There was another, less dramatic but more effective, response to the situation arising out of the First World War-the Home Rule Leagues of Lokmanya Tilak and Annie Besant.

Events leading to the formation of leagues

When Tilak returned to India after serving a long sentence of six years in Mandalay in Burma, he initially concentrated all attention on securing the readmission of himself and other Extremists into the Indian National Congress from which they had been thrown out in 1907 at Surat. Even in 1907, he had been far from happy with the split, and now he was convinced even more that unity was necessary. Besides, the sanction of the Congress was seen to be desirable for any political activity as the Congress had come to symbolise the national movement in the minds of the people. Further disunity had only helped the British who had removed the Extremists through repression, and then ignored the Moderates by granting reforms the Extremists through repression, and then ignored the Moderates by granting reforms that fell far short of their expectations. The complete lack of political activity since 1908 was also making the Moderates unhappy and many of them were now more favourably disposed towards the question of the return of the Extremists to the fold.

The Moderate leaders were also under considerable pressure from Mrs. Annie Besant, who wanted to build up a movement in India on the lines of the Irish Home Rule League, and was urging them to accept the Extremists back into the Congress. Annie Besant, aged 66 in 1914, had come to India from England in 1893 to work for the Theosophical Society, and had earlier been an exponent of Free Thought, Radicalism and Fabianism. She had set up her headquarters at Adyar near Madras, and developed a large network of followers of the Theosophical Society from among those educated Indians whose communities had experienced no cultural revival of their own. With this as a base, she now wanted to start a political movement on agitational lines.

Two leagues

The Extremists failed to be allowed re-entry into the Congress at its session in December 1914, but consistent efforts throughout 1915, including the campaigns launched separately by Annie Besant and Tilak through newspapers and local associations, secured them their re-entry in December 1915. The opposition to the Extremists was also considerably whittled down by the death of Pherozeshah Mehta who had been the most recalcitrant in his opposition. The Congress still dominated as it was by the Moderates, however, failed to keep its promise of reviving local level Congress Committees and beginning a programme of educative propaganda by September 1916. Therefore, Annie Besant and Tilak launched their own organisations, the Home Rule League, in 1916. The two Leagues demarcated their areas of operation: Tilak’s League was to work in Maharashtra, Karnataka Central Provinces and Berar and Annie Besant’s in the rest of India.

Tilak’s Home Rule League

Tilak’s Home Rule League, launched at the Bombay provincial Conference held at Belgaum in April 1916, was organised into 6 branches, one each in Central Maharashtra, Bombay city, Karnataka and Central Provinces, and two in Berar. It published 6 pamphlets in Marathi and 2 in English, of which 47,000 copies were sold. Pamphlets were also brought out in Kannada and Gujarat. Apart from these, the most crucial role was played by Tilak’s tours of Maharashtra during the course of which he lectured on and explained the demand for Home Rule. “India was like a son who had grown up and attained maturity”, he said. “It was right now that the trustee or the father should give him what was his due”. His speeches during this period also show no trace of a religious appeal and he categorically stated:

“Alienness is not connected with religion, trade or profession; it is a question of interests. He who does what is beneficial to the people of this country, be he a Mohammedan or an Englishman, is not alien.”

The most surpising element of Home Rule Leagues was that they were only implementing in a vigorous fashion, the programme of the Moderates.

The annual session of the Congress in December 1916 at Lucknow also provided the Home Rule Leaguers with an opportunity of demonstrating their strength and they turned up at this Congress in large numbers. Tilak and Annie Besant also played a leading role in bringing about the famous Congress League Pact which was signed at this session[1]. The Home Rule Leagues held a joint meeting at the end of the session attended by more than 1,000 delegates and addressed by Besant and Tilak, and on their return journeys both the leaders toured extensively through parts of North, Central and Eastern India.

The government’s decision to again try repression acted as a further spur to the movement. In June 1917, Besant, B.P. Wadia and Arundale were placed under arrest. Immediately, many who had earlier kept their distance now voiced their protest and joined the movement. Jinnah, Surendranath Banerjee and Madan Mohan Malaviya were among the most famous of these. Tilak advocated passive resistance to the AICC meeting in July 1917, and Gandhi’s suggestion of collecting the signatures of one thousand men willing to defy the internment orders and march to Besant’s place of detention was implemented. Village tours and meetings were intensified and the movement displayed a new resolve.

Change in British attitude

Faced with this growing agitation, the government in Britain decided to adopt a soft line. The signal for the change of policy was the declaration of Montague, the Secretary of State for India, in the British House of Commons which stated: “the policy of His Majesty’s government...is that of increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire”. This statement was a distinct advance on the position taken in 1909 when Morley while introducing the Reforms had categorically stated that they were not intended to lead to self-government. After Montague’s declaration, the demand for self-government or Home Rule could no longer be treated as seditious, and this was an important achievement. This did not, however, mean that Britain was about to grant self-government to India. Any doubts on this score were dispelled by the accompanying part of the statement which made it clear that the nature and timing of the reforms would be decided by the government alone. This gave enough room for continual postponement of transfer of any real power to Indians.

The immediate gain of the new policy was that Annie Besant was released in September 1917. She was, at Tilak’s instance, elected President of the annual session of the Congress in December 1917. Her popularity at this time was at its height, and the movement appeared poised for greater advances.

Decline of the home rule leagues

During 1918, however, the Home Rule agitation gradually fizzled out. Among the factors responsible for this was the withdrawal of support by the Moderates who had again been won over to the hope for reforms and worried by the increasing talk of civil disobedience among the Home Rule rank and file. The publication of the Reforms Scheme in July 1918 further divided the nationalists: while some wanted to reject them, others wanted to give them a trial. Annie Besant herself demonstrated considerable inconsistency in her stand both on the question of the reforms and on the issue of passive resistance. Tilak was on the whole more consistent in his approach that the reforms were unworthy of Britain to offer and Indians to accept, but given Besant’s continuous vacillation, there was little he could do on his own. His decision to go to England at the end of 1918 to pursue a libel case he had filed against Valentine Chirol, the author of Indian Unrest, physically removed him from the scene for many critical months. The movement was essentially rendered leaderless.

The tremendous achievement of the Home Rule movement was in creating a politically aware and committed band of nationalist workers who were to play the leading role in the coming mass struggles. The contacts they had established in towns and villages during the course of the agitation were also to prove invaluable in the coming years. The ground was also created by the wide popularization of the idea of Home Rule and the arousal of national feeling.

True, the leaders of the Home Rule Movement were themselves unable to show the way forward and translate this consciousness into a mass struggle. But they prepared the ground for the next stage-a stage that was to be shaped and given a unique character by the personality of Mahatma Gandhi.