Gandhian Nationalism After 1919: Ideas and Movements: Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi

Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Indian

Nationalism

Subject: History
Unit: Gandhian Nationalism after 1919: Ideas and
Movements

Lesson: Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the

Making of Indian Nationalism
Lesson Developer : Prof. Sumit Sarkar
College/Department : Professor (retired), Department of
History, University of Delhi
1
Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi
Nationalism
Table of contents
Chapter 9: Gandhian nationalism after 1919: ideas and movements

• 9.2: Leaders and followers: Gandhi and the making of Indian
nationalism
• Summary
• Exercises
• Glossary
• Further readings
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9.2: Leaders and followers: Gandhi and the making of

Indian nationalism
Shifting approaches
Historiographical approaches to Indian nationalism in the Gandhian era have inevitably

varied and shifted across time. Initially, there were contrasting pro-colonial and Indian
nationalist readings of colonial and Gandhian nationalist politics: the first trying to justify
what was sometimes declared to be ‘England’s work in India’, the second tending to
glorify anti-colonial nationalism, and particularly Gandhi. This earlier work took the form
of general surveys based on published material: biographies, autobiographies,
collections of letters.
A major historiographical breakthrough came about from the 1960s with the opening up
of unpublished official reports and correspondence (archival material) and letters and
diaries of Indian activists as well as of British official and non official persons (private
papers). Such research was pioneered in Cambridge (hence known as the
CambridgeSchool of history) by scholars like Anil Seal and C. A. Bayly. They tended to
highlight internal factional disputes among nationalists and, so presented a less starry-
eyed view of nationalists as well as of British officials. Historians with nationalist leanings
often criticized such work for its neglect or down-playing of patriotic aspirations as well
as of moments of mass agitations.
In the 1970s- 80s there occurred a second major transformation, with the emergence of
what came to be called the ‘Subaltern School’, pioneered by Ranajit Guha and his
colleagues. This school emphasized the importance of ‘histories from below’: struggles of
ordinary peasants and tribal people, and not just the leading role of great nationalists.
The Congress leadership was, in fact, criticized for trying to make popular movements
very tame and moderate. These historians pointed out Gandhi’s ‘betrayals’ or sudden
retreats from popular upsurges, as for instance, after an occasion of spectacular violence
at Chauri-Chaura, during the Non-cooperation movement.
Subalternist historians introduced an interesting emphasis on popular constructions of

images of Gandhi, through the spread of rumours. Such rumours tended to create
autonomous images of leaders or politicians, making them out to be often more radical
than they actually were. Peasants and tribals would imagine Gandhi in ways that were
very different from what he actually was. They would then draw inspiration from this
imagined Gandhi and his commands in order to start struggles that were important to
them but were not really a part of the Gandhian or Congress strategies. Such rumours
sometimes declared that he would end landlord oppression and give lands to peasants.
Or that he had asked Indians to prepare liquor at home, in order to avoid imported
drinks.
More recently, the emphasis of some of these scholars has shifted from studies of
popular initiatives to critiques of Western cultural domination and efforts to overcome it
through indigenous cultural alternatives. Such scholars valorize Gandhi as a leader who
broke free of all western influences and who lived and thought like an Indian peasant.
The change, in other words, has been to some extent from political histories to cultural
studies.
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Rowlatt satyagraha, Khilafat, non-cooperation
In the 1920s and 30s, Indian political and social life was radically transformed by the
Non-cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements, inspired and led by Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi. After the bloody suppression of the military and popular rebellions
of 1857, Indian political life had become confined to small groups of educated middle
class men petitioning and pleading for administrative and constitutional reforms. These
‘Moderate’ politicians had developed critiques of what they called drain of wealth,
excessive revenue burdens, and decline of traditional handicrafts enforced by
competition from cheap machine-made Lancashire goods. They pointed out that the
British refused to give any tariff protection to Indian commodities, and hindered efforts
to develop indigenous industries. These criticisms remained standard throughout the
nationalist era, but not much was done about their demands before the rise of mass
nationalism.
What the Gandhian era achieved was a major breakthrough to other social groups
beyond the educated middle classes, particularly peasants and business groups. Some
methods that had been pioneered during the struggle against the partition of Bengal in
1903-1908 - boycott of foreign cloth, national education, and peaceful passive
resistance, the success of which required active participation by vast numbers of people
- now became effective for the first time in the Gandhian era. The breakthrough was
related to the impact of the First World War on India. Thousands of Indian soldiers were
killed in a war in which they had no interest, and discontent was enhanced by the sharp
rise in prices and wartime shortages. War and immediate post war years were marked
by an accumulation of grievances, but also by moods of growing strength and
confidence. Business groups had profited as Lancashire imports declined due to lack of
shipping space. The working class grew in size. Hit by high prices and shortages, factory
workers participated in a massive strike wave in the immediate post war years.
But what explains the sudden rise of Gandhi, a newcomer to Indian politics up until
1915, to a position of supreme leadership in the Indian National Congress by 1919?
Gandhi returned to India fresh from a partial victory in a struggle against white racism in
South Africa. This had brought him into contact with settlers from many regions,
communities and religions of India, giving him a potential reach much beyond that of
other political leaders in India. Balgangadhar Tilak or Bipin Chandra Pal had mainly
provincial bases. (Maharashtra in the case of Tilak, Bengal with regard to Pal). Unlike
early Congress leaders, Gandhi had also worked with social groups not confined to the
middle classes: coolies, traders, soldiers. He returned to India with a mastery over
techniques of mass mobilization and political organization that had already been tried
and tested in South Africa. These included careful training of disciplined volunteers,
peaceful violation of specific laws, mass courting of arrest, occasional hartals and huge
demonstrations. Gandhi’s insistence on peaceful methods and total non violence even
when faced with repression sometimes led him to abruptly call off movements. Clearly,
non violence was a profoundly important moral compulsion for Gandhi, far more
meaningful than political success. Moreover, unrestrained mass movements would not
have been in the interest of business groups and the propertied sections of the
peasantry, as both were afraid that classes subordinate to them would become too
confident and aggressive once they became a part of political struggles. Gandhi had to
tread a delicate line between huge and intense mass movements, and the maintenance
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of certain restraint. Non violence helped to combine popular upsurge with maintenance
of controls.
During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi also developed a specific philosophy which was
embodied in Hind Swaraj (1909). Here he argued that the real evil was not British
political rule but the domination of industrial civilization. He attacked railways which
pumped out resources from the country through exports, lawyers whose fees burdened
the poor, and even hospitals which were very costly and whose western medicines were
often harmful. Much of this seems unrealistic and obscurantist. One has to realize,
however, that the anti-modern message did have an appeal for many peasants, artisans
and poor people in general who had not really benefited from the spread of colonial
modernity.
Value addition: from the sources
Gandhi on western modernity
“It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than the
American Rockefeller…India’s salvation consists in unlearning what she has learnt
during the past 50 years or so. The railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors,
and all such like have to go, and the so called upper classes have to learn to live
consciously and religiously and deliberately the simple life of the peasant.”
A very extreme statement, but an interesting and important one. We have to

understand that such an apparently obscurantist statement did have an appeal to
many peasants, artisans and lower middle classes who had benefited little from such
manifestations of colonial modernity. The rejection of modernity has remained
influential in some quarters, to a greater or lesser extent, both in India and else
where.
Source: Hind Swaraj, 1909, with author’s comment
The specific style of presentation in Hind Swaraj, the central text of Gandhian thinking
needs to be kept in mind. It is written in the form of a dialogue between the ‘Editor’
(Gandhi himself) and the ‘Reader’ (Gandhi’s prospective audience). Such a form of
presentation for a key political and philosophical text is unusual, but not unique. One
may cite, as texts which must have been familiar to Gandhi, Plato’s Republic or, to cite
an Indian precedent, the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna in the Gita in
Mahabharata. It still remains a very interesting format; particularly since Gandhi’s
political thinking does have a dialogic character in general. This is a point that has been
interestingly developed in David Hardiman’s recent work ‘Gandhi in His time and Ours’.
Other aspects of the Gandhian appeal included his cult of peasant simplicity- wearing the
loin-cloth, traveling third class on trains, speaking simple Hindustani and not
Sanskritized Hindi. Gandhi’s appeal was enhanced by his use of Hindu religious language
and imagery. However, there were evident problems with this kind of language so far as
Muslims were concerned. At the same time, Hindu-Muslim unity was and remained a life-
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long passionate belief and aspiration for Gandhi, a cause for which he eventually had to
die.
Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915 having won a partial victory there. Smuts’
Indian Relief Act of June 1914 abolished the £ 3 tax and recognized Indian marriages,
though discrimination certainly did not end and the broader question of white racist
exploitation of Africans and Indian alike had hardly been touched upon as yet. After his
return to India he travelled through large parts of the country by train. Between 1917
and early 1918 Gandhi acquired the reputation of a man who would take up specific local
grievances and usually manage to redress them to some extent. Thus, he took up the
grievances of oppressed Champaran indigo cultivators in Bihar, Kheda peasants in
Gujarat burdened by excessive revenue demands, and Ahmedabad textile workers who
were facing a wage-cut. His excellent relations with fellow-Gujarati mill owners helped
him to settle this last dispute. Though these were only specific local matters, rumours
had already started spreading about Gandhi which made him into a much more radical
and transformative figure. He would end zamindari oppression, it came to be believed by
the poor, give peasants and landless labourers land: a hope which made many grossly
exploited tea-garden labourers in Assam start flocking back to their homes in Bihar and
other parts of Northern and Central India during Non-cooperation. Gandhi’s promise of a
vaguely-defined ‘Swaraj’ within a year also stimulated wild hopes of a sudden total
change.
Official assessments of Gandhi
“Gandhi is daily transfiguring the imagination of masses of ignorant men with visions
of an early millennium”.
“The currency which Mr. Gandhi’s name has acquired even in the remotes villages is
astonishing no one seems to know quite who he is…but it is an accepted fact that what
he says is so, and what he orders must be done…the real power of his name is
perhaps to be traced back to the idea that it was he who got be-dakhli (illegal
eviction) stopped in Pratapgarh”.
These extracts from contemporary official sources illustrate the kind of rumours that
circulated in the early days of the Gandhian movement, and the ways in which
rumours helped to create, ‘from below’ as it were, a more radical image of Gandhi.
Source: A sub-divisional officer from Champaran 29 April 1917; A C.I.D

report, Government of India Home Political Deposit 19th February 1921, No
13. With author’s comments.
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In 1919, Gandhi launched his first all-India movement directed against the Rowlatt Act
which had sought to extend time restrictions on civil liberties even after the war was
over. This included provisions for special courts and detention without trial for a year.
The other major grievance, which directly concerned Muslims, was the imposition of very
harsh peace terms on Ottoman Turkey which had been on the losing side in the War.
This became the basis of the Khilafat movement in defense of the Ottoman sultan (who
had the prestigious title of Khalifa, the head of the global Muslim world). Muslims of
course also shared the other grievances of Indians and the result was an unprecedented
degree of Hindu-Muslim unity during the Khilafat-Non-cooperation movement of 1919-
1922.
The arbitrary extension of wartime restrictions on civil rights by the official committee
headed by Rowlatt was bitterly opposed by all sections of Indian political opinion. It was
Gandhi, however, who suggested the methods for an effective and peaceful form of
protest that would draw in all categories of Indians. The initial suggestion was a fairly
mild one, of volunteers courting arrest by publicly selling pamphlets declared to be illegal
by the British - hence the term commonly used for the movement, ‘Rowlatt
Satyagraha’. Gandhi soon added a suggestion of an all India hartal which implied
closing of shops and other business establishments. It was fixed for a Sunday and
Gandhi was careful to stipulate that workers who might have jobs to do on that day
should ask the permission of their employers before they stopped work. As always he
was very careful about keeping controls on workers.
What happened afterwards, however, was an unprecedented popular upsurge,

particularly in cities and towns, especially in Delhi, Punjab and some other areas.
Nothing like this had been seen after 1857. The British were particularly frightened by
the many instances of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh unity. They reacted with vicious repression
and brutality.
On 13 April 1919, large crowds had come to attend a fair in an enclosed park called
Jallianwalla bagh at Amritsar. There was nothing political or violent about this crowd, but
the British had been made nervous by the unusual degree of Hindu- Muslim unity in the
previous movement: members of the two communities even drank from the same cups
demonstratively to signify the end of the purity-pollution taboos that had separated
them. Suddenly and without warning, General Dyer, the British commander, opened fire
on the crowds who had gathered peacefully in Jallianwalla bagh. Official figures reported
that 379 were killed. Unofficial estimates were much higher. It was followed by weeks of
brutal repression. Indians were made to crawl down a lane in Amritsar where an English
woman had been insulted.
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Figure 9.2.1: Title page of Rashtriya Sangit Julmi Daayar – Jallianwalla Bagh, in Hindi, by
Manohar Lal Shukla, Kanpur, 1922
Source: Reprinted in Metcalf, Barbara D. and Thomas R. Metcalf. 2008. A Concise History
of Modern India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 170.
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Figure 9.2.2: An artist’s impression of the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh on April 13.
1919
Source: Nehru Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi
The Indian response was the Non-cooperation- Khilafat movement of 1919-1922. Gandhi
called for this all India protest against what he branded as ‘the Punjab wrong’ and the
Khilafat wrong. This involved boycott of British imports, titles, schools and colleges, law
courts and elections. The response was patchy. Not many lawyers, for instance, gave up
their professions, and many of the students who had initially gone out of government
schools and colleges went back after a time. The educational boycott was associated with
the organization of alternative national schools and colleges. Thus emerged, for instance,
the Jamia Milia Islamia in Delhi as a nationalist alternative to the pro-British Anglo-
Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh.
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Figure 9.2.3: Gandhi with Ali brothers
Source: Nehru Memorial Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi
But once again the radical hopes which had been aroused by Non-cooperation – Khilafat
found their most militant expression in the numerous movements with which Gandhi and
the Congress had little to do: working class strikes, peasant’s agitations, adivasi
movements. Poor people fervently believed that Swaraj would definitely come in a year if
they obeyed Gandhi’s commands and that Swaraj would resolve all their problems.
Women participated on a large scale, courting arrest and going to prison in an
unprecedented manner. The economic boycott proved particularly effective, and imports
of Lancashire goods went down sharply.
Gandhi hesitated for a long time about extending the boycott of foreign goods to non-
payment of taxes. He was afraid that if landlords refused to pay revenue to the state,
their tenants might stop paying rent to landlords. This would usher in agrarian class
conflict. While he wanted to economically punish the colonial state and British business
groups, he did not want any upset in Indian agrarian relations. He was, nonetheless,
moving towards a selective use of a no-revenue movement, however, when he ordered
an abrupt calling off the entire movement following a terrible incident. In February 1922,
in a village called Chauri-Chaura in Gorakhpur in the United Provinces (present day Uttar
Pradesh) a crowd provoked by official oppression surrounded and burnt the local police-
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station, burning alive twenty-two Indian policemen. A horrified Gandhi immediately
called off the entire movement, and Non-cooperation came to an abrupt halt. Even if
other Congress leaders and political activists did not like the retreat, they obeyed
Gandhi’s decision, as did masses of ordinary participants. This was the other side of the
cult of the Mahatma. Rumours had spread about Gandhi, making people believe that
since he was a great and holy man, whatever he said and ordered needed to be obeyed.
Figure 9.2.4: Cartoon in Amrita Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, 15 August 1947
Source: Amin, Shahid. 2006. Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992.
New Delhi: Penguin.
The movement showed how successfully Gandhi had reorganized the Congress: with his
drive for mass membership, rural bases with welfare programmes and the use of the
spinning wheel to create small scale livelihoods, along with his personal charisma. It was
now a vast but strongly organized body with a centralized working committee and local
and provincial bodies, capable of running disciplined and non violent mass movements
all over the country.
Despite its wide reach during its peak, the appeal of the movement did have certain
limits. Untouchable Dalits (whom Gandhi would later rename as Harijans) for instance
were not always enthusiastic, for they felt that their immediate oppressors were upper
caste Hindus against whom the British could even provide occasional support. Gandhi
from the beginning did condemn untouchablility, but for a long time he did not attack the
caste system as a whole. In some of his speeches in the late 1920’s in South India, he
even praised it. Here lay major problems for the future.
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The sudden calling off of Non-cooperation came as a deep disappointment to many and
resulted in a variety of internal tensions. Hindu-Muslim conflicts which had stopped
during the height of Non-cooperation- Khilafat movement began on an enhanced scale in
the mid-1920s. But there were also more positive alternative tendencies that emerged in
this political vacuum that the calling off of Non cooperation had left. The labour
movement, for instance, gathered strength in the mid and late 1920’s. Internationally,
too, the post war years were a period of radicalization, particularly with the Russian
Revolution of 1917 attracting many in India. The early years of the Soviet Union were
inspiring for them. They began with the abrogation of unequal imperial treaties which
Tsarist Russia had signed to enhance its territories and power. Such a voluntary
abdication of imperial gains won the hearts of many colonized Indians. Socialist and
Communists groups started to develop in various parts of India and, there was a
massive - and initially successful - strike of Bombay textile workers in 1928. They were
led by the Girni Kamgar ‘Lal Bavta’ (Red Flag) Union. This new and growing Left pressed
for an uncompromising struggle against colonial rule with which it combined social and
economic demands in the interest of workers and peasants.
The Congress led national movement had come to a standstill after Chauri-Chaura. The
period of stagnation was marked by communal riots in many parts of the country. Even
at the time of Non-cooperation-Khilafat itself, there began an anti-landlord peasant
movement in the Malabar district of Kerala which was initially directed against
oppressive Hindu money lenders and traders. This was the Mapila uprising. It then
turned into a violent rebellion which developed communal dimensions. As always, Hindu
and Muslim communalism kept pace with each other. In the mid 20’s for instance, an
aggressive Hindu outfit called the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in
Nagpur with a bitterly anti- Muslim programme.
A revival of the national movement began in the late 1920s. The British began to plan a
fresh round of constitutional changes. In 1919, in the context of the British promise of
self-government in the near future, a system of dyarchy had been instituted. This had
made certain ministries at the provincial level responsible to elected legislatures. The
reforms promised that a review of this system would be done after a decade. To enable
this, a commission was appointed in 1927 to consider a new round of constitutional
reforms. Headed by Sir John Simon, it, however, did not include a single Indian member.
Indian politicians were furious. There were huge demonstrations in many towns, calling
for the boycott of the Simon Commission, and chanting the slogan of “Go back Simon”.
As the boycott movement spread, the Congress began to prepare itself for another spate
of mass struggles.
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Figure 9.2.5: Simon Commission boycott
There were other kinds of anti colonial initiatives that lay outside Gandhi’s control and
defied his mandate of non violence. There was a revival of revolutionary terrorism
among radical minded youth. Interestingly, some of these terroristic groups also began
to draw close to socialist ideals. The key figure among them was Bhagat Singh who, in
1928, founded the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. The revolutionary
terrorists of the Swadeshi era had been markedly Hindu in their ideas and language.
Bhagat Singh, however, marked a major departure here. Condemned to death and
awaiting execution for his assassination of a British official, he had come to some extent
under the sway of Marxists ideas. One of his last writings was called: Why I Am An
Atheist. It broadened the scope of revolutionary thinking beyond secret assassination
and questioned social power and domination by religion.
Civil disobedience and Gandhi, 1930-34
By the late 1920s, therefore, pressures began to mount, asking for a fresh round of
nationalist struggle with more radical political and socio economic demands. The earlier
Gandhian slogan of Swaraj had been deliberately ambiguous. It could range from self
government within the British Empire to complete independence. But Gandhi had not
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precisely spelt out its exact meaning, leaving different groups free to imagine it in
different ways. After much hesitation and pressure from his more radical associates like
Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, Gandhi finally accepted the demand for
complete independence - Purna Swaraj - at the Lahore Congress in late December
1929. A decision was taken to adopt this resolution along with the hoisting of what had
been chosen as the national tri-colour flag. It was hoisted at meetings all over the
country on 26 January, 1930. That is why the latter date is still observed as Republic
Day.
But what would be the methods of the new movement, which was to hopefully culminate
in the winning of complete independence? Gandhi thought for a long time about possible
methods. Eventually, he came forward with a decision which seemed to many to be an
anti- climax, but which eventually proved brilliantly effective. This was the salt
satyagraha. The British had made the production of salt a government monopoly,
thereby making it quite expensive because of the salt tax. Salt appeared a trivial issue
for average urban middle class Indians, but it meant something very different for the
poor. It was an essential item of food and the high price made it a great burden. Salt
was again something that could be manufactured very easily, collected without
additional cost from sea water. The making of it would violate the state law which
allowed only government agencies to produce salt. It would signify the peoples’ defiance
as much as it would address the needs of the poor. Making and selling of illicit salt in the
open became the predominant form of the movement. In the famous Dandi March (12
March- 6 April 1930), Gandhi traveled from his Gujarat ashram down to the sea coast at
Dandi to collect salt from the beach and bands of volunteers grew larger and larger on
his way. His example was followed by Congress leaders and volunteers all along the
Indian coastlines. Contraband salt was sold in cities, towns and villages, as an act of
open, deliberate mass level provocation, but peaceful in its form.
The salt satyagraha marked the beginning of the Civil Disobedience movement. This was
in some ways more radical from the beginning than Non-cooperation. Unlike the latter, it
involved a deliberate violation of the law and was not just a refusal to render voluntary
services. In some areas, this was accompanied with non payment of village level
chowkidari taxes as well. The British met the movement with massive lathi charges,
arrests and brutal repression.
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Figure 9.2.6: Gandhi breaking the salt law, Dandi, April 6. 1930
At the same time Civil Disobedience suffered from some inadequacies that were not
present in the earlier movement. It did not coincide with any major labour upsurge
unlike what had happened in 1919-1922. Muslim participation was considerably less than
before, except in the North West Frontier Provinces where Khan Abdul Gafar Khan, called
Frontier Gandhi, led a powerful yet peaceful mass movement. But many Muslims had
been alienated by Gandhi’s unilateral decision to stop Non- Cooperation, and there was
now no parallel Khilafat Movement. Hindu-Muslim relations had been strained also by the
Congress insistence on a unitary form of governance in future independent India. Many
Muslims wanted a more federal set up where Muslim majority provinces would have a
greater autonomy. A second crucial limitation concerned the Dalits. An autonomous
political movement was gathering strength among them under the leadership of B.R.
Ambedkar. Despite gestures of occasional goodwill, upper caste Hindus had not
fundamentally changed their attitudes about purity-pollution taboos. Gandhi himself
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condemned untouchablility, but still found much to praise in the caste system as a
whole.
Civil Disobedience, particularly in the form of non payment of taxes, gained enormous
popular support, particularly among many peasants, since Gandhi encouraged non
payment of revenue. What strengthened the movement was its coincidence with a very
sharp fall in the prices of agricultural products due to the world economic depression of
the early 1930’s. The fall hit hard particularly the relatively better off peasants who had
a surplus to sell in the market to meet the heavy burdens of revenue and rent payments.
This was in contrast to the post World War rise in prices, which had hit the poorer
peasants and the labourers the hardest. Gandhi, however, refused to go in for no rent
movements as he did not want to sharpen in any way class tensions within Indian
society between landlords and tenants.
Figure 9.2.7: A batch of Satyagrahis of Pratapgarh, June 1930
Another point of contrast with the previous movement was that this time Gandhi did not
call any halt due to individual or local cases of violence. The movement was by and large
peaceful though there were stray cases of attacks and conflicts. There were violent
upsurges outside the Congress movement. In April 1930, for instance, a revolutionary
group headed by Surya Sen carried out a daring raid on the armory of Chittagong in East
Bengal. There were also more or less violent mass upheavals in Peshawar and Sholapur.
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Apart from peasants, Civil Disobedience also involved large numbers of urban students.
The presence of women was notable and they would become local ‘dictators’ in Civil
Disobedience when the men were put behind bars. Boycott of British goods, particularly
Lancashire imports, proved very effective. Civil Disobedience did not quite have the
spontaneous mass appeal of its predecessor, for Gandhi now was a well known figure.
The earlier process of radicalization of mass movements through rumours about Gandhi
could no longer operate so powerfully. The Congress was much more organized now,
creating the possibility of effective but also tightly controlled mass movements.
Mass courting of arrest by volunteers, women as well as men, led to a flooding of the
prisons. The Government got seriously worried and Viceroy Irwin sent out feelers for
talks in early February 1931. Somewhat surprisingly, Gandhi quickly accepted the offer
and concluded what is called the Gandhi-Irwin Pact in March 1931. A somewhat uneasy
truce began which continued till the end of 1931. Some detailed research has indicated
that as the movement seemed to be gathering strength, business groups had become
restive due to frequent hartals and the general disruption of normal commerce. The
Congress agreed to a fresh round of negotiations, which took the form of a Round Table
Conference in London in early 1931, where Indian leaders of all political groups
participated along with British officials and politicians. The Conference however failed,
mainly because of sharp disagreements among Indian leaders. Not only Muslim leaders
but notably also Ambedkar refused to accept the Congress and Gandhi as the sole
spokesman for the country. The story goes that when Gandhi made an appeal to
Ambedkar to unite with the Congress in the name of the country, Ambedkar responded
with the statement, “Mahatmaji I have no country”. An angry but understandable reply,
given the conditions of extreme oppression and inequality in which masses of Dalits had
to live.
The breakdown of the Round Table Conference was followed in 1932 by a second round
of Civil Disobedience. Here the British were clearly on the offensive, the Congress was
declared illegal and massive repression was unleashed. Even though the movement was
not formally called off, Gandhi had shifted attention after the mid 1930s to what he
called his Harijan programme, trying to meet Dalit grievances through minor reforms like
the opening of wells and other facilities to untouchables without, however, very much
success.
In a sense, then, the Civil Disobedience movement failed, for British political structures
of domination remained as before. But, underneath, Gandhian movements had firmly
established the Congress as the real political authority in the minds of people. When
elections were called in 1935, the Congress won an overwhelming victory in most
provinces, benefiting evidently from memories of Civil Disobedience and the halo of
martyrdom and suffering that the non violent struggle led to. In 1935, a new
constitution had come into effect under which the provinces got somewhat greater
autonomy and ministries responsible to elected legislatures were constituted. The
Congress was able to form ministries in most parts of the country.
The developments of the 1920s and 30s had stimulated a variety of radical movements
and pressures within and outside the Congress. Socialism, for instance, was no longer a
creed espoused only by a handful of extreme radicals. Pressure groups had emerged
within the Congress demanding more Left-oriented politics, and these were occasionally
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stimulated by younger leaders within the Congress, notably Jawaharlal Nehru and, to
some extent, Subhas Chandra Bose.
August 1942 and ‘Quit India’
The Quit India movement of August 1942 is often seen as the peak point of Gandhian
nationalism. In many ways it marked a significant departure from the preceding
decades. It developed in the very specific context of a particular phase of the Second
World War, when Britain seemed to be on the point of losing the war against the Axis
powers. Japan seemed poised to invade India. Subhas Chandra Bose, the left leaning
dissident within the Congress, had secretly left the country, contacted and visited Axis
leaders and had set up a government in exile in alliance with Japan. He recruited from
Indian prisoners of war and built up the Azad Hind Fauj. Gandhi, too, was in a rather
new mood at this time. For once he was apparently less worried by possibilities of
violence within his movement, calling heroic resistance against the state leonine even if
it turned violent.
A number of efforts were made by the Congress just before 1942 to negotiate with the
British, offering wartime cooperation in exchange for the promise of post war
independence. All such negotiations, notably the Cripps Mission of 1942, had failed. The
British wanted to use the war situation, with a large Allied army situated on Indian soil,
to crush the Congress and nationalism once and for all. There was much provocation,
then, for the famous Quit India Resolution passed by the Congress on 8/9 August 1942.
An additional factor may have been a feeling in wide circles among nationalists that
Britain was on the point of losing the war, and Japan might well successfully take over
India. To forestall it, the Congress should make a bid for immediate independence at all
costs.
The unprecedented scale, as well as considerable mass and individual violence of the
1942 upsurge had their roots also in general suffering and discontent. War had once
again brought in new miseries, especially for the ordinary people. There were shortages
of essential goods, a massive rise in prices and, the misbehavior at times of British and
Allied soldiers added to the discontent. All this created a fertile soil for a huge uprising.
Immediately after the Congress resolution of August 1942, the British unleashed
massive repression, arresting Gandhi and a very large number of Congress activists all
over the country. The Indian reaction was equally extreme, and quite often violent.
Students and other middle class groups, along with peasants were the most prominent.
Parallel governments were set up in some parts of the country, notably in some regions
of Bihar, UnitedProvinces, Satara in Maharashtra, and Midnapur in Bengal. Workers were
also active in many places, particularly in Bombay and Jamshedpur. Even capitalists
seemed at times to be quite sympathetic, no doubt thinking, like others, that Britain
would lose the War. Left leaning Congress groups, notably the Congress Socialists led by
Jaya Prakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia were particularly militant. Communists
kept away from this upsurge. They were afraid of doing anything that would in practice
help the Fascist powers in a war in which the Soviet Union seemed to be in mortal
danger.
18
Nationalism
Taking full advantage of the war situation, the British unleashed enormous repression,
and were able to suppress the Quit India upsurge in a matter of weeks, except in some
scattered pockets of the country, especially where parallel governments did function for
a time.
1942 was accompanied and followed by enormous problems and crises. This reached its
climax in the devastating Bengal Famine of 1943. This was rooted not so much in
absolute scarcity, as in profiteering, and enormous black markets, and general official
indifference and inefficiency. British rule seemed to be ending amidst enormous mass
suffering. It would also leave behind a deeply divided people as its legacy.
Figure 9.2.8: Protest during Quit India movement
For despite its enormous scale, the Quit India movement did have one major limitation
as compared with its predecessors. Muslim participation on the whole remained low.
Many Muslims had been upset by the way the provincial governments, most of them
dominated by the Congress, seemed to often favour Hindu groups and discriminate
against Muslims. The demand of many Muslim political groups for greater provincial
autonomy within a loose federal structure consequently gathered strength. The
resolution passed by the Lahore session of the Muslim League in March 1940 needs to be
seen in this context. It demanded that Muslim majority areas in the North-western and
Eastern parts of India should be grouped together to constitute ‘Independent States’.
The resolution did not really use the terms ‘Pakistan’ or ‘Partition’, but it soon began to
be widely called the Pakistan resolution. The ban and repression unleashed on the
19
Nationalism
Congress in the wake of the Quit India movement left the political field for some years
open to the Muslim League. The Pakistan demand did become very popular among large
number of Muslims. As always, Muslim and Hindu communalisms fed into each other.
The mid 40s saw a climax in communal violence symbolized by the Calcutta riots of
August 1946.
1942 had apparently ended in British victory, for repression had crushed the nationalist
rebellion. But subsequent events were soon to show that this was only a temporary
British victory. British leaders by and large realized that a negotiated transfer of power
to Indians was more or less inevitable after the War ended. The exceptional measures of
repression through which August 1942 had been crushed would be impossible to sustain
in the post war world. The British economy had been exhausted by the war. In addition,
anti-imperialist sentiments were riding high worldwide in the years immediately after
1945. So, colonialism did have to come to an end, leaving behind a divided India and a
people at war among themselves.
Gandhian movements: aspects and tensions
The historical significance of Gandhi on not just an Indian but on a world scale goes
beyond his role – often controversial - as the leading figure in a series of anti-colonial
movements. The figure of Gandhi remains relevant to many movements down to our
own times.
Gandhi, at times, has been portrayed as a spokesman of struggle against Western

cultural domination. Hind Swaraj,for instance, can be read as a tirade against Western
materialist civilization: with its denunciation of railways, lawyers, even doctors and
hospitals. But it would be an oversimplification which presents Gandhian ideals as part of
a simple dichotomy between West and non-West. Hind Swaraj, in fact, also includes
much praise of Englishmen, and the rejection of railways for instance, cannot be taken
too literally. Gandhi, it may be noted, did not hesitate to travel frequently on trains or
use other modern means of communication like journalism which he abused in his book.
His was not a simple, obscurantist rejection of the West.
Yet the cultural critique developed by Gandhi does have a contemporary relevance, if it
is seen as a renunciation of a blind worship of machines and material success. Here,
Gandhian criticism links up with contemporary environmental and ecological radicalism
and alternative models of sustainable development which are oriented towards welfare of
people and environment and not just the growth of commodity production. Non violent
mass satyagraha, as a tool for action, also remains relevant to many. One may cite the
Chipko movement of the 1970s in which peasants and women in the western Himalayan
hills defended tress against deforestation by literally hugging them: or the Narmada
Bachao Andolan, especially in Madhya Pradesh which was directed against the
construction of huge dams which threaten floods and take away the land held by
peasants for many generations and lead to large scale destruction of forests.
Internationally, the best known examples would include the anti apartheid and liberation
struggles in South Africa under Nelson Mandela which began with quasi-Gandhian non-
violence but later was forced to take up arms. Or the Afro-American movements for civil
rights in the USA led by Martin Luther King. There have also been numerous
environmental movements with some affinities with Gandhian ideals and methods: the
20
Nationalism
so called Green Movements in many parts of the West, notably, the Green Party in
Germany led by Petra Kelly which for some time became a significant electoral force.
Non-violence
“When a person claims to be non-violent, he is expected not to be angry with one who
has injured him. He will not wish him harm; he will wish him well; he will not swear at
him; he will not cause him any physical hurt. He will put up with all the injury to which
he is subjected by the wrongdoer. Thus non-violence is complete innocence. Complete
non-violence is complete absence of ill will against all that lives. It therefore embraces
even sub-human life not excluding obnoxious insects or beasts. They have not been
created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator,
we should find their proper place in His creation. Non-violence is therefore, in its active
form, goodwill towards all life. It is pure Love. I read it in Hindu scripture, in the Bible,
in the Koran’’.
This extract indicates some of the wider dimensions of Gandhian non-violence. Its
extension to all forms of life indicates some of Gandhi’s affinities with notions of
environmental conservation which has become an increasingly central issue worldwide.
Source: Young India, 9-3-1922
With author’s comment.
So far, we have looked at the broad sweep of the Gandhian movements and ideologies.
It may be useful now to analyze these in terms of the specific social groups that were
involved and the tensions that emerged in their mutual relationships. A recurrent pattern
was the dual dimension within Gandhian ideology and movements. Gandhi without doubt
inspired and energized massive movements but he also repeatedly restrained or even
halted them abruptly. He staunchly discouraged class conflict among Indians even when
there were abuses of power by the upper classes. The contradictions here, at once
inspiring and curbing movements, frequently led to pressures from below, some of which
at times sought to go beyond the limits of the Gandhian leadership.
We may now look briefly at five dimensions within this contradictory phenomenon, in
terms of industrial workers, peasants, caste, gender, communalism and nationalism.
Labour
One of the earliest movements led by Gandhi concerned industrial workers: the
Ahmedabad textile workers strike of 1918. Yet in some ways Gandhi seems always to
have been nervous and hesitant about encouraging labour unrest. The hesitation no
doubt was related to his fear of contributing to internal tensions within Indian society.
Yet the way in which he sought to tackle such issues generally tended to have a tilt
towards the more dominant groups within such relationships.
21
Nationalism
A striking example here was the way in which he backed no tax or no revenue
movements, but had enormous hesitation about calling for non-payment of rent. Non-
payment of revenue would hit the colonial rulers, but the recurrent problem for Gandhi
seems to have been the fact that no rent movements would hit the interest of indigenous
landlords or locally dominant groups in the countryside. So he was prepared to
countenance non-payment of rent rarely, and always with great hesitation and delays.
The abrupt halts which he sometimes called for in movements, as we have seen were
often related also to such class dimensions.
The Ahmedabad textile strike of 1918 provides one example. It made clear Gandhi’s
refusal to support class struggle between workers and employers - a hesitation enhanced
in the Ahmedabad case as mill-owners like Ambalal Sarabhai and Kasturbhai Lal Bhai
were personally close to Gandhi. More generally, Gandhi developed a theory of
trusteeship. i.e. that capitalists, possibly landlords too, hold their properties in trust for
workers and peasants subordinated to them. Wealth belongs to them only because they
will contribute to the uplift of the producers. This was Gandhi’s alternative to theories of
class struggle, which became increasingly influential from around the 1920s and 1930s
among Left leaning groups in India. It did prove on the whole effective in Ahmedabad. In
the wake of the 1918 strike, the Textile Labour Association that was set up followed
Gandhian lines of class peace rather than class struggle. As a result this organization
never joined the All India Trade Union Congress that was set up in 1920 and which came
to include a large variety of groups with different leanings, Congress as well as Socialists
or Communists. Gandhi divided the Association into different craft groups and allowed
for arbitration of disputes, generally under his personal instruction.
Gandhi discouraged strikes against employers which would include European as well as
Indian industrialists. He was critical of industrial production but he did not want workers
to disrupt it in any way. Even during peak points in nationalist movements, he was not in
favour of political strikes among workers in sympathy with nationalist demands and
grievances.
Peasants
As said earlier, Gandhi would, on occasion, allow and organize no revenue movements,
where landowners stopped paying taxes to the state. One of the most effective of these
no revenue movements was the Bardoli satyagraha of 1928 in Gujarat. Excessive land
revenue demands from peasants led to a very successful movement which withheld such
payment, even when peasants were deprived of their holdings. But even at the height of
the Depression in the 1930s, when agrarian prices crashed, leading to peasant
bankruptcy, Gandhi would not allow peasants to stop rent payments to landlords, nor
would he try to enlarge the rights of agricultural workers or sharecroppers.
Despite his evident hesitation on issues of no rent movements and his tendency to call
off movements at points where they seem to be turning not just or necessarily violent
but socially radical, Gandhi was able to mobilize peasants on an unprecedented and
unequalled scale throughout his life. To some extent, even his hesitations and restraints
may have helped, for they did contribute to unity in the countryside, where class
tensions were often less clear cut, and elements of paternalism were sometimes present
in relations between landlords and tenants, peasants and agricultural labourers, high and
low castes. Moreover, his followers set up ashrams in rural areas, setting up arbitration
22
Nationalism
courts to help resolve rural disputes, and organized small scale income generating
projects. Khadi did augment peasant livelihoods, in however small a way.
Yet the breaks, hesitations, and compromises did stimulate criticism and resentment. In
a recurrent pattern, radical groups that were critical of the Gandhian message of class
peace and trusteeship began to spring up to address issues of landlord exploitation
which Gandhi would not touch. Organizations like Kisan Sabhas developed from the
1920s onwards in many parts of the country, pressing for greater tenancy rights and
critical of Gandhian ideology and methods from a Left perspective.
Dalits and caste
Gandhi was consistent in his condemnation of untouchablility from the beginning. But
about caste in general he tended to be much more hesitant and statements are not rare,
particularly in his earlier phases, that were or could be read as praise for caste as a
whole. Varnashramaor the four fold division of society into hereditary occupations,
carrying strong purity-pollution taboos, was described as a structure that helped to
maintain social peace and reduce social conflict. He went so far as to occasionally praise
Brahmans as the finest flowers of Hindu and Indian civilization. He discouraged inter
caste marriages or change of caste based occupation.
At the same time, in what can be seen as an overall pattern, there seems to be a
tendency towards greater radicalism over time. Here the development of the Ambedkar
alternative provided both a threat as well as a stimulus for Gandhi’s thinking. It became
increasingly clear from the 1920s that among the untouchables there was a growing
appeal of such more radical condemnation of caste as a whole, as an alternative to
Gandhian or Congress ideology. Gandhi liked to call the untouchables Harijans or
children of God. They themselves began to name themselves Dalits, the most oppressed.
This was a deliberate break with Gandhi’s efforts. The Gandhian Congress developed
over time a complex pattern of relationships with Ambedkar and other radical Dalit
leaders. It included both conflict and compromise or even partial unity.
In 1932, the Congress determinedly opposed Ambedkar’s demand for separate

electorates for untouchables and Gandhi went on a fast unto death to oppose it. He also
stayed aloof from Ambedkar’s militant struggles to reclaim, for Dalit access, public
spaces that lay alongside the temples from which Dalits were barred. Gandhi preferred
that upper castes should realize their guilt and abolish untouchability themselves, rather
than Dalits fight it with state help. Moreover, he insisted at the Round Table Conference
that he and the Congress represented Dalits adequately and they needed no other
organization or leader outside the Congress.
However, things changed as Gandhi increasingly realized that his hopes were not
realizable. In the mid-40s, the Congress supported Ambedkar’s election to the
Constituent Assembly, and subsequently went on to put him in principal charge of
drafting the Constitution of independent India. This helped to make that basic document
much more socially radical than it otherwise would have been.
23
Nationalism
Women and gender
Initiative and pressures critical of patriarchal domination had been the central theme of
so-called social reform initiatives and movements throughout the 19th century,
beginning with Ram Mohun Roy with his campaign against sati or widow immolation. In
the late 19th and early 20th century however, there was a tendency towards a certain
decline in such social reform movements, as many anti-colonial nationalists, notably
figures like Tilak and much of the Swadeshi movements against the partition of Bengal of
1905 thought that such reform meant seeking the support of the colonial state and
therefore should be postponed or abandoned, and priority had to be given to the anti-
colonial struggle. There was thus a wave of Hindu revivalist pressures, and praise of the
allegedly unique position of the chaste Hindu women and Hindu patriarchal values. There
was therefore even at times a hostile relationship between the more aggressive types of
anti-colonial nationalism and criticism of patriarchy and support of emancipation of
women. Some signs of a revival of more reformists attitudes could be seen however
from the 1910s, as for instance, in some of the writings of Rabindranath Tagore in the
immediate post-Swadeshi years. From the early decades of the 20th century, women
began to set up their own organizations and gradually came to lead the agenda of social
reform.
Gandhi’s own attitudes towards women, gender and patriarchal values were highly
complex. He would ask women to be meek and submissive, to accept their sufferings
without confrontation or rebellion; yet, to remain morally pledged to the right values,
even if the family punished them for their rectitude. In this they would be the model for
his satyagrahis. He revered his mother’s piety and modelled himself on her qualities,
thus learning to nurture, nurse and feed his associates and cultivating what are called
feminine virtues. His gentleness and non aggression made him a very different sort of
man and he encouraged his followers to be masculine in that different mode. At the
same time, he was authoritarian in his family life, often forcing his wife and children to
obey him despite their misgivings. His emphasis on perfect celibacy for satyagrahis
imposed a lot of emotional stress on his associates.
Yet, unlike the bulk of the social reformists of the 19th century Gandhi did call for the
active participation of women in political movements and the anti-colonial struggle in
general. In 1917 for instance, at a political conference in Godhra in Gujarat, he noticed
that there were no women in the audience and made the remark to the men assembled
there that they were walking on one foot. Women participated in all aspects of Gandhian
movements, picketing shops to impose boycott of foreign goods, courting arrest, facing
lathi–charges. Going to prison was previously considered a disgrace particularly for
women. It now became a symbol of patriotism. This can be seen both in the Non-
cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements, particularly in the latter when thousands
of women participated actively. It seems that the religious appeal which was evident in
many aspects of Gandhian nationalism was helpful in this context, for, political activism
was often projected as a religious duty. At the same time, a relatively negative aspect
should also be noted. Women who had played notably non- traditional roles in course of
the anti-colonial struggle sometimes slipped back to more conservative roles and values
when that era was over. Still the active public role of women including large number of
peasants and women from highly conventional middle class families needs to be
emphasized.
24
Nationalism
Figure 9.2.9: Women participation in Salt Satyagraha, 1930
Communalism and nationalism
From his South African days onwards, Gandhi was and remained a passionate believer in
Hindu-Muslim unity. Possibly the fact that some of his earliest supporters of the anti-
racists struggles in South Africa had been Muslim lawyers and traders contributed to the
way in which anti-communalism became a part of his very being. Gandhi’s life thus
ended in tragedy, often presented in terms of the acceptance of a partition of India. But
the real tragedy was not the acceptance of a separate Pakistan but the communal
holocaust that preceded, accompanied, and followed it. For Gandhi, political divisions
were much less significant than the division of hearts. The last years of his life were
devoted almost totally to the struggle against all forms of communalism, whether Muslim
or Hindu. Gandhi’s interventions often took the form of going on a fast unto death. In
Calcutta in late 1946 and early ‘47, and in Delhi just before his murder, such fasts did
succeed remarkably in ending violence for the time being. But even these acts of
courage and self sacrifice did not bank the flames permanently, as is evident in his own
brutal murder on 30 January, 1948 in a conspiracy organized by Hindu communalist
groups.
25
Nationalism
Figure 9.2.10: Refugees migration during partition
Gandhi spent the last weeks and months of his life desperately trying to end the
communal violence, Hindu as much as Muslim, that had begun with what is called the
Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946. Massive communal violence spread rapidly,
virtually all across the sub-continent: Noakhali in East Bengal, numerous cities, towns
and villages across Northern and Central India, Bihar, ultimately Delhi and Punjab.
Horrified particularly by the news of many cases of rape being reported from Noakhali,
Gandhi made his last major intervention, in what has been called the Mahatma’s finest
hour. He went to riot- torn Noakhali refusing any police or military help, accompanied by
a group of young men and women. He moved through villages unprotected, moving
aside with his own hands sometimes the sticks and dirt which had been thrown on his
path by the rioters. While he walked he was singing what had become his favorite song,
“If no one heeds your call walk alone walk alone”. He spoke of peace and love to
implacable Muslim communalists who gradually stopped their violence and began to
attend his prayer meetings.
26
Nationalism
Talk to students
Calcutta, August 15, 1947.
Gandhiji explained in detail why the fighting must stop now. We had two states now,
each of which was to have both Hindu and Muslim citizens. If that were so, it meant
an end of the two-nation theory. Students ought to think and think well. They should
do no wrong. It was wrong to molest an Indian citizen merely because he professed a
different religion. Students should do everything to build up a new state of India which
would be everybody’s pride. With regard to the demonstrations of fraternization he
said:
I am not lifted off my feet by these demonstrations of joy.
Source: Bose, Nirmal Kumar. My Days with Gandhi, 266.
On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot dead at a prayer meeting by Nathuram Godse, an
activist for many years of the extreme Hindu communalist organization, the Rashtriya
Swayam Sevak Sangh(RSS) which he left to join the Hindu Mahasabha. At his trial, in a
speech, entitled ‘May it please your honor’, Godse acknowledged Savarkar, principle
ideologue of the entire Hindu Right, as his mentor. It is interesting that some scholars
think that Savarkar may have attended the group meeting in London where Gandhi first
presented Hind Swaraj. The murder of the Mahatma which deeply shocked the entire
country, and indeed the world, did stop for a time the communal riots. But communalism
has repeatedly revived and remains a terrible problem for the entire sub-continent.
9.2 Summary
• There are various historical approaches to understand Gandhi and his impact
on the Indian national movement and different sections of Indian society.
• The context of South Africa is important in understanding how Gandhian

ideas and methods of mobilization took shape.
• Gandhian strategy expanded the reach of nationalism to the masses both in cities
as well as in the countryside to hitherto marginalized sections like women,
peasants and workers.
• Non-violence and control from above by the leadership sought to ensure that
mass nationalism was never out of effective control of the nationalist elites.
27
Nationalism
• Various critiques of Gandhian strategy and ideology appeared from diverse
sections like religious minorities, lower castes and from the oppressed classes.
• The legacy of mass nationalism had its ambiguities, for it coincided with and
occasionally contributed to sectional religious formations like communalism.
• The Gandhian vision of swaraj and non–violence culminated eventually in massive

communal riots.
• Gandhian ideology of non-violence and his critique of modern society have

remained relevant in the present context not just for India but in many parts of
the world.
9.2: Exercises
Essay questions
1) Examine the different historiographical approaches to Gandhian nationalism.

2) What was the importance of Gandhi’s early political activities in South Africa?
3) Gandhian mass movements were marked by control rather than empowerment of
the masses. Comment
4) Examine the Gandhian approach to the issue of gender and caste discrimination.
5) Discuss Gandhi’s attitude towards movements of workers and peasants.
6) Examine the different implications of Gandhi’s combination of religion and politics.
7) Assess the Gandhian understanding of non-violence and Self Rule.
Objective questions
Question Number Type of question LOD
1 Match the following 1
Question
Match each event with the date:
a) Rowlatt Act i) April 1919
b) Jallianwala bagh massacre ii) February 1922
c) Chauri Chaura incident iii) March 1919
Correct Answer /
a) and iii), b)and i), c)and ii)
28
Nationalism
Option(s)
Justification/ Feedback for the correct answer
The passing of the Rowlatt act was followed by the Jallianwala Bagh
massacre. Subsequentlly, Gandhi launched the non-cooperation
movement which was called off due to violence at Chauri Chaura in 1922.
Resource/Hints/Feedback for the wrong answer
Reviewer’s Comment:
Question
Match each Gandhian movement with the relevant time frame:
a) Non-cooperation movement i) 1942
b) Civil Disobedience movement ii) 1930-34
c) Quit India movement iii) 1919-1922
Correct Answer /
a) and iii), b)and ii), c) and i)
Option(s)
Gandhi began his mass nationalist movement with the Non-cooperation

movement. Civil disobedience was the second major movement. Quit India
Movement being the last one witnessed far more violence then the
previous two movements.
29
Nationalism
Question
Match the following individuals with the movement they led:
a) Nelson Mandela i) Green movement
b) Martin Luther King ii) Narmada Bachao Andolan
c) Petra Kelly iii) Anti Apartheid movement
d) Medha Patkar iv) Civil rights movement
Correct Answer /
a) and iii), b) and iv), c)and i), d) and ii)
Option(s)
All these movement owed some of their ideals and methods from aspects
of Gandhian philosophy.
30
Nationalism
Question
Match each person with the related event:
a) Surya Sen i) Khilafat movement
b) Subhas Chandra Bose ii) Chittagong Raid
c) Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan iii) Khudai Khidmatgar
d) Mohammed Ali iv) Indian National Army
Correct Answer /
a) and ii), b)and iv), c)and iii), d) and i)
Option(s)
Mohammed Ali joined Gandhi to fight for the Khilafat issue. Khan Abdul
Ghaffar Khan remained part of Gandhian activities in North Western
frontier and led the Khudai Khidmatgar group. Surya Sen was the leader
of the famous Chittagong armoury raid while Subhas Chandra Bose led the
first organized military opposition to the colonial state by organizing the
Indian National Army.
Question
Match each of the following events with the correct date:
a) Quit India resolution i) March 1931
31
Nationalism
b) Gandhi Irwin pact ii) August 1942
c) Pune pact iii) September 1932
d) Purna Swaraj demand iv) December 1929
Correct Answer /
a) and ii), b)and i), c) and iii), d) and iv)
Option(s)
9.2 Glossary
Swaraj: self-governance
Hind swaraj: Indian home rule
Purna swaraj: complete independence
Swadeshi: of one’s own country
Satyagraha: search for truth
Ahimsa: non-violence
Mahatma: great soul
Harijan: children of God
Dalit: ground down; the most oppressed; the untouchable castes
9.2 Further readings

Hardiman, David. 2003. Gandhi in His Time and Ours. New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Brown, Judith.1972. Gandhi’s Rise to Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Forbes, Geraldine. 1996. Women in Modern India. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.
Sarkar, Sumit. 1983. Modern India,1885-1947. New Delhi: Macmillan India Limited.
32

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Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the Making of Indian

Lesson: Leaders and Followers: Gandhi and the

Chapter 9: Gandhian nationalism after 1919: ideas and movements

9.2: Leaders and followers: Gandhi and the making of

Historiographical approaches to Indian nationalism in the Gandhian era have inevitably

Subalternist historians introduced an interesting emphasis on popular constructions of

Value addition: from the sources

Gandhi on western modernity

A very extreme statement, but an interesting and important one. We have to

Source: Hind Swaraj, 1909, with author’s comment

Value addition: from the sources

Official assessments of Gandhi

Source: A sub-divisional officer from Champaran 29 April 1917; A C.I.D

What happened afterwards, however, was an unprecedented popular upsurge,

Source: Nehru Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

Figure 9.2.3: Gandhi with Ali brothers

Source: Nehru Memorial Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

Figure 9.2.4: Cartoon in Amrita Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, 15 August 1947

Figure 9.2.5: Simon Commission boycott

Source: Nehru Memorial Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

Civil disobedience and Gandhi, 1930-34

Source: Nehru Memorial Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

Figure 9.2.7: A batch of Satyagrahis of Pratapgarh, June 1930

Source: Nehru Memorial Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

August 1942 and ‘Quit India’

Figure 9.2.8: Protest during Quit India movement

Source: Nehru Memorial Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

Gandhian movements: aspects and tensions

Gandhi, at times, has been portrayed as a spokesman of struggle against Western

Value addition: from the sources

Source: Young India, 9-3-1922

With author’s comment.

Dalits and caste

In 1932, the Congress determinedly opposed Ambedkar’s demand for separate

Figure 9.2.9: Women participation in Salt Satyagraha, 1930

Source: Nehru Memorial Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

Communalism and nationalism

Figure 9.2.10: Refugees migration during partition

Source: Nehru Memorial Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

Value addition: from the sources

Calcutta, August 15, 1947.

I am not lifted off my feet by these demonstrations of joy.

Source: Bose, Nirmal Kumar. My Days with Gandhi, 266.

• The context of South Africa is important in understanding how Gandhian

• The Gandhian vision of swaraj and non–violence culminated eventually in massive

• Gandhian ideology of non-violence and his critique of modern society have

1) Examine the different historiographical approaches to Gandhian nationalism.

Question Number Type of question LOD

1 Match the following 1

a) Rowlatt Act i) April 1919

b) Jallianwala bagh massacre ii) February 1922

c) Chauri Chaura incident iii) March 1919

Justification/ Feedback for the correct answer

Question Number Type of question LOD

2 Match the following 1

a) Non-cooperation movement i) 1942

b) Civil Disobedience movement ii) 1930-34

c) Quit India movement iii) 1919-1922

Justification/ Feedback for the correct answer