NATIONALISM IN INDIA

1. The Idea of Satyagraha

Mahatma Gandhi returned to India in January 1915. In 1917 he travelled to Champaran in Bihar to inspire the
peasants to struggle against the oppressive plantation system. Then in 1917, he organised a satyagraha to support
the peasants of the Kheda district of Gujarat. Affected by crop failure and a plague epidemic, the peasants of
Kheda could not pay the revenue, and were demanding that revenue collection be relaxed. In 1918, Mahatma
Gandhi went to Ahmedabad to organise a satyagraha movement amongst cotton mill workers.
1.1 The Rowlatt Act
Gandhiji in 1919 decided to launch a nationwide satyagraha against the proposed Rowlatt Act (1919). This Act
had been passed through the Imperial Legislative Council despite the united opposition of the Indian members. The
civil disobedience would start with a hartal on 6 April. On 10 April, the police in Amritsar fired upon a peaceful
procession. Martial law was imposed and General Dyer took command. On 13 April the Jallianwalla Bagh incident
took place. On that day a large crowd gathered in the enclosed ground of Jallianwalla Bagh. Some came to protest
against the government’s new repressive measures. Others had come to attend the annual Baisakhi fair. Dyer entered
the area and opened fire on the crowd, killing hundreds. His object was to ‘produce a moral effect’, to create in the
minds of satyagrahis a feeling of terror and awe. The First World War had ended with the defeat of Ottoman Turkey.
And there were rumours that a harsh peace treaty was going to be imposed on the Ottoman emperor – the spiritual
head of the Islamic world (the Khalifa). To defend the Khalifa’s temporal powers, a Khilafat Committee was formed in
Bombay in March 1919. A young generation of Muslim leaders like the brothers Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali,
began discussing with Mahatma Gandhi about the possibility of a united mass action on the issue. At the Calcutta
session of the Congress in September 1920, he convinced other leaders of the need to start a non-cooperation
movement in support of Khilafat as well as for swaraj.
1.2 Why Non-cooperation?
In his famous book Hind Swaraj (1909), Mahatma Gandhi declared that British rule was established in India with the
cooperation of Indians, and had survived only because of this cooperation. Through the summer of 1920 Mahatma
Gandhi and Shaukat Ali toured extensively, mobilising popular support for the movement. At the Congress session
at Nagpur in December 1920, a compromise was worked out and the Non-Cooperation programme was adopted.

2. Differing Strands within the Movement

The Non-Cooperation-Khilafat Movement began in January 1921.
2.1 The Movement in the Towns
The council elections were boycotted in most provinces except Madras, where the Justice Party, the party of the non-
Brahmans, felt that entering the council was one way of gaining some power – something that usually only Brahmans
had access to.
2.2 Rebellion in the Countryside
In Awadh, peasants were led by Baba Ramchandra – a sanyasi who had earlier been to Fiji as an indentured
labourer. The movement here was against talukdars and landlords who demanded from peasants exorbitantly high
rents and a variety of other cesses. Peasants had to do begar and work at landlords’ farms without any payment. As
tenants they had no security of tenure, being regularly evicted so that they could acquire no right over the leased
land. In many places nai – dhobi bandhs were organised by panchayats to deprive landlords of the services of even
barbers and washermen. In June 1920, Jawaharlal Nehru began going around the villages in Awadh, talking to the
villagers, and trying to understand their grievances. By October, the Oudh Kisan Sabha was set up headed by
Jawaharlal Nehru, Baba Ramchandra and a few others. In the Gudem Hills of Andhra Pradesh, a militant
guerrilla movement spread in the early 1920s – not a form of struggle that the Congress could approve. Alluri
Sitaram Raju claimed that he had a variety of special powers: he could make correct astrological predictions and heal
people, and he could survive even bullet shots. Raju was captured and executed in 1924, and over time became a folk
hero.
In 1928, Vallabhbhai Patel led the peasant movement in Bardoli, a taluka in Gujarat, against enhancement of land
revenue. Known as the Bardoli Satyagraha, this movement was a success under the able leadership of Vallabhbhai
Patel.
2.3 Swaraj in the Plantations
For plantation workers in Assam, freedom meant the right to move freely in and out of the confined space in which
they were enclosed, and it meant retaining a link with the village from which they had come. Under the Inland
Emigration Act of 1859, plantation workers were not permitted to leave the tea gardens without permission.

3 Towards Civil Disobedience

In February 1922, Mahatma Gandhi decided to withdraw the Non-Cooperation Movement. Within the Congress,
some leaders wanted to participate in elections to the provincial councils that had been set up by the Government of
India Act of 1919. C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Party within the Congress to argue for a return
to council politics. Younger leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose pressed for more radical mass
agitation and for full independence. Agricultural prices began to fall from 1926 and collapsed after 1930. Against this
background the new Tory government in Britain constituted a Statutory Commission under Sir John Simon. When
the Simon Commission arrived in India in 1928, it was greeted with the slogan ‘Go back Simon’. In an effort to win
them over, the viceroy, Lord Irwin, announced in October 1929, a vague offer of ‘dominion status’ for India in an
unspecified future, and a Round Table Conference to discuss a future constitution. In December 1929, under the
presidency of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Lahore Congress formalised the demand of ‘Purna Swaraj’ or full
independence for India. It was declared that 26 January 1930, would be celebrated as the Independence Day.
3.1 The Salt March and the Civil Disobedience Movement
On 31 January 1930, Mahatma Gandhi sent a letter to Viceroy Irwin stating 11 demands. If the demands were not
fulfilled by 11 March, the letter stated, the Congress would launch a civil disobedience campaign. Mahatma
Gandhi started his famous salt march accompanied by 78 of his trusted volunteers. The march was over 240 miles,
from Gandhiji’s ashram in Sabarmati to the Gujarati coastal town of Dandi. The volunteers walked for 24 days,
about 10 miles a day. On 6 April he reached Dandi. This marked the beginning of the Civil Disobedience
Movement. People were now asked not only to refuse cooperation with the British, as they had done in 1921-22(Non
Cooperation Movement), but also to break colonial laws. When Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a devout disciple of Mahatma
Gandhi, was arrested in April 1930, angry crowds demonstrated in the streets of Peshawar, facing armoured cars and
police firing. Mahatma Gandhi once again decided to call off the movement and entered into a pact with Irwin on 5
March 1931. In December 1931, Gandhiji went to London for the conference, but the negotiations broke down and
he returned disappointed. Ghaffar Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru were both in jail and the Congress had been declared
illegal. Mahatma Gandhi relaunched the Civil Disobedience Movement. For over a year, the movement continued,
but by 1934 it lost its momentum.
3.2 How Participants saw the Movement
In the countryside, rich peasant communities – like the Patidars of Gujarat and the Jats of Uttar Pradesh – were
active in the movement. But they were deeply disappointed when the movement was called off in 1931 without the
revenue rates being revised. So when the movement was restarted in 1932, many of them refused to participate.
Indian merchants and industrialists formed the Indian Industrial and Commercial Congress in 1920 and the
Federation of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) in 1927. Led by prominent
industrialists like Purshottamdas Thakurdas and G. D. Birla, the industrialists attacked colonial control over the
Indian economy, and supported the Civil Disobedience Movement when it was first launched. Some workers did
participate in the Civil Disobedience Movement, selectively adopting some of the ideas of the Gandhian programme,
like boycott of foreign goods, as part of their own movements against low wages and poor working conditions. There
were strikes by railway workers in 1930 and dockworkers in 1932. In 1930 thousands of workers in Chotanagpur tin
mines wore Gandhi caps and participated in protest rallies and boycott campaigns.
Some important dates
1918-19 : Distressed UP peasants organised by Baba Ramchandra.
April 1919 : Gandhian hartal against Rowlatt Act; Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
January 1921 : Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movement launched.
February 1922 : Chauri Chaura; Gandhiji withdraws NonCooperation movement.
May 1924 : Alluri Sitarama Raju arrested ending a two-year armed tribal struggle.
December 1929 : Lahore Congress; Congress adopts the demand for ‘Purna Swaraj’.
1930 : Ambedkar establishes Depressed Classes Association.
March 1930 : Gandhiji begins Civil Disobedience Movement by breaking salt law at Dandi.
March 1931 : Gandhiji ends Civil Disobedience Movement.
December 1931 : Second Round Table Conference.
1932 : Civil Disobedience re-launched.
3.3 The Limits of Civil Disobedience
Mahatma Gandhi called the ‘untouchables’ harijan, or the children of God, organised satyagraha to secure them
entry into temples, and access to public wells, tanks, roads and schools. Dr B.R. Ambedkar, who organised the dalits
into the Depressed Classes Association in 1930, clashed with Mahatma Gandhi at the second Round Table
Conference by demanding separate electorates for dalits. Ambedkar ultimately accepted Gandhiji’s position and the
result was the Poona Pact of September 1932. The Congress and the Muslim League made efforts to renegotiate
an alliance, and in 1927 it appeared that such a unity could be forged. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, one of the leaders of
the Muslim League, was willing to give up the demand for separate electorates, if Muslims were assured reserved seats
in the Central Assembly and representation in proportion to population in the Muslim-dominated provinces (Bengal
and Punjab). Negotiations over the question of representation continued but all hope of resolving the issue at the All
Parties Conference in 1928 disappeared when M.R. Jayakar of the Hindu Mahasabha strongly opposed efforts at
compromise.

4 The Sense of Collective Belonging

The image of Bharat Mata was first created by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. In the 1870s he wrote ‘Vande
Mataram’ as a hymn to the motherland. Later it was included in his novel Anandamath and widely sung during the
Swadeshi movement in Bengal. Moved by the Swadeshi movement, Abanindranath Tagore painted his famous
image of Bharat Mata (see Fig. 12). In this painting Bharat Mata is portrayed as an ascetic figure; she is calm,
composed, divine and spiritual. In Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore himself began collecting ballads, nursery rhymes
and myths, and led the movement for folk revival. In Madras, Natesa Sastri published a massive four-volume
collection of Tamil folk tales, The Folklore of Southern India. He believed that folklore was national literature; it
was ‘the most trustworthy manifestation of people’s real thoughts and characteristics’. During the Swadeshi
movement in Bengal, a tricolour flag (red, green and yellow) was designed. It had 8 lotuses representing 8
provinces of British India, and a crescent moon, representing Hindus and Muslims. By 1921, Gandhiji had
designed the Swaraj flag. It was again a tricolour (red, green and white) and had a spinning wheel in the centre,
representing the Gandhian ideal of self-help. Carrying the flag, holding it aloft, during marches became a symbol of
defiance.
Quit India Movement The failure of the Cripps Mission and the effects of World War II created widespread
discontentment in India. The Congress Working Committee, in its meeting in Wardha on 14 July 1942, passed the
historic ‘Quit India’ resolution demanding the immediate transfer of power to Indians and quit India. On 8 August
1942 in Bombay, the All India Congress Committee endorsed the resolution which called for a non-violent mass
struggle on the widest possible scale throughout the country.