Organization	Founder(s)	Year	Place
Landholders Society	Dwarkanath Tagore	1830	Calcutta
British India Society	William Adam	1839	London
Bengal British India Society	Not available	1843	Calcutta
British India Association (Result of the merger of the first two organizations)	Devendranath Tagore	1851	Calcutta
Madras Native Association	Not available	1852	Madras
Bombay Association	Jaganath Shankerseth	1852	Bombay
East India Association	Dadabhai Naoroji	1866	London
National Indian Association	Mary Carpenter (biographer of Rammohun Roy)	1867	London
Poona Sarvajanik Sabha	S.H. Chiplunkar, G.V. Joshi, M.G. Ranade, etc	1870	Poona
Indian Society	Anandamohan Bose	1872	London
Indian Association	Anandmohan Bose and S.N. Banerji	1876	Calcutta
Madras Mahajan Sabha	G.S. Aiyer, M. Viragahavachari, Anandacharlu, etc.	1884	Madras
Bombay Presidency Association	Pherozeshah Mehta, K.T. Telang, Badruddin Tyabji, etc.	1885	Bombay

 

Moderates- Extremists

MODERATE PHASE (1885-1905)

Changing Nature of Congress under Moderates

·         Congress passed resolution criticizing some of the actions and policies of the British government and demanding reforms.

·         By the beginning of the 20^th century, the moderate nationalists put forward the claim of self-government within the British Empire as in the colonies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

·         This demand was first made from the Congress platform by Gokhale in 1905 and then by Dadabhai Naoroji in 1906.

Important Moderates

·         The important moderate leaders were Dadabhai Naoroji, M.G. Ranade, Surendranath Banerji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Badruddin Tyabji, Gopala Krishna Gokhale, Dinsha Wacha, Anandamohan Bose, Rashbehari Ghosh.

Main Demands of Moderates

·         Expansion and reform of the legislative councils, leading to popular control of administration.

·         Greater opportunities for Indians in the public services by holding ICS examinations simultaneously in England and India.

·         Reimposition of import duties on cotton goods.

·         Reduction of military expenditure.

·         Separation of technical and general education and spread of both.

·         Grant of self-government to India within the British Empire as the colonies of Australia, Canada, etc. (1905).

Methods of Moderates

·         The methods of the Moderates can best be described as `Constitutional agitation’.

·         Confined themselves to meetings, speeches, resolutions and petitions.

·         On rare occasions only, they resorted to the boycott of foreign goods and the use of Indian goods (Swadeshi).

·         Confined their political activity to the educated classes only, not willing to involve the masses in the national movement.

·         Moreover, they wanted to attain political rights and self-government in a prolonged stage-by-stage evolution, and not all of a sudden.

Achievements of Moderates

·         Creation of a wide national awakening among the people and training them in the art of political work.

·         Popularization of the ideas of democracy and nationalism among the people.

·         Exposition of the exploitative character of British imperialism and the consequent evil results for India, for example Dadabhai Naoroji’s Drain Theory.

·         Creation of a common political and economic programmed around which the Indians gathered and waged political struggle.

·         Providing a solid base and foundation on which the Indian national movement built up momentum and vigour in later years.     

·         Providing impetus to the campaign against medieval obscurantism and authoritarianism.

·         Succeeded in getting the Indian Councils Act of 1892 passed by the British.

FAILURES OF MODERATES

·         They failed to realize the importance of mass struggle, and hence their confinement of the movement to the educated middle classes.

·         Also most of them failed to realize the true nature of the British for a considerable time.

·         Finally, they failed to get anything substantial from the British through their constitutional methods.

GROWTH OF EXTREMISM (1906-18)

CAUSES FOR RISE OF EXTREMISM

·         Growing Consciousness among the Indians

·         Failure of the Moderate agitation

·         Repressive Policies of the British Government: For instance, the enactment of a law making it an offence to preach nationalism (1898) and the enactment of the Indian Official Secrets Act to restrict the freedom of the press (1904). Also, the imprisonment of Tilak and some other editors for preaching nationalism (1897) aggravated the Indian sentiments.

·         Realisation of the Need for Mass Action

·         Growth of Self-respect among the Indians Tilak declared that swaraj was the birth right of every Indian and not a gift which would be granted to the Indians by the British after the former had passed all the test prescribed by the latter.

·         Influence of Western Education and Ideas

·         Realisation of the social and Cultural Evils of British Rule

·         Existence of a Militant Nationalist School of Thought – The existence of a militant nationalist school [5]of thought from the beginning of the nationalist movement and the emergence of eminent extremist leaders [6]in the beginning of the 20^th century,

·         Influence of International Events – Influence of certain international events like the rise of Japan and its defeat of Russia in 1905 and the defeat of an Italian army by the Ethiopians in 1896 (these events shattered the myth of European invincibility), and the revolutionary movements in Ireland, Russia, Egypt, Turkey and China and Boer war in South Africa (these events inspired the Indians to step up their struggle for swaraj).

Immediate Cause: Curzon’s Rule

·         The reactionary rule of Lord Curzon (1889-1905) and his partition of Bengal (1905).

·        During the first half he launched a programme of administrative reform covering twelve major fields. Commissions were constituted to deal with irrigation, railways, agricultural banks and police. His financial reforms soon began to bear fruit while the currency reform was widely applauded.

·         His Calcutta Municipal Act (1899) sought to officialise municipal administration and diminish the Indian control. The measure proved to be extremely controversial and was ultimately undone in 1923.

·       The widespread famine of 1897-98 made him to revise the earlier Famine Code. Through the Punjab Land Alienation Act (1901) he sought to protect cultivators from eviction. To promote agricultural production, he set up an Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa in Delhi. He also ordered a land survey under Sir Colin Scott Monorieff who recommended widespread irrigation. A new department of commerce and industry was started to promote, among other things, railway construction.

·        The Police Commission (1901) under Sir Andrew Fraser was appointed to inquire into all facets of the force. On the basis of its recommendations a new covenanted police service was constituted and a criminal intelligence department established.

·         During Curzon’s viceroy ship a Coronation Darbar was held at Delhi (1903) to mark the accession of King Edward (1902-12).

·         Curzon partitioned Bengal, ostensibly for administrative convenience, but in reality for curbing the growing nationalism. Consequently the Indian put up passive resistance in the form of the Swadeshi movement. Curzon thus sought to stifle nationalism with bureaucracy. In fact in his single mindedness he aided rather than deterred the forces undermining the British position in India.

·         Main Objective of Extremists     

·         It was the attainment of swaraj which meant to them complete autonomy or independence and not just self government as in the colonies of Australia, New Zealand, etc. (aim of the moderates), and which has to be as soon as possible and not through gradual stages.

Methods of the Extremists

·         The methods used by the extremists were:      

·         Passive resistance, i.e. non-cooperating with the British government by boycotting government service, courts, schools and colleges.

·         Promotion of Swadeshi and boycott of foreign goods.

·         Building up a new national through the introduction and promotion of national education.

·         A very significant role was played by the following extremist leaders.

 

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.

 

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).

NATIONALIST MUSLIM PARTY The rise of the nationalist Muslims as an organized group may be traced to the formation of the Congress Muslim Party at Bombay on July 29, 1929. At the same time Maulana Abul Kalam Azad who presided over the first All-India Nationalist Muslims Conference at Allahabad pledged to develop among Muslims a spirit of nationalism. Even earlier, at the Muslim League session at Delhi in March 1929, leaders of the Khilafat Conference had supported by some outsiders and supporters of the Report were thrown out, some of whom decided to from the Nationalist Muslim Party. Initiative also came from the Congress, which was naturally, anxious that nationalist Muslims should have an independent organization to support its programme and the Nehru Report. Finally, some representatives from the Punjab and Bengal, as well as Dr. Sheikh Muhammad Alam formed the new Muslim Nationalist Party, Dr. M.A. Ansari became its president. Though Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Rafi Ahmad Kidwai did not oppose the formation of the new party, they kept aloof from it. Almost simultaneously there was the emergence in the North-West Frontier Province of the Khudai Khidmatgars* (Red shirts) under Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan and Dr. Khan Sahib, giving a great boost to the nationalist Muslim cause. *Refer to the separate sheet Khudai Khidmatgars.

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 931.

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.

ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE

·         The Indians Round Table Conference held three session which are sometimes referred to, albeit erroneously, as the First, Second and Third Round Table Conferences.

First Session (November 12, 1930 to January 19, 1931)

·        It was Simon Commission, who suggested in a letter from India on 16^th October 1929, to the British Prime Minister, Ramsay Macdonald to convene a conference of the representatives of both British India and the Indian States to take a final decision on the question of constitutional reforms for India.

·       His suggestion was accepted by the British Cabinet, and subsequently Lord Irwin, the Governor-General of India, made his famous declaration, known as the `Deepavali Declaration’ (October 31, 1929) according to which the objective of British policy was to grant Dominion Status to India and a round table conference would be held in London after the Simon Commission had reported.

·        It was attended by 16 representatives of the three British political parties, 16 delegates from the Indian States, and 57 delegates from British India.

·        The Congress, which was unhappy with the report of Simon Commission, boycotted the conference.

·       Other political parties and interest groups were well represented – Muslim League by Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Shafi, Aga Khan and Fazul Haq; Hindu Mahasabha by Moonje and Jayakar; Indian Liberal Federation by Tej Bahadur Sapru. C.Y. Chintamani, M.R. Jayakar and Srinivas Shastri; and Depressed Castes were represented by B.R. Ambedkar[11].

·         The conference ended with the Indian princes agreeing for a federation with a weak responsible central government, but the communalist parties could not come to an agreement on the question of minority representation.

·         The British realized the futility of holding a conference on the question of constitutional reforms for India without the representatives of the Congress.

Second Session (September 7 to December 1931)

·         It was attended by Gandhi as the sole representative of the Congress (according to the terms of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1931) along with all the representatives of other political parties, interest groups, etc.

·        Before any progress could be made, the conference was soon deadlocked on the minorities issue, with separate electorates being demanded now not only by Muslims but also by the Depressed Castes, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans.

·        Gandhi desperately fought against the concerted move to make all constitutional progress conditional on a solution of the communal problem, and even offered to accept all Muslim claims provided they supported the Congress demand for independence, but the Muslim delegates rejected the offer while the Hindu Mahasabha and the Sikhs strongly opposed it.

·         With regard to the question of federation too, the Indian princes were less enthusiastic than in the first session.

·         The Conference ended with Ramsay MacDonald announcing the formation of two new Muslim majority provinces (North Western Frontier Province and Sind) and the setting up of an Indian consultative committee, and three expert committee (on franchise, finance and states), and holding out the prospect of a unilateral British communal award if the Indians failed to agree on the minorities issue.

·         An out maneuvered and dejected Gandhi returned to India and was immediately arrested and imprisoned by the British.

Third Session (1932 November 17 to December 24)

·         It was held without Congress representation, and was attended by a far smaller number of representatives than that of the first two.

·         In this session, the delegates agreed on almost all the issues.

·         The British government, on the basis of the discussion at the three sessions, drafted its proposals for the reform of the Indian constitution, which were embodied in the White Paper published in March 1933.

·        The White Paper was examined and approved by a joint committee of the British Parliament (October, 1934) and a bill, based on the report of this committee, was introduced and passed in the British Parliament as the Government of India Act of 1935[12].

THE COMMUNAL AWARD (1932)

·         On August 16, 1932, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald made an announcement in the British Parliament about the representation of India communities in the provincial legislatures.

·         Popularly known as the `Communal Award’, it provided for separate electorates for Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans.

·         Secondly, the Depressed Classes were assured separate special constituencies with a right to vote in the remaining general constituencies also.

·         Thirdly, special constituencies with separate communal electorates were to be constituted for women in all provinces except the NWFP.

·         Lastly, seven seats were to be reserved for the Marathas in certain selected plural-member constituencies in the Bombay Presidency.

POONA PACT (1932)

·         The Poona Pact took place at Yerawada Jail in Pune, Maharashtra on 24th September, 1932.

·         Gandhi strongly opposed the proposal of separate electorate for the depressed classes as he thought that it would disintegrate Hindu society.

·         He went for an indefinite hunger strike starting from September 20,1932 against the decision of the then British Prime Minister J.Ramsay Mac Donald.

·         Mr. Ramsay granted communal award to the depressed classes as he gave them separate position in the constitution for governance of British India.

·         The whole country was agitated at the health concern of Mahatma Gandhi.

·         A mass upsurge generated in India to save the life of Gandhi.

·         Ambedkar was put in a great pressure and he was forced to soften his stand.

·         The compromise between the leaders of caste Hindu and the depressed classes was achieved when Dr. B.R.Ambedkar signed the Poona Pact on September 24, 1932.

·         This was a landmark step for Dalit movement in India that gave share to the Dalits in the political empowerment of democratic India.

Main provisions of the Pact:

·         There shall be reserved seats for the depressed classes out of general electorate seats in the provincial legislature as follows- Madras 30; Bombay with Sind 25; Punjab 8; Bihar and Orissa 18; Central Provinces 20; Assam 7; Bengal 30; United Provinces 20. Total 148. These figures are based on the Prime Minister`s (British) decision.

·         Election to these seats shall be by joint electorate subjects by the following procedures - the members of the depressed classes formed the Electoral College, which was in liberty to elect the panel of the depressed classes. Voting system was taken into consideration then. The legislature pointed out that the method of the single vote and four persons getting the highest number of votes in such primary elections shall be the candidates for election by the general electorate.

Central Legislature

·         In the Central Legislature eighteen per cent of the seats allotted to the general electorate for British India in the said legislature shall be reserved for the Depressed Classes.

·         The system of primary election to a panel of candidates for election to the Central and Provincial Legislatures as herein-before mentioned shall come to an end after the first ten years, unless terminated sooner by mutual agreement under the provision of clause 6 below.

·        The system of representation of Depressed Classes by reserved seats in the Provincial and Central Legislatures as provided for in clauses (1) and (4) shall continue until determined otherwise by mutual agreement between the communities concerned in this settlement.

·         The Franchise for the Central and Provincial Legislatures of the Depressed Classes shall be as indicated, in the Lothian Committee Report.

·        There shall be no disabilities attached to any one on the ground of his being a member of the Depressed Classes in regard to any election to local bodies or appointment to the public services. Every endeavour shall be made to secure a fair representation of the Depressed Classes in these respects, subject to such educational qualifications as may be laid down for appointment to the Public Services.

 

SECOND PHASE OF REVOLUTIONARY TRENDS

Post WWI Developments

·         After the First World War, the revolutionary activities began to slowly wane as it suffered major setbacks due to the arrest of prominent leaders.

·         In the 1920s, some revolutionary activists began to reorganize.

·         Frustrated and disillusioned by the inaction of the Congress, the revolutionaries in northern India were the first to reorganize under the leadership of the older veterans, Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chatterjea and Sachindranath Sanyal whose Bandi Jiwan served as a textbook for the revolutionary movement.

·         They met in Kanpur in October 1924 and founded the Hindustan Republican Association (or Army) to organize armed revolution to overthrow colonial rule.

·         The advance of the armed struggle required bold and risky actions. Volunteers had to be recruited and trained and arms had to be procured, requiring money – hence raids on the British treasury.

·         On 9 August 1925, ten men held up the 8-Down train at Kakori (a village near Lucknow), to get access to its railway cash. British reaction was quick and hard.

·         Ashfaqulla Khan, Ramprasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri were hanged, four others were sent to the Andamans for life and seventeen others were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

·         The Kakori case was a major setback to the revolutionaries of northern India; but it was not a fatal blow.

·         Younger men such as Bejoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Varma and Jaidev Kapur in U.P., Bhagat Singh, Bhagwati Charan Vohra and Sukhdev in Punjab set out to reorganize the HRA under the overall leadership of Chandrashekhar Azad.

·         At this time, they were also strongly influenced by socialist ideas.

·         At a Delhi meeting in September, 1928, a new collective leadership adopted socialism as their official goal and changed their party’s name to the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (Army).

·         On 8 April 1929, HSRA embarked on a plan to throw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly against the passage of two new repressive bills – the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill.

·         The aim was not to cause any loss of life, but to use the daring action to awaken and energize the Indian masses and to ‘make the deaf hear‘.

·         The objective was to get arrested and to use the trial court as a vehicle to disseminate their dreams and ideas for a new and liberated India.

·         Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt were tried in the Assembly Bomb Case.

·         Later Sukhdev, Rajguru and tens of other revolutionaries were also tried in a series of famous conspiracy cases.

·         In March 1931, Rajguru, Sukhdev, and Bhagat Singh were hanged by the British in spite of tremendous popular opposition to their hanging.

·         On 13 March 1940, Udham Singh shot Michael o' Dwyer, generally held responsible for the Amritsar massacre, in London.

·         Allama Mashriqi founded Khaksar Tehreek[13] in order to direct particularly the Muslims towards the independence movement.

·         In Bengal too, armed revolutionary groups started reorganizing and developing underground activities even as some of the leaders maintained their links with the Congress.

·         One of their planned actions was to assassinate Charles Tegart, the much hated Police Commissioner of Calcutta.

·         The attempt failed and Gopinath Saha was arrested and hanged for the attempt despite massive popular protest.

·         Among the new ‘Revolt Groups,’ the most active and famous was the Chittagong group led by Surya Sen.

·         Surya Sen had actively participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement and had become a teacher in a national school in Chittagong.

·         He had also been closely associated with Congress work in Chittagong.

·         Along with other colleagues in the local Congress committees, and several young recruits, Surya Sen and his compatriots decided to organize a rebellion, on however small a scale, to demonstrate that it was possible to challenge the armed might of the British empire in India.

·         Their action plan was to include occupation of the two main armories in Chittagong and the seizing of their arms with which four large band of revolutionaries could be formed into an armed detachment.

·         In a fierce fight, (April, 1930) eighty British troops and twelve revolutionaries died, but Chittagong could not be held by the revolutionaries.

·         When the armed revolutionaries dispersed into the Chittagong countryside, most of the Muslim villagers gave food and shelter to the revolutionaries in hiding, enabling them to survive for three years.

·         The Chittagong Armoury Raid had a tremendous impact on the people of Bengal and inspired numerous other acts of armed resistance.

·         But Surya Sen was eventually caught and hanged in 1934.

·         Many of his co-fighters were also caught and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

·         Pritilata Waddedar led an attack on a European club in Chittagong in 1932, while Bina Das attempted to assassinate Stanley Jackson, the Governor of Bengal inside the convocation hall of Calcutta University.

·         The Bengal Volunteers started operating in 1928. On 8 December 1930, the Benoy-Badal-Dinesh trio of the party entered the secretariat Writers' Building in Kolkata and murdered Col. N. S. Simpson, the Inspector General of Prisons.

·         Just as it seemed that the national movement was completely slipping away from the influence of the Congress, Gandhi returned to the mode of non-violent struggle and launched the salt satyagraha (1930-31).

·         The political scenario changed in the late 1930s — with the mainstream leaders considering several options offered by the British and with religious politics coming into play — revolutionary activities gradually declined.

·         Many past revolutionaries joined mainstream politics by joining Congress and other parties, especially communist ones, while many of the activists were kept under hold in different jails across the country.

 

CONGRESS MINISTRIES OF 1937

General Election of 1937

·         Under the Act of 1935 elections were held for the Provincial Legislatures in February, 1937.

·         Although the Congress was opposed to many provisions of the Act, it decided to contest the elections with an object to make the working of Provincial autonomy impossible by refusing to cooperate with the Government.

·         The Muslim League and the Liberals also agreed to fight the elections in order to judge the merits of the Act.

·         The Congress obtained clear majorities in Madras, Bihar, UP, Bombay, Central Provinces and Orissa, the provinces which claimed two-thirds of the Indian population.

·         In Assam, the Congress emerged as the single largest party by capturing 35 out of 108 seats.

·         In NWFP also, it gained 19 out of 50 seats.

·         The Muslim League fared relatively badly at the polls.

·         It could secure only 51 of the total of 482 seats reserved for the Muslims in provincial assemblies.

·         Nationalist Muslims contested 58 seats on Congress tickets and captured 26.

·         The League could not show its strength even in Muslim majority provinces of Punjab, Bengal and NWFP.

·         But it rather made notable gains in Hindu majority provinces of UP, Central Provinces, Bombay and others.

·         In the Punjab, the Unionist Party[14], which was a coalition of all the communities, emerged as the strongest party.

·         In Bengal, the Praja Party[15] and the Independents captured two-thirds of the total seats.

·         After an acute controversy in the Congress circles over the question of the formation of ministries the issue was decided in favour of office acceptance.

·         In July, 1937, the Congress formed its ministries in six Provinces of UP, Bihar, Madras, Bombay, Orissa and Central Provinces.

·         In NWFP and Assam, it agreed to form coalition ministries with the cooperation of other political parties.

·         In provinces where it had gained a clear majority, it refused to give any concession to the League in the cabinet.

·         It felt that a set of ministers divided in loyalties would not be able to work in, a team spirit.

·         The non-inclusion of League members in the cabinet, however, proved harmful. It strained the relations between the Hindus and Muslims.

·         Muhammad Ali Jinnah leveled several charges against Congress.

Eleven Provincial Ministries of British India

·         The ministries formed in 1937 in eleven provinces of India had different stories to tell.

·         They could not function smoothly.

·         In Bengal, Sind and Punjab the new setup worked for ten years.

·         In other provinces, the so-called responsible governments remained in saddle just for two years.

·         In October, 1939, the Congress ministries in eight provinces resigned on the war issue.

·         The governors in those provinces, by issuing a Proclamation of Emergency, assumed all the executive and legislative powers to themselves.

·         The Governors rule lasted till 1946, when fresh elections were held and responsible governments once against set up in the provinces.                 

Role of Governors in Congress-ruled Provinces

·         In Congress-dominated provinces, the Governors usually behaved decently.

·         They did not interfere much with the work of the Ministers.

·         Instances when the Governor exercised their special powers were also few.

·         They extended their cooperation to the ministries by giving their assent to nearly all the Act passed by the legislatures.

·         Hence, the initial fear that the Governors, by invoking their special responsibilities, would obstruct and undo the work of the ministers, proved unnecessary.

·         No doubt, a few dead-locks and crises did occur in Congress Provinces, but they were soon resolved.

Question of Political Prisoners in UP and Bihar

·         The Congress ministries in UP and Bihar decided to release all the political prisoners in February, 1938.

·         The Governors of both the provinces opposed this move on the excuse that such a step would disturb the peace in the provinces.

·         The Governor General under Section 126 of the Act directed the Governors to refuse the release of prisoners by invoking their special responsibility.

·         The ministries made it a prestige issue and resigned.

·         It seemed for the time being, that even the provincial part of the Act was also not going to work well.

·         The British Government ultimately relented.

·         Negotiations started between the Governor General and the Congress and it was decided that the political prisoners would be released gradually, after examining each individual case thoroughly.

Alleged Congress Persecution of Muslims in UP

·         The Congress decision not to join hands with any communal organization had severe repercussions.

·         When the Congress left out the League in selecting the team of ministers, the League began to raise a bogey of Hindu tyranny over the Muslims.

·         It alleged that Congress was essentially a Hindu organization and was committing atrocities on the poor Muslims[16].

·         The Congress rebutted the League’s charges and demanded a judicial inquiry into the allegations made by Jinnah.

·         The Viceroy, however, cancelled the proposal of inquiry, because he himself was satisfied with the fair and secular conduct of the Congress.

·         The Governor General and the Governors refused to interfere with the working of Congress ministries in the name of safeguarding the interests of the minorities.

·         Mr. Jinnah was sorely disappointed.

·         Thus, the working of the Provincial Autonomy till 1939 remained quite satisfactory.

·         The Governors remained true to the assurance given by the Governor General before the acceptance of office by the Congress.

·         They acted as constitutional heads.

·         After the resignation of Congress ministries in 1939, they once again became the real heads of the provinces.

Part Played by Governors in Non-Congress Provinces

·         In non-Congress provinces, the Governors enjoyed unlimited powers.

·         For instance, when the Governor General consulted the Punjab Governor on the question of the release of political prisoners, the latter, without even consulting the Chief Minister, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, wrote back that the Punjab Government was not going to release them.

·         In October, 1942, Allah Bukhsh, the Chief Minister of Sind, was dismissed by the governor arbitrarily.

·         In Sind, Bengal and NWFP, the governors showed undue favour to the League and tried to keep it in power in spite of its poor strength in the assembly.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE MINISTRIES

Constructive Work

·         The Congress did laudable work during its term of office in various provinces.

·         The Congress Ministers busied themselves with constructive work.

·         Soon after assuming office, they set about tackling the questions of elementary education[17], industrial wages, cottage industries and uplift of Harijans.

·         They provided relief to the agriculturists from indebtedness.

·         Efforts were made to abolish the evil of drinking and to benefit the farmers by passing tenancy laws.

·         The political prisoners were released and their properties restored.

·         It served as a good training ground in public administration.

·         The ministers gained confidence to shoulder the responsibilities of a similar nature after independence.   

·         The short period of Congress rule gave a taste of self-government to the people.

 

QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT

Towards the Movement

August offer (1940)

·         To ensure Indian support in the war effort, the British offered:

·         An immediate expansion of Viceroy’s Executive Council by inducting a number of Indians;

·         To establish a War Advisory Council comprising representatives of British India and Indian States;

·         To promote steps to arrive at an agreement among Indians on the form which the postwar representative body would take.

·         Nationalist reaction to this August Offer was hostile.

·         But, the British, on their part, went ahead with the scheme and in 1941; the number of Indian members in the Viceroy’s Executive Council was increased from three to eight out of a total of twelve members in all.

Causes of Quit India Movement

·         The Cripps mission[18] (1942), with its vague proposals Satisfied none and threatened to Balkanize the Indian subcontinent:

• A post-war Dominion Status for India;
• A constitution making body elected by provincial legislatures and the native states;
• Provincial opt out clause;
• The immediate participation of Indian leaders in war effort but the retention of the control of Indian defence by the British.

·         The retreat of the British from Malay, Burma and Singapore, leaving their dependants to fend for themselves.

·         The indescribable plight of the Indians trekking back home from these places.

·         The racial ill-treatment meted out to Indians by white soldiers stationed in India.

·         The 'scorched earth' policy pursued by the British in Bengal to resist probable Japanese invasion which resulted in the commandeering of all means of communicating.

·         War-time price rise, black-marketeering and profiteering.

·         All these contributed to the creation of an anti-white fury.

·         Above all, there was the attempt of the British bureaucracy right from the outbreak of the war for a wholesale crackdown on the Congress on the pattern of 1932.

·         The early morning round up of Congress leaders on 9 August 'unleashed an unprecedented and country-wide wave of mass fury'.

Phases of Quit India Movement

There were three broad phases of the movement:

·         The first phase was predominantly urban and included hartals, strikes and clashes with the police and army in most major cities. All these were massive and violent but quickly suppressed.

·         The second phase started from the middle of August. Militant students fanned out from different centres, destroying communications and leading peasant rebellion in Northern and Western Bihar, Eastern UP, Midnapore in Bengal, and pockets in Maharastra, Karnataka and Orissa. A number of short-lived local 'national governments' were also set up.

·         The third phase started from about the end of September and was characterized by terrorist activities, sabotage and guerrilla warfare by educated youths and peasant squads. Parallel national governments functioned at Tamluk in Midnapore[19], Satara in Maharastra, and Talcher in Orissa.

·         All the three phases of the movement were crushed by brutal atrocities including the use of machine guns from the air.

Nature of Quit India Movement

·         A good deal of controversy exists about the nature of the movement-whether it was a 'spontaneous revolution' or an 'organized rebellion'.

·       The famous 'Quit India' resolution passed by the Bombay session of the AICC on 8^th August, 1942 followed up its call for 'mass struggle on non violent lines on the widest possible scale', 'inevitably' under Gandhi, with the significant rider that if the Congress leadership was removed by arrest, every Indian who desires freedom and strives for it must be his own guide...'.

·         At the crucial working committee session of 27 April - 1 May, Gandhi's hard-line was backed by a combination of Right-wingers like Patel, Rajendra Prasad and Kripalni and the socialists like Achyut Patwardhan and Narendra Dev.

·         Jawaharlal was initially hesitant, but ultimately joined the queue and only the Communists opposed the Quit India resolution.

·         During and after the Quit India upsurge, the British in documents like Tottenhams' Report painted the whole outburst as a 'deliberate fifth columnist[20] conspiracy', intending to strengthen the Axis powers.

·       This interpretation not only ignored the consistent anti-fascist international stance of the Congress throughout the 1930s, but also made a historical travesty of the facts that being arrested in the early morning of 9 August the Congress leaders could hardly lead the outburst.

·         The movement was, in reality 'elemental and largely spontaneous'.

·         It was sparked off by a variety of factors and of an expectation that British rule was coming to an end.

·         Bureaucratic high-handedness and provocation worsened the situation.

·         Financial losses incurred in Malay and Burma induced sections of Indian business community to give some covert support to a movement (even if violent) for a short while.

·         The real picture was that the removal of established leaders left younger and more militant cadres to their own initiative and gave greater scope to pressure from below.

·         The participation of labour was short-lived and limited but there was certainly considerable covert upper-class and even Indian high official support to secret nationalist activities in 1942.

·         Such support enabled activists to set up a fairly effective illegal apparatus, including even a secret radio station under Usha Mehta for three months in Bombay.

·         Unlike in the Civil Disobedience days, middle class students were very much in the forefront in 1942, whether in urban clashes, as organizers of sabotage, or as motivators of present rebellion.

·         What made the movement so formidable, however, was the massive upsurge of the peasantry in certain areas, particularly in Bihar.

·         Indeed, that 1942 clearly surpassed all previous Congress led movements in its level of anti-British radicalism possibly reduced internal class tensions and social radiation.

·         In the struggle there were many who refused to use violent means and confined themselves to the traditional weaponry of the Congress.

·         But many of those, including many staunch Gandhians, who used 'violent means' in 1942 felt that the peculiar circumstances warranted their use.

·         Gandhi refused to condemn the violence of the people because he saw it as a reaction to the much bigger violence being perpetrated on the state.

·         It is held that Gandhi's major objection to violence was that its use prevented mass participation in a movement.

·         For in 1942, Gandhi had come round to the view that mass participation would not be restricted as a result of isolated violence.

·         He would have liked the movement to be non-violent but was prepared to run the risk of unrestricted mass action even if that meant civil war.

·         The Quit India movement was thus not a controlled volunteer movement like Gandhi's previous movements of 1920-22 and 1930-34.

·         It was to be a 'fight to the finish', an 'open rebellion', 'short and swift' which could very well plunge the country into a 'conflagration'.

·         The continuing police repression and 'Ordinance Raj' further inflamed the feelings of the people.

·         There had been no Congress call for civil disobedience. 'Therefore what started as individual acts of angry defiance, soon swelled into a movement and the movement into a revolt'.

·         The gravity and extent of the Quit India movement by Linlithgow's own admission may be compared to that of the Revolt of 1857.

Why it failed?

·         It failed because an unarmed people without leaders and proper organization could not stand for long before the mighty strength of an imperial government in power.

Significance of Quit India Movement

·         Yet, the significance of the great movement lay in the fact that it placed the demand for independence on the immediate agenda of the national movement.

·         After Quit India, there could be no turning back.

·         Any future negotiations with the British government could only be on the manner of transfer of power.

·         Independence was no longer a matter of bargain and this became amply clear after the war.

Participation of women in the movement

·         When most of the men-folk were in prison, women came forward to take charge of the struggle.

·         Mahatma Gandhi remarked: “When the history of India’s fight for independence comes to be written, the sacrifice made by the women of India will occupy the foremost place.”

·         Uneducated and educated women sacrificed time and materials, volunteering, campaigning, protesting, fasting, and donating to the causes of freedom.

·         Some women students protested against the British rule by picketing the Secretariat.

UNDERGROUND PARALLEL GOVERNMENTS DURING THE COURSE OF QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT

Bhagalpur

·         The people declared the establishment of a National Government or Jatiya Sarkar in North Bhagalpur. Under the guidance of indomitable revolutionary Siaram Singh a parallel government sprang up at Sultanpur.

·         An efficient administrative system was set up by the people in the areas.

·         Swatantra Mandal was the highest body which worked through village Panchayats.

·         Above it were thana Panchayats.

·         There were four main departments under Swatantra Mandal - Department of Dislocators, Publicity Department, Village Defence Department and Volunteers Department or Sevak Dal.

·         The head of each of the Department was known as Adliyaksha whose orders were carried out by the Sevak Dals under him.

·         The two revolutionary groups Siaram Dal and Parasuram Dal were active in Bihar.

·         The movement took a very serious turn in U.P. especially in the eastern District of Ballia.

·         The Mob led by a local Congressman Chitu Pandey according to government version had installed himself as Swaraj Tahasildar.

·         The arrested leaders were made free and National Government was established under Chitu Pandey.

Midnapore

·         The best account of a rebel 'National Government' is found from Tamluk sub-division of Midnapore district in Bengal.

·         In comparison with Ballia and Bhagalpur flare-up it was less violent but better organised and more sustained.

·         Well-planned attacks were made on the police stations of Tamluk, Mahishadal, Sutahat and Naudigrah.

Satara

·         The people threw up the foreign yoke and set up a parallel government known as 'Satara Prati Sarkar'.

·         Nana Patil was at the head of this government which ran its course for a number of months.

·         The parallel government developed bit late from mid 1943 and maintained its existence as late as 1945-46.

·         It managed to run people's courts (Nyayadan Mandals).

·         Apart from carrying guerilla war it took constructive works on Gandhian lines.

·         Mortgaged land was returned to poor peasants and exploitation of women by village big wigs were severely tackled.

Others

·         The most spectacular was the formation of a parallel government on 17^th December, 1942 in Eran-Basudevpur.

·         It was handed as Swadhina Banchhanidhi chakla (in the name of native Oriya Nationalist poet Banchhanidhi Mohanty) comprising 6 Panchayats and 24 villages.

·         For the smooth functioning of the government a five member apex committee was formed with Gouranga Chandra Mohanty as its Prime Minister and Ramala Prasad Kar as its Director-cum-Commander-in-chief.

·         Anirudha Mohanty, Pravakar Tripathy and Shyam Sundar Panigrahi were the three members.

Talcher

·         It had already witnessed struggle against forced labour (Bethi), forest laws and autocratic rule in September 1938.

·         The immediate cause of the popular upsurge was a rumour that Pabitra Mohan Pradhan, President of Talcher state Prajamandal had been murdered.

·         For all practical purposes the ruler's administration had collapsed from 31^st August 1942.

·         The Jatiya Sarkar was called as 'Chasi-Maulia' or 'Mazdoor Raj'.

·         It was to be set up on the basis of adult franchise in each village, block, circle, pargana and sub-division.

·         The Central Government was accordingly constituted on the same line.

·         Some government servants voluntarily resigned and swore allegiance to the New Raj.

·         People had their Raj almost in the whole of Talcher except Talcher town where the ruler and his entourage were under British protection.

·         A National Militia was formed by the rebels.

·         They were well equipped with crude implements and made an organized march in Talcher principality.

·         They requested the ruler to relinquish British authority and to hand over the government of Kisan Mazdoor Raj – the ruler might act as the constitutional head.

·         The counter move started with the machine - gunning the mob from the air.

·         The firing of the British troops below resulted in many casualties.

·         Thus Talcher was one of the five places in India where in 1942 the masses were machine-gunned from air because of the intensity of the movement.

Jatiya Sarkar

·         It bloomed in the Gurpal area of Balasore district in September 1942.

·         The residents of the locality being influenced by Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar in the East and Swadhina Banchhanidhi Chakla in the west resolved to have their own National Government.

·         A strong determined public in the open meetings vowed to paralyze the Government machinery.

·         Payment of taxes were stopped.

·         Government servants were socially boycotted.

·         Rural police force was compelled to resign.

·         Post offices, police station and the government offices were demolished.

·         In a parallel judicial system the criminal cases were settled by local Panchayat courts rather than by government institutions.

 

A UNITED STRUGGLE FOR UNITED INDIA: AZAD HIND FAUJ

• In the history of India’s freedom struggle, the INA occupies an important place.
• At the time when there were all round divisions on the Indian national scene, the INA exhibited complete national unity.
• This armed struggled of the INA forced the British to realize that they could no longer depend upon the loyalty of the Indian Army for the maintenance of their rule in the country.
• Besides, the countrywide support and sympathy of the Indian masses for the INA and the opposition of the Indian section of the British Indian Army to the INA trials led the British to transfer power through a negotiated settlement.
• Thus the INA revolt hastened the end of British rule of India.

Origin and Growth

• The INA was organized during the Second World War on September 1, 1942.
• It was first raised by Captain Mohan Singh and Mohammad Akram.
• They came across Giani Pritam Singh, an Indian revolutionary and Secretary General of the Indian Independence League of Thailand and Malaya, with some Sikhs and Major Fujihara from the Japanese forces.
• Giani Pritam Singh informed them that if they took up the cause of their motherland, the Japanese would welcome it and render all assistance to them.
• Captain Mohan Singh seized the opportunity without hesitation.
• He with Japanese help contacted Indian soldiers and persuaded them not to fight for the British Empire but to utilize the opportunity presented by the war for the liberation of India.
• This plan was started by the end of December 1941 and by the end of August 1942, more than 45,000 Indian soldiers, who had been taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese, had joined the INA.
• To materialize the plan of India’s freedom, it was decided by the Indian and Japanese Army Officers and Civilians in Malaya and Thailand to send a select team to Tokyo for consultations with the Japanese High Command as well as with well-known revolutionaries residing there, namely, Raja Mahendra Pratap and Rash Behari Bose.
• The team  included Captain Mohan Singh, Mohammad Akram and Niranjan Singh Gill from the Army side and K.P.K. Menon, N. Raghvan, S.C. Gopi and N.K. Aiyer, all leading lawyers, and Giani Pritam Singh and Swami Satyanand Puri from the civilian side.
• Along with the Japanese team, they flew to Tokyo in to planes in March 1942. Unfortunately the plane carrying Mohammad Akram, Giani Pritam Singh and Swami Satyanand Puri crashed, killing them all.
• They were thus the first martyrs of the INA movement.
• At Tokyo the Indian team met General Tojo, the Japanese Premier, Raja Mahendra Pratap and Ras Behari Bose.
• The latter had founded the Indian Independence League first in Japan and then in all the areas of South-East Asia occupied by Japan that had small pockets of Indians.
• It was at Tokyo that the decision to form the INA was taken.
• It was also decided to hold a conference at Bangkok to seek the co-operation of three million members of the Indian community living all over the East.
• This was held from June 15 to 20, 1942 and attended by 150 Indian delegates.
• The conference commenced with the raising of the tri-colour flag by Rash Behari Bose.
• The Conference decided to set up the INA comprising Indian troops and civilians of East Asia with Captain Mohan Singh as the Commander-in-Chief with the objective of fighting for the freedom of India.
• A council of Action was formed with Rash Behari Bose as its President, Major General Mohan Singh head of the INA and in charge of Defence Affairs.
• By September, three Brigades were formed.
• The Gandhi Brigade was commanded by Lt. Col. M.Z. Kiani;
• Nehru Brigade by Lt. Aziz Ahmed Khan; and
• Azad Brigade by Col. Prakash Chand.
• The members of the INA were exhorted to adopt three principles, that is, Unity, Faith and Sacrifice.
• The Conference, in one of its resolutions, invited S.C. Bose to East Asia to lead the INA movement.
• The INA opened its headquarters at Mount Pleasant in Singapore, the place where no Indian or Asiatic was allowed even to walk.
• Papers were published to rouse the Indians living abroad for the cause of the INA.
• Voice of India and Azad Hind in English, Awaz Hind and Azad Hind in Hindustani and Swatantra Bharat in Tamil, published from Singapore, were quite popular.
• An INA Officers Training School was opened with Lt. Col. Shah Nawaz as the first Commandant.
• The Qaumi song was ‘Sare Jahan Se Acchha Hindustan Hamara’.
• However, differences arose between the INA officials and the Japanese.
• Captain Mohan Singh wanted the Japanese to recognize Indian independence immediately while the Japanese officials were reluctant to do so.
• Mohan Singh became suspicious of the Japanese motives and on December 21, he announced the dissolution of the INA.

Subhas Chandra Bose

• Bose was a disciple of C.R. Das in politics.
• Within the Congress he belonged to the Left Group and was no less popular than Pandit Nehru.
• Bose stood and won the election second time for the post of President in 1939 despite Gandhi’s opposition defeating Pattabhi Sitarammaya.
• In spite of winning the election Bose had to resign because of Gandhi and his supporters’ displeasure.
• He was also suspended from the Congress. Rajendra Prasad, was appointed as the President of the Congress.     
• When Second World War broke out the British put Subhas in jail and later under house arrest due to his opposition to the war efforts.
• He escaped from Calcutta in January 1941 and reached Berlin via Peshawar and Kabul in March 1941 with the help of Akbar Shah, Mohammad Shah, Abad Khan and Bhagat Ram Talwar.
• In Berlin, he founded the Free India Centre and created the Indian Legion consisting of 45,000 soldiers out of the Indian prisoners of war.
• In the first official meeting of the Free Indian Centre on November 2, 1941 he was conferred the title of Netaji.
• ‘Jai Hind’, was introduced as the national greeting and Jana Gana Mana was adopted as the national anthem and Hindustani, the most widely spoken language, as the national language of independent India.
• Azad Hindi Radio too started functioning by the end of the year and Azad, a bilingual journal, was published regularly.
• Bose met both Hitler and Mussolini but resented the attack on Russia by Germany.
• However, he was enthused on hearing the phenomenal success of the Japanese against the British.
• He accepted the request to lead the INA and reached Japan by a German submarine accompanied by Abid Hasan.
• The day after his arrival, Bose was invited by Japanese Premier Tojo to the Japanese Parliament [Diet] where, in his presence, the Japanese Parliament made an official declaration affirming full and unqualified support to the cause of Indian independence.
• Bose spoke from Tokyo over the radio of his firm determination to launch an armed fight against the British from Indian’s eastern border.
• The overseas Indians were thrilled with delight at the prospect of participating in this venture.

Coming of Subash and Reorganization

• Bose arrived in Singapore on July 2, 1943.
• On July 4, Rash Behari Bose handed over the leadership of the India Independence League and INA which still existed despite its dissolution by Captain Mohan Singh.
• On July 5, Bose took the salute of the INA soldiers, himself dressed in military uniform.
• On August 26, 1943, he became the supreme commander of the INA renaming it as Azad Hind Fauj.
• It was there that Bose gave a clarion call to the youth: Tum mujhe khoon do, mein tumhein azadi doonga. [Give me blood, I will give you freedom.]’
• Bose also visited the tomb of the last Indian Emperor of free India, Bahadur Shah, to pay his humble homage to the great soul.
• In September a new brigade, known as the Guerrilla Regiment, was raised with Shah Nawaz its Commander.
• The soldiers themselves gave it the name Subhas Brigade.
• A regiment of women named after Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi was organized on October 23 under Captain Laxmi Swaminathan.
• A nursing unit of women too was formed and it was named after Chand Bibi.
• On October 21, 1943 Bose announced the formation of the Provisional Government of free India ‘Aarzi Hakumat-i-Azad Hind’ with himself as the Head of the State and Supreme Commander of the Azad Hind Fauj. Rash Behari Bose and Bashir Ahmed were appointed Advisors.
• The government was immediately recognised by the Axis powers and countries under their control.  
• The Japanese also handed over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to Subhash.
• He renamed the Islands s ‘Shaheed’ and ‘Swaraj’ and appointed Lt. Col. Loganathan as the Chief Commissioner of these.
• Due to Muslims’ objection to Bande Matram, a song, Subha Sukha Chainki Barkha Barse, composed by a Muslim named Hussain, was approved.
• The national salutation was hanged from Bande Mataram to Jai Hind.
• Bose also decided that the tri-colour flag should be retained but without the charkha.
• To liberate India an action plan was drawn up and accordingly the headquarters of the Provisional Government were shifted to Rangoon in January 1944.
• The Azad Hind Bank was also opened.
• The Subhas Brigade under the command of Shah Nawaz Khan, reached Burma to take part in the battlefield first.
• In the middle of March 1944, the INA Soldiers inflicted a defeat upon the much praised Negro troops from Africa in the British Army while engaged in constructing a bridge over the Kaladan river.
• The INA troops, reinforced by Japanese troops, then advanced towards the Indian border.
• The INA was in action on two fronts-one in the Araken areas and the other along the Imphal Road.
• The nearest British post on the Indian side was Mowdok.
• It was captured in May 1944.
• Under the inspiring leadership of Bose the INA moved towards Kohima and along with the Japanese forces captured Kohima in March 1944.

Causes of Failure

• By the end of May the Allied forces were well prepared for the offensive.
• Torrential rains cut off the supply of ration and ammunition.
• The British forces then moved towards Burma and the Japanese retreated.
• Rangoon, which was left in the hands of the INA, was occupied by the British in May 1945.
• In Europe, Italy had fallen and Germany was collapsing.
• There was no alternative before the INA then to surrender.
• They were disarmed and made prisoners and brought back to India.
• But Bose left Burma for Singapore where in early July he laid the foundation stone of the INA Memorial.
• The words inscribed upon the Memorial were Itteefaq [Unity], Etmad [Faith] and Qurbani [Sacrifice].
• Later it was destroyed on Mountbatten’s orders when the Allied forces reoccupied the city.
• Japan surrendered after the bombing of its cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• Bose then planned to go to Russia.
• But before his plan could materialize it is alleged that he died in a plane crash in March 1942.
• Bose’s alleged death ended the INA fight for India’s independence.

INA trials and their significance

• The entire country unitedly rose against the British when the INA soldiers were brought to India and put on trial.
• The INA trials roused the entire country including the Indian sections in the armed forces.
• There were strikes and violent demonstrations against the British and these exhibited complete unity.
• An announcement by the Government, limiting trails of the INA personals to those guilty of brutality or active complicity, was due to be made by the end of August 1945.
• However, before this statement could be issued. Nehru raised the demand for leniency at a meeting in Srinagar on 16^th August 1945.
• The defence of the INA prisoners was taken up by the Congress and Bhulabhai Desai, Tej Bahadur Sapru, K.N. Katju, Nehru and Asaf Ali appeared in court at the historic Red Fort trails.
• The Congress organized an INA relief and enquiry committee, which provided small sums of money and food to the men on their release, and attempted to secure employment for them.

Significance

The INA agitation was a landmark on many counts.

• Firstly, the high pitch or intensity at which the campaign for the release of Ina prisoners was conducted was unprecedented.
• INA Day was observed on 12 November and INA week from 5 to 11 November 1945.
• The second significant feature of the Ina campaign was its vide geographical reach and the participation of diverse social groups and political parties.
• This had two aspects. One was the generally extensive nature of the agitation; the other was the spread of pro – INA sentiment to social groups hitherto outside the nationalist pale.

 

THE POST-1945 DEVELOPMENTS: PARTITION AND INDEPENDENCE

C.R. Formula (1944)

·        C. Rajagopalachari, realizing the necessity of a settlement between the Congress and the Muslim League for the attainment of independence by India. Evolved in 1944, a formula, called the C.R. Formula. Its main contents were:

·         The Muslim League should cooperate with the Congress in the formation of provisional interim government for the transitional period.

·       After the close of war, a commission shall be appointed to demarcate the boundaries of the Muslim-dominated districts in the north-west and east of India. The people of these districts shall decide, be plebiscite, the issue of separation from India.

·         In the event of separation, a mutual agreement shall be entered into between the two governments for jointly safeguarding defence, commece, communications and other essential sectors, etc.

Gandhi-Jinnah Talks (1994)

·         The talks began on September 9, 1944 in Bombay and continued up to September 27, when Jinnah announced their termination and failure to reach agreement. Gandhi maintained that since the `C R Formula’, conceded the substance of the Muslim League demand, he wanted the League to renounce its Lahore Resolution which, in his opinion, was based on the two-nation theory. But Jinnah argued that Gandhi should accept this premise and recognize that Hindus and Muslims were two independent nations.

Desai-Liaqat Pact (1945)

·         Talks between Bhulabhai Desai and Liaqat Ali Khan, leaders of the Congress and the League respectively, were meant to find a way out of the 1942-45 political impasses. After Desai’s declaration at Peshawar on April 22, 1945, Liaqat Ali published the gist of the agreement. According to it, the Congress and the League would form the interim government at the centre on the following lines: (i) nomination of equal number of persons by both in the central executive; and (ii) representation of the minorities, in particular of the scheduled castes and the Sikhs.

·         Known as the Desai-Liaqat pact, it was never formally endorsed either by the Congress or the League.

Wavell Plan and Simla Conference (1945)

·         After the failure of the Gandhi-Jinnah talks based on the C R Formula. Lord Wavell, the then governor-general, offered a new plan to end the Constitutional deadlock. He summoned a conference of the leaders of all the Indian political parties and interest groups at Simla in 1945 to discuss it.

·         His plan proposed to leave the executive council comprising all Indian members, excepting the commander-in-chief, and to give equal representation to the Muslims and Hindus in the council. This was to be an interim arrangement till a new constitution was drafted for India.

·         But the plan as well as the conference ended in failure due to the unreasonable attitude of the Muslim League, headed by Jinnah. He wanted that the League alone should choose the Muslim members of the Executive Council, which was, however, not acceptable to the Congress.

Cabinet Mission Plan (1946)

·       In the 1945 general elections of England, the Conservatives under Churchill were routed by the Labour Party under C.R. Attlee who took over as the new prime minister. Soon after Lord Wavell was summoned to London and informed that Britain had made up its mind to quit India.

·         Later, in the same year (1945-46) elections were held in India also to the provincial assemblies and the legislative assembly at the centre. In these general elections, the Congress won 57 seats in the Central Legislative Assembly. The Muslim league captured all the 30 seats reserved for Muslims. In the provinces, while in 1937 the Congress had 714 seats, in 1946 it won 923. The League did even better: in 1937, its representatives numbered a bare 109 out of the Muslim quota of 492; in 1946, it won 425 seats, its percentage going up to eighty-six.

·        On March 24, 1946, a special mission of cabinet ministers consisting of Lord Pethick Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps and A.V. Alexander came to India to help her to achieve freedom as speedily as possible. The mission spent nearly five weeks in discussions with the representatives of the Indian States as well as those of British India. Finally, a conference of leaders of the Congress and League was begun at Simla on May 5 to consider the grouping of provinces; character of the federal union; and the setting up of a constitution-making machinery.

·       When the Congress and League differences were found to be irreconcilable, the conference was closed. On May 16 the mission published a statement putting forward their recommendations, which came to be known as the Cabinet Mission Plan. Its main provisions were as follows:

·         A union of India, comprising both British India and princely states, should deal with three subjects viz. foreign affairs, defence and communications.

·         All subjects other than the Union subjects and all residuary powers should vest in the provinces of British India.

·         The princely states would retain all subjects other than those ceded to the Union.

·         Provinces should be free to form groups (subfederal).

·        The constitution of the Union and the groups should contain a provision whereby province should by a majority vote of its legislative assembly call for a reconsideration of the terms of the constitution after an initial period of ten years.

·       The formation of a constituent assembly on the basis of the recently elected provincial legislatures by allotting to each province a total number of seats proportional to its population. Elections were to be held by a method of proportional representation with single transferable vote.

·         To carry on the country’s administration while the constitution-making was proceeding, an interim government having the support of the major political parties should be set up.

·        The proposed Constituent Assembly was to consist of 292 members from British India and 93 from the Indian States. The British India members were to be divided into 210 General (viz., all those who were not Muslims or Sikhs), 78 Muslim and 4 Sikh seats. In the preliminary meeting, the Assembly was to elect not only a chairman and other office bearers but also an advisory committee. Next it divided itself into three sections consisting of groups of Provinces `A’, `B’, `C’. Provinces thus, put in group `A’ were Madras. Bombay, the United Provinces, Bihar, the Central Provinces and Orissa; Group `B’ consisting of Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province and Sind; and Group `C’, Bengal and Assam.

·         Further, it was provided that any decision about the secession of any province from a group would be taken by the legislature of that province after the first general election under the new constitution.                          

·         Both the Congress and the League were quite ambivalent in their reaction to the Cabinet Mission proposals. And about the issue of filling posts in the proposed interim government, there was more disagreement.

·         Thus Cabinet Mission got exasperated in its attempts to find a meeting ground between the two major political parties. For members of the Mission could satisfy neither the Congress nor the League. Finally they left for England on 29 June.

·        The Congress agreed to contest the election and take part in the constituent assembly, but refused to join the interim government. The Muslim League approved the plan and expected the viceroy to call upon it to form the interim government. But the viceroy refused to do so. The League refused to participate in the constituent assembly that met to draft the constitution. It continued its insistence on Pakistan and called upon the British government to dissolve the constituent assembly.

Direct Action Day

·         The League decided on July 30 that August 16 would be observed as `Direct Action Day’ throughout the country. In this tense situation, the viceroy’s decision to invite the Congress to form the interim government at the centre added fuel to the fire. In Calcutta on August 16, the league organized public demonstration and hartals, resulting in clashes and rioting all over the city. The mob fury continued for four consecutive days, after which normalcy was gradually restored. The Bengal government led by the League leader, H.S. Suhrawardy had declared August 16 a public holiday which made things worse. Nor did it call the army until the situation had got completely out of hand.

Interim Government (1946-47)

·         The personnel and portfolios of the composite four-teen member government were – Jawaharlal Nehru (vice-president of the Executive Council, External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations); Vallabhai Patel (Home, information and Broadcasting); Baldev Singh (Defence); Dr John Matthai (Industries and Supplies); C. Rajagopalachari (Education); C.H. Bhabha (Works, Mines and Power); Rajendra Prasad (Food and Agricultural); Asaf Ali (Railways); Jagjivan Ram (Labour); Liaqat Ali Khan (Finance); T.T. Chundrigar (Commerce); Abdur Rab Nishtar (Communications); Ghazanfar Ali Khan (Health); and Jogendra Nath Mandal (Law). The first nine represented the Congress, while the last five belonged to the League.

Constituent Assembly (1946-50)

·         Elections to the Constituent Assembly were over by the end of June 1946. Out of a total of 292 seats allotted to British Indian, 4 remained vacant because of the Sikh refusal to join the Assembly. The remaining 288 were divided into three sections: `A’, `B’ and `C’. In Section `A’ Congress won 162 general and two Muslim seats, the League 19 and the Independents one. In group `B’ the Congress won 7 general and 2 Muslim seats; the League 19, the Unionist Party 3, Independents one. In group `C’, the Congress won 32, the League 35, the Communists 1, the Scheduled Castes 2 and the Krishak Praja Party 1. Thus totally the Congress won 201; the Muslim League 73; there were 8 independents and 6 members from other parties.

·         The Assembly held its first meeting on December 9 in the Library of the Council Chamber and 205 members attended. The League representatives abstained, as did those form the Indian States. As part of the preliminary business, the Assembly elected a committee of 15 to frame the rules of procedure, and Dr. Rajendra Prasad as Chairman.

·         The most important resolution known as the `Objective Resolution’ was adopted by the Assembly on January 22, 1947. It was later to the incorporated substantially into the Preamble of the Indian Constitution. After nearly three years of strenuous work, the constitution was finally adopted by the Assembly on November 26, 1949 and came into force on January 26, 1950.  

Mountbatten Plan and Achievement of Freedom (1947)

·         Lord Mountbatten, who replaced to effect the transfer of power at the earliest opportunity, and worked out a compromise plan after long discussions with the leaders of the Congress and the League.

·         According to his plan, India was to be free but not united. The main contents of the plan were:

June Third Plan (1947)

·         Though the work of the existing Constituent Assembly was to be continued, the constitution framed by it was not applicable to those parts of India unwilling to accept it.

·        For ascertaining the wishes of the different parts of the country, two alternative suggestions were made, viz. (i) through the existing Constituent Assembly which would be joined by the representatives of the dissident parts; or (ii) through separate constituent assemblies.

·         In the case of provinces, the following arrangements were made: (i) in the Punjab and Bengal the legislative assembly would be divided into two sections, one for members belonging to the Muslim-majority districts and the other for the non-Muslim districts. If any of them opted for partition of the provinces, each section would join that constituent assembly preferred by the provinces; (ii) the legislative assembly of a province would decide which constituent assembly the province would join; (iii) in the NWFP this choice would be exercised through a referendum; (iv) the district of Sylhet in Assam would also decide its choice by means of a referendum; (v) the Governor-General would prescribe the method and mode of ascertaining the will of the people of Baluchistan; (vi) there would be elections in parts of the Punjab, Bengal and in Sylhet to choose representatives for their respective constituent assemblies.

·        Negotiation were to be held – (i) between the successor governments concerning the central subjects; (ii) between the successor governments and England for treaties in regard to matters arising out of the transfer of power; (iii) between the parts of the partitioned provinces concerning the administration of provincial subjects.

·         With regard to the Indian States, the British government would cease to exercise the powers of paramountcy. It would then be open to the States to enter into political relations with the successor governments.         

Indian Independence Act (1947)

·       A bill was rushed through the British parliament in the short span of 12 days (4-16 July) and received Royal assent on July 18 to become an act. The Act fixed August 15, 1947 as the date for setting up the two Dominions. It specified the territorial division of India and the constitution of two provinces each in the Punjab and Bengal. It provided for a separate governor-general for each Dominion and a legislature each.

Constitutional Development under the British

REGULATING ACT, 1773

·         Subjected the Company’s actions to the supervision of the British Govt.

·         End of Dual government

·         Governor of Bengal to be the Governor General of British territories of India.

·         Establishment of Supreme Court in Calcutta.

·         The servants of the Company were forbidden to engage in private trade, accept presents or bribes, etc.

PITTS ACT OF 1784

·         The commercial and political activities of the Company were now separated.  Board of Control of six members (including two cabinet ministers) set up to guide and supervise the affairs of the Company in India.

·         Three members will be there in Governor General’s Executive Council.

·         Secret Committee of three Directors were to look into political and military affairs.  [Governor General and the council were forbidden to declare war and make treaties without the sanction of secret committee].

·         Madras and Bombay Presidencies were subordinated to the Governor-General-in-Council of Bengal in all matters.

·         This act gave the British government a measure of control over the Company’s affairs.  In fact, the Company became a subordinate department of the State.

ACT OF 1786

·         Governor General given the power to over-ride the council and was made Commander-in-Chief also.

CHARTER ACT OF 1793

·         Company given monopoly of trade for 20 more years.

·         Expenses and salaries of the Board of Control to be charged on Indian revenue.

·         The Governor General and the Governors could now over-ride the decisions of their respective Councils.

·         All laws were to be translated in Indian languages.

·         It laid the foundation of govt. by written laws, interpreted by courts.

CHARTER ACT OF 1813

·         Company deprived of its trade monopoly in India except in tea and trade with China.  This made the Company more of an administrative body.  All Englishmen could trade with India subjective to few restrictions.

·         A sum of Rs. 1 lakh earmarked annually for education of Indians.

·         Further, Christian missionaries of govt. by written laws, interpreted by courts.

CHARTER ACT OF 1833

·         End of Company’s trade monopoly even in tea and trade with China.  Company was asked to close its commercial business at the earliest.

·         All restrictions on European immigration into India and acquisition of land and property in India by them were removed, legalizing European colonization of India.

·         Governor General of Bengal to be Governor of India; all powers, administrative and financial, were centralized in the hands of the Governor-General-in Council. (1^st Governor General of India William Bentinck).

·         President of Board of control became the minister for Indian affairs.

·         A law member (without power to vote) was added to the Executive Council of the Governor General.  Macaulay was the first Law member.  This increased the Council’s strength to four with it began the Indian Legislature.

·         A law commission was constituted for constituted for codification of laws.

·         The Act threw to all, irrespective of religion, place of birth, decent and colour, services under the Company.

CHARTER ACT OF 1853

·         The Act renewed the powers of the Company and allowed it to retain the possession of Indian territories in trust for the British Crown but not for any specified period.

·         The numbers of members of the Court of Directors was reduced from 24 to 18 of which 6 were to be nominated by the Crown.

·         The Law member was made a full member of the Governor General’s Executive Council.

·         Legislation was treated for the first time as separate from executive functions.

·         Questions could be asked and the policy of the Executive Council could be discussed, though the Executive Council could veto a bill of the Legislative Council.

·         Recruitment to the Civil Services was based on open annual competition examination (excluding Indians).

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT, 1858

·         Rule of Company in India ended and that of the Crown began.

·       System of Dual government ended.  Court of Directors and board of Control abolished and substituted them with a post of Secretary of State (a member of the British cabinet).  He was assisted by a 15-member council (called Indian Council).  He was to exercise the powers of the Crown.

·         Secretary of the State governed India through the Governor General.

·         Governor General received the title of Viceroy.   He represented Secretary of State and was assisted by an Executive Council, which consisted of high officials of the Govt.

·         A unitary and highly centralized administrative structure was created.

INDIAN COUNCIL ACT, 1861

·        A fifth member, who was to be a jurist, was added to the Viceroy’s Executive Council.

·     6–12 additional members to be added to the Executive Council for legislation purpose.  This implied that Viceroy’s Executive council, which was so long composed of officials, would now include certain additional non-official members.  Some of non-official seats were offered to natives of high ranks.  Thus, a minute element of popular participation was introduced in the legislative process.  The additional members, though had little powers.

·        The Executive Council was now to be called Central Legislative Council.

·        Viceroy could issue ordinances in case of emergency.

INDIAN COUNCIL ACT, 1892

·         Two improvements in both the Central and the Provincial Legislative Councils were suggested.

·        Though the majority of the official members was retained, the non-official members were to be nominated by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Provincial Legislative Councils. [The non official members of the Provincial Councils were to be nominated by certain local bodies such as universities, district boards, municipalities].  Indian leaders like G. K. Gokhale, Ashutosh Mukherjee, Ras Bihari Ghosh and S. N. Banerjee found their way in the Legislative Council. 

·         The Councils were to have the powers to discuss the annual statement of revenue and expenditure (i.e. the budget) and of addressing questions to the Executive.  They could also put questions, within certain limits, to the Government on matters of public interest after giving six days notice.

INDIAN COUNCIL ACT, 1909 OR MORLEY MINTO ACT

·         Legislative Councils, both at the Centre and in the Provinces, were expanded.

·         With regard to Central government, an Indian member was taken in the executive Council of the Governor General.

·         The size of the Provincial Legislative Councils was enlarged by including elected non-official members so that the official majority was gone.  Their functions were also increased.  Now, they could move resolutions on Budget and on some public matters.

·         An element of election was also introduced in the Central Legislative Council, but the official majority was maintained.

·         The most notable and retrograde change introduced was that Muslims were given separate representation.  Thus, communal representation was introduced.

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT, 1919 OR MONTAGUE CHELMSFORD REFORMS

·         Dyarchy system introduced in the provinces.  It was considered to be a substantial step towards transfer of power to the Indians.  The Provincial subjects of administration were to be divided into two categories Transferred and Reserved.  The transferred subjects were to be administered by the Governor with the aid of ministers responsible to the Legislative Council.  The Governor and the Executive Council were to administer the reserved subjects without any responsibility to the legislature.

·         Devolution Rules: Subjects of administration were divided into two categories Central and Provincial.  Subjects of all India importance (like railways and finance) were brought under the category of Central, while matters relating to the administration of the provinces were classified as Provincial.

·         The Provincial Legislature was to consist of one House only (Legislative Council)

·         The number of Indians in the Governor Generals Executive Council was raised to three in a Council of eight.  The Indian members were entrusted with departments such as Law, Education, Labour, Health and Industries.

·         The Centre was now to have a Bicameral Legislature for the first time.  It actually happened after 1935 Act.

·         Communal representation extended to Sikhs, Christians, Anglo Indians, etc.

·         Secretary of State to be henceforth paid salary out of the British revenue.

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT, 1935

·         Provided for the establishment of All India Federation consisting of the British provinces and the Princely States.  The joining of Princely States was voluntary and as a result the federation did not come into existence.

·        Dyarchy was introduced at the Centre (e.g., Department of Foreign Affairs and Defence were reserved for the Governor General). The other Federal subjects were to be administered by the Governor General with the assistance and advice of a Council of Ministers to be chosen by him (but to include representatives of Princely States and minorities, and to be responsible to the Central Legislature). Residuary powers were to be with the Governor General only.      

·       The federal Legislature was to have two chambers (bicameral) the Council of State and the Federal Assembly. The Council of State was to be a permanent body with one-third of its membership being vacated and renewed triennially. The Federal Assembly’s duration was fixed for five years.

·       It made a 3-fold division of powers: Federal Legislative List, Provincial Legislative List and the Concurrent Legislative List. Residuary legislative powers were subject to the discretion of the Governor General. Even if a bill was passed by the Federal Legislature, the Governor General could veto it, while even Acts assented to by the Governor General could be disallowed by the King-in-Council.

·        Provincial autonomy replaced Dyarchy in Provinces i.e, the distinction between Reserved and Transferred subjects was abolished and full responsible government was established, subject to certain safeguards. They were granted separate legal identity.

·         The Governor was the head of the Provincial Executive and was expected to be guided by the advice of the popular ministries. However, the Act gave arbitrary powers to the Governors to act in their `discretions’ in certain matters.

·         The Act also provided for a Federal Court (which was established in 1937), with original and appellate powers) to interpret the Constitution. A Federal Bank (the Reserve Bank of India) was also established.

·         The Indian Council of Secretary of State was abolished.

·         Principle of separate electorate was extended to include Anglo-Indians, Indian Christians and Europeans.

·         Burma (now Myanmar) and Aden were separated from India.

·         Two new provinces, Orissa and Sind were created.

 

SOCIO RELIGIOUS REFORM MOVEMENTS

BRAHMO SAMAJ

·         Rammohan Roy established the Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta in 1828 in order to purify Hinduism and to preach monotheism.

·         The Samaj under him was based on the twin pillars of reason and the ancient Hindu scriptures (only the Vedas and the Upanishads), and incorporated the best teachings of other religions as well.

Rammohan Roy (1772-1833)

·         Born in 1772 at Radhanagar in Burdwan district in West Bengal, he is unanimously considered as the first `modern man’ of India.

·         He was a pioneer of socio-religious and political reform movements in modern India.

·         He passed away at Bristol in England in 1833.

·         He was sent to England by the titular Mughal emperor (Akbar II) to plead with the British crown for a larger sum of pension.

His religious ideas and reforms 

·         He studied different languages (Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, English, French, Latin Greek, Hebrew, etc.) in order to study the various religious scriptures in their original.

·         He believed in monotheism (Doctrine of the Unity of God-head) and opposed idol worship.

·         In 1803 he published a Persian treatise called Tuhfat-ul-Muwahidin or `A gift to monotheists’ wherein he explains his concept of monotheism.

·         He established the Atmiya Sabha in Calcutta (1815) in order to propagate monotheism and to fight against the evil customs and practices in Hinduism.

·         Later in 1828 he established the Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta in order to purify Hinduism and to preach monotheism.

·         He also published a book entitled The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to Peace and Happiness (1820), which embodied the moral and spiritual precepts of Jesus without the narratives of the miracles.

·         Further, he defended Hinduism and its Vedanta philosophy, as found in the Vedas and the Upanishads, from the ignorant attacks of Christian missionaries.

His social ideas and reforms

·         He led a life-ling crusade against the practice of sati and finally in 1829 he succeeded in persuading Lord William Bentinck to abolish it.

·         He championed women’s rights, like right of inheritance and property, and attacked polygamy and the degraded state of windows.

·         He fought for the introduction and spread of modern education through the medium of English.

His political ideas and reforms

·         He believed in the unification of divergent groups of Indian society in order to bring about national consciousness in India.

·         He initiated public agitation on political questions like the need for reforms in the British administration, trade and economic policies etc.

·         He also pioneered Indian journalism in order to educate the public on current issues and to represent public opinion before the government.

BRAHMO SAMAJ AFTER ROY

Debendranath Tagore (1817-1905)

·         He established Tattvabodhini Sabha (1839) at Calcutta to propagate Rammohan Roy’s ideas.

·         Formally he joined the Brahmo Samaj in 1843 and reorganized it.

·         He promoted systematic study of India’s past through Tattvabodhini Patrika (a Bengali monthly).

·         He remained undisputed leader of Brahmo Samaj till 1866.

Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-84)

·         He joined Brahmo Samaj in 1857 and became the right hand man of Debendranath.

·         During this time differences developed between the older and conservative section led by Debendranath and the younger and progressive section led by Sen over the issues of social reforms (particularly the caste system) and of the relationship between Hinduism and Brahmoism.

·         While the latter group stood for the complete abolition of the caste system and maintained that Brahmoism is different from Hinduism, the former group wanted to retain caste system, though criticizing its rigidity, and asserted that Brahmoism is Hinduism.

·         This led to secession of Sen’s group from the parent body (which had come to be known as the Adi Brahmo Samaj) in 1865 and formation of a new organization, known as the Brahmo Samaj of India, by it in 1866.

·         He spread the message of Brahmo Samaj in other parts of India including Bombay and Madras.

·         He adopted a much more radical and comprehensive scheme of social reform and infused bhakti into Brahmoism.

·         Further, he formed the `Indian Reform Association’ (1870) and persuaded the British government to enact the Native Marriage Act of 1872 (popularly known as the Civil Marriage Act) which legalized the Brahmo marriages and fixed the minimum age for the groom and the bride at 18 and 14 respectively.

Second schism in Brahmoism

·         The second schism in Brahmoism occurred in 1878 when a group of Sen’s followers, under Ananda Mohan Bose and Shivanatha Shastri, left him and formed the Sadharana Brahmo Samaj.

·         The causes for this split were the question of management of the Samaj and the violation of the Native Marriage Act by Sen himself.

·         He gave his eldest daughter in marriage to the ruler of Cooch Behar, but neither of them had attained the marriageable age under the Act.

MANAV DHARMA SABHA

·         Durgaram Manchharam (1809-78) was a leading figure among the small group of educated Gujaratis who in the 1830s became strong critics of contemporary society.

·         Participants in this group were Dadoba Panderung, Dinmani Shankar, Dalpatram Bhagubai, and Damodar Das.

·         They founded the Manav Dharma Sabha at Surat in 1844 and held meetings every Sunday that were open to anyone who wished to attend.

·         As part of its programme, the Manav Dharma Sabha challenged magicians and the reciters of incarntations to demonstrate their skills.

·         They also criticized caste, but took no direct action against this institution.

·         The Manav Dharma Sabha had only a short career as an active organization.

·         It began to Shatter in 1846 when Dadoba Panderung returned to Bombay, and ceased to function in 1852 when Durgaram Manichharam left for Rajkot.

·         Although its life was severely limited, this Sabha was directly linked to later developments in Maharashtra and Gujarat as its members carried with them the ideals of the movement and became leaders in similar organizations.

PARAMAHANSA MANDALI

·         Its history was closely linked to the Manav Dharma Sabha and to the leadership of Dadoba Panderung (1814-82).

·         Dadoba outlined his doctrines in Dharma Vivechan (1848).

·         He listed seven principles that became the basis for the new association. They are:

·         God alone should be worshipped;

·         Real relation is based on love and moral conduct;

·         Spiritual religion is one;        

·         Every individual should have freedom of thought;

·         Our daily words should be consistent with reason;

·         Mankind is one caste; and

·         The right kind of knowledge should be given to all.

·         These principles denied the polytheism of popular Hinduism, the caste system and the Brahmanical monopoly of knowledge.

·         In 1849, Dadoba and his friends organized the Paramahansa Mandali at Bombay, a radical socio religious society that met in secret.

·         Ram Bal Krishna Jayakar became president of the Mandali.

·         All members were required to pledge that they would abandon caste restrictions.

·         Each initiate had to take food and drink prepared by a member of the lower castes.

·         The group soon came to an agreement on two major principles:

·         First, they would not attack any religion; and

·         Secondly, they rejected any religion which claimed infallibility.

·         Branches of this organization were established in Poona, Ahmednagar, and Ratnagiri.

·         Its insistence on remaining a secret organization illustrated an unwillingness to openly challenge Hindu orthodox.

·         Yet the ideas seen in  the Manav Dharma Sabha and the Paramahansa Mandali appeared once more in the form of a new socio-religious movement.

PRARTHANA SAMAJ

·         An off-shoot of the Brahmo Samaj, it was founded in 1867 in Bombay by Dr. Atmaram Pandurang (1823-98).

·         In 1870 M.G. Ranade and R.G. Bhandarkar joined it and infused new strength in it.

·         It was reform movement within Hinduism, and concentrated on social reforms like inter-dining, inter-marriage, remarriage of windows, and uplift of women and depressed classes.

ARYA SAMAJ

·         The Arya Samaj was founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati at Bombay in 1875.

·         The most distinctive feature of Arya Samaj was the Shuddhi movement, which means the reconversion of those Hindus who had once been willingly or forcibly converted into the fold of Hinduism.

·         It was considered by the Arya Samajists a potent instrument for affecting socio-religious and political unity of India.

·         The Arya Samaj, though founded in Bombay, became very powerful in Punjab and spread its influence to other parts of north India like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat etc.

Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824-83)

·         Originally known as Mul Shankar, Dayanand was born in 1824 in the town of Tankara in Gujarat.

·         He spent 15 years (1845-60) as a wandering ascetic and later received education from Swami Birajananda at Mathura.

·         He founded the Arya Samaj at Bombay in 1875.

His religious and social and reforms

·         He considered the Vedas as eternal and infallible.

·         He was against idolatry, ritual and priesthood.

·         In his opinion priests had perverted Hinduism with the help of the Puranas which were full of falsehood.

·         He attacked child marriages and caste system based on birth; encouraged inter-caste marriages and widow remarriage; favoured the spread of western sciences; and organized social services during natural calamities, etc.  

·         He wrote three books, viz. Satyartha Prakash (in Hindi), Veda-Bhasya Bhumika (Partly in Hindi and partly in Sanskrit) and Veda Bhashya (in Sanskrit).

·         After the death of Dayanand (1883), serious differences arose between two sections of the Arya Samaj over the question of the system of education to be followed, resulting in a split in 1892.

·         One section, known as the Gurukula section led by Swami Shraddhanand, advocated the adoption of the ancient system of Hindu education and established institutions for boys only, the most important among them being the one at Hardwar.

·         The other one, called the College section led by Lajpat Rai and Hans Raj, stood for the spread of English education, and established a number of Dayanand Anglo-Vedic (DAV) schools and colleges both for girls and boys, the most important being the one at Lahore. 

RAMAKRISHNA MISSION AND RAMAKRISHNA MATH

·         The former is a social service and charitable society, formed by Swami Vivekananda in 1897 at Belur, with the objective of carrying on humanitarian relief and social work through the establishment of schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages etc.

·         The latter is a religious order or trust, founded by Vivekananda in 1887 at Baranagar.

·         Belur has become the headquarters of both the Mission and the Math since 1898.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886)

·         Originally known as Godadhar Chattopadhay, he was born in 1836 in Kamarpukur village in Hooghly district in West Bengal.

·         He became a priest in the temple of Goddess Kali at Dakshineshwar near Calcutta (1856).

·         He sought religious salvation in the traditional way of renunciation, meditation and devotion.

·         He emphasized that there were several roads to god and salvation and that service of man was service of god.

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)

·         Originally known as Narendranath Datta, he was born in 1863 in Calcutta.

·         His first visit to Ramakrishna, his future guru, was in 1881.

·         He established a monastery at Baranagar (1887) after the death of his guru.

·         He made an extensive tour of India which brought him into close contact with the people and enabled him to realize the true condition of India.

·         He also attended the World Parliament of Religions (1893) at Chicago (USA) and raised the prestige of India and Hinduism very high.

·         From USA, he visited Europe and returned to India in 1897.

·         Meanwhile he started publishing two papers the monthly Prabudha Bharata in English and the fortnightly Udbodhana in Bengali.

·         Later he made his second visit to USA in 1899 and also spoke at the Congress of the History of Religions at Paris (1900).

·         He returned to India in 1900 and soon expired in 1902 due to ill-health.

His socio-religious ideas and reforms

·         He popularized his guru’s religious message and tried to put it in a form that would suit the needs of contemporary Indian society.

·         He stressed that social action was essential without which knowledge was useless in this world.

·         Further, he condemned the caste system and current Hindu emphasis on rituals, ceremonies, etc, and urged the people to imbibe the spirit of liberty, equality and free thinking.

·         He proclaimed the essential oneness of all religions.

·         Vedanta according to him was a fully rational system.

THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

·         Founded in New York (USA) in 1875 By Madam H.P. Blavatsky (1831-91), a Russian lady, and H.S. Olcott (1832-1907), an American colonel, with three main subjects:

·         To form a universal brotherhood of man.

·         To promote the study of ancient religions and philosophies.    

·         To make a systematic investigation into the mystic potencies of life and matter, called occultism.

·         They arrived in India in 1879 and established their headquarters at Adyar, near Madras in 1882.

·         Later Annie Besant arrived in India in 1893 and succeeded to the presidentship of the society after the death of Olcott in 1907.

·         The society under Besant concentrated on the revival of Hinduism and its ancient ideas.

·         In order to provide Hindu religious instruction, she founded the Central Hindu School at Varanasi (1898), which was later developed into the Benaras Hindu University by Madan Mohan Malavia.

YOUNG BENGAL MOVEMENT

·         Its founder was Henry Vivian Derozio, who was born in Calcutta in 1809 and who taught at the Hindu college between 1826 and 1831.

·         His followers were known as the Derozians and their movements as the Young Bengal movement.

Their socio-religious views

·         They attacked old traditions and decadent customs.

·         Also advocated women’s rights and their education and educated the public on the current socio-economic and political questions through the press and public associations.

·         They carried on public agitation on public questions like freedom of the press, trial by jury, protection of peasants, etc.

OTHER HINDU REFORMERS AND SOCIAL WORKERS

Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar

·         He contributed to the uplift of India women by struggling in favour of widow remarriage.

·         His efforts bore fruit in 1856 when the British passed the Hindu Widow’s Remarriage Act).

·         He also opposed child marriage and polygamy, and campaigned in favour of education of women.

·         He evolved a new technique of teaching Sanskrit and a modern prose style in Bengali.

·         He also admitted non-Brahmin students into Sanskrit College at Calcutta (of which he became the principal in 1851) and introduced the study of Western thought in it.

Gopal Hari Deshmukh

·         A champion of new learning and social reform in Maharashtra, he was popularly known as Lokahitawadi.

·         He made powerful rationalist attacks on Hindu orthodoxy, and preached religious and social equality.

M.G. Ranade

·         One of the prominent members of the Prarthana Samaj as well as the source of inspiration for the foundation of the Deccan Education Society (1884) by Agarkar.

·         He inaugurated the Indian National Social Conference in 1887.

·         Gokhale acknowledged him as his guru.

Gopal Ganesh Agarkar

·         He founded the Deccan Education Society at Poona in 1884 in association with B.G. Tilak, V. Chiplunkar and Madhavrao Namjoshi.

Jyotiba Phule

·         Belonging to a low caste from Maharashtra and being aware of the degraded position of the untouchables and non-Brahmins, he waged a life-long struggle against upper caste domination and Brahmanical supremacy through his Satyashodak Samaj (1873).

·         He pioneered the widow remarriage movement in Maharashtra and worked for the education of women.

Tulsi Ram

·         Popularly known as Shiva Dayal Saheb, he founded the Radha Soami Satsang in 1861 at Agra, with the aim of propagating a monotheistic doctrine.

·         According to him, the only means of salvation was the practice of surat sabdyoga (union of the human soul with the spirit-current or word) under the guidance of a Sant Satguru or sincere lover of the Supreme Being.

·         His teachings were embodied in two books; each named Sarr Bachan (Essential Utterance).

·         The sect recognizes no God of the Hindu Pantheon, nor any temples or sacred places except those sanctified by the presence of the guru or his relics.

Shivnarayan Agnihotri

·         An active member of the Lahore branch of the Brahmo Samaj.

·         Due to differences with the other leaders of the Samaj, he left it and founded the Deva Samaj in 1887 at Lahore with aims similar to those of the Brahmo Samaj but with an additional element, namely the predominance of the guru.

·         The religious text of this Samaj was Deva Shastra and the teaching Devadharma.

·         The guru, claiming supernatural powers, was practically regarded and worshipped as god by his disciples.

Gopala Krishana Gokhale

·         He founded the Servants of India Society in 1905 at Bombay with the aim of training Indian in different fields for the service of their motherland.

·         Earlier he was an active member of the Deccan Education Society (founded by G.G. Agarkar in 1884 at Poona) but left in after some time due to serious differences with Tilak who was also one of its members.

N.M. Joshi

·         Initially a member of Gokhale’s Servants of Indian Society, he founded the Social Service League at Bombay in 1911 with the aim of securing for the masses better and reasonable conditions of life and work.

·         He also founded the All India Trade Union Congress in 1920 at Bombay, but left it in 1929 when it showed leaning towards the Soviet Union, and started the Indian Trades Union Federation.

H.N. Kunzru

·         He founded the Seva Samiti at Allahabad in 1914 with the objective of organizing social service during natural calamities, and promoting education, sanitation, physical culture, etc.

·         He was also a member of the Servants of India Society earlier.

Shri Ram Bajpai

·         Another member of the Servants of India Society, he founded the Seva Samiti Boy Scouts Association in 1914 at Bombay on the lines of the world-wide Barden-Powell Organization, which at that time banned Indians from joining it.

·         Though later Baden-Powell, after a private visit to India, lifted the colour bar, Bajpai’s organization continued its separate existence, for it had the aim of bringing about the complete Indianisation of the Boy Scout movement in India.

Viresalingam Pantulu

·         He was the most prominent social reformer of south India in the second half of the 19^th century.

·         He founded the Rajahmundri Social Reforms Association in Andhra Pradesh ion 1878 with the principal objective of promoting widow remarriage.

MUSLIM REFORM MOVEMENTS

Aligarh Movement

·         It was a movement started by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-98) for the social and educational advancement of the Muslims in India.

·         Other prominent members of the movement were Altaf Hussain Hali, Dr. Nazir Ahmad, Nawab Mushin-ul-Mulk, Chirag Ali, etc,

·         Sir Syed fought medieval obscurantism through his journal Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq, and advocated a rational approach towards religion.

·         He rejected blind adherence to religious law and asked for a reinterpretation of the Quran in the light of reason to suit the new trends of the time.

·         In order to promote English education among the Muslims, he founded in 1875 a modern school at Aligarh, which soon developed into the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (1877) and later into a full-fledged university.

·         In 1866, he founded the Muhammadan Educational Conference as a general forum for spreading liberal ideas among the Muslims.

·         But unfortunately, this movement in the later stages became anti-Congress and anti-Hindu, and pro-British due to some misconceived fears of Hindu domination.

Deband Movement

·         It was the movement that began after the foundation of the Dar-ul-Ulam (name of the institution) at Deoband in 1866 by Maulana Husain Ahmad and others with the aim of resuscitating classical Islam and improving the spiritual and moral conditions of the Muslims.

·         The liberal interpretation of Islam of its founders created political awakening among its followers, and some of them like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad played an important role in the national movement.

Ahrar Movement

·         It was a movement founded in the 1910 under the leadership of Maulana Muhammad Ali, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Hasan Imam, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan and Mazhar-ul-Haq in opposition to the loyalist politics of the Aligarh movement.

·         Moved by modern ideas of self-government, its members advocated active participation in the nationalist movement.

Ahmadia Movement

·         Also known as the Qadiani movement.

·         It was founded by Mirza Gulam Ahmad (1837-1908) at Qadian in Punjab, towards the end of the 19^th century.

·         Its objective was to reform Islam and defend it against the onslaughts of Christian missionaries and the Arya Samajists.

·         It gave religious recognition to modern industrial and technological progress.

·         It has become the most closely knit and the best organized Muslim group in India.

OTHER MUSLIM REFORMERS

Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938)

·         He emphasized the need for a reconstruction of Muslim religious thought in the light of the problems posed by the modern world.

·         Criticized those ascetic elements of religious thought which made man parasitic and indolent, and preached a life of self-assertion and self-realization.

·         Influenced the contemporary Muslim religious attitude through his poetry.   

Maulana Shibli Numani

·         He founded the institution of Nadwah-ul-Ulama at Lucknow in 1894 with the objectives of recasting Muslim educational system, developing religious sciences, reforming Muslim morals and putting an end to theological controversies within Islam.

Syed Nazir Husain

·         He founded the sect of Ahl-i-Hadis (People of the hadis) in Punjab in the second half of the 19^th century.

·         This group considered only the hadis (sayings of the Prophet) and the Quran as the only and the ultimate authority on Islam, and refused to recognize any of the existing four schools of jurisprudence.

Abdullah Chakralavi

·         He founded the sect of Ahl-i-Quran (People of the Quran) in Punjab in the late 19^th century.

·         Its members, also known as the `Chakralavis’, considered only the Quran as the ultimate authority on Islam.

Ahmad Riza Khan

·         He founded the Barelwi school in Punjab in the late 19^th century.

·         Its members, known as `Barelwis’, preached the revival of many old Islamic practices and vehemently opposed the Deoband school and its preachings.    

PARSI REFORM MOVEMENT

·         The refugee Zoroastrains from Iran, known as Paris, are said to have reached Gujarat in 936 AD.

·         Their temples and Domas (towers of silence), where the dead were exposed, were closed to non-Parsis.

·         Over the period the Indian Parsis retained a limited contact with those followers of Zoroastrianism still living in Iran, known as the `Gabars’.

·         In 1746 the Indian Parsis got divided into two groups, when a group of them decided to accept the Irani calendar and came to be known as the `Kadami’ (ancient section) as opposed to the `Shahanshahis’ (royalists), who retained the calendar used in Gujarat.

·         This major division of the community lasted into the 20^th century.

·         Besides the Parsi religion was frequently targeted by the Christian missionaries.

·         In this background, Naroji Furdunji edited in the 1840s the Fam-i-Famshid, a journal aimed at defending the cause of Zoroastrianism.

·         He also wrote a number of pamphlets and published the book, Tarikha Farthest (1850), in which he convincingly argued that Zoroaster pre-dated Jesus Christ.

·         All these events led to the formation of a socio-religious movement designed to codify the Zoroastrian religion and reshape Parsi social life.

·         In 1851, a small group of educated Parsis from Bombay founded the Rahnumai Mazdayasnan Sabha (Paris Reform Society), with funds provided by K.N. Kama.

·         Furdunji Naoroji became its president and S.S. Bengalee, the secretary.

·         In 1850, S.S. Bengalee began publishing a monthly journal, Jagat Mitra (Friend of the World), to further the acceptance of his ideas among literate Parsis.

·         In 1851, he started another journal, Jagat Premi (Lover of the World), for spreading knowledge of ancient Iran.

·         The Sabha also issued its own Journal, Rast Goftar (The Truth Teller), as the main voice of their movement.

·         The leaders of the Sabha criticized elaborate ceremonies at betrothals, marriages and funerals.

·         They opposed both infant marriage and the use of astrology.

·         But the activities of the Sabha divided the Parsis into two groups – those who advocated radical change, and those who wished only limited alternations in customs and rituals.

·         The latter organised the Raherastnumi Mazdayasnan Sabha in opposition to the radicals.

·         In 1863 M.H. Kama founded the orthodox journal, Suryodaya (Sunrise), edited by M.B. Minocheer.

·         This division between radical and orthodox Parsis continued into the 20^th century.

SIKH REFORM MOVEMENT

Nirankaris

·         Baba Dayal Das (1783-1855) was the founder of this movement of purification and return.

·         In the 1840s, he called for the return of Sikhism to its origins and emphasized the worship of God as nirankar (formless).

·         Such an approach meant a rejection of idols, rituals, associated with idolatry, and the priests who conducted these rituals.

·         Stressing the importance and authority of Guru Nanak and of the Adi Granth, he prohibited eating meat, drinking liquor, lying, cheating, using false weights, etc.

·         Before his death Dayal Das named his son Baba Darbara Singh (1814-70), as his successor.

·         Determined to cut all ties with Hinduism, Darbara Singh began to issue hukamnamas (statements describing both doctrine and approved rituals).

·         Under him the Nirankaris had their most rapid period of expansion; for in fifteen years he opened forty new subcentres.

·         Rattan Chand, younger brother and successor of Darbara Singh, also established new centres and appointed biredars (leaders) for each congregation or sangat.

·         The biredars oversaw these groups and were charged with reciting the hukamnamas every fifteen days.

·         Thus they provided a tie between the head of the Nirankari movement and its members.

·         Between 1909 and 1947, Baba Gurdit Singh, son and successor of Rattan Chand, headed the movement.

·         The Nirankaris laid emphasis on Guru Nanak and on Sikhism before the establishment of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh at Anandpur.

·         In this they pursued a path open to both orthodox sikhs, kesadharis, and to the non-baptised ranks of the sahajdharis, but drew members mainly from the urban non-Jat section of the Sikh community.

·         Their dependence on Guru Nanak and early Sikhism for their model of `pure’ religion separated them from another movement, the Namdharis.

Namdharis

·         Baba Ram Singh (1816-85) was the founder of this movement.

·         In 1841, he became a disciple of Balak Singh of the Kuka movement.

·         Before his death, Balak Singh chose Ram Singh as his successor.

·         In 1857, Ram Singh formally inaugurated the Namdhari movement with a set of rituals modeled after Guru Gobind Singh’s founding of the Khalsa.

·         To initiate followers into the new community, Ram Singh used a recitation of gurbani (hymns from the Granth Sahib), ardas (the Sikh prayer), a flag, and baptism.

·         Every baptised Sikh was required to wear the five symbols (kakka).

·         Instead of the sword, Ram Singh required them to keep a lathi.

·         In addition the Namdharis wore white clothes with a white turban and carried a rosary to further set them apart from all others.

·         The Namdharis were to abandon the worship of gods, goddesses, idols, graves, tombs, trees, and snakes.

·         They were also told to abstain from drinking, stealing, adultery, falsehood, slandering, backbiting and cheating.

·         Further, the consumption of beef was strictly forbidden, since protection of cattle remained one of the Namdharis most ardently held values.

SINGH SABHAS

Amritsar Singh Sabha

·         Shaken by Namdhari unrest, the speeches of Shraddha Ram of Arya Samaj, and by Christian conversions, a small group of prominent Sikhs decided to form the Singh Sabha of Amritsar, which held its first meeting on 1 October 1873.

·         Thakur Singh Sandhawalia became its president and Giani Gian Singh its secretary.

·         The aims of the Sabha were:

·         Restoring of Sikhism to its past purity;

·         Publishing historical religious books, magazines and journals;

·         Propagating knowledge using Punjabi;

·         Returning Sikh apostates to their original faith; and

·         Involving high placed Englishmen in the educational programmed of the Sikhs.

·         It was joined by members of the landed gentry, the aristocracy, and by various types of temple servants – pujaris (who conducted rituals), granthis (who receited the Sikh scriptures), mahants (who administered the gurudwaras), gianis and descendants of the gurus.

·         One of the main activities of the Sabha was the preparation of a definitive text of the Dassam Granth.

·         When this task proved very demanding, a separate organization, the Gurmat Granth Pracharak Sabha, was founded to finish it.

·         The Sabha published numerous tracts and books and in 1894 organised the Khalsa Tract Society to popularize Punjabi, the Gurmukhi script, and to issue monthly tracts on the Sikh religion

Lahore Singh Sabha

·         Soon the Amritsar Sabha was emulated and rivaled by a new organization, viz. the Lahore Singh Sabha, which held its first meeting on 2 November 1879.

·         The latter was led by Professor Gurmukh Singh and Bhai Ditt Singh.

·         It announced goals similar to those of the former.

·         The first president of the Lahore Sabha was Diwan Buta Singh, and Bhai Gurmukh Singh served as its secretary.

·         Difference between the two societies soon came to the forefront.

·         The Lahore Sabha was more democratic and accepted members from all castes including untouchables.

·         Their programme of purifying Sikhism directly opposed the vested interests of the Amritsar Sabha.

·         Ditt Singh, coming from a low-caste, wanted to remove the evils of caste system and the institution of guru from the Sikh community.

·         His tract, Sudan Natak, ridiculed the religious establishment and resulted in a court case.

·         The Lahore Sabha expanded with local branches in many of the Punjab towns.

·         The Amritsar Sabha developed its own societies, but its growth was far slower than the Lahore society.

Other Sabhas

Khalsa Diwan

·         In 1880 a General Sabha was founded at Amritsar to provide a central organization for all Singh Sabhas.

·         On 11 April, 1883 this was renamed the Khalsa Diwan, Amritsar.

·         It included 36 to 37 different Singh Sabhas as well as the Lahore association.

·         But this effort at unity was short-lived.

·         In 1886 the Lahore Singh Sabha created its own Khalsa Diwan (Sikh Council).

·         Only the Sabhas of  Faridkot, Amritsar, and Rawalpindi allied with the original Diwan; the rest turned to the Lahore leadership and to its radical ideology of social and religious change.

·         The Lahore Khalsa Diwan received assistance from the Maharaja of Nabha as its patron, while Sir Attar Singh served as its president and Bhai Gurmukh Singh as its secretary.

·         The Singh Sabhas continued to expand, new branches were founded that, at times, created their own distinct ideas and programmes.

·         The Bhasur Singh Sabha became a hub of Sikh militancy under the leadership of Bhai Teja Singh.

·         It was aggressive in its missionary zeal and extreme in its ideology.

·         In time it developed into the Panch Khalsa Diwan and competed with other Khalsa Diwans.

·         The low-caste Sikhs, particularly the Rahtias (untouchable weavers) from the Jullundur Doab, demanded that the Singh Sabhas remove their social and religious liabilities, caste system.

·         Since the Singh Sabha leaders did not respond to their pleas, they turned to the Arya Samaj, which welcomed them and conducted public ceremonies of Shuddhi for Rahtias.

·         Thus, in the 20^th century the Singh Sabhas were overwhelmed by other organizations.

·         In the first decade they were supplanted by the Khalsa Diwans and then in the second decade by the struggle for control over the Sikh places of worship.

Akali Movement

·         The next important Sikh reform movement was the Akali movement in the 1920s.

·         The main aim of the Akalis was to purify the management of the Sikh gurudwaras or shrines by removing the corrupt and selfish mahants (priests) from them.

·         Their movement led to the enactment of a new Sikh Gurudwara Act by the British in 1925, and with the help of this Act and sometimes through direct action, they removed the mahants from the gurudwaras and managed them through the Shiromani Gurudwaras Prabhandhak Committee (SGPC).

Nature and Limitations of 19^th Century Renaissance

Nature and Character

·         The socio-religious ferment that characterized this period was religious in character.

·         Secularization was not yet a stance, although a few anticipated it.

·         The leaders couched their appeals in religious language and were heard as spiritual persons.

·         By and large, they stayed away from politics. Only a few had opposed British rule and preached overthrowing the British rule.

·         The economic ideas of the reform leaders represented the traditional outlook.

·         They never possessed radical economic ideas, for the time was not ripe to breed such ideas.

·         A lot of difference can be observed in the approach and methods of the leaders in carrying out the reform movement.

·         Roy broke away from the mainstream of traditional Hindu society.

·         Ranade followed the path of gradual reform within Hindu society.

·         Dayanand displayed an attitude of intransigence and rigidity towards foreign influences.

Achievement of Renaissance

·         One should give credit to the 19^th century reformers for initiating social and religious awakening in India.

·         It was due to their work that great self-respect, self-confidence and pride were fostered among Indians.

·         The problems of women were highlighted by almost all the reform leaders. Though the result was not spectacular, the road was laid in the proper form.

·         During the first two decades of the 20^th century, much attention was paid to the problem of depressed classes in society.

Limitations of Renaissance

·         At the same time, the religious reform movement was concentrated upon and benefited only a microscopic minority of the Indian populations.

·         Further, it started tending to look backward appeal to past greatness and to rely on scriptural authority.

·         The supremacy of the human reason and scientific outlook was undermined, barring a few thinkers.

·         The neglect of medieval Indian history showed serious repercussions both socially and politically in later periods.

·         One of the main limitations of the Indian renaissance was a lack of unity and a sound organization. Opposition from orthodox elements was there at every attempt of the reformers.

·         For instance, Radhakanta Deb organized the Dharma Sabha to protest against reforms of Roy, Sayyid Ahmed Khan was attacked by the conservatives of Deoband Movement.       

·         Rise of revival during the last decade of the 19^th century in the form of Theosophical society, also contributed to the declining zeal of the reform movements.

·         The upsurge of militants nationalism, with its revivalist undertones, strengthened this trend.

·         These movements were carried under constraints inherent in a colonial society.

·         They tended to lean more on alien rulers for help in their efforts to achieve their ends.

·         Also the reformers lacked mass support as their ideas and programmes never went beyond the reach of middle classes and their problems.

On top of all this, feudalism, though moribund, continued to be a major force and its ideology did not show signs of a real break-up.

 

BRITISH EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND GROWTH OF MOERN EDUCATION

FIRST PHASE (1758-1812)

·       The British East India Company showed very little interest in the education of its subjects during this period, the 2 minor exceptions being : (a) The Calcutta Madrassah set up by Warren Hastings in 1781 for the study and teaching of Muslim law and subjects. (b) The Sanskrit College at Varanasi by Jonathan Duncan in 1792 for the study of Hindu Law and Philosophy.

·       Both were designed to provide a regular supply of qualified Indians to help the administration of law in the courts of Company.

SECOND PHASE (1813-1853)

·       Due to the strong pressure exerted on the Co. by the Christian missionaries and many humanitarians, including some Indians, to encourage and promote modern education in India, The Charter Act of 1813 required the Co. to spend rupees 1 lakh annually for encouraging learned Indians and promoting the knowledge of modern sciences in India.

·       Two controversies about the nature of education arose during the part of this phase, They were :

• Whether to lay emphasis on the promotion of modern western studies or on the expansion of traditional Indian learning?
• Whether to adopt Indian languages or English as the medium of instruction in modern schools and colleges to spread western learning?

·         These 2 controversies were settled in 1835 when Lord William Bentinck (with the support of R.M. Roy) applied English medium.

·         In 1844, Lord Hardinge decided to give govt. employment to Indians educated in English Schools. The success of English education was thus assured. It made good progress in the 3 residences of Bengals Bombay and Madras where the number of schools and colleges increased.

·         A great upsurge in the activities of the missionaries who did pioneer work in quite a few fields of modern education.

·         Establishment of medical, engineering and law colleges, which marked a beginning in professional education.

·         Official sanction accorded to education of girls (Lord Dalhousie, in fact, offered the open support of govt.).

·         The Govt, policy of opening a few English schools and colleges instead of a large number of elementary schools led to the neglect of education of masses.

·         To cover up this defect in their policy, the British took recourse to the so-called `Downward Filtration Theory’ which meant that education and modern ideas were supposed to filter or radiate downward from the upper classes.

·         This policy continued till the very end of British rule, although it was officially abandoned in 1854.

THIRD PHASE (1854-1900)

·         The Educational Dispatch of 1854 was also called Wood’s Dispatch (after Sir Charles Wood, the then President of Board of Control, who became the first Secretary of State of India.

·         It is considered as the Magna Carta of English Education in India.

·         Creation of Education Departments in the provinces of Bombay,  Madras, Bengal, N.W. Provinces and Punjab in 1855; Organizations of Indian Education Services in 1897 to cover the senior most posts.

·         Establishment of universities of Calcutta (Jan. 1857) Bombay (July 1857), Madras (Sept. 1857), Punjab (1882) and Allahabad (1887).    

·         Lord Ripon appointed Hunter Commission (under Sir W.W. Hunter):

·         It recommended that local bodies (distt. Boards and municipalities) should be entrusted with the management of primary schools.

·         Also said that govt. should maintain only a few schools and colleges; other to be left to private hands.

FOURTH PHASE (1901-1920)

·         Lord Curzon appointed a Universities Commission under Thomas Raleigh (Law member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council) in 1902, and based on his recommendations Indian Universities Act of 1904 was passed.

·         It enabled the universities to assume teaching functions (hitherto they were mainly examining bodies), periodic inspection of institutions, speedier transaction of business, strict conditions for affiliation etc.

·         Criticized by nationalists for its tightening 1910, a separate deptt. of Education was established at the Centre.  

·         In 1910, a separate department of Education was established at the Centre.

·         The Saddler Commission was appointed by Lord Chelmsford to review the working of Calcutta University (2 Indians : Sir Ashutosh Mukherji and Dr. Ziauddin Ahmed.). Main recommendation were :

• Secondary Education by a Board of Secondary education and duration of degree course be 3 yrs.
• 7 new universities were opened (Total 12 now). They were: Banaras, Mysore, Patna, Aligarh, Dhaka, Lucknow and Osmania.
• Kashi Vidyapeeth and Jamia Milia Islamia were established.
• University course divided into pass course and Honours.

FIFTH PHASE (1921-1947)

·         Came under Indian control officially, as it became a provincial subject administered by provincial subject administered by provincial legislature.

·         Increase in number of universities (20 in 1947); improvement in the quality of higher education (on recommendations of Saddler Commission); establishment of an inter-University Board (1924) and beginning of inter-collegiate and inter-university activities.

·         Achievement in women’s education and education of backward classes.

HARTOG COMMITTEE (1929)

·         Recommended the policy of consolidation and improvement of Primary education.

·         Recommended a selective system of admission to universities and diversified courses leading to industrial and commercial careers.

·         Universities should be improved.

·         Wardha scheme of Basic Education (1937), worked out by the Zakir Hussain Committee after Gandhi published a series of articles in the Harijan.

SARGEANT PLAN OF EDUCATiON (1944)

·         Establishment of elementary schools and high school.

·         Universal and compulsory education for all children between the ages of 6-11.

·         High schools of 2 types :

(a) academic

(b) Technical and Vocational

(c) Intermediate courses were to be abolished.

Controversies between Anglicist and Classicists

The controversy arose mainly for the following reasons:

Aims

Regarding the aims of education during that time, groups of people had different opinions.

One group preferred the propagation of oriental literature, whereas the other group stressed the need to introduce western literature among the Indian people.

In terms of agencies to be employed for organizing the schools and colleges

One school of thought opined that missionaries should be an agency for educational management while another group believed that it will be better if Indians themselves played the role for conducting the educational institutions. The third school of thought recommended the establishment of the schools by the company itself.

Regarding the medium of instruction.

The first opinion was that the western sciences and knowledge should be promoted through the classical language as a medium of instruction, namely Sanskrit and Arabic.

The second school of thought was favored to the modern Indian language and lastly the third school of thought held that education should be given through the medium of English.

Methods of education.

The first opinion was that education always filters down from the upper classes of the society to the common masses.

It was known as ‘Downward Filtration Theory’.

The other opinion preferred that the company should themselves take the responsibility for educating the masses.

In 1823, the Governor-General-in Council appointed a “General Committee of Public Instruction”, which had the responsibility to grant the one lakh of rupees for education.

That committee consisted of 10 a European member of which Lord Macaulay was the president.

The committee decided to spend major portions from the grant for the improvement of oriental literature.

Interestingly, during that time, there was a rapid change in attitude towards the importance of English education, mainly due to the missionaries and the political influence of the English language.

Therefore, for the Council of East India Company, the decision for granting the money faced a greater problem.

The Court of Directors of the East India Company asked the Government of India to take the decision for spreading the education; however the Court of Directors of the East India Company was in favour of English education.

Even, the General Committee of Public Instruction also was not able to decide the medium of instruction by vote; because out of ten members, five were supporters of English language or Anglicist as the medium of instruction and the rest were supporters of oriental or classic language or Classicists as a medium of instruction.

Actually, the oriental party wanted to preserve the oriental learning from existing educational institutions while the other group of Anglicist party wanted to abolish the preservation of the oriental education.

 

The Wardha Scheme of Education

• This was the first attempt to develop an indigenous scheme of education in British India by Mahatma Gandhi.
• As a nationalist leader he fully realised that the British system of education could not serve the socio-economic need of the country.
• At Round Table Conference in London (1931) he pointed out the ineffectiveness of the system of primary education in India and the alarming low percentage of literacy among Indian people.
• He held the policy of the British Government responsible for this painful situation in the field of mass education. Gandhi said “I am convinced that the present system of education is not only wasteful but positively harmful.”
• It was in this context the concept of Basic Education emerged in the mind of Gandhi.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• The Government of India Act, 1935 came into force in 1937. According to the Act, Congress Ministries were formed in seven provinces in India.
• Prior to this Congress had been strongly pleading for free, compulsory and universal education.
• After having the power the Congress had to implement it in action.
• Gandhi was fully conversant with the deplorable condition of education in the land.
• For improving this condition he advocated a scheme of primary education based on Indian traditional culture through the medium of mother tongue.
• But this required a huge sum of money which meant fresh taxation.
• The situation was further complicated as Mahatma Gandhi promised to introduce total prohibition which again meant the loss of a huge amount of revenue. Congress was committed to both ‘prohibition and compulsion’.
• To end this dilemma Gandhi put forward the proposal that the plan of mass education need not be held up for want of funds.
• Free and compulsory primary education could be given to every child if the process of schooling could be made self supporting by imparting education through a useful and productive craft.
• Gandhi expressed his views on education through a series of articles in ‘Harijan’ in June 31, 1937, which later on developed into the Wardha Scheme of Basic Education.
• The views of Gandhi created controversies in the academic circles. Therefore it was desirable to get the scheme examined by experts and educationists.
• Finally, Gandhi placed his Basic Education System to the nation in the Wardha Conference in 1937.

WARDHA EDUCATION CONFERENCE

• For the purpose of discussing different aspects of the proposed new scheme of education, an All India Education Conference was held in Wardha on 22nd and 23rd October, 1937.
• The eminent educationists, congress leaders and workers along with the Education Ministers of the seven states had attended the conference.
• Gandhi himself presided over it. After serious discussions the following four resolutions were passed.
• That in the opinion of this conference, free and compulsory education be provided on a nation-wide scale.
• That the medium of instruction be the mother tongue.
• That the process of education through this period should centre round some form of manual productive work suitable for the local condition.
• That the conference expects that the system of education will be gradually able to cover the remuneration of the teacher.
• The conference then appointed a committee under the Chairmanship of Dr. Zakir Hussain to prepare a detailed education plan and syllabus on the lines of the above resolutions.

Zakir Hussain Committee

• Besides Dr. Zakir Hussain, the Committee consisted of nine members.
• Among those who served in the committee, Prof. K. G. Saigidain’s name is prominent. Other members included were Arya Nayakam, Vinoba Bhave, Kaka Kalelkar, J. C. Kumarappa, Kishori Lal, Prof. K. T. Shah etc.
• It submitted its reports, one in December, 1937 and the other in April, 1938.
• This report has since become the fundamental document of the basic scheme and the scheme has come to be known as the Wardha Scheme of Education.
• It was approved by Mahatma Gandhi and was placed before the Indian National Congress at its Haripura session held in March,1938.
• The first report included the basic principles of the Wardha Scheme of education, its aims, teachers and their training, organisation of schools, administration, inspection and inclusion of craft centred education regarding handicrafts like spinning, weaving etc.
• The second report dealt with Agriculture, Metal work, Wood craft and other basic handicraft.
• An elaborate curriculum of all those subjects and ways and means to establish their correlation with other subjects was also suggested.
• In course of time more conferences were held, more committees were formed on this important subject.
• As a result more new features were added to this aspect of education which later on took the final shape.
• The conference of 1945 at Sevagram characterized Basic Education as “education for life”.
• The conference considered it as a radical and important revolution in social and economic structure of the Indian society, i.e., creating a new way of life.”
• Since then Basic education came to be known as ‘Nai Talim’.
• A conference of education ministers and educational workers was called by B.G. Kher in 1946 that took some important resolutions which affected the quality of Basic Education in different provinces.
• Basic Education has finally emerged after a decade of experimentation and discussion. The scheme of basic education formulates the following proposals:

• Free, universal and compulsory education should be provided for all boys and girls between the ages of 7—14.
• This education should be imparted in the mother-tongue of the child.
• All education should centre round some basic craft chosen with due regard to the capacity of children and the needs of the locality.

• The committee suggested spinning and weaving, card-board and wood work, leather work, kitchen-gardening, agriculture and fishery as obviously suitable crafts.
• The selected craft should be both taught and practiced so that the children are able to produce articles which can be used and may be sold to meet part of the expenditure on the school.
• This craft must not be taught mechanically but its social and scientific implications were to be studied side by side.
• In this craft-centered education all the subjects to be taught were to be integrally related to the selected craft or the child’s physical and social environment.

MEANING AND PHILOSOPHY OF BASIC EDUCATION

• Mahatma Gandhi wanted to make the foundation of the educational edifice strong.
• It is with this objective that he put forward this scheme. This scheme of education is based on the national culture and civilization of India.
• It aims at making a child self-reliant by enabling him to use his acquired knowledge and skills in practical affairs of life.
• Basic education has close relationship with the basic needs and interest of the education as the child is the focal point of education.
• The central point of this scheme is some handicraft, whose teaching will enable the student to solve the problems of his livelihood and at the same time develop qualities of good citizenship.
• In Gandhi’s view, sound education must be rooted in the culture and life of the soil and therefore he strongly pleads for relating education to the environment.
• Gandhi’s definition of education gives an insight into his philosophy of education.

Education according to Gandhi

• By true education he means an all-round drawing out of the best in child and man, body, mind and spirit. For Gandhi mere literacy is not the end of education not even the beginning.
• It is only one of the means by which man and woman can be educated. Therefore, he attaches little value to literacy in his scheme of education.
• Gandhi was a practical educational philosopher and an experimentalist to the core.
• His experiments with truth and education were the instrument for the realisation of his ideal in life.
• In several of his educational experiments he tried to translate his philosophy-into achieving the reality of the evolution and establishment of an ideal society.
• His educational system is the dynamic side of his entire philosophy.
• Gandhi keenly wanted to create a new social order based on truth and non-violence.
• This can be brought about only through a silent social revolution.
• He believed that revolutionary change in the educational system can help to bring this silent social revolution.
• The scheme of Basic Education does not stand for mere technique, it stands for a new spirit and approach to all education.

 

Governor General’s Chart

Governors of Calcutta or Fort William (1756-72)

·         Drake (1756-58): Capture of Calcutta by Siraj and Black Hole Episode; recapture of Calcutta by Clive; Battle of Plassey.

·         Clive (1756-60): Election of Clive as governor by the Council of Calcutta (June 1758) and legalization of this election by the home authorities of the Company (December 1756); departure of Clive to England (February 1760).

·         Vansittart (1760-65): Replacement of Mir Jafar by Mir Qasim as the Nawab (1760) and reinstatement of Mir Jafar (1763); Battle of Buxar (1764); death of Mir Jafar and succession of Najm-ud-daula; conclusion of a treaty (February 20, 1765) with the new Nawab.

·         Clive (1756-67): Return to Clive to India (May 1765) to serve his second term as governor. A tripartite treaty was concluded at Allahabad on August 16, 1765 by Robert Clive on behalf of the Company, Najm-ud-daula (Mir Jafar’s son and successor and the then titular ruler of Bengal) and Shuja-ud-daula and consequent acquisition of diwani rights of Bihar, Bengal and Orissa.

·         Verelst (1767-69)

·         Cartier (1769-72)

·         Warren Hastings (1772-73): He abolished the Dual Government, pensioned off the nawab, took over the direct charge of administering Bengal, concluded the Treaty of Benaras (1773) with the Nawab of Awadh.

GOVERNORS-GENERAL AND VICEROYS

·         British India saw thirteen governors-general from 1773 to 1857. The main events and developments of their respective tenures are listed.

WARREN HASTINGS (1773-85)

·         Regulating Act of 1773.

·         The Act of 1781 (it made a clear demarcation between the jurisdiction of the Governor General-in-Council and that of the Supreme Court at Calcutta).

·         Pitt’s India Act of 1784.

·         The Rohilla war (1774) and annexation of Rohilkhand by the Nawab of Oudh with help of the British.

·         First Maratha war (1775-82) and the Treaty of Salbai.

·         Second Mysore war (1780-84) (First one was fought in 1766-69).

·         Chait Singh affair (1778) (Chait Singh was the Raja of Benaras).  Subsequent impeachment of Hastings.  

·         The Begams of Oudh affair (1782).

·         Nand Kumar episode (1775).

·         Foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal by Hastings and Sir William Jones (1784).

·         After his return to England (1785), impeachment proceedings were started against him in the House of Lords by Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox, Sheridan and Gilbert Elliot. He was defended by Edward Lay, Plumer and Dallas. After a prolonged trial (seven years), he was finally acquitted.

LORD CORNWALLIS (1786-93)

·         Third Mysore War (1790-92) and the Treaty of Seringapatam (1792).

·         Introduction of the permanent revenue settlement or the zamindari system in Bengal and Bihar (1793).

·         Reform of the judiciary (1793): setting up courts at different levels and separation of revenue administration from judicial administration; introduction of civil service and reforms to purify and improve administration.

SIR JOHN SHORE (1793-98)

·         In the introduction of the permanent settlement (1793) he played an important role as the President of the Board of Revenue, but his Governor-Generalship was not very eventful.

LORD WELLESLEY (1798-1805)

·         Introduction of the system of Subsidiary Alliance (1798), and the first Subsidiary Treaty with the Nizam of Hyderabad (1798).

·         Fourth Mysore War (1799) and the annexation of many parts of Mysore.

·         Subsidiary Treaty of Bassein (1802) and Second Maratha War (1803-05).

·         Formation of the Madras Presidency after the annexation of the kingdoms of Tanjore and Carnatic.

SIR GEORGE BARLOW (1805-07)

·         Vellore Mutiny (1806).

LORD MINTO I (1807-13)

·         Treaty of Amritsar with Ranjit Singh (1809).

·         Charter Act of 1813.

LORD HASTINGS (1813-23)

·         War with Nepal or the Gorkha War (1814-16); due to his success in this war, he was made Marquess of Hastings (1816).

·         Third Maratha War (1817-1818): abolition of Peshwaship and annexation of all his territories, and creation of the Bombay Presidency (1818).

·         Pindary War (1817-1818).

·         Introduction of the ryotwari settlement in Madras Presidency by governor, Thomas Munro (1820). 

LORD AMHERST (1823-28)

·         First Burmese War (1824-26).

·         Capture of Bharatpur (1826).

LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK (1828-35)

·         Prohibition of sati (1829).

·         Suppression of thuggee (1829-35).

·         Charter Act of 1833.

·         Macaulay’s Minutes and introduction of English as the medium of instruction (1835).

·         Visit of Rammohan Roy to England (1830) and his death there (1833).

·         Deposition of the Raja of Mysore and annexation of his territories (1831).

·         Annexation of Cachar and Jaintia (1832).

·         Annexation of Coorg (1834).

·         Formation of the Agra Province (1834).

·         Abolition of the Provincial Courts of Appeal and Circuit, and appointment of Commissioners instead.

SIR CHARLES METCALFE (1835)

·         Freed the Indian press of restrictions

LORD AUCKLAND (1835-42)

·         First Afghan War (1836-42) – disaster of the British in the war and recall of Auckland.

·         Death of Ranjit Singh (1839).

LORD ELLENBOROUGH (1842-44)

·         Termination of the first Afghan war (1842).

·         Conquest and annexation of Sind (1843).

·         War with Gwalior (1843).

LORD HARDINGE I (1844-48)

·         First Sikh war (1845-46) and treaty of Lahore (1846).

·         Prohibition of female infanticide and suppression of the practice of human sacrifice among the Gonds of Central India.

LORD DALHOUSIE (1848-56)

·         Second Sikh war (1848-49) and annexation of the Punjab.

·         Second Burmese war (1852) and annexation of Lower Burma.

·         Charter Act of 1853.

·         Application of the Doctrine of Lapse and annexation of Satara (1848), Sambalpur (1849), Jhansi (1853), Nagpur (1854), etc.

·         Annexation of Oudh (1856).

·         Wood’s (President of the Board of Control) Education Despatch of 1854 and British assumption of the responsibility of educating the masses.

·         Introduction of the Railways (First train-Bombay to Thana), Telegraph (First line-Calcutta to Agra) and the Postal System in 1853.

·         Widow Remarriage Act (1856).

·         Establishment of a separate Public Works Department in every province.

·         Santhal uprising (1855-56).

LORD CANNING (1856-57)

·         Establishment of three universities (at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay) in 1857.

·         Revolt of 1857.

VICEROYS (1858-62)

LORD CANNING (1858-62)

·         Queen Victoria’s Proclamation and the India Act of 1858.

·         `White Mutiny’ by the European troops of the EICO in 1859.

·         India Councils Act of 1861.

LORD ELGIN I (1862)

·         His sudden death in 1862; administration carried on by Sir Napier and Sir Denison from 1862 to 1864.

LORD JOHN LAWRENCE (1864-69)

·         War with Bhutan in 1865.

·         Establishment of the High Courts at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1865.

LORD MAYO (1869-72)

·         Establishment of two colleges for the education and political training of the Indian Princes–the Rajkot college in Kathiawar and the Mayo College at Ajmer in Rajasthan.

·         First step in the direction of separation of central and provincial finances in 1870.

·         Organization of Statistical Survey of India.

·         Establishment of a Department of Agriculture and Commerce.

·         Beginning of the system of State Railways.

·         His assassination by a convict in the Andamans in 1872.

LORD NORTHBROOK (1872-76)

·         Visit of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) to India in 1875.

·         His resignation over the Afghan question.

LORD LYTTON (1876-80)

·         Royal Titles Act of 1876 and the assumption as the title of `Empress of India’ by Queen Victoria; the Delhi-Durbar in January 1877.

·         Vernacular Press Act and the Arms Act of 1878.

·         Second Afghan War of (1878-80).

·         Appointment of the first Famine Commission under Sir Richard Strachey in 1878.

LORD RIPON (1880-84)

·         First Factory Act of 1881.

·         Introduction of Local Self-Government in 1882.

·         Repeal of the Vernacular Press Act in 1882.

·         Division of the finances of the centre in 1882.

·         Appointment of an Educational Commission under Sir William Hunter in 1882.

·         The IIbert Bill Controversy (1883).

·         Coming into existence of the Famine Code in 183.

LORD DUFFERIN (1884-88)

·         Third Burmese war (1885-86).

·         Foundation of the Indian National Congress (Lord Cross was the Secretary of State at that time.

LORD LANSDOWNE (1888-94)

·         Factory Act of 1891.

·         Division of the Civil Services into Imperial, Provincial and Subordinate.

·         Indian Council Act of 1892.

·         Appointment of the Durand Commission and its definition of the Durand Line between British India and Afghanistan (now between Pakistan and Afghanistan) in 1893.

LORD ELGIN II (1894-99)

·         Assassination of two British officials by the Chapekar brothers of Poona in 1897.

LORD CURZON (1899-1905)

·         Appointment of a commission under Sir Thomas Raleigh in 1902 to suggest reforms regarding universities, and the passing of the Indian Universities Act of 1904 on the basis of its recommendations.

·         Ancient Monuments Preservation Act of 1904.

·         Establishment of an Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa in Delhi.

·         Partition of Bengal in 1905.

·         Col. Younghusband’s Expedition to Tibet in 1904.

LORD MINTO II (1905-10)

·         Anti-Partition and Swadeshi Movements.

·         Surat Session and split in the Congress (1907).

·         Minto-Morley Reforms or the Indian Councils Act of 1909.              

·         Foundation of the Muslim League by the Aga Khan, the Nawab of Dacca, etc, in 1906.

LORD HARDINGE II (1910-16)

·         Annulment of the partition of Bengal and creation of a Governorship for Bengal like Bombay and Madras in 1911. (Lieutenant Governorship for Bihar and Orissa, and Chief Commissionership for Assam).

·         Transfer of the Imperial capital from Calcutta to Delhi (1911).

·         Coronation Durbar of King George V and Queen Mary at Delhi (December, 9111).

·         Death of G.K. Gokhale in 1915.

·         Foundation of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1915 by Madan Mohan Malaviya and some Punjabi leaders.

LORD CHELMSFORD (1916-21)

·         Foundation of two Home Rule Leagues – one by Tilak in April, 1916 and another by Mrs Annie Besant in September, 1916.

·         Lucknow session and the reunion of the Congress (1916) (Mrs Besant played an important role in the reunion).       

·         Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League in 1916. (Tilak played an important role in this).

·         Return of Gandhi to India (1915); foundation of the Sabarmati ashram (1916); Champaran Satyagraha (the first time Gandhi experimented his new technique in India-1917); satyagraha at Ahmedabad (1918); Khaira satyagraha (1918).

·         August Declaration (1917) by Montague, the then Secretary of State, and Montford reforms or the Government of India Act of 1919.

·         Resignation of some veteran leaders led by S.N. Banerji from the Congress, and their foundation of the Indian Liberal Federation (1918).

·         Rowlatt Act (March, 1919) and the Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre (13th April, 1919).

·         Death of Tilak on 1 August, 1920.

·         Formation of the Khilafat Committee and the launching of the Khilafat Movement (1919-20).

·         Launching of the Non-cooperation Movement (1920-22).

·         Nagpur session of the Congress (Dec.1920) – changes in the constitution of the Congress.

·         Foundation of the Women’s University at Poona (1916).

·         Appointment of Sir S.P. Sinha at Lieutenant Governor of Bihar (Sir Sinha was the first Indian to become a Governor and the second Indian to become a member of the British Parliament, the first being Dadabhai Naoroji).

LORD READING (1921-26)

·         Chauri Chaura incident (Feburary 5, 1922) and the withdrawal of the Non-cooperation Movement by Gandhi.

·         Formation of the Swaraj Party by C.R. Das (Deshbandhu) and Motilal Nehru in December 1922.

·         Foundation of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangha (RSS) by K.B. Hedgewar at Nagpur in 1925.

·         Repeal of the Rowlatt Act.

·         Holdings of simultaneous examinations for the ICS in England and India with effect from 1923.

·         Beginning of Indianisation of the officer’s cadre of the Indian army.

·         Foundation of the Communist Party of the India in 1925.

LORD IRWIN (1926-31)

·         Popularly knows as the `Christian Viceroy’.

·         Appointment of the Simon Commission (November 1927) and the boycott of the Commission by the Congress.

·         Appointment of the Harcourt Butler Indian States Commission in November 1927 (to recommend measures for the establishment of better relations between the Indian states and the Central Govt.); and the convening of the All India States People’s Conference in December 1927 by the states’ people in response.

·         Meeting of the First All India Youth Congress in December 1928.       

·         Convening of an All Parties Conference and its appointment of a committee under Motilal Nehru Committee’s submission of a report known as the `Nehru Report’ in August 1928; rejection of the report by the Muslim League. Hindu Mahasabha, etc.

·         `Deepavali Declaration’ by Lord Irwin (on 31st, 1929) that India would be granted dominion status in due course.

·         Lahore session of the Congress (December 1929) and the Poorna Swaraj resolution; Fixing 26th January 1930 as the first Independence Day.

·         Launching of the Civil Disobedience Movement by Gandhi with his Dandi March (12th March, 1930); boycott of the first session of the Round Table Conference by the Congress (1930); Gandhi-Irwin Pact and the suspension of the movement (March 1931).

LORD WILLINGDON (1931-36)

·         Participation of Gandhi in the second session of the Round Table conference (Sep. 1931) and the failure of the conference; return of Gandhi to India (December 1931) and resumption of the movements Gandhi’s imprisonment; final suspension of the movement in May, 1934.

·         Third session of the Round Table Conference in London (1932) without the representation of the Congress.

·         Announcement of the `Communal Award’ by Ramsay Macdonald, British P.M. (1932); Gandhi’s fast unto death in the Yeravada prison and the Poona Pact between Gandhi and Ambedkar (September 1932).

·         Government of India Act of 1935.

·         Separation of Burma from India (1935).

·         Foundation of the Congress Socialist Party by Acharya Narendra Dev and Jai Prakash Narayan (1934).

·         Formation of the All-India Kisan Sabha in 1936.

LORD LINLITHGOW (1936-43)

·         Formation of Congress Ministries in majority of the provinces (1937).

·         Resignation of Subhash Chandra Bose from the Presidentship of the Congress as well as from its membership in 1939; formation of the Forward Bloc by Bose and his followers (1939).

·         Resignation of the Congress Ministries after the outbreak of the World War II (1939).

·         Celebration of the Congress Ministries’ resignation as `Deliverance Day’ by the Muslim League (1939), and its Lahore Resolution (23rd March, 1940) demanding separate state for the Muslims, (It was at this session that Jinnah propounded his Two-Nation Theory.)

·         `August Offer’ by Linlithgow (1940); its rejection by the Congress and the starting of individual Satyagraha by Gandhi.

·         Escape of S.C. Bose from India in 1941.

·         Cripps Mission (March, 1942) offering Dominion Status to India, and its rejection by the Congress.

·         Passing of the `Quit India’ Resolution by the Congress at Bombay (8th August, 1942), arrest of all the Congress leaders and the outbreak of the `August Revolution’ or Revolt of 1942.

LORD WAVELL (1943-47)

·         C.R. Formula evolved by C. Rajagopalachari in 1944 and the Gandhi-Jinnah Talks (1945) based on it; failure of the talks.

·         Wavell Plan and the Simla Conference (1945) to discuss it; its failure.

·         INA Trials and the Naval Mutiny (1946).

·         Cabinet Mission (Three members – Lawrence, Cripps and Alexander) and acceptance of its plan by both the Congress and the League (1946).

·         Elections to the Constituent Assembly.

·         Formation of Interim Government by the Congress (September 1946).

·         Launching of `Direct Action Day’ by the League (17th August 1946), but it also joined the Interim Govt. in October 1946, though it abstained from the Constituent Assembly.

·         Announcement of end of British rule in India by Clement Atlee (British P.M.) on 20^th February, 1947.

LORD MOUNTBATTEN (MARCH, 1947-AUGUST, 1947)

·         3^rd June (Mountbatten) plan; partition of India and achievement of freedom.   

·         Appointment of two boundary commissions under Sir Cyril Radcliff for the partition of Bengal and Punjab.

GOVERNOR GENERALS (1947-1950)

LORD MOUNTBATTEN (AUGUST, 1947-JUNE, 1948)

·         Continued as Governor General of free India

C. RAJGOPALACHARI (JUNE 1948 – JANUARY 1950)

First Indian Viceroy and the last Viceroy.