition, village uplift and the like.
• His Civil Disobedience Movement was temporarily suspended by the Gandhi-Irwin Pact and he attended the second session of the Round Table Conference in England. On returning home he resumed the movement but was again imprisoned.
• When the Communal Award was announced in August 1932, he started a fast and signed the Poona Pact. After release from prison, he launched the weekly, Harijan (1933), which took the place of his earlier paper, Young India (1919-32).
• Gandhi formally left the Congress in 1934, but continued, until his death, to be the party’s moving spirit.
• Setting up a new ashram at Sevagram, near Wardha, he made it the never-centre of his `constructive programme’ which now came to include among others an active scheme of Basic Education.
• In 1940, he briefly assumed leadership of the Congress but gave it up the following year.
• His last-bid call to win freedom became catch-words to Indians. But before he could start the Quit India Movement he was put behind bars.
• During his imprisonment in the Aga Khan Place at Poona, his wife Kasturba died.
• Released in 1944, he was engaged in the fruitless negotiations with Jinnah for a political settlement. Gandhi’s influence in the counsels of the Congress was, however, reduced after 1945.

HIS TECHNIQUES OF MASS MOBILIZATION

Theory and Practice of Satyagraha

• Satyagraha was based on truth and non-violence.
• It was influenced by Thoreau, Emerson and Tolstoy.
• The literal meaning of Satyagraha is holding on to truth. Satyagraha can be distinguished from passive resistance (the method adopted by the extremists). There are different techniques of Satyagraha, such as fasting, hijrat, and hartals.
• The technique of Satyagraha, being based on non-violence, could easily attract the masses.
• The Gandhian model proved acceptable to business groups as well as to the relatively better-off or locally dominant sections of the peasantry, all of whom stood to lose something if political struggle turned into uninhibited and violent social revolution.

Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience 

• Gandhi resorted to non-cooperation between 1921-1922.
• This technique had an immediate appeal to the masses.
• Civil disobedience of the laws of the unjust and tyrannical government was a strong and extreme form of political agitation. According to Gandhi, this technique could be more dangerous and powerful than armed rebellion and, hence, should be adopted only as a last resort.

Constructive Gandhian Programmes

• Gandhi’s Khadi programme had a real attraction for the peasants and the artisans.
• The programme of village reconstruction got him the support of rural folks.
• His programme of Harijan welfare, aimed at improving the lot of the untouchables, naturally endeared him to the hearts of these people.
• His Hindu-Muslim unity programme attracted both communities.

KHILAFAT AND NON-COOPERATION MOVEMENTS

Rowlatt Act (1919)

• The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act (1919) is popularly known as the Rowlatt Act after Sir Sydney Rowlatt, the president of a committee set up in 1917 to look into the subversive activities.
• The Committee made recommendations to arm the government with powers to suppress all unlawful and dangerous activities. On the basis of its report, the government drew up a bill empowering itself to short-circuit the due process of law so as to check terrorist activities.
• In the Imperial Legislative Council it was passed, the only Indian member voting in its favour was Sankaran Nair, then a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council.
• Called the Black Act, it came to be widely opposed.
• Meetings were held all over the country to signify popular disapproval of the Act. But unfortunately there were several violent incidents in the Punjab, Gujarat and Bengal. Deeply upset, Gandhi admitted that in launching his movement without prior preparation he had committed a `mistake of Himalayan magnitude’ and decided to call of the movement.
• But already this Rowlatt Satyagraha set into motion a chain reaction culminating in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and the subsequent developments.

Jallianwala Bagh Massacre           

• Jallianwala Bagh was developed as a garden by one of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s courtiers, Pandit Jalla and came to be known after him.
• When the Congress called for a hartal on April 8 (1919), it received unprecedented support.
• Facing a violent situation, the civil government handed over the administration to the military authorities under Brigadier-General Dyer.
• Dyer banned all public meetings and also detained all the important political leaders.
• A public meeting was called at Jallianwala Bagh (April 13) in open defiance of the ban and without warning, the crowd was fire upon.
• An approximate 20,000 people were caught beneath the hail of bullets.

Khilafat Movement

Causes:

• To begin with, it was caused by the resentment among Indian Muslims over the defeat in World War I of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.
• Secondly, the harsh terms of the Treaty of Sevres (1920) with Turkey further added fuel to the fire.
• Thirdly, revolts in Arab lands engineered, at British instigation, against the Sultan’s empire made the Muslim sentiments in India to flare up.
• The whole movement was based on the Muslim belief that the Caliph was the religious as well as the temporal head of the Muslim world.

Background:

• At the Muslim League’s 1918 annual session in Delhi, M.A. Ansari demanded the restoration of the Arab lands to the Caliph. The Congress under Gandhi echoed Ansari’s sentiments and gave full support to the Muslim cause.
• In September 1919, an All- India Khilafat Committee was set up with Seth Chhotani of Bombay as President and Maulana Shaukat Ali as Secretary.
• The Khilafat Conference held in Calcutta (February 1920) under the presidentship of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad passed a resolution in favour of non-cooperation and decided that a Khilafat day would be observed.
• When the Treaty of Serves with Turkey was announced on May 15, 1920, the Central Khilafat Committee meeting at Bombay announced its decision to start its non-cooperation movement from August 1.
• Course – The Nagpur session of the Congress (December 1920) passed a resolution in support of the Khilafat movement. The Congress as well as the Khilafat Committee had agreed upon the triple purpose of non-cooperation – redressal of the Punjab grievances, rectification of the Khilafat wrongs and the establishment of swaraj.
• The movement, though had thoroughly roused the country, drew little response from the British. Consequently the All-India Khilafat Conference held at Karachi on July 8, 1921 called upon Muslim soldiers in the Indian army to quit their jobs.
• Gandhi’s decision to suspend the Non-cooperation movement early in 1922 sharply divided the Khilafatists. But it as the Kemalist revolution in Turkey (1922) that took the wind out of the agitation’s sails and made it redundant.

NON-COOPERATION MOVEMENT (1921-1922)

Causes

• The main causes which led to the non-cooperation movement were:
• Annulment of the Rowlatt Act and remedying the `Punjab wrong’, i.e. the British government should express its regret on the happenings in the Punjab, particularly in Amritsar.
• Remedying the `Khilafat wrong’, i.e. the British should adopt a lenient attitude towards Turkey, which was one of the defeated countries in the first World War.
• Satisfying the nationalist urge for swaraj by offering a new scheme of meaningful and substantial reforms.

Launching

• When the British refused to meet anyone of the main demands of the Congress, an All-Party Conference was held at Allahabad in June, 1920 and a programme of boycott of government schools, colleges a law courts was approved. The Congress met in a special session in September, 1920 at Calcutta, and agreed to start the non-cooperation movement, unless the British met its demands. This decision was further endorsed at its Nagpur session held in December 1920. the Congress, therefore, under the leadership of Gandhi started the Non-Cooperation movement in right earnest in January, 1921.

Programmes

The movements included certain negative as well as

positive programmes. The negative programmes were.

• Boycott of government or semi-government schools, colleges courts, elections to be held for the councils as suggested by the reforms of 1919 and finally of foreign goods.
• Surrender of titles and honorary offices and resignation from nominated seats in local bodies.
• Refusal to attend government or semi-government functions.                              
• Refusal by the military, clerical and labouring classes to offer themselves as recruits in Mesopotamia.
• Though these negative programmes, the Indian sought to refuse to cooperate with the British in administering and exploiting their motherland.

The positive programmes were:

• Establishment of national schools and colleges and private arbitration courts, knows as panchayats, all over India.
• Popularisation of swadeshi and khadi by reviving hand-spinning and hand-weaving.
• Development of unity between Hindus and Muslims.
• Removal of unsociability and other measures for Harijan welfare.
• Emancipation and upliftment of women.
• The first two sought to remove the hardships caused to the people by the negative programmes, while the last three ensured the participation of Muslims, Harijans and women in the movement in order to make it a success.

Different Phases

• The first phase (January-March, 9121) was marked by the boycott of government schools and colleges by teachers and students, and of courts of the lawyers.
• During the second phase (April-June, 1921) the focus was on raising funds (Rs one crore) for the `Tilak Swaraj Fund’, enrolling common people as members of the Congress, and installing charkhas (spinning wheels) on a large scale.
• The Third Phase (July-November, 1921) was marked by a focus on the boycott of foreign goods and on organization of volunteer bands to organize a nation-wide hartal on the eve of the visit of the Prince of Wales.  
• The fourth Phase (November, 1921-Febraury, 1922) witnessed certain developments which nearly brought the government to its knees. Some militant sections, angered by the repressive policy of the British, were demanding complete independence and were in favour of giving up the non-violence dogma. The general mood of the people also was quite rebellious. But unfortunately the whole movement was abruptly called off on 11^th February, 1922, at Gandhi’s insistence, following the news of the burning of 22 policemen by angry peasants at Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur district of UP on February 5, 1992.

Significance

• The Indian Nationalist movement, for the first time in history, acquired a real mass base with the participation of different sections of Indian society such as peasants, workers, students and teachers, women, merchants and so on. However, the big industrialist, capitalists and zamindars still remained hostile.
• Secondly, the movement witnessed the spread of nationalism to the remotest corners of the country.
• Thirdly, it transformed the Indian National Congress from a deliberative assembly into an organization for action as, evident from the various programmes of the movement.
• Fourthly, it marked the height of Hindu-Muslim unity which could be seen in the merger of the Khilafat movement with this movement.
• Finally, the movement demonstrated to a remarkable degree the willingness and ability of the masses to endure hardships and make sacrifices in the cause of national independence.
• Thus, thought the movement failed to achieve any of one of its three main demands, it was, nevertheless, a great step forward in the course of the Indian nationalist movement.