SWARAJ PARTY

Birth

• Swaraj Party was formed by a section of nationalists and members of INC who had opposed Gandhi’s suspension of all civil resistance in 1922 in response to Chauri Chaura tragedy.
• Many Indians felt that NCM should not have been suspended over an isolated incident of violence, and that its astonishing success was actually close to breaking the back of British Rule in India.
• These people became disillusioned with Gandhi’s political judgements and instincts.

Council Entry

• Gandhi and most of the Congress Party rejected the provincial and central legislative councils created by the British to offer some participation for Indians.
• They argued that councils were filled with un-elected allies of the British, and too un-democratic and simply rubber stamps of Viceroy.
• In December 1922, Chiitaranjan Das, N.C. Kelkar and Motilal Nehru formed Congress-Khilafat Swarajaya Party with Das as president and Nehru as one of the secretaries.
• Other prominent leaders included Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Subhas Chandra Bose of Bengal, Vithalbhai Patel and other congress leaders who were dissatisfied with Congress.
• The other group was the ‘No-changers’, who had accepted Gandhi’s decision to withdrawn the movement.
• Now both Swarajists (Pro-Changers) and No-Changers were engaged in fierce political struggle. But both were determined to avoid the disastrous experience of the 1907 split at Surat.
• On the advice of Gandhi the two groups decided to remain in the Congress but to work in their separate ways. There was no basic difference between the two.
• Swarajist members were elected to the councils.
• Vithalbhai Patel became the President of the Central Legislative Assembly.
• However, legislatures had very limited powers, and apart from some heated parliamentary debates, procedural stand-offs with British authorities, the core mission of obstructing British rule failed.
• With the death of Chittaranjan Das in 1925, and with Motilal Nehru’s return to the Congress the following year. The Swaraj Party was greatly weakened.

Changers and No-Changers, and the Simon Commission

• After his release from prison in 1924, Gandhi sought to bring back the Swarajists to the Congress and reunite the party.
• Gandhi supporters were in a vast majority in Congress, and Congress still remained India’s largest political party, but Gandhi felt it necessary to heal the divide with Swarajists, so as to heal nation’s wounds over 1922 suspension.
• The Swarajists sought more representation in the Congress officers, and an end to the mandatory requirement for Congressmen to spin khadi cloth and do social service as a prerequisite for office.
• These was opposed by Gandhi’s supporters, men like Vallabhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru and Rejendra Prasad, who become known as the No Changers as opposed to the Swarajists.
• Gandhi relaxed the rules on spinning and named some Swarajists to important positions in the Congress Party
• He also encouraged the Congress to support those Swarajists elected to the councils, so as not to embarrass them before the British authorities.
• When the Simon Commission arrived in India in 1928, millions of Indians were infuriated with the idea of an all-British committee writing proposals for Indian constitutional reforms without any Indian member or consultations with the Indian people.
• The Congress created a committee to write Indian proposals for constitutional reforms, headed by now Congress President Motilal Nehru.
• The death of Lala Lajpat Rai, beaten by police in Punjab further infuriated India.
• People rallied around the Nehru Report and old political divisions and wounds were forgotten, and Vithalbhai patel and all Swarajist councilors resigned in protest.
• Between 1929 and 1937, the INC would declare the Complete Independence as its goal and launch the Salt Satyagraha.
• In this tumultuous period, the Swaraj Party, was defunct as its members quietly dissolved into the Congress fold.

Madras Province Swarajya Party:

• The Madras Province Swarajya Party was established in 1923.
• S. Sathyamurthy and S. Srinivasa Iyengar led the party.
• Though the character of the organization was heterogenous compared to the communal Justice Party, it was largely dominated by Brahmins.
• The party contested in all provincial election between 1923 and 1934 with the exception of the 1930 election which it did not participate officially due to the Civil Disobedience movement though some of the members of the party contested as independents.
• The party emerged as the single largest party in the 1926 and 1934 Assembly elections but refused to form the provincial government under the existing Dyarchy system.
• In 1934, the Madras Province Swarajya Party merged with the All India Swarajya Party which subsequently merged with the Indian National Congress when it contested the 1935 elections to the Imperial Legislative Council held as per the Government of India Act 1935.
• From 1935 onwards, the Swarajya Party ceased to exist and was succeeded by the Indian National Congress in the elections to the Imperial Legislative Council as well as the Madras Legislative Council.

MUSLIM LEAGUE AND RISE OF SEPARATISM

• Communal groups did not hesitate to join hands against the Congress. Another characteristic was their tendency to adopt pro-government political attitudes. Above all, they shied away from the specific demands of the masses. They began as elite organizations and continued to remain so.

Results

• Separatist groups weakened nationalist forces due to divisions created to communal feelings.
• They led to the rise and growth of communal organizations.
• They even delayed the achievement of independence at least by a few years.
• The demand for a separate state for Muslims and hence the eventual partition of India was also due to them.
• Above all, separatist groups resulted in the new social problem of communal riots and the consequent senseless massacre of numerous innocent people.

RISE AND GROWTH OF MUSLIM LEAGUE

• It was formed at Dacca in December 1906 by Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk who also presided over its first session.
• Muslim deputation met Lord Minto at Simla in October 1906 as Aga Khan had appealed to the Muslims to establish a separate political organization of their own.
• From 1906 to 1910 the party’s central office remained at Aligarh and was nothing more than an adjunct of its educational institution. But after its headquarters had been shifted to Lucknow, its political activities increased.
• Led by the Maulanas (Mohammed Ali and Shaukat Ali), Fazlul Haq, Mazharul Haque, and Fazli-i-Hussain, by 1912 it was joined by not only many young Muslims but also some Muslim members of the Congress who, however, retained their membership of the latter.
• During the Khilafat Movement (1920-24), the party existed only nominally, holding its sessions wherever the Khilafat Conference met.
• Till Jinnah’s takeover in 1934, the League’s fortunes fid not improve much. For instance in 1927, the party’s total membership was 1,330 only; in 1930, at the Allahabad session, when Dr. Muhammad Iqbal presented his historic address demanding the establishment of a north-western Muslim State in India, the annual general meeting did not have even its quorum of seventy five members.
• A parliamentary board was nominated by Jinnah in 1936 to contest elections to the provincial assemblies as well as the Central Legislative Assembly.
• In Punjab, Jinnah could not get any support, for Fazil Hussain, having retired from the Governor General’s Executive Council, returned to his home state to revive the Unionist Party.
• Jinnah’s electoral prospects appeared so bleak that even Aga Khan gave financial support to the Unionist Party rather than the League.
• Soon after, however, the League succeeded in galvanizing Indian Muslim into a political force second only to the Congress.
• Despite the initial limitations, the League did not fare too badly in the 1937 general elections. It contested altogether a little more than half the seats reserved for Muslims in separate constituencies and won around 60 per cent of these. Yet, except for Bengal, it drew almost a blank in the Muslim-majority provinces.
• The Lucknow Session (1937), reaffirmed the League’s two-nation theory, but only the Lahore Session (1940) passed a resolution demanding partition of the country.
• The Lahore Resolution was termed by the Indian nationalist press as the ‘Pakistan resolution’, although the word itself was not mentioned either in the speeches made or in the text of the resolution.
• The League became really strong during World War II party due to political wilderness in the Congress and partly due to government’s covert support.
• In the general elections to the legislatures in 1946, it fared very well and captured almost all the Muslims seats both at the centre and in the provinces. The League polled about 75 per cent of the Muslim vote in the elections, winning 460 out of 533 Muslims seats in the central and provincial legislatures.

PAKISTAN MOVEMENT

Genesis of the Movement

• There were occasional Muslim thinkers and leaders who did speak of an autonomous Muslim territory carved out of India. But such views carried little weight and had even less impact on the course of events.
• The President of the 1921 League Session, Maulana Hasrat Mohani, suggested that the four Muslim-majority provinces be used as a counter-weight to the seven Hindu majority provinces in British India, with the provinces strong and the center weak.
• In 1928 this was expounded with some force by Aga Khan in the advocacy of sovereign region united in a voluntary federation of free States.
• Muhammad Iqbal was the President of the Muslim League 1930, and probably India’s most popular and influential Muslim poet. 
• In the meantime, the debates surrounding the Government of India Act of 1935 had reinforced Muslim separatism since the Act reaffirmed the representation of interests rather than of members. It not only give the Muslims separate seats, a convention which was by then firmly established, but also virtual perpetual majorities in the new full provinces of Sind and the NWFP, the Punjab and 48.6 per cent of seats in Bengal. But feats of Hindu domination would continue since the proposed federation would be strong rather than loose and residuary powers would rest with the center and not with the provinces.
• In 1933, Rahmat Ali, a Muslim student at Cambridge, published a pamphlet in which he advocated a separate Muslim State in the north-west of India.
• He named it Pakistan which meant ‘the land of the pure’ and was coined from the first letters of Punjab, Afghania (i.e. NWFP), Kashmir, Sind and the final part of Baluchistan. Again, the territorial area was delimited and did not include Bengal, where Muslims were concentrated.
• The idea of a separate nation, of Pakistan, had thus achieved definite shape and was mooted but, in 1935-36, it had little support and was not at all an important issue of the day.

Growth of the Movement

• Even in 1934 the League was disunited, its organization was minimal and its membership sparse and elitist in nature.
• It had little influence upon Muslim politics which in the NWFP were dominated by the Congress-oriented ‘Red Shirts’, the Khudai Khidmatgar, under Abdul Ghaffar Khan; in the Punjab by the Unionist Party (which also had non-Muslim members) led by Sir Fazil-i-Hussain; and in Bengal too the most important was the Krishak Praja Samiti, led by Fazlul Haq. In Muslim minority provinces like the UP and Bombay its position was slightly better but only marginally so.
• The League’s fortunes took an upturn after 1934 when Jinnah, then permanently residing in England, was persuaded by the UP politician Liaquat Ali Khan to return to India and take charge of the virtually moribund organization.
• He did so, was elected permanent President in March 1934 and soon began to make his presence felt.
• At this stage, though, he still seems to have wanted to cooperated with the Congress and to work it on the basis of equality.
• The elections of 1937 were to alter the picture somewhat. As a part of his general programme of revitalizing the League and giving the Muslims greater influence, Jinnah felt that a specifically Muslim party should attempt to play a role in legislation. The 1936 League session at Bombay accepted his view and decided to contest the elections. A Central Parliamentary Board was established and Jinnah was charged with implementing a three point programme.
• The conclusions that the League drew from the elections and from the logistics of the situation created by the Act of 1935 were far-reaching.
• In the minority provinces, it seemed that they were fated never to form a government and would always be dominated by the Congress with its strong grip over non-Muslim India.
• If the federation ever came into operation, the pattern would be repeated at the center where Muslims would only have one-third of the seats allotted to British India.
• In the majority provinces too the weightage of seats worked to their disadvantage and gave them just under a majority of the total Bengal and Punjab.  
• In any case, 1937 demonstrated that their hold on these provinces was tenuous.
• It was clear that the League would have to seek to capture the Muslim majority provinces, preferably by bringing non-league Muslim leaders into the fold; in addition, it would have to political ineffectiveness while, as the final resort, it would have to prepare to change its self-image and no longer consider itself merely as the separate minority within the Indian polity, but as a separate nation.
• One of the crucial factors in promoting this change of attitude was brought about by the aftermath of the elections.
• The Congress and the League had not really been rivals during the campaign and, at least in UP, a gentleman’s agreement seems to have existed between them to cooperate with one another. 
• The success of Congress, however, made it decide to form governments on its own. It did admit, and in fact include. Muslims in its Ministries provided they accepted the Congress creed and the view that the Congress was the only organization in the struggle against the British.
• It did not allow members of the Muslim League to enter cabinets. The decision alienated the League and probably marked the turning point in its attitude.
• In 1937, at Lucknow, the League decided to continue its 1936 programme and did so with a will hitherto lacking.
• An anti-Congress propaganda drive was mounted.
• Muslims were told they could not expect fair play or justice under a Congress raj and complaints were made of Congress mal-administration.  
• In the Pirpur Report and the Shareef Reprot, specific instances of the Ministries’ persecution of Muslims were cited and, generally, of the injustice done to them.
• It was claimed that the new administration and encouraged the playing of music in front of mosques, did not permit the sacrifice of cows and that mosques had been desecrated.
• The truth of these charges is doubtful but they did serve to heighten Muslim feelings against the Congress and hence improve the position of the League.
• When, in 1939, the Congress Ministries resigned, Jinnah proclaimed a Day of Deliverance.
• In 1938, the Sind Provincial Muslim League, used the term ‘nation’, in League propaganda, for the first time while in the same year the annual session of the League authorized Jinnah to examine alternative forms of government.
• In 1939, the Working Committee of the League formed a sub-committee to examine various schemes and, finally, in 1940 the Lahore Session of the League adopted a resolution knows as the Pakistan Resolution.

Conclusion

• It was easy to over emphasize the inevitability of the formulation of the demand for Pakistan and to view it was the logical outcome of forces going back perhaps to 1937, perhaps to 1934, to 1920, to 1919 or even to the days of Sir Sayyid.
• The events of these years may have been significant milestones but they did not inevitably lead to Pakistan. Nor indeed did the Lahore Resolution itself inexorably foreshadow the formation of an Islamic state.
• In 1940 the Pakistan demand seemed somewhat quixotic, an unreal objective. It was still not widely accepted seriously even by Muslim intellectuals and leaders, much less by the middle class or by the masses.
• Some writers have interpreted the formulation of the demand not as a serious objective but rather as a bargaining point which the League could use to exact the maximum concessions from any future constitutional settlement.
• If so, then even after 1940, Pakistan was not inevitable and it does see that Jinnah was prepared at certain later stages to accept something significantly less than Pakistan.

Hindu Nationalism

• An ideology that views India as a Hindu nation and continue to preserve the same.
• Due to offensive propaganda of Christian Missionaries, forcible conversion to Islam and Christianity etc. various Hindu Reform Movements, led by Dayanand Saraswati, Swami Vivekananada and the others came into existence.
• Sri Aurobindo was a nationalist who was one of the first to embrace the idea of complete political independence in India. Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo are credited with having found the basis for a version of freedom and glory for India in the spiritual richness and heritage of Hinduism.
• The “Hindu Nation” is conceived collective Indians belonging to religions like Sikhism, Buddhism, but whether Indian Muslims and Christians are also included, for Savarkar at least, they cannot be Hindus as long as the origins and sacred sites of their religions lie in West Asia.
• Savarkar identified India as a Hindu Rashtra (“Hindu nation”) in terms of culture and heritage.

Hindu Mahasabha

• An Indian political party established in 1913 to bring together various Hindu movements opposed to British concessions to the Muslim League.
• With its main strength in areas with a large Muslim community (Punjab and Bengal), it campaigned for the Hindu character of India and encouraged the conversion of Hindus from Islam.
• Its aggressive attitudes towards Muslims led to strained relations with the Indian National Congress, which fundamentally restricted the growth of the movement.
• Under its leader, V.D. Sarvarkar, it became an important influence in the foundation of the Jana Sangh (forerunner of the modern BJP) after independence in 1947.

ROAD TO CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

SIMON COMMISSION (1927)

• On November 8, 1927 the British government announced the setting up the Indian Statutory Commission under Sir John Simon[9]. 
• Party wise, there were four Conservatives, two Labourities and one Liberal.
• This all-white Commission with no Indian representation caused a great controversy even before it began its task of enquiring into the working of the system of government in British India, and reporting on the desirability and extent of establishing the principle of responsible government.
• Its impending visit to India provoked a popular political and even social boycott.
• All the major political parties – the Congress, the All-India Liberal Federation, the Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha – as well as the Federation of the Indian Chambers of Commerce and Mill-owners’ Association were signatories to a statement calling for a boycott of the Commission.
• Those who welcomed it were either splinter groups, such as a section of the Muslim league, or representatives of special or sectarian interests like Europeans, Anglo-Indians and the Depressed Classes.
• The Commission, nevertheless, completed its task.
• Its report, submitted in 1930, omitted any mention of Dominion Status even as a distant goal and rejected all ideas of transfer of power at the centre.
• Autonomy in the provinces, which was to replace the Montford version of Dyarchy, was nothing but a disguise.
• Predictably those proposals were completely rejected by the major political parties in the country, including the Muslim League.
• Even Lord Irwin found its findings as `lacking in imagination’ and sought to divert attention by stressing the independent role of the forthcoming Round Table Conference.
• Besides, the Commission’s findings were outpaced by events like the Nehru Report as well as the viceroy’s declaration of October 31, 1929 promising Dominion Status for India in the future.

BUTLER COMMITTEE (1927)

• Along with the Simon Commission, British also announced the setting up of a three member committee consisting of Harcourt Butler, W.S. Holdsworth and S.C. Peel to inquire into the relationship between the Indian States and the Paramount Power and to suggest ways and means for a more satisfactory adjustment of the existing economic relations between them and British India.
• Officially called the Indian States Committee, it visited 16 Indian States.
• Its report, submitted in 1929, observed that the relationship of the Paramount Power with the States was not merely a contractual relationship, but a living, growing relationship shaped by circumstances and policy.
• Further, it maintained that in view of this historical nature of the relationship, the States should not be transferred without their own agreement to a relationship with a new government in British India responsible to an Indian legislature.
• Later the Simon Commission substantially endorsed the Butler Committee’s findings.
• It agreed that the viceroy, and not the governor-general-in-council, should be the `agent of the Paramount Power’ in its relations with the Princes.

NEHRU REPORT (1928)

• In opposition to the appointment of the Simon Commission, on all-parties conference was convened at Delhi on February 12, 1928, which was attended by representatives of 29 organizations.
• At the Bombay meeting on May 19, 1928, the All-Parties Conference appointed a committee with Motilal Nehru as its chairman to consider and determine the principles of the Constitution for India.
• The Nehru Committee presented its report to the fourth session of the All-Parties Conference at Lucknow in August 1928.
• The central theme of the Committee’s recommendations was the assumption that the country’s new constitution would rest on the solid base of Dominion Status.

Important recommendations of the Report

• provision for freedom of conscience, profession and practice of one’s religion
• lower houses in the central legislature and the provincial councils to consist of members elected by joined mixed electorates with reservation of seats for Muslims or Hindus wherever they were in a minorit
• no reservation of seats for Muslims in Punjab and Bengal;
• reservation of seats on the basis of population and for a fixed period of 10 years; and
• provision for adult universal suffrage.

Response

• When it was placed before the All-Parties Convention at Calcutta, there was a violent clash between Jinnah (representing the Muslim League) and M.R. Jayakar (who put forth the Hindu Mahasabha view point).

The former demanded, among others, one-third of the total seats in the proposed central legislature for Muslims.

• The latter, on the other hand, questioned Jinnah’s locus standi as a representative of the Muslims.
• Consequently, Jinnah’s proposed amendments were overwhelmingly outvoted.
• Thus, the Report proved to be a non-starter and became a mere historical document.

JINNAH’S FOURTEEN POINTS (1929)

At a meeting of the Muslim

League in Delhi on March 28,

1929, M.A. Jinnah announced

the `Fourteen Points’. Rejecting

the Nehru Report, he

maintained that no scheme for

the future government of India

would be acceptable to

Muslims until and unless the

following basic principles were

given effect to:

• The future constitution should be federal with the residuary powers vested in the provinces.
• All legislatures and other elected bodies should be constituted on the principle of adequate representation of minorities in every province.
• A uniform measure of autonomy should be guaranteed to all provinces.
• In the Central Legislature, Muslim representation should not be less than one-third.
• Representation of communal groups should be continued through separate electorates.
• Any future territorial redistribution should not affect the Muslim majority in Punjab, Bengal and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).
• Full religious liberty should be granted to all communities.
• No bill should be passed in any elected body if three-fourths of the members of any community in that particular body were to oppose such a bill.
• Sind should be separated from the Bombay Presidency. 
• Reforms should be introduced in the NWFP and Baluchistan as in other provinces.
• Muslims should be given an adequate share in all the services.
• Adequate safeguards should be provided for the protection of Muslim culture.                      
• No cabinet should be made in the constitution except without the concurrence of the federating states.
• No change should be made in the constitution except without the concurrence of the federating states.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT (1930-34)

Demands and Launching

Before starting the movement, Gandhi served on the British government a `11 Point Ultimatum’, which, though did not include the demand for complete independence, represented the specific grievances of the Indians.

The ultimatum included the following demands:

Peasant Demands

• 50% reduction in land revenue.
• Abolition of the salt tax and government salt monopoly.

Bourgeois Demands

• Reservation of coastal shipping for Indians.
• Lowering of the rupee-sterling exchange ratio.
• Protection of indigenous textile industry.

General Demands

• 50% cut in military expenditure.
• 50% reduction in expenditure on civil administration.
• Total prohibition of intoxicants.
• Release of all political prisoners
• Changes in the Central Intelligence Department.
• Changes in the Arms Act enabling citizens to bear arms for self-protection.  

• After waiting in vain for the government response to his ultimatum for 41 days, Gandhi started the movement with his famous Dandi march (March 12 to April 6, 1930) from the Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi on the Gujarat coast.

Dandi March

• The Lahore session of the Congress (December 1929) witnessed the unfurling of the flag of Purna Swaraj (complete independence).
• 26 January, 1930 was observed as `independence day’ throughout the country with Gandhi’s call to the people that `it was a crime against God and man’ to submit to the `satanic British rule’.
• Next, Gandhi decided to start his campaign by breaking the Salt Laws.
• On 12 March, Gandhi along with his group of 78 volunteers started his trek from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandhi on the Gujarat coast.
• Of the Satyagrahis, who were drawn from all parts of India, two were Muslims, one Christian and the rest Hindus.
• On April 5, Gandhi and his party reached Dandi.
• Next morning Gandhi and his volunteers picked up slat lying on the coast, symbolically breaking the Salt Laws.
• With this, salt became the symbol of India’s will to freedom.
• This Salt Satyagraha lasted another two months, petering out as soon as the monsoon arrived.

Different Phases

• The first phase (March to September, 1930) witnessed the high point of bourgeois participation in towns and peasant mobilization in the villages on issues like salt, no-revenue, picketing of liquor shops, and non-payment of chowkidari tax.
• The second phase (October 1930 to March 1931) was marked by a clear decline in the participation of the urban bourgeoisie (merchants and industrialists) and also by their attempts to bring about a compromise between the government and the Congress, which finally resulted in the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 1931.
• The third phase (January 1932 to April 1934) saw ruthless repression practiced by the government on the people and the eventual withdrawal of the movement by the Congress.

Gandhian-Irwin Pact

The ceaseless efforts of Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Dr.

Jayakar and others to bring about a compromise

between the government and the Congress resulted in the

signing of a pact by Gandhi and Lord Irwin, the

Governor-General, in March 1931.

According to the Pact, the government agreed to:

• Withdraw all ordinances and end prosecutions.
• Release all political prisoners, except those guilty of violence.
• Restore the confiscated property of the satyagrahis.
• Permit peaceful picketing of liquor and foreign cloth shops.
• Permit the free collection or manufacture of salt to persons residing within a specific distance from the sea coast.

The Congress, in its turn, consented to the following:

• To suspend the civil disobedience movement.
• To participate in the second session of the Round Table Conference.
• Not to press for investigation into police excesses.
• Gandhi accordingly attended the second session of the Round Table Conference[10] in London, but its failure and revival of the oppressive policy by the government led to the revival of the Civil Disobedience movement in January 1932.

Comparison between Civil Disobedience Movement and Non-Cooperation Movement

• The Civil Disobedience movement (1930-34) was a step further over Non-cooperation movement (1921-22) in several respects.
• The former had an objective (the achievement of complete independence) much greater than that of the latter (the remedying of two specific `wrongs’ and the demand for a vague Swaraj).
• As the very names of the movements suggest, the methods adopted during the former (involving deliberate violation of law) were evidently more militant than those of the latter (involving only non-cooperation).
• Participation in the former involved greater risk for the people than in the latter. For the government adopted a policy of ruthless repression from the very beginning in the case of the former movement.
• The participation of women, business group and peasantry was much greater in the former than in the latter.                     
• The former resulted in the Congress becoming organizationally much stronger than the latter.

However, the Civil Disobedience movement was a retrograde step in comparison to the Non-cooperation movement in certain other aspects:

• The former was not marked by the same Hindu-Muslim unity as was the latter. This was evident from the low Muslim participation in the Civil Disobedience movement.
• The participation of the labour in the former was insignificant when compared to the latter